Answer: Sometimes the company itself can tell you. Try giving its investor relations department a call. Another good resource is your public library, where librarians should be able to help you look up the price in newspaper archives or elsewhere. If you're online, click over to quote.fool.com and type in the company's ticker symbol. Once you get its quote, click on the "Historical" link to access its price history.

A: You might consider skipping it - for now. Think of insurance as protection against the consequences of a loss, not as an investment. After all, there are more effective ways to invest. If you had young children, you'd want to carry insurance to protect against income loss, should something happen to you. But if you don't need to protect any income stream, you might be better off parking your money elsewhere.

/learningcenter and www.fool.com/insurance . One upside to buying life insurance while you're young is that it should be relatively inexpensive.

Q:: During the great tech-stock bubble, I bought 300 shares of Gene Logic at $6, which was an $1,800 investment. Some few months later it soared past $150 - a $45,000 jackpot for me. But I didn't sell. I held it as it fell and fell, selling half at $30 and the other half at $16.

A: Your error wasn't in failing to sell at the stock's peak. After all, exactly when a stock hits its peak is never clear except in hindsight. But when a stock surges, it's good to examine it closely, to see whether it has gotten ahead of itself and is trading at values well above its actual worth.

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