Investment Tips

Lombardi Publishing was originally established in 1986 as an investment newsletter publisher offering stock market advice to its readers. Today, we publish 25 paid-for investment letters most of which provide stock market advice. Profit Confidential is our daily free e-letter that goes to all our Lombardi Financial customers and to any investor who wishes to opt-in in to receive it. Written by Lombardi Financial editors who have been offering stock market advice for year to Lombardi customers, Profit Confidential provides a macro-picture on where the stock market is headed, what sectors are hot, what sectors to avoid. Our two most recent and popular calls were telling investors to bail from stocks in 2007 and telling investors to jump back into the stock market in March of 2009. Timely stock market advice that worked well for the Profit Confidential family of readers.

At this juncture, stock markets are pausing and showing some uncertainty. And, while I do not pretend to have a crystal ball, I do firmly believe in adopting strong risk management to protect your investments and hard-earned capital. This is my best stock market advice.

The last thing you want is to watch your gains disappear.

One of my favorite strategies to protect investment gains is the use of put options as a defensive hedge against market weakness. This strategy is called a protective hedge. Don't be scared by the name or the fact that it employs derivatives, as the strategy is straightforward.

Under this scenario, investors may be somewhat bearish or uncertain and want to protect the current gains against a downside move in the stock or the market with the use of index put options.

For those of you not familiar with options, a buyer of a put option contract buys the right, but not the obligation, to sell a specific number of the underlying instrument at the strike or exercise price for a specified length of time until the expiry date of the contract. After the expiry date, the particular option expires worthless and any responsibility is eliminated.

The buyer of the put option pays a premium to the writer of the option, who gets compensated for assuming the risk of exercise. The writer of the put option is obligated to buy the stock from the holder of the put should it be exercised by the expiry date.

For the writer of the put option, the amount of premium received for assuming the risk is generally directly correlated to the volatility of the stock and market. The more volatile the stock, the higher the premium paid for the option. And low volatility translates into lower premiums.

You can buy puts for stocks and sectors. If your portfolio is heavy in technology, you can buy puts on the NASDAQ. Or let's say you have benefited from the run-up in gold and silver to record historical highs; then a strategy may be to buy put options on The Philadelphia Gold & Silver Index, which tracks 10 major gold and silver stocks.

If you are heavily weighted in technology, you can buy put options in PowerShares ETFs (NASDAQA/QQQQ), a heavily traded put used for defensive purposes.

It's that easy. Just take a look at the various indices that closely reflect your holdings or put options on individual stocks that you may have a large position in.

The world's automakers know that, to grow, you need a presence in China's auto sector, whether in it's a venture with a Chinese company or as a standalone manufacturer of vehicles. The auto sector in China remains strong, as the country is the world's largest auto market, with an estimated 16.5 million vehicles sold in 2010, according to the Chinese Industry Association.

Sales are showing some signs of slowing early in 2011. In the January-February period, vehicle sales were 10% year-over-year to 3.15 million vehicles in China, down from 84% growth a year earlier. While this is a concern, the absolute sales growth in China is still staggering.

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Although international realty investors look benignly upon every inch of Costa Rica real estate, there are places which pull more investors than others. Quepos and Manuel Antonio are two such places. In this article, I will talk about Quepos real estate because Quepos is not only very beautiful in its own right, but also considered as a gateway to Manuel Antonio National Park. It makes Quepos real estate even more attractive.

Quepos - A brief introduction

Quepos is a beautiful small city in Puntarenas Province, the largest province in the country. Total population of the city is around 14,000, which makes it a very cozy place to spend one's vacation in.

Many people prefer to have their Costa Rica homes in this city because of its proximity to Manuel Antonio and colorful nightlife. The city has many bars and restaurants, and it is famous for its nightlife. The city is not as small as Manuel Antonio, for which it works as a gateway. Tourists mainly visit this place between December and April, when the rainfall is low and city is comparatively dry.

With many headwinds threatening to send the US back into a recession, many smart investors are focusing their portfolios on only the income generating stocks and commodities (especially precious metals) that still have room to run.

Many astute economists now admit that the hangover from the financial crisis is still playing out and while many people are panicking and losing money there are many areas of growth out there at the moment. Investors just need to look past all the doom and gloom that is out there and being written in the papers and economic journals.
The 7 best ways to protect yourself from the coming economic troubles include:-

1) Focus your efforts on High quality businesses and stocks that have A-Type balance sheets and strong yields.

2) Stocks that only provide reliable dividends and have a proven track record in a weak economic environment.

3) Choosing stocks and bonds that show low debt to equities ratios and high liquid asset ratios currently. This is really companies with good balance sheets and no heavy debts lingering from the financial crisis.

4) Choosing the hard assets such as oil and gas royalties, and similar real estate Investments with a long term focus on various income streams.

5) Choosing sectors and companies that have high variable costs, and low risk entries such as utilities, consumers staples and especially health care services.

6) Choosing areas such as high growth potential in the Alternative / Clean energy sectors. Or also sectors that are not heavily reliant on bullish equities markets and volatile market swings.

7) Choosing education or a fund manager that can look after your money safely. If you are busy, it is better to pay for someone to manage your money.

The best thing about a weak economic environment is that good opportunities stick out like a sore thumb. You just have to be on the look out for them. Do not think that there are limited opportunities out there at the moment. There is an era of very aggressive growth coming when the US recovers from this credit crisis hangover. The best time to ride the coat tails of this booming period is before it happens. That time is right now, when everything is cheap and flat lining.

The best bet is to never put all your eggs in one basket. There are always opportunities out there, and no one ever made lots of money but not diversifying. Investment diversification will be your friend in the next few years at the US and economic situation start to get better.