First up is

Ernest Waddell

, who writes, "Several years ago, on the recommendation of an investment newsletter, I bought shares in a penny stock incorporated in the state of Nevada. I bought it as a long-term speculative play, put the stock certificate in a file and forgot about it until recently. It probably no longer exists. But is there a way I can find out what happened to this company?"

Maybe. I know of two companies that offer this service:

R.M. Smythe

, based right here in Manhattan, and

Stock Search International

, based way out (from where I'm sitting) in Tucson, Ariz. I haven't personally used either of them, but both claim to be able to tell the pulse of even the most obscure of companies for around a hundred bucks. Or at least deliver the eulogy.

Good luck. Maybe they can tell you if

Rick Mahorn's

still in the league, too.

Memo to

Marie Ragazzo

, who wonders what the heck a warrant is: Warrants give an investor the right to buy securities in the future for a fixed price, usually higher than the current price. Companies -- and sometimes governments -- use them as "sweeteners" to make low-growth, interest-rate-sensitive securities like bonds and preferred stock more attractive to investors. For example, a company may bundle a million shares of preferred stock along with warrants to buy 1 million common shares at a premium to their current market price. The expectation is that the stock will rise enough in the long term to make exercising the warrant worthwhile.

If you don't want your warrants, don't worry, they're liquid. You can trade them on the major exchanges until the expiration of their subscription periods, which can vary from a few years to perpetuity.

Memo to

Jeff Chen

, who wonders how he can listen in on conference calls: Are you an analyst? A portfolio manager? A financial journalist? Head of a hedge fund? With a large institutional investor? Forget about it.

Or so it used to be. In late 1997 a company called

Vcall

started simulcasting corporate conference calls to thousands of individual investors through its

Web site. You can hear the calls live or access written transcripts 48 hours after the event. It's free, as is the

Real Player

application you'll need to download to hear the calls.

Memo to

Emil Cerny

, who wonders where he can find advance-decline charts on the Internet: First of all, for those who don't know, the advance-decline ratio (more simply known as the A-D ratio) is a way of seeing to what extent individual stocks participate in index movements that are expressed in terms of gross point gains or losses. An A-D ratio of greater than 1 is considered bullish, since it indicates that more stocks have posted gains than losses over a given period. The caveat: A-D numbers can be as misleading as they are enlightening, since they would consider a stock's losing 1/16 of a point for eight straight days -- for a total loss of half a point -- eight times more significant than a five-point gain that took place in a single day.

What was the question? Oh yeah, try

DecisionPoint.com. It has three-year A-D charts for such indices as the

Nasdaq Composite Index

, the

Dow Jones Industrial Average

and the

Standard & Poor's 100 Stock Index

.

Memo: Have a dumb question relating to finance? Great. Have a

really

dumb question? Even better. Send it to

MonEmailbag@thestreet.com, and I'll do my best to answer. Include your full name, and please, no questions seeking personal financial advice or regarding personal brokerage disputes. And this reminder: Because of the volume of mail, personal replies can't be guaranteed.