EASILY FINDING A GOOD STOCK 
by THE ALCHEMIST, Al Thomas, 3-21-05

There is a tremendous amount of software, complicated high priced newsletters, radio and TV stock pickers and Internet web sites that will help you find a stock that is going to make you rich.  The problem is you don’t know if this is talk or are these gurus putting their own money where their mouth is. Until I know for sure this “expert” has his own cash on the line I don’t want to buy it. If he doesn’t have confidence in his own picks than why should I put my money at risk?

Wall Street wants you to do research. Find out everything you can about a company before you buy their shares. Your broker will send you tons of information on full color click paper, pink sheets, blue sheets, yellow sheets and more. Morningstar will be very happy to sell you a complete report.

One important fact is that if you and everyone else can have this information then it can’t be worthwhile because once a bit of news is known it is immediately factored into the price of the stock. That is why research is worthless. What you want to know is if you buy it will it go up. Obviously there are no guarantees.  Furthermore, do you have the time to pour over hundreds of pages of scores of companies to find one that will go up? If you follow those “hot stock” tipsters that send email every day you are sure to lose your money.  Surely someone should know something, but how do you find that person.

Here is the secret. On the Internet you can find many sites that rate mutual funds by performance. Performance means those that are making more money during the last one month or 3 months than all the others. Be careful of those who advertise the “Top 25 Mutual Funds”. It may not mean by performance. It might be those that have the most assets and that doesn’t mean squat. Size is not a criteria of quality.  There is one advisory service that will sell you a monthly list of best performing mutual funds and has them listed by 1, 3, 6 and 12 month performance. It is NoLoad FundX. A free subscription can be had to Successful Investing that tracks the best funds weekly at http://www.successful-investment.com/StatSheet/SS012005.htm on the Internet.

             Now that you have found the best performing funds you can easily see what stocks they have in their portfolio either by requesting a prospectus or by checking online at Market Watch web site http://www2.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/intchart.asp?seiteid=mktw.   Type in the symbol for the best performing fund and you will be able to locate the stocks they own. Looking through their top picks you will soon be able to find a few  stocks  that are going up now. Do this with several funds and you will have good equities from which to choose.   What you have done is pick the brain of the manager of the currently best performing fund to find stocks on which he has done all the research. Here is a free method of easily finding good stocks.