Social Security and many retirement accounts not being fully funded, it is more important than ever to earn a high rate of return on your retirement accounts. Those of us in the baby boom generation and after will not receive the type of governmental funding that our parents received. My parents, as well as my wife's, paid in about $100,000 in Social Security and Medicare payments, and these funds earned about $95,000 in interest. The government paid out about $400,000 in benefits to them, and my dad is still alive at 86 and receiving benefits. The average age of our parents at passing is 81 and still counting. I was in an investment club of 12 members who were primarily of the WWII generation. Their average age at passing is over 84 and counting. Their combined payments made and benefits received are even worse than our parents from Social Security

My previous article on Apple (AAPL) presented various reasons why Apple stock is undervalued. In this article I will give possible outcomes of what Apple's stock valuation will be for the next four years. You can choose which outcome you expect and proceed accordingly. Remember, never fall in love with any stock and diversify your holdings.

What does Apple management need to do to get its stock fully valued? First, every time the stock exceeds two hundred and forty dollars a share, the company should split it either two for one or one for two shares, depending on the projected growth rate and the current price earnings ratio. This has been the tried and true method to get growth stocks fully valued on Wall Street for at least the past fifty years. For whatever reason, Apple has not followed this course of

Recently, Clem Chambers on CNBC stated that Apple (AAPL) was overpriced and should be trading closer to $200 a share than $360 a share. I don't think either price for a share of Apple is appropriate. I will make a case for Apple stock being undervalued by the stock market. Just remember, no matter how good a stock is, never fall in love with it and always diversify your investments.

For the last 14 years, since Steve Jobs re-assumed the helm at Apple, he and his team have turned Apple into the premier large cap growth stock performer. Microsoft (MSFT), the old number one, hit its high on December 1, 1999, and is currently nowhere near it today.

Has Apple seen better

I would like to thank everyone who wrote comments on my first part of the article on Canadian oil and gold stocks. Because of these comments, I thought I needed to expand on certain comments and also clarify some important points on the stocks I suggested.

I wrote my first article on SandRidge Energy, which went into my philosophy on investing and laid out the reasons for investing in detail. However, it was published second, so even though you may not be interested in SandRidge, I suggest you read that article for some background. I spend a substantial amount of time researching each of my investments. I will never suggest an investment unless I think it will increase in value significantly; I very seldom invest in a stock unless I can make a strong case that it will double in three

How Much Oil Does the US Have and How Much Can It Produce?

The US Geological Service (USGS) prepares estimates on how much oil the US has in various oil and gas plays, how much original oil was in place, and the amount of producible oil in place. According to the USGS website, with current technology, the US has approximately 50 billion barrels of producible oil in place; this also includes Alaska. Most of these assessments were made before the current horizontal drilling and fracing procedures were developed. If you look this up in Wikipedia, they give you a formula to calculate the amount of oil in place. Not being a geologist and a little rusty on my math, I didn't do the calculation.

However, being a retired

When I invest in common stocks I have set parameters that I use to pick my stocks, and if the companies do not meet these parameters, then I do not select them for investment. The requirements for non fixed income type investments are as follows:

1. The companies must be sound and generally earning a profit with positive cash flow.
2. I need to make a case for the stock price to at least double in three years time.
3. The company should have a future price earnings or cash flow per share that is no more than 25 times.

This does not mean every stock that I invest in doubles in 3 years; many things can and do go wrong with the companies that I cannot foresee when I invest in them. Many of these companies are smaller and risky investments. I

There are many junior oil and gold mining stocks that trade between 25 cents to 10 dollars that can double within six months to three years, but they can also lose value very rapidly. So how do you invest in these stocks and make money?

I first started investing in Canada in the mid 1980's when some clients started companies and did Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on the Vancouver Stock Exchange (VSE). The VSE was a very wild and wooly market - it was Caveat Emptor - buyer beware. Most of the companies were mining the investors instead of mining for minerals. I would estimate that maybe 2 to 5 companies in a hundred new companies actually went on to become viable businesses, and there were a substantial number of frauds - management would