What Is A Good Credit Score?

Written by L. K. Hughes


As a credit repair specialist,repparttar question I hear most often is "what's a good credit score?".

It seems that everyone cares about their credit score these days, with interest rates lower than ever andrepparttar 139950 easy money lending environment we have now that comes with low rates.

The good news is, it is easier to get that loan for your house or car than ever before.

"Oh No, I Have a 622 Credit Score!"

Recently, I went to purchase a triplex to live in and keep as an investment, and when I got torepparttar 139951 lender's office I found to my horror that I had a middle credit score of  622. I will explain this in a moment, but even though this score was considered "bad" a few years ago, it turned out to be ok.

Your Middle Score

What do I mean when I say I had a middle credit score of 622? There are three main credit bureaus, and banks are now inrepparttar 139952 practice of looking at your credit scores from all three bureaus, and then usingrepparttar 139953 "middle credit score" as an indicator of your credit performance.  They order a report that they call a "Tri Merge" or a 3-in-1 credit report. There are actually six main companies that banks like to use to provide this type of report, although there are many companies out there that will sell reports torepparttar 139954 public. If you order a 3-in-1 credit report on your own,repparttar 139955 banks will still insist on ordering theirs from one of their preferred companies. Once they discover your middle credit score, they use this as a very important indicator about your creditworthiness. Your credit scores can make or break your home loan or credit application.

What Does My Credit Score Mean?

Generally speaking, having a 650 credit score or higher means that you can find many home loans at a good rate, and having a 720 credit score or higher isrepparttar 139956 "holy grail",repparttar 139957 highest score category where you can qualify for allrepparttar 139958 best loans like zero percent down or 125 percent financing. Credit scores go allrepparttar 139959 way up to 850, and allrepparttar 139960 way down to 350.



Have Analysts Gotten Honest?

Written by Mark Mahorney


It caught my attention when I heard an analyst on a popular financial news program tell investors to sell a stock because too many analysts likedrepparttar company, citingrepparttar 139905 fact that there were no sell ratings.

It seemed perfectly logical to me that analysts wouldn’t be telling investors to sell 3M (MMM), which has one ofrepparttar 139906 most consistent positive earnings records inrepparttar 139907 history ofrepparttar 139908 stock markets. But being suspicious of conflicts of interest between brokerage firms and analysts I decided to do a bit of fact checking anyway.

Whilerepparttar 139909 stock did not have any sell ratings atrepparttar 139910 time of writing, there were quite a few hold ratings. Now I feel compelled to diverge here and say thatrepparttar 139911 hold rating seems quite illogical to me. If a stock is good enough to hold it’s good enough to buy, and vice versa if you wouldn’t want to buy it then you shouldn’t want to hold on to it either.

As it turns out,repparttar 139912 average analyst rating for 3M was only slightly and insignificantly better thanrepparttar 139913 average for all stocks inrepparttar 139914 Dow Jones Industrial Average, of whichrepparttar 139915 company is a component.

But what was most interesting aboutrepparttar 139916 ratings on Dow components was that, despite numerous and serious legal problems, AIG (AIG) was tied with General Electric (GE) and Du Pont (DD) forrepparttar 139917 third best rating, only bested by Citigroup (C) and Microsoft (MSFT). AIG was actually more highly recommended by analysts than J.P. Morgan Chase’s (JPM) and American Express (AXP).

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