Mourad Haroutunian, BA, MA
Mourad joined Profit Confidential as a financial writer. He has worked for several media companies across three continents, in many different languages, and on various platforms, all with a single factor in common: news. It was Bloomberg where Mourad fell in love with stock market writing, Proactive Investors where he became fascinated with U.S. and Canadian equities, and MT Newswires where he felt at one with speed and real-time reporting.
Addicted to online reading, Mourad has a passion for personal finance, world politics, and intercultural relations. He holds a BA and MA in journalism and mass communication.
Mourad likes to explore every corner in the cities he lives in or travels to by driving highways and walking down the streets and alleys. Away from the digital world, Mourad enjoys spending time with his little son and daughter.
Get to know Mourad…
What was your first stock market investment?
My first investments were really unforgettable moments in my life. I was closely watching a friend who had invested a bulk of his savings in an amazingly quickly appreciating blue chip. He bought the stock at $9.00 and saw it rising to $10.00, then swiftly plunging to $5.00 within a few weeks. At that time, I decided—with my below-zero stock trading knowledge—to invest $5,000, thinking the stock couldn’t drop further. I made a $50.00 gain in my first trade and you can’t imagine how excited I was. I decided to stay away a bit to see how things would be going. However, repeated chatter by my friend and others that the price would definitely go up to $6.00 prompted me to re-invest the $5,000. That was a catastrophe. The stock never went up again and I sold it a year later at $3.00, losing $2,000. The stock then nosedived to $0.30 on the heels of the 2008 financial crisis. The lesson: don’t listen to amateurish projections and more importantly, eradicate your stock trading illiteracy…
What is your investment philosophy?
Stick to the trading ABCs that most experts advise: invest only the amount of money that you would not need in the coming two years; every investment you purchase should not exceed five percent of your portfolio; when you are 25 years old, put 75% of your portfolio in stocks and the rest in low-risk securities; and flip that ratio when you are 75 years old (but make it 50%:50% when you are 50 years old). One more basic tip that I like: don’t wait until the share price goes down beyond 10%—sell it.
Jim Rogers, the veteran American investor who is based in Singapore, is reportedly pouring funds into Russian ruble-denominated sovereign bonds and is mulling over investing in Kazakhstan, Iran, and China at a time when U.S. stock indexes are near their all-time highs. Jim Rogers told a group of…
Marc Faber Issues Grim Warning Perma-bear investor Marc Faber’s current stock investment advice to retail traders is to expand their exposure to precious metals and Asian economies, while staying away from the U.S. dollar. “[The U.S. dollar] is not a desirable currency,” Faber, publisher of The Gloom, Boom…
Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, is less active on Twitter compared to Donald Trump, the top Republican presidential hopeful. However, Clinton, who joined the micro-blogging site in 2013, four years after Trump, has amassed 5.7 million followers and produced about 5,000 tweets. She may still be far…
Bad News for SUNE Stock SunEdison Inc (NYSE:SUNE) stock suffered further on Wednesday, giving up 17% after Axiom Capital Management Inc. lowered its price target amid chatter that the struggling solar company is just one step closer to bankruptcy. SUNE stock dropped to as low as $1.24 in…
Perma-bear investor Peter Schiff says consumers have no confidence in the U.S. economy and are going to vote for anti-establishment candidates Donald Trump of the Republican Party and Bernie Sanders of the Democratic Party. The top Libertarian financial analyst advised cautious investors to follow his course, pouring their…
Ron Paul Issues Dire Warning Former member of the U.S. House of Representatives and three-time presidential candidate Ron Paul warned that government spending must be reduced if America is going to avoid a major economic collapse. “Budgets that merely tinker around the edges of the welfare-warfare state, or…
Huge Upside for Silver Prices, Expert Silver prices could hit $660.00 a troy ounce as the financial crisis rapidly deepens, according to investing legend Egon von Greyerz. “Gold and silver are now reaching their period of glory. Precious metals will be one of the very few ways to…
The recent surge in oil prices will not only pause but will also reverse course and tumble to as low as $25.00 a barrel. At least, that’s what oil expert John Kilduff predicted in an interview with CNBC on Monday. Kilduff based his oil price forecast on the…
U.S. on Verge of Economic Collapse, Says Marc Faber Adding more emphasis on his belief that the U.S. is on the verge of an economic collapse, perma-bear investor Marc Faber advised retail investors not to put money in U.S. stocks; instead, according to Faber, investors should pour their…
2For those Canadians who may be reading this, don’t get overjoyed because the Canadian dollar has seemingly been strengthened 12% since mid-January. Instead, hold back on your spending—the loonie will soon fall back 15%. James Price, a portfolio manager at Richardson GMP Asset Management, told Bloomberg TV that…
Is the U.S. on the Verge of an Economic Collapse? Foreign governments are accelerating sales of U.S. debt they hold, a fresh signal that a U.S. economic collapse is coming soon. Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury debt and other notes have dropped to $6.18 trillion in January 2016,…
Here is an indicator that we’re facing the prospect of a stock market crash this year. The recent blip of oil prices may not be high or fast enough to protect all oil and gas producers from bond defaults or bankruptcy. Earlier this week, Linn Energy LLC (NASDAQ:LINE),…
A Donald Trump presidency may cause a global economic crisis, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a respected risk analysis firm. Updating its global risk assessment, the British firm ranked the election of Trump a 12 on a scale of one to 25, or sixth on its…
A global study has shown that Americans are less happy than they were a decade ago—a fresh signal that an U.S. economic collapse has never been closer. The new World Happiness Report 2016, released just before UN World Happiness Day on March 20, determined that the U.S. came…
Lower Gold Prices Ahead? Brace yourself for lower gold prices. A technical analyst advises investors to sell their gold holdings now because no more rally is expected. In written remarks to CNBC on Monday, Oppenheimer’s Ari Wald said bullion’s recent breach of its long-term downtrend reminds him of…
Morgan Stanley, one of the top five banks in the U.S., has raised the probability of a recession hitting the world economy within the next year from 20% to 30% and warned that the S&P 500 over the next year will grow a mere 1.5% from its current…
Can George Soros Stop Donald Trump? George Soros, the 86-year-old American-Hungarian billionaire, is pouring money into the U.S. presidential race to prevent Republican frontrunners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz from entering the White House. Bloomberg reports that Soros has spent or committed more than $13.0 million to support…
U.S. stocks and gold futures rallied right after the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) maintained interest rates and said it sees two interest-rate hikes this year instead of four. At 2:00 p.m. in New York, the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 0.5% to an intraday high of 17,336.99.…
David Stockman, who has for years been predicting an economic collapse worse than 2008, described the U.S. Federal Reserve as “being lost” and needs to resign ahead of its two-day meeting. “I think the Fed is completely lost in its Keynesian Puzzle Palace,” the former head of the…
Peter Schiff, the top Libertarian economic forecaster, believes the U.S. economy is on the verge of economic collapse. In response to the coming recession, Schiff told RT on Friday that he expects layoffs will start sometime this year. (Source: “Fed Hoping to Will Recession Away With False Optimism,”…
