looking for basic info.

I'm on the sidelines with a good chunk of cash, waiting for the right time to buy into the market again. I quit my job on 12/31/00 and my 401k was terminated a month or so after that. I rolled the full amount into a personal IRA and have had it sitting in a money market account ever since. I originally planned to roll it back into stocks when the market dipped below 9000, but now I am sitting back and waiting for the market to hit the bottom of the current situation. Are there any good books or websites out there along the lines of investing for idiots? I have just enough of an idea about the market to be a danger to myself. It seems like I'm poised in a good situation. How do I best cash in on the death and misery of others?

Wait for someone to ring a bell.


Someone always rings a bell at the bottom.


Just watch out for the little leprechauns that sometimes ring the bell

before the bottom.

Invest for the long term. Trying to time the market is impossible. However if you want a web site or book, plenty of people are willing to take your money. Just me aware that giving them money directly cuts into the amount you invest and that's HARD to recover.

dog, I think you need to figure out when you need the money, how much you'll need, what kind of risks you want to take, your tax situation, all sorts of things that are infinitely more important than trying to time the market. You need to do some reading. I recommend Malkiel's "A Random Walk Down Wall Street", Bogle's "Bogle on Mutual Funds", Graham and Dodd's "Security Analysis", and Larry Swedroe's two books. There are some good sites. www.indexfunds.com (http://www.indexfunds.com), www.efficientfrontier.com (http://www.efficientfrontier.com), www.diehards.org (http://www.diehards.org), etc. All these folks emphasize using cheap, passively-managed mutual funds/index funds and assert that your asset allocation between stocks/bond/cash determines the vast majority of your returns. I envy your problem since I am not awash in cash but I will stay the course and hope it turns around sometime between now and 2030 when I'll really need the cash. Good luck.