I compute and plot (2,20) Bollinger bands using SMA(20) and SMSD(20) and get much different results. What formula does Yahoo/Finance use?

When you buy stock you buy a tiny portion of the company, as it were. The theory is that any company in business will always expand and improve... so the money you give them they use for that expansion... and when the company improves (if it does) the value of the stock(s) you bought goes up, so that is how you gain from it. Investment is risky, though.

Not all CEOs know what they're doing.

It's a paper loss as you still own the stock. Ie If you own a 1000 shares at $1 on Tuesday, it'd be worth $1000 but if the value dropped 10% then they'd be worth $900. It's all dependent when you sell them though.

You could have bought them for 20 cents. A lot of pension funds own shares and they get affected with dividends.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.