The Motley Fool: It’s easy to reduce phone, mail solicitations

Reducing all those telephone and mail solicitations you get can also reduce your chances of falling prey to identity theft, while keeping you from getting carried away with credit card offers.

Reduce calls by registering your home and personal cell phone numbers with the Federal Trade Commission. Just click over to www.donotcall.gov or call 1-888-382-1222 (TTY 1-866-290-4236). You must call from the number you wish to register. Registration is free. There are currently more than 100 million phone numbers in the registry. Many states maintain their own do-not-call lists, too, though the national list covers the same ground and more, and is likely used by more marketing entities.

Register with the major credit reporting agencies, also. The four major credit agencies — Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion — support the www.optoutprescreen .com Web site, where you can opt out of lists used by creditors or insurers to make firm offers of credit or insurance. Opting out should prevent the agencies from distributing your credit file information to those who want to provide you with credit or insurance, unless you initiate an inquiry.

To stop receiving junk mail, click over to the Web site of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) at www.dmaconsumers.org/consumer assistance.html. There you’ll find information on how to remove yourself from postal mailing lists as well as e-mail lists. The site also features some helpful information on other topics, such as avoiding becoming a victim of identity theft and things to know about online sweepstakes contests. (Some are not very scrupulous and exist mainly to collect names and addresses.)

You can also mail your request to: Direct Marketing Association, Box 9008, Farmingdale, NY 11735-9008. This should remove your name from all DMA member lists for five years (though it may take a few months be in full effect). Be warned that you’ll still receive mail from companies and organizations that do not belong to the DMA.

At http://spam.abuse.net, learn how to minimize any spam (unwanted e-mail solicitations) you may receive.

Whenever you move to a new address or receive a new phone number, you’ll want to re-register or opt out again.

Ask the Fool

Q: Can you short any stock? — R.Y., Fresno, Calif.

A: To be shorted, a stock needs to qualify as “marginable,” meaning that investors can purchase shares with funds borrowed from their brokerages. Most stocks on the New York Stock Exchange are marginable, and many Nasdaq stocks also qualify, while stocks trading for less than $5 per share often do not.

In case you’ve forgotten, shorting stocks involves reversing the usual order of investing. If you’ve heard about Groundhog City (ticker: WDCHK) and you think its stock price is due to tumble, you might profit off its decline by shorting it.

You’d first place an order to sell a stock through your broker, and the broker would borrow someone else’s shares and sell them for you. You’d later buy them back on the open market and replace them, profiting if they fell and losing money if they appreciated. This is a tricky transaction, and investors shouldn’t do it unless they have a thorough understanding of the process.

Q: What’s a “golden parachute”? — P.T., Cincinnati

A: Some corporate bigwigs negotiate to include “golden parachute” clauses in their contracts. With such a clause, if a firm is bought out and the bigwig’s job is terminated, the bigwig will receive some hefty benefits, such as one or more of the following: a large cash payout, a generous severance package and stock options. As you might imagine, shareholders don’t love these clauses, especially since some executives involved are the ones who orchestrate the buyouts in the first place. Also, these clauses aren’t tied to merit. A CEO can mismanage a firm, causing its shareholders to lose money, while he ends up leaving the company with millions.

My dumbest investment

In 1979, I bought my wife a $75 cockatiel for Christmas, to keep her pet bird company. Soon, four chicks hatched. In 1985, we were evicted from our apartment because we had four reproducing pairs of birds and seven singles, so we rented a house to launch a parrot-breeding business. By 1990, we’d moved to Florida, joined an established breeder and added our 300 assorted parrots to his 1,500 birds. After we divorced in 1995, I relinquished my share to her (gratis) for my peace of mind. You could say my investment of 734 parrots worth $600,000 flew away with my ex-wife. — Axel Shillers, West Palm Beach, Fla.

The Fool Responds: If you know what you’re doing and you don’t run into trouble, it’s possible to make good money in all kinds of ventures, from real estate to collectibles to parrots.