Ask the Fool How To Start Q What's the best way to start investing in stocks if you don't have much money and don't know much about investing? — E.R., Midland, Michigan A It's best not to start investing until you've read enough to have a basic grasp of what you're doing.
You might check out books such as "The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The only way to guarantee your fair share of stock market returns" by John C. Bogle (Wiley, $27), "The Little Book That Still Beats the Market" by Joel Greenblatt (Wiley, $28) and "I Will Teach You to Be Rich: No guilt. No excuses.
Just a 6-week program that works" by Ramit Sethi (Workman Publishing, $17). Once you're ready to deploy your dollars to grow over time, you might start by investing in a simple low-fee, broad-market index mutual fund, such as one that tracks the S&P 500 index of 500 major American companies. Such index funds outperform most managed mutual funds over long periods, and they can be great long-term wealth builders.
You can learn more at Fool.com by clicking on the "How to Invest" tab. *** Q What's a "run rate"? — W.
U., Salisbury, Maryland AI t's an estimate of a measure for a longer period, extrapolated from the corresponding measure for a shorter period. So, for example, imagine that the Home Surgery Kits (ticker: OUCHH) company is growing quickly, with $50 million in sales in its last quarter.
If you add up the past four quarters, they might reflect total sales for the year of, say, $140 million. But i.
