Investing

If you're in the market, you probably want to analyze your holdings and stock market results from time to time. Who doesn't? Although most financial experts suggest not obsessing over your portfolio and/or your specific stock market results too often, you need to know what facts and figures really count when you do. What do all those terms mean and what should you look to maximize and minimize? Over what periods of time?

The first rule of thumb: look at any stock market result metric on at least a yearly basis -- nothing shorter. The market gyrates way too much from day to day for you to be able and make any solid judgment on any stock result within a few weeks, a month or even half a year. The metric most can easily understand - rate of return -- can either be positive or negative. If you purchased shares of a mutual fund or individual stock share for $100, and the value of that stock or mutual fund share was $110 after a year, you would have made a positive 10% rate of return. That is, your ending price ($110) divided by your cost ($100). If the value of your share(s) were only $90 at the end of a hypothetical year, then your negative rate of return would be -10%.

Most financial calculators that help you plan for future events like college savings, home down payments and retirement use a 10% or 12% positive rate of return to zero on potential stock market results so you can easily find the number of years you have to build that veritable nest...

You may have tried looking on your local newspaper site for a home, only to find listings that are either out-of-date, have just a picture or two, or are flat out wrong.

In most of the United States, local real estate brokers contribute their listings to what is called a multiple listing service or MLS, accessible only by agents. To have access to the "complete" MLS listings-- a trove of comparable data -- one must typically be a licensed real estate broker and pay an MLS membership fee.

Of course, many of these same real estate agents publish their listings through their web sites. The trouble is getting accurate information across different brokers' sites. Searching Google, Bing or Yahoo for real estate listings should produce relevant listings in your own area. But if you search for MLS, all you'll get are search results about Major League Soccer.

For comprehensive listings then, the safest bet is generally Realtor.com, which is run in conjunction with the National Association of Realtors. Due to their relationship with Realtors, realtor.com usually has the most complete real estate listings, although a significant percentage appear to be out of date. Caveat emptor: Realtors sometimes leave listings online long after under a home is under contract or sold to gather more leads.

Other popular search based sites that aggregate MLS listings include Trulia,...