Hi, I'm new in the investment world and planning to enter the stock market.
I have two questions I would like to have answered:

1. How do you calculate the risk of your portfolio? (ie, which methodology and tools would you use) I have an etrade account that allows me to see my portfolio value, but I would like to also be able to caclculate risk and compare it with other portfolios or potential investments.

2. Where do you get historical data for stocks? ie, if you want to do your own number crunching, what is the best (paid or free) site to get data statistics?

Thanks to all and happy new year 2010!

Lucky

Google Finance is a decent place for data, and for setting up a test portfolio to track performance.

Morningstar is really good as well for number crunching and historical data/info

Ask yourself the following:

If my equity investments were cut in half (stocks frequently fall 40-60% in severe bear markets), would I have to sell the remainder? If the answer is yes, you're taking too much risk.

Even i am looking for the answers thanks for sharing all these places.