Stock Takes Flight

After losing money on investments made on my broker's advice, I started using Value Line. In December 1974, Value Line predicted earnings of $2 in 1975 for an aircraft company. The company faced some challenges, but I bought 200 shares at $3.50 for $700. The company earned $1.29 instead of $2, but the stock doubled. I held on another year, and it doubled again. I sold in 1978 for $15.33 per share (and should have hung on longer).

— R. Weber, Lancaster, Pa.

The Fool Responds: Companies facing challenges have often been beaten down and can turn out to be great or regrettable buys. You were smart to do your own homework, examining the company's financial performance and gathering other data via Value Line. These days there's much more information available about companies — on financial Web sites such as Yahoo! Finance, Google Finance, AOL Money & Finance and at Fool.com, too, as well as online discussion boards, companies' own Web sites and elsewhere. It's important to do your own homework when investing, and that's gotten a lot easier in recent years.

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