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Future and Present Value of Money This note explains briefly two concepts concerning the time-value-of-money, namely future and present value. Careful application of these concepts will help you evaluate investment opportunities such as real estate, life insurance, and many others. Computing Compound Return This article discusses how to compute the effective annual percentage rate earned by a single investment after a number of years have passed. There's no 80 percent solution for r (Linda Stern is a freelance writer. Any opinions in the column are solely those of Ms. Stern. You can e-mail her at lindastern(at)aol.com.) Rush Enterprises Superior profit margins and a solid balance sheet help position Rush Enterprises on the Industry Leaders stock screen. Book-to-Bill Ratio The book-to-bill ration is the ratio of business "booked" (orders taken) to business "billed" (products shipped and bills sent). Beta and Alpha Beta is the sensitivity of a stock's returns to the returns on some market index (e.g., S&P 500). Beta values can be roughly characterized as follows: Target Stock Prices A target price for a stock is a figure published by a securities industry person, usually an analyst. The idea is that the target price is a prediction, a guess about where the stock is headed. Researching a Company This article gives a basic idea of some steps that you might take to research a company. Many sites on the web will help you in your quest for information, and this article gives a few of them. You might look for the following. Paying for Investment Advice I'm no expert, but there's a simple rule that you should use to evaluate all advice that is offered to you, especially advice for which someone who doesn't know you is asking significant sums of money.		On the radar: Talisman Energy Talisman's stock has held up relatively well amid the turmoil in the oil sector. Yet, it is still priced low enough to land on a value screen. Book Value In simplest terms, Book Value is Assets less Liabilities. The problem is Assets includes, as stated, existing land & buildings, inventory, cash in the bank, etc. held by the company. Annual Reports The June 1994 Issue of "Better Investing" magazine, page 26 has a three-page article about reading and understanding company annual reports. I will paraphrase: One-Line Wisdom This is a collection of one-line pieces of investment wisdom, with brief explanations. Use and apply at your own risk or discretion. They are not in any particular order. Mutual-Fund Expenses Mutual fund expense ratios, and similar investment-related fees, can seriously erode wealth accumulation over time. Those fees and expenses are stealthy, and they go largely unnoticed by investors while steadily diminishing the value of their investments Using a Full-Service Broker There are several reasons to choose a full-service broker over a discount or web broker. People use a full-service broker because they may not want to do their own research, because they are only interested in long-term investing, because they like to hea Errors in Investing The Wall Street Journal of June 18, 1991 had an article on pages C1/C10 on Investment Errors and how to avoid them. As summarized from that article, the errors are: Buying a Car at a Reasonable Price Before making a purchase, especially a large one, most buyers ponder an equation that goes something like: What is it going to cost me, and will that equal what I am going to get? Advice - Beginning Investors Investing is just one aspect of personal finance. People often seem to have the itch to try their hand at investing before they get the rest of their act together. This is a big mistake.