Why You Should Be Using Stop Loss and Limit Orders

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Investing is a percentage game. The lower you can buy a stock and the higher you can sell, then the more money can be gained. But in reality finding the exact bottom or the exact top of a stock is impossible, and most investors will tell you when to sell is the most difficult decision. The key is to use charts to buy a stock near its 52-week low and then firmly decide when you are going to sell (or buy and hold). Using Stop Loss and Limit orders helps you achieve these goals, and protects you from downside risk. …

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The Safe Withdrawal Rate – Can You Rely on It in Retirement?

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The following is a guest post. If you’d like to guest post on the Dividend Ninja, be sure to check out our Guest Posting Guidelines. Do you know how much you can withdraw from your retirement plan each year, and be sure that you’ll never run out of money? There’s actually a method – referred to as the safe withdrawal rate – that can help you do that, although it’s not exactly scientific. In theory, it enables you to draw a certain amount of money out of your retirement portfolio each year, but will never leave you broke. Can you …

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Is Low Unemployment Good For the Stock Market?

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The following is a guest post. If you’d like to guest post on the Dividend Ninja, be sure to check out our Guest Posting Guidelines. When the unemployment rate is very low, it is often due to the economy doing very well. In fact, very low unemployment often translates to already high stock prices and for investors buying at that particular stage in the cycle is often detrimental to their portfolio returns. What we know about the stock market is prices are dependent on the business fundamentals, meaning what the business has done since its inception in addition to the …

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Why Dividend Cuts May Be a Good Thing for Investors

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Life isn’t perfect and for whatever reason, we purchase stocks we shouldn’t have bought, lured in by the high yield, or still hang on to stocks we should have sold. Investor confidence in a company can be sudden and swift. In the case of TransAlta Corp (TA) for example (which I don’t own) this was pointed out in a recent post by John Heinzl. Management decisions over the sale of the  Sundance coal plants, and the looming threat of a dividend cut have pummelled the stock price. TA closed at $16.81 per share today, down -20.5% from a recent high …

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