Everyone always seems to have great interest in investing in penny stocks. It is probably because people think it is easier for a penny stock to rapidly rise in value and for the investor to make a boatload of profits.

However, in every market there are the scam artists and the investing market is no different. Have you ever received emails that told you a certain penny stock was about to explode? I get at least one everyday.

Well, the whole purpose of these emails is to try and get a bunch of uninformed investors (or suckers) to go out and buy the penny stock that these emails are promoting. It does not take many buy orders on a penny stock with little volume to drive up the price quickly.

Here’s the problem. The scam artists that send these emails buy the penny stock before the emails are sent. Then all of the investors that believe these emails drive up the price and the scam artists sell their shares. Unfortunately, those that bought the penny stock after reading the emails end up buying at the high and then watch as the stock comes falling down back to it’s normal level.

Here is an example…

Last Friday I started getting emails about EXCHANGE MOBILE TELE (EXMT.PK) . On Thursday the stock was trading at around $0.08. By Friday when I first received the email it was already up to $0.14. By Monday it had hit a high of $0.17.

These scam artists were able to make the price of the stock double and I am sure they made out with a huge return on their investment. With no other news release about the company during the period, or for all of August for that matter, it is hard to believe the jump was from anything else.

So stay away from these penny stock emails because you will always be the last one on board and end up buying at the high and then watching the stock go back to it’s normal level.

How would you like to shave 7 years off your mortgage?  Sounds pretty good and it is extremely easy to do by taking advantage of bi-weekly mortgage payments.

The majority of home owners make a mortgage payment once a month.  However, if you take a different route and make a mortgage payment every two weeks you will end up making 1 extra mortgage payment a year.  This extra payment will allow you to pay off your mortgage is 23 years compared to the standard 30 years.

Here’s the math.  If you have a 30 year $200,000 mortgage at 7% fixed interest rate your monthly mortgage payment would be $1330.60.   If you decided to pay bi-weekly you would pay $665.30 every two weeks.  Since there are 52 weeks a year you would end up making 26 payments per year and in turn end up making 13 full mortgage payments.

How much will this save you?  Based on the above mortgage, if you paid once a month you would end up paying $279017.80 in interests over the course of 30 years.  However, by paying bi-weekly you would end up paying only $207917.46 in interest, for a savings of $71,1003.40 in interest!

How hard is this to do?  Not very hard at all.  Most people get paid every two weeks so all you need to do is make a mortgage payment every time you get paid.  Almost all lenders now offer bi-weekly mortgage payments with no fee.  Just simply call your lender and let them know that you would like to switch to a bi-weekly mortgage and you are all set.

One of the best feelings is having a home that is paid off.  By switching to a bi-weekly you will accomplish that in 23 years instead of 30 years. Not to mention you will build up equity in your home much faster by using a bi-weekly mortgage.

Many investors feel that mutual funds are the best thing since sliced bread and for good reasons. Mutual funds are easy to invest in, they have low expenses, they offer instant diversification, etc. But how good of investments are mutual funds…

Not very good ones when you compare them to index funds. An index fund is one whose goal is to match the target index as closely as possible. They may try to replicate the the S&P 500, Russell 2000, Wilshire 5000, etc.

So why are Index funds better than Mutual Funds?

Only about 30% of mutual funds beat the S&P 500 in any given single year.

And if you are lucky enough to pick one of the 30% that do beat the S&P, how likely is it that the fund will beat the S&P in 2 straight years, or 5 straight years or even 30 straight years?

Let’s take a look at some facts.

The largest and most well-known index fund is the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund. This index fund attempts to match the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. How well has it done?

Over the last ten years it has beaten the performance of over 90% of all domestic equity mutual funds over the past three and five year periods! Are you a good enough investor (or lucky enough) to be able to pick the 10% of mutual funds that will beat the S&P Index? Probably not, sorry.

Here is another fact. During the 1990s, the S&P 500 provided an annualized return of 17.3%, compared with just 13.9% for the average diversified mutual fund. (Fool.com).

If you invested $100,000 at 17.3%, after 10 years your investment would have grown to $493,151.

If you invested $100,000 at 13.9%, after 10 years your investment would have only grown to $367,482. A difference of $125,669!

But the advantages of index funds doesn’t stop there. The expense ratio of the average mutual fund is about 1.5%. By comparison, the Vanguard S&P 500 expense ratio is 0.19%.. When you factor in the expense ratio differences the gap widens to $163,364!

Better yet, index funds can even outperform the index they are replicating because any dividends are also distributed to fund shareholders.

So why do mutual funds continue to be so popular? Well, there isn’t much money to be made by investment advisor’s who put their clients in index funds. They make a whole lot more money from mutual funds. But investment advisor’s wouldn’t put their clients in an investment that performs worst just to make more money would they? Hmmmm.

Another factor is that index funds are simple and there isn’t much to talk about with them. Investment magazines would have little to write about if they just told you to pick an index fund. Talking about mutual funds gives them much more to talk about.

So next time you are researching the latest and greatest mutual fund to invest in, give you self a break, save your time and just choose an index fund. Chances are you will come out better.

Everyone wants to find an online broker with low trading fees to use for investing. However, many investors are fooled when looking at online brokerage firms that state they have low fees but in the end you are paying more than you thought you would.

To combat this we have reviewed all of the top brokerages on the basis of their trading fees but also their account minimum and account inactivity fees. Low trading fees are no good if you end up getting hit with account inactivity fees.

Through our research we came to the conclusion that the #1 choice for an online brokerage account with low trading fees is TradeKing.

TradeKing offers $4.95 trades and is the #1 rated discount broker by SmartMoney Magazine.

How can they offer such low stock trading fees? Most brokers have large advertising budgets and those budgets end up in their customers having to pay higher fees. TradeKing does very little advertising and therefore can offer trades at a ridiculously low $4.95.

TradeKing also has NO account minimum and you can start your account with whatever dollar amount you want and there is NO account inactivity fees. You really can’t beat TradeKing when it comes to value.

So if you are looking for an online brokerage with low trading fees our suggestion is to head on over to TradeKing and open an account now.

For a full review of online brokers see our How To Start Investing Online guide and see the full results

The first thing you need to do when starting to invest online is to find a quality and reliable online investment brokerage firm. This is a very important step because you want to make sure you pick a broker that has a competitive price for stock trades and also have low fees.

Below you will find my online investing review. I judged each online broker on account minimum, IRA fees, and cost of a market trade.

#1 Top Choice - TradeKing - TradeKing is a discount broker that allows you to place stock trades for $4.95.

TradeKing also has NO account minimum which makes it the perfect place for any investor to get started. You can get started with $25 if you would like and there are no account inactivity fees so there is no need to worry about placing a certain amount of trades per month.

TradeKing also has no account minimum for IRA’s. You can open it with any amount that you would like. TradeKing gets our highest recommendation and it the perfect place to start your online investing.

Open A TradeKing Account Now

#2 E-Trade - Requires a $1,000 account minimum and has no IRA account min. They offer real time trades for $12.99. Another great option for an online investment broker.

#3 TD Ameritrade - Requires a $2,000 account minimum and no account minimum for IRA accounts. They offer real time trades for $9.99

#4 Fidelity - Requires a $2,500 account minimum for personal and IRA accounts. Offers real time trades for $19.95.

As you can see, TradeKing offers the best online investing accounts due to their low fees, no account minimums and $4.95 stock trades. In our online investment brokerage firm comparison review they get the top ranking.

Investing in mutual funds has many benefits that other investments can not offer. Mutual funds continue to be one of the best ways for people to get started investing for retirement and also for seasoned investors.

One of the biggest advantages that mutual funds give investors is simplicity. Mutual fund statistics are easily attainable and there is little need for exhaustive research that individual stock investing requires. Research is still needed but on a much smaller scale.

Another advantage of mutual funds is diversification. Mutual funds invest in a large pool of stocks and immediately give the investor a well diversified investment. Mutual funds invest in stocks in different sectors, different sizes, different countries, etc. This type of diversification would be much harder if you were investing in individual stocks.

Mutual funds also provide investors with professional management. Mutual funds are run by highly trained fund managers who’s job is to closely monitor the funds performance and follow all companies that the fund is invested in. Most individual investors do not have the time or resources to do this type of management.

Lower investment fees are another great benefit of mutual fund investing. When you buy a share of a mutual fund you instantly have a stake in a large number of companies. If you were to buy each of these stocks one by one you would incur very high brokerage fees. Mutual funds also have the ability to buy stocks at lower fees due to their large volume purchases.

These are just a few of the advantages of investing in mutual funds and there are many more to add to it, like liquidity.  Investing in mutual funds is a great place for online investing beginners to get started.