Nobody knows what the future holds. But there are a few things shaping up that suggest certain things will most likely happen. Here are some of the major ones.

Interest Rates: Low at the beginning of the year, then headed higher for a long time. If you have an adjustable rate mortgage and you're still paying it, it's the perfect time to get it refinanced, if you can qualify. Interest rates are definitely going up; it's just a matter of when. As long as the Fed is pumping money in (QE2 is targeted with $800 billion .... with the possibility of more behind it), rates will stay low, unless investors think inflation will get way out of hand. Then rates will go higher no matter what the Fed does as investors sell longer term bonds to beat the coming inflation. Initially, rising interest rates will be bullish as they are a precursor to a healthy economy. But that bull will morph and become a bear when rates start jumping as the Fed tries to get ahead of inflation. Tricky business. Investors will do well to have floating rate assets and fixed rate liabilities.

Plans. They're something other people make, right? And what's the use of a plan when the stock market is so volatile? You can watch a stock take years to rise well above where you bought it, only to see all that gain lost in a matter of hours. Plans. Who needs them? You do. Especially you.

Investors need plans and discipline more than ever. It's been a tough few years. No one knows how long this recession will last, but having a plan that is almost (nothing is absolute in investing) bulletproof will help you get through the roughest days, weeks, months, even years of turmoil. Here's where you start:

Banks were sick for a while. Some of them died (41 in the third quarter alone, a total of 127 so far this year), quickly taken over by the FDIC (Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.), transferring their ticket to ride to another institution that changed the name on the front door (but kept the FDIC sticker) over a weekend. More will evaporate. There are currently 860 on the FDIC's list of problem institutions as of September 30. That compares to 829 at the end of June. But the latest bank profits suggest the worst is over for the banking sector.

Most good deeds never go unpunished. That's certainly the case for the latest effort from the Federal Reserve (the Fed). It wants to pump $600 billion into the economy to keep interest rates low and spur growth. It's called quantitative easing (QE). Unfortunately, that's not how investors are interpreting its latest move. They're seeing it as yet another failed, inflationary, dollar degrading stunt that won't do anyone any good.

As you may remember, the Fed has already injected quite a bit of money into the system through the QE1 program. That was announced back in November of 2008. The Fed declared it would purchase direct obligations of housing-related government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) -- Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks -- and mortgage backed securities (MBS) backed by Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie Mae. Purchases of up to $100 billion in GSE direct obligations through the Fed's primary dealers (big Wall Street firms and banks) through competitive auctions. Purchases of up to $500 billion in MBS by asset managers selected by a competitive process. Buying to begin by year-end, 2008, and expected to last for several quarters.

General Motors is about to go public again. Speculation is that the stock will be priced between $26 and $29 a share, depending on demand and how much stock is sold. Is this a good investment for the average investor?

I don't know. I haven't seen the prospectus so I can only tell you what I've read so far. Much of what you would be buying is the future, and well, that's in the future where many things can happen.

Last week's column gave five questions for investors to ask before they buy or sell a stock. Here are five more to help start any research. They'll help save a lot of time and more important, money and loss of sleep.

6. What is Price to Book? This measures the price you pay compared to the amount of equity that's in the company. Equity is all the money investors have put in plus all the profits. When you can find a company that is selling for a Price to Book of less than 1, it means you are buying the equity in the firm for less than it's worth. It's like buying $1 for less than a dollar. Hard to find these stocks? Not now in the Financial sector. Look at Bank of America (BAC). It's Price to Book is 0.54. That means you're paying 54 cents for every $1 of equity. Of course, investors think there could be many more charges against that equity before the bank stabilizes, but if they're wrong, an investor might be picking up a real bargain here. Other examples: JPMorgan Chase (JPM) at 0.89; Citibank (C) at 0.74.

While investing can be as complicated as you'd like to make it (stochastics anyone? perhaps collateralized debt obligation swaps instead?), the basics are very simple, especially for stock investors. Here are a few questions you can consider before buying or selling any stock.

1. Does the company sell anything? Laugh all you want, but this one question (and its answer) can save you lots and lots of money ... and grief. If you look at most biotech companies, they don't sell anything except hope. They have no revenues, but their stories are fantastic. Investors can get carried away with the promise (not the revenues or profits) of these sometime miracle producers. Most often, the promise turns to pffffft; the stock goes to zero. If a company doesn't have revenues, it doesn't mean you don't buy it (though you should have very good reasons), it only means you buy very little of it ... if you must, and you can't help yourself, and you've temporarily lost your investing compass.

Patience is the rarest commodity on Wall Street. That's why it's so well rewarded.

With all the volatility in the stock market, it's easy to understand why investors don't have much patience. They buy a stock and watch it slowly, very slowly, inch its way higher. Then one negative earnings report comes out or bad news hits the market, and all gains go away, disappearing in a matter of minutes. The feeling is like watching a balloon slowly inflate, then getting hit by a pin. POP! Gains become losses, and the world looks less fun.

Investors always look for good things to happen in stocks they own. Things like better than expected earnings, new contracts or a breakthrough discovery that will convert to better sales and profits. But they should also look for red flags, troubling developments within a company that could spell lower earnings in the future, even if they start with the opposite intent.

I'm reminded of that as I read about Microsoft (MSFT) getting into the mobile phone business. Of course, management thinks it will create more sales and profits, else why would they enter one of the most competitive markets on the planet? The problem (the red flag) is that there are already too many mobile phones with every type of application available and profit margins are much slimmer than in software. What can Microsoft add to this market that doesn't exist?

Maybe you already are. Good for you. Most investors aren't. They're still waiting for the big pay off. The problem is that most of them don't understand that there are several ways to be rich. Here are three ways to get yours.

For most people it takes a long time to gather enough wealth to feel comfortable, a great way to define rich. It takes years of saving, investing, and sacrificing for future rewards. It's not easily done, but if done correctly, it will pay off.

While the stock market has moved up nicely in the last three months, it's hardly moved stocks above reasonable valuations. IBM (IBM) sells at 12.77 times earnings. Intel (INTC) goes for 11.67 times. Microsoft (MSFT) has a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 11.74. Google (GOOG) sports one of 22.8, but even that isn't too noteworthy when many of these stocks at one time or another traded at 50 to 100 times their earnings. Of course, those were days when there was only up, and everyone was on Ecstasy. Thankfully, every stock, and everyone, is back on earth.

Those relatively benign valuations come from the reality of a slow global economy. In the U.S. it's more like a smashed-into-a-brick-wall economy. No matter the degree of the economic slowdown, all investors are cautious, not willing to bid up stocks when they believe things will only get worse, that profits will only decrease.

The stock market, the gold market. Both of these have a way of moving well before major economic events are evident. Research suggests the stock market is ahead of the economy by about six months. It moves in anticipation of events rather than actual events. The gold market has its own drummer and moves for its own reasons, in its own time. Stocks and gold are moving now, and they suggest a change in the economy.

First, the stock market continues to gain ground, climbing what is commonly referred to as the "wall of worry." In other words, there's lots to be worried about, but stocks go up anyway. That's because investors are beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. And it isn't a train. This week, the official keepers of recession data, the National Bureau of Economic Research, announced the recession ended in June of 2009. Aren't you sorry you missed it?

When Russell Sage was asked how to to become wealthy, he replied: "Buy straw hats in the winter." Who was Russell Sage? A Congressman from New York who was also a Wall Street financier who died with $70 million ... in 1906. His (sage) advice still works today, especially for stocks.

If you can buy stocks when they're out of season, or more likely, out of favor, you've got a much better chance of making money than when everyone else is jumping on the band wagon. The key item to remember is this: there are four seasons in a year ... every year, and when you buy straw hats in the winter (on sale no doubt), you know summer will be coming and their price will go higher. There are no seasons in the stock market. A stock out of favor now could stay that way for a long, long, long time. Even go bankrupt. So don't believe that a "cheap" stock now will automatically become valuable later.

Warren Buffett once said: "Prior to that, I had been investing with my glands instead of my head." He was referring to his tutelage by his mentor, the great Benjamin Graham, the father of fundamental investing. After learning how to analyze a stock, he realized that he'd been buying stocks more with his emotions than his brains. He put his brain to work, and the rest is history.

Mr. Buffett was saying that he let the sizzle get in the way of judging the quality of the steak. He could see the popping on the grill, smell the meat sizzling, but he wasn't able to judge the quality of the cut. Many investors are still blinded by the sizzle, buying steaks that are mostly fat and not a lot of meat. They need to get beyond their noses and into their brains.

M & A. That's mergers and acquisitions. They're all over the financial pages. Intel (INTC) is buying Infineon's wireless division for $1.4 billion so the chip manufacturer can diversify beyond computers. HP (HPQ) or Dell (DELL) will end up with 3PAR, a cloud-computing company, at a cost of $2 billion or more. Carl Icahn, the billionaire financier, is making a hostile tender bid for Lions Gate (LGF), the film and television producer. 3M (MMM) is buying Attenti Holdings, an Israeli maker of remote monitoring technology used to track people, for $230 million. Exelon (EXC) is picking up a division of Deere (DE), a renewable energy unit, for about $900 million so it can enter the wind-power segment. Sanofi-Aventis (SNYNF) is trying to buy Genzyme (GENZ) but the board won't accept the bid of $18.5 billion. The board is open to better numbers. There are many more.

Is all this good for investors? Or is there some bad in there?