Sharpen Your Investing Skill Before and After Retirement

Your investment needs to be reviewed and revised frequently. You really have to have time to taking care of your investment. But now you have more time to pay attention to this important subject compared to time you have prior to retirement. The low interest rate environment as we have seen in the past and in the current year will give you very small return. Retirees were forced to take a riskier approach by investing in stocks and mutual funds.

There is always risk when you invest in stock market. Working hard to minimize risk is extremely important. Research the market required long working hours. You need to read lots of report and news. Information from sites such as TD Bank, Royal Bank, Yahoo Finance, Globe Investor and much more are very helpful. We need to stay in touch with the trend of the stocks. We will learn when to get in and when to get out the market. But keep in mind we have to minimize the risk and protect our principal capital.

Yahoo Finance is a good place to start. It gives you overview and headlines of what happening in the markets and warning that will effect your holdings. You can glance at the active stocks of the days along with the gainers and losers. That will give you a feel about the trend in the market, the direction of the flow, the market pulse. You can study certain stock from Yahoo Finance along with the reports or comments. You can look up certain stock and find analyst opinion about this stock. You will familiarize yourself with recommendation like Hold, Buy,Neutral or Sell; more active like from Buy to Hold or from Hold to Buy...

There is one thing for sure: we never know exactly what direction the market or the stock will be heading. Diversification is the key in stock market investing. You cannot time the market so you need a broader horizon. But one thing we can learn: the market is effected by news, good and bad, and uncertainty. So we all hope for the best luck.

In Canada, we only have to withdraw money in Registered Retirement Saving Plan at 71 ( after converting to Registered Retirement Income Fund) at certain rate ( the first year usually about 9 to 10% of the total value). It makes sense that we have to continue to sharpen our investing skill for these years.