I'm 41 and divorced with two children. And, thanks to my super dad, I've had a great job for 11 years, with excellent benefits and a very good retirement plan. I have an individual retirement account worth $109,000, consisting only of stocks you have recommended in the past eight years. I got a good bonus this year, and my dad, who retired from Kimberly-Clark, recommends I buy 100 shares of that corporation. What do you think?
I lost $9,000 when Orion Bank in Florida was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2009, and CEO Jerry Williams, whom I've known since 1998, went to prison three years later because he falsified the bank's books to hide losses. He's broke today.
When I asked my broker last May about buying 400 shares of Facebook, he didn't think it was a good idea.
We sold our home in 2007 and took back a five-year, $48,000 balloon second mortgage at 8.5 percent. It's now due, so we have $48,000 to invest in dividend stocks.
Dear Mr. Berko: I bought 100 shares of Best Buy in the beginning of 2011 at $32, and now it's $26.
Please tell me what you think its prospects are for this year and next. Do you think I should buy another 100 shares or hold what I have? Or should I sell my stock and take a loss?
Dear Mr. Berko: My grandfather died in 2001 with eight different stocks in his footlocker, and I can’t find one of them in the paper. A broker told me he could send them to his home office, and for $150 each they’d tell me if the certificates had any value. The certificates themselves are beautiful, [...]
