Within two months our children will head back to the daily classroom grind. While some children prefer to remain in denial about this imminent event, other children might hunger for the friendships, structure, stimulation, and discipline provided by scholastic institutions. You might find your hands full as you deal with mounting expectations whether your children rue the day the school doors open or not. You can eliminate some anxieties if you keep them busy with selections for their stock market portfolios.

Once our children head into those school confines, they'll have little time for stock market research. If your children finalize their equity selections, then they can watch their portfolios over the upcoming school year. These initial one to three selections will enable your children to plan for the long-term goals they created this summer. If they're foggy on ideas, Cora and I created lists that will help them in their research. The first list consists of places to find interesting stock choices, and the second list is constructed to help them finalize their choices.

Where to find interesting equities:

1. You can find stock selections all around you! You can repeat the Commercial Investment practice as many times as necessary to find stock market picks. Continue to walk the neighborhood and look around for choices, also. A simple trip to the grocery store will create all the choices you'll need for the rest of the summer.
   
   
2. If you create new behavior patterns for yourself and for your children based on "either-or" choices (see previous article), then you'll have a whole new realm to investigate for stocks. For instance, Cora and I changed our eating habits this summer from packaged foods to organic fruits and veggies, since two organic grocery stores are within walking distance. We save train and bus fare, and this savings allows us to pay the difference in price between discount groceries and health foods. To our surprise, we discovered that organic products are much less expensive than they were even one year ago, and many prices are now no different than those at the chain grocery. Additionally, the package labels provide us with new companies to investigate.
   
   
3. Watch CNN, or visit their website on a regular basis for company news. These stories provide information about the ups and downs of various national and international activities that might affect the market. They also provide information about new products and services that might pique your interests. You can also find specific news about your company at BUYandHOLD. Just type in the ticker or company name, and go to "News" in the pull-down menu.
   
   
4. Take your kids on a cross-country vacation to learn about portfolio possibilities. The least expensive way to achieve this goal is to visit BUYandHOLD's Fortune 500 Companies by State. If they find a few companies this way, a trip to the library to investigate the company and its state (both economic and physical) will eat up a whole afternoon.
   
   
5. Before you purchase that new toy or game, investigate the company that makes that item. If your child decides to invest in this company, this investment may increase your child's willingness to take care of that game or toy. Additionally, this effort could increase your child's contentment with just one toy rather than three or four.
   
   
6. A rainy-day project could entail a house-hunt for new companies. Your children can make new lists of every company they find on product labels in your refrigerator, cabinets, and shelves. You may need a ream of paper, but that's cheaper than many games! Plus, you could ask them to clean the shelves as they investigate the bottles, cans, and jars.
   
   
7. Once your children make the list from #6, look up the company's competitors. One easy way to do this is to use Yahoo Finance. If you type the ticker symbol into this site's search box at the top of this page, you'll find a list on the left (use their symbol lookup or the one at BUYandHOLD to make a list of ticker symbols if you don't know them). About halfway down this menu under "Company," you'll see a link to "competitors." When you click on this link, a chart will come up with more ticker symbols. You'll need to click on these ticker links to discover which companies are represented.

Once your children pick their favorite companies, how do they narrow down their choices? Here are a few ideas to narrow down stock selections, but remember that these ideas are based on my personal opinion. You might have a few ideas of your own based on your own research:

Although you might feel frightened about opening a portfolio for your children, remember this: You have to start somewhere otherwise you'll never start at all. You can always change your choices as you learn more about the market. Next week we'll begin that process as we step through quarterly reports. This lesson will help you determine how others see your choices.

Until Then,
Linda Goin