Oops. That's probably what some investors thought when they accidentally purchased stock in TWTRQ, Tweeter Home Entertainment Group, an electronics chain that liquidated in 2008.

With investors buzzing about the latest news on the upcoming Twitter IPO, some silly traders helped the defunct company's stock rise to a value of about 1,400 per cent. On Thursday, the stock closed at one cent, but on Friday it rose to as much as 15 cents. The OTC finally head to step in and halted trading on the stock at 12:42 p.m. on Friday. This is after details about Twitter's financial situation was revealed through a prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Unfortunately, investors were over eager and it turns out that the Q behind the stock means that the company is bankrupt, but can continue to be traded, according to CNN.

After announcing that it would lay off close to half of its workforce and getting killed by last week’s whopper of an earnings warning, struggling smartphone maker BlackBerry may soon be acquired by a consortium led by its biggest shareholder, Fairfax Financial.

The going-in price? $9 a share -- way way below BlackBerry's price in the years before the iPhone ate its lunch. 

The company's shares closed below that number, however, suggesting that investors don't see much upside just yet despite trading volume that was close to triple the daily average.

Fairfax CEO Prem Watsa, who has a longstanding reputation as a value investor, plans to take a page out of Dell's book by taking the company private and refocussing it on the business market.

But that's not going to be easy.

Broadly rising equity markets coupled with increasing interest rates will lead to more near-term volatility, predicts investment firm Edward Jones in a recent report.

In other words, there's still money to be made in 2013: "We believe stocks are primed to deliver attractive total returns going forward, particularly compared to bonds and cash."

However, while there are compelling opportunities in today’s market, there are also some clearcut mistakes investors need to avoid, the firm warns. 

Every Wednesday, Patrick McKeough, editor of The Successful Investor publishes his “Investor Toolkit” series on his TSI Network. These weekly updates are designed to offer specific investment advice ... which you can accept or ignore as you like.

Written in jargon-free English, each update provides a fundamental piece of investing strategy, and shows you how you can put it into practice right away.

Last week, for instance, McKeough warned about some of the dangers in putting too much faith in a company's history of dividend payments. Too many investors think of a stock with a good dividend history as the next best thing to a government bond.

Shopping, reading, gaming, working, researching, banking. 

Today we do just about everything from the convenience of our computers.

As a matter of fact, Canadians spend an average of 30 hours per week connecting to the online world.

So it's no wonder that more and more Canadians are investing online too.

A few years ago, veteran market strategist Laszlo Birinyi told the New York Times that we were in the early stages of a classic bull market. Since then, the S&P 500 has returned more than 50%. 

In fact it's up some 124% off the lows and is nearing nearing record highs.

And that's not about to change anytime soon, he says: “The bull market probably has between a year and three years to go. I can’t time it. I can only point out the trend.”

And he's not alone in that view. What the big rally hasn't done is cause stock valuations to hit nose-bleed levels that put the bull market at risk, says Jeffrey Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial.

"There might be some ups and downs, but we will likely have another leg up in this bull market," says Kleintop. "Bull markets end at higher stock market valuations."

Talk about a long wait. After numerous delays, Research In Motion is finally set to show the world its next-generation BlackBerry 10 operating system and its first new BlackBerry in almost two years.

A hit would inject new life into RIM, while a tepid response could sound the death knell for a Canadian icon that's been shunted aside by the likes of Apple and Samsung. 

Investors have been betting on the former, evidenced by the fact that the company's stock price has more than doubled since last fall, though it's still nearly 90% below its 2008 peak of $147.

Scotiabank's Gus Papageorgiou thinks it can go higher, providing about a third of current subscribers upgrade and the company can get 4 million new users overseas, especially in countries where the BlackBerry has remained popular.

Ovum analyst Jan Dawson doesn't see that happening, however.