Stock Market Information

With the recent turmoil in the financial sector caused by a binge of lending and credit that now threatens a deep economic recession and causing the collapse of former financial titans Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and others, there aren’t too many investors ready to jump into the financial sector. Surprisingly enough, however, if you’re willing to take the risk, there could be some winners out there that emerge victorious once the dust clears.

There are two distinct possibilities at play here. One, is that a savvy investor is presented with a tremendous buying opportunity to pick up deep value stocks in the financial sector. On the other we could be standing on the edge of a long, drawn out depression in the industry.

No one knows where we’ll head next, but some big investors are starting to put their chips down. One of the most famous investors of all time, Warren Buffett, recently made a $5 billion dollar investment into Goldman Sachs, and he noted that he remained confident in Goldman’s abilities and prospects for the longterm, but didn’t necessarily think that the whole financial sector was on the road to recovery.

What does the average investor think? The Motley Fool CAPS community comprises about 115,000 individual investors, and quite a few have set their eyes on certain financial stocks. They particularly like certain brokerages like TD Ameritrade and optionsXpress, and believe that they could come in to fill in the void left by failed investment banks as the credit crisis winds down. If it does, anyway.

What stocks are on the chopping block at CAPs? Most banks have been knocked down over the past year, and that certainly hasn’t changed in the last 30 days. Citigroup, Bank of NY Mellon, and Suntrust banks have all been poorly rated.

While these aren’t recommendations, taking in the knowledge of other investors can help you to understand why they like the stock and why you might like them too. Use others as a point of reference when doing your own due diligence, and you stand to profit as a result.

This is the section for discussing patterns that are important to stock traders. We will start this section by writing about candlestick patterns and giving examples so readers can more easily understand.

In addition, we will also be describing other phrases that are used in stock trading. This includes long days, short days, evening star and several other pattern related phrases. These phrases will also be defined in the terminology section of this site.