Build Wealth By Green Investing

In today's depressive stock market it is hard to find a silver lining. Green investing is a way to feel good about your stocks and mutual funds while having the potential to make a healthy return on investment. Socially responsible investing makes sense during the corruption on Wall Street and the search for alternative energy sources.

Green investing is finally coming into the mainstream. People can do what's right for the environment and build wealth too! Socially responsible investing has been around for decades and is now becoming popular. SRI already has $2.3 trillion in investments. SRI started by appealing to investors who wanted to avoid sin stocks, the stocks of companies that are involved in alcohol, tobacco, and gambling.

Today, Social Responsible Investing is an all encompassing term that generally means screening companies out that are abusive to the environment, practice poor labor relations, are not responsible to their communities and lack corporate integrity. SRI has evolved to serve in an advocacy manner. The new focus by consumers, business and government on sustainability and the environment has created its own category of SRI. Goldman Sachs, the darling of Wall Street, has already set aside $1.5 billion to privately invest in green companies. CalPERS; one of the country's largest institutional investors, has set aside more than a billion dollars for green investments.

How do you catch the green investing wave? The most practical and probably most efficient way to put money to work in a SRI is via an SRI mutual fund. Other ways to invest are via an Exchange Traded Fund and by owning stocks individually. The latter way takes more time, expertise and is riskier as you are not diversified as well as a mutual fund.

Not all SRI funds are alike. For decades SRI has screened out companies that were considered socially or ethically unacceptable. Now green funds screen in companies that are making a positive impact. Today's green funds include some surprising choices as more and more blue-chip companies are becoming green-chip companies.

How do they work? Imagine if you or I try and ask a CEO about changing her packaging for products or about ending abusive consumer practices. We would not get too far. But imagine a pot of $2 trillion dollars invested by SRI managers speaking about these things to CEO's? For better or worse, having that much money under management gives them an open ear to management. This shareholder advocacy becomes a powerful force for improvement.

SRI aligns your money with your interests. In my opinion, companies that focus on doing right by the consumer, the environment, the marketplace and all other constituents tend to do better over the long term. It is those who focus on the short term and take shortcuts that tend to be disappointing investments. Sustainability is not just about us as humans on this earth but is also relevant to companies and investments.

In the past, being altruistic and investing was not as correlated as they can be today. You can put money to work, funding newer renewable energy technologies and have your money working in an area that is the next challenge for our country while offering a potential favorable return on your money. A major Wall Street firm recently put out a research report titled "Clean Energy: Sustainable Opportunities." They predicted that annual clean-energy revenue opportunities could reach $500 billion by 2020 and a trillion annually by 2030. This is an exciting time indeed!

Article By Larry Burke

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Investing Made Simple

Let’s face it in good years when the stock market is soaring everyone seems to be a stock market genius. Heck, you can throw darts at the Wall Street Journal and pick winning stocks. The problem for all of us is when the market travels either sideways or worse yet, moves in a downward direction. Then what do you do as it becomes increasingly harder to find winning stocks.

I have read in more than one source that a given individual stock aside from the fundamentals of the stock itself is influenced by a number of factors. This includes falsely pumping up the value of the security by company executives as well as the Wall Street bankers looking to make a quick buck off the backs of “regular people” like us.

More importantly perhaps is the fact that the movement of an individual stock may be influenced by factors beyond its control. For example it is estimated that 70 percent of the stocks movement is influenced by the movement of the stock market itself. So, your stock may have great fundamentals, but if the overall movement of the stock market is down, guess what, your stock if probably going with it.

Twenty percent of a stock’s movement is influenced by the sector that it is in (banking, textiles, health care, etc.), so again even with good fundamentals, if your stock is in a poor performing sector there is a good chance the price of the stock is moving south.

Lastly, about ten percent of a stock’s movement is influenced by the stocks actual fundamentals and as stated earlier in many instances these fundamentals are manipulated. Remember Enron, Tyco, etc.?

So how does the average investor eliminate all these potential shortcomings when investing in the stock market? Exchange Traded Funds or ETF. These are funds that are traded like stocks, you buy and sell shares just as you would with any equity, but they mimic mutual funds in that the ETF’s are made up of a basket of individual stocks.

Exchange Traded Funds come in various shapes and sizes meaning you can trade whole markets, such as the Nasdaq, you can trade complete sectors. Additionally you can trade specific styles of stocks such as large cap, mid cap, value cap, etc.

You can also trade foreign equities, commodities and real estate. Since they trade like individual stocks you can buy and sell them anytime during the day while the market is open.

Lastly they are transparent, you know exactly what you are trading and they allow for easy diversification.

You can trade markets like the S&P 1500, SPDR or Spiders which mimics the S&P 500, the NYSE Composite Index Fund which corresponds to the NYSE Composite Index., the Russell 3000 Index and of course the most popular is the QQQQ which corresponds to the Nasdaq 100.

Within these groups there are funds that attempt to double the return of these indexes as well as funds which attempt to short the indexes, so you can trade them in any market environment. Plus there are options available on them for those that prefer that method of trading.

Another nice thing about Exchange Traded Funds is that if you play a lot of money in the market, because of the huge size of these funds, they are always redeemable. Although that concept is probably true with larger stocks, some thinly traded stocks may cause you a problem if you attempt to sell a large quantity at one time

The Exchange Traded Funds are superior to mutual funds for a couple of reasons. One there are far less expenses associated with ETF’s compared to mutual funds and as previously stated the ETF’s can be bought and sold anytime while the market is open compared to mutual funds where the buy and sell price is determined at market close.

In conclusion I believe it is much easier to determine the potential direction of the overall stock market than an individual stock at any given time and for that reason and the reasons listed , trading Exchange Traded Funds is a much smarter investment move.

Article By footdoc77

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Deedless Real Estate Investing - An Overview

Are you looking to increase the number of real estate deals you can do without significantly increasing your risk and without increasing the amount of cash or credit you need? If so, then deedless real estate investing may be just the strategy you’re looking for.

Deedless real estate investing is a collective term used to describe a group of tactics that do not involve an immediate transfer of ownership of a piece of property. Among these tactics are straight lease option, sandwich lease option, and subject to.

The first of these, the straight lease option, describes an agreement between you the investor and the seller in which you lease (or rent) their property for a monthly payment, and you have a guaranteed option to buy the property at a predetermined price within a fixed period of time. Ownership does not change hands unless and until you exercise your purchase option, making this the first type of deedless real estate investing.

The second type of deedless real estate investing, the sandwich lease option, starts out as a straight lease option. You then, as the tenant buyer, would find a second tenant/buyer to assign your interest in the property to. They would lease the property from you, with the option to buy it from you. When and if they exercise their option, you would in turn exercise your option to buy from the original seller. This puts you in the middle of the sandwich, where you stand to profit with little or none of your own money at risk!

Finally, the third tactic for deedless real estate investing is the subject to, which means you buy the property subject to the existing mortgage or deed of trust remaining in place in the seller’s name- you simply start making the payments. Some investors actually do insist that they get the deed when doing a subject to deal, but they don’t record the deed until they resell the property and cash out the seller’s loan.

Other subject to investors don’t get the deed, waiting instead until they find a buyer who exercises their option and cashes them out of the seller’s loan. Doing it this way makes this a true deedless real estate investing tactic, but significantly increases the risk. I don’t recommend it!

We have barely scratched the surface of what could be said about these three tactics for deedless real estate investing, but now you have an overview. Add these tactics to you real estate investing toolkit, and more deals will be available to you.

Now, go make more offers!

Article By Tom Dunn

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