If you're reading this, you've already gotten past the hardest part of investing in today's markets. Plenty of people have simply turned off their computers, stopped reading financial news and brokerage statements, and taken to hoping that someone will eventually sound the all-clear sometime down the road.
But you know everything won't get better all by itself. To master investing, you can't just coast through the good times as your account balances rise seemingly without any effort at all. No, Fool, you have to know that your investments will get you through the bad times as well.
If you're looking for a simple way to stay on the path toward financial success, look no further. Here's an investing strategy even a beginning investor can follow.
Get what you need
When you first start investing, sticking with simple investments gives you a great introduction to the financial world. Although there's a world of different types of investments out there, focusing on large-cap companies you already know something about makes an ideal first step. Stocks such as Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) and Home Depot (NYSE: HD) may not have much potential for multiplying your investment 100-fold in the next 10 years, but they will give you a comfortable foundation to build on as you get more investing experience.
Once you have a few picks under your belt, though, you'll realize that there's a lot more to investing than just the household names you're most familiar with. But where should you go next? To help you answer that question, look at the following stocks:
Stock
Market Cap (Millions)
Current P/E
Projected 5-Year Growth Rate
Dividend Yield
Intuitive Surgical (Nasdaq: ISRG)
$5,180
26.1
31.6%
0%
Blackboard (Nasdaq: BBBB)
$840
203
25%
0%
Merck (NYSE: MRK)
$65,540
14.8
4.6%
4.9% Continued... |