Somebody mentioned this before I think, but are there apps/sites that let you create your own funds essentially? Say you could create fund X and put Apple, Google, Disney and others in there, then you just buy shares or even partial shares in that fund. Does that exist?
I think you're thinking of the investment site motif. They offer essentially funds in certain sectors, ie tech or consumer goods, that you can invest in. Not sure if you can create your own fund though.
Well I figure free trading exists now at places like Robinhood. So some group could easily allow you to create mini funds or whatever you want to call them and just charge a commission fee. The tricky part would be finding a way to purchase fractions of shares. I could purchase Berkshire Hathaway, Google, Apple, Amazon, Chipotle, etc all right now on Robinhood for free (no fees) but I don't have the capital to even buy 1 share in that package. I see a startup like Acorns or Robinhood eventually doing this, not an established bank.
So I just got offered a new job with a significant pay raise and an option for company matching in a 403(b). I'm really confused on how much I should be putting into that plan to take full advantage of it or if I should be going into an IRA. Would anyone be willing to give some advice via PM as to not clog up this thread?
Just opened a Roth IRA with Fidelity. Now I just gotta decide what funds I want to invest in. Any suggestions? I am young and relatively aggressive with my money when investing.
I should probably know the answer to this question, but I do not. If you are asking what it costs per trade, then the answer is 0 if it is for mutual funds or indexes.
So I guess my question is how do I ensure to take advantage of it? The offer sheet says employer contribution match up to 3%. While I know that's low and not the best, should I be doing like 5% into that to make sure they match the 3% and then the rest to an IRA? Please be kind with me, I'm an idiot when it comes to investment stuff.
I would do 3% into the 403b. Anything over that 3% should go into the option that has the lower fees or better investment opportunities. If you're in a 403b you work for the government, right? I'm guessing you're going to have lower fees in your 403b than in your IRA. However, are you an active trader that wants to be able to buy individual stocks? Then the IRA might be better for you. The 403b will have limited investment opportunities.
It pains me to say it, but looks like Tuesday will be a very important day for the market depending on China's economic data. Still sickens me that we seem so tied to the hip with them.
Thank you. I'm working for a non-profit in DC. I'll have to figure out the fees and stuff when I get back next week. Like I said, I know nothing about investment stuff so definitely not an active trader.
I don't see that happening. Firms like that are likely too small / don't want to deal with the headache of all that'd be entailed with doing something like this. Think about it - there is no way to buy fractional shares so they would have to make sure there is enough demand for a stock before they know how many whole shares to buy. Then they'd have to allocate fractional share amounts to what could potentially be a large # of different "funds." But how do they decide where to buy a stock for the people that want it? Cause it's not like everyone is going to want to buy a Google/Apple/Disney/whatever at the same price. Throw in the fact that there isn't any existing regulation (to my knowledge) for something like this, other issues that would be encountered like keeping track of various data for tax purposes/tracking corporate actions/ect., and the list of stuff the firm doing this has to worry about continues to grow. There is just too much that goes into running a fund (be it an open end i.e. mutual fund, a closed end fund, an ETF, ect.) to make something like this worthwhile. It is a cool idea, I just do not see how they could ever make it feasible/profitable nor the incentive for regulators to come up with rules/laws/ect. governing how something like this should be handled/run. They would just tell you to go out and buy an existing fund that holds the securities you were interested in your own personal fund holding.
My whole family uses Vanguard and we love it. The fees are negligible and they have a great variety of funds that fit varying goals.
So I was reading an article today about diversification and it stated that having at least 15 but no more than 30 individual stocks is ideal. Without getting into that discussion, taking 30 as the number and assuming even allocation for each, that would take a lot of money to build a portfolio that size without having fees take out a big chunk. If you were going to start building this from scratch, what fees would you say are acceptable for each position? 1%? Less? Assume it's $10 per trade, you'd be looking at $1,000 for each of 30 positions to stay at 1%. Too high, too low?
I guess what I really meant above is how would you actually go about building an evenly allocated portfolio with 30 positions? Most would not have the funds to do it all at one time, but if you do it over a long period then by the end the size of each position will have shifted and your goal of an even starting allocation is lost.
Nobody actually gives investing advice to people with $10,000 to invest because it is impractical. If you are not retiring any time soon, just buy a mutual fund that tracks the S&P and forget about it.
So everybody that ever invests just immediately started with 6 figures in the bank? I get what you're saying, but surely there are recommendations or at least some info out there for younger folks looking to build over the long term?
Yeah, put it in the S&P and keep putting more money in the S&P until you have enough money to diversify without eating your returns. By all means, if you have a great idea, invest in it, but don't waste your time doing a bunch of research to buy 1 share of Apple. A typical investment thesis takes tens of hours to develop. If you spend 40 hours on research, value your time at $20/hour, have a 1 year holding period, and invest $5,000 in the idea, you need to outperform the S&P 500 by 16% to justify your time. That's a pretty absurd level of outperformance.
No what he is saying is pick a mutual fund and go with that instead. Seriously the guys that run mutual funds are PAID to manage money. They can sure as shit do it better than some guy doing it as a side hobby. Seriously look at Vanguard Funds. I have a good amount with them and they charge me almost nothing for the returns I get.
This is pretty terrible logic because most people don't have a second job they would be doing instead of researching an investment strategy. I'm not going to earn an extra $20/hour by watching a college football game instead of researching investments.
But most people have a life outside of work where they do stuff besides research stocks. I pay a VERY small amount to have someone work 8 to 10 hours a day managing my money who has done that his entire life.
What is the opportunity Cost of being on TMB??? Literally an old Razorback forum used to keep track of how much time you spent on the site. I was way past the weeks time frame. I kept asking myself. Who wants to see that? Shockingly I was banned from that site a few years later.
Depends on the person. Watson = Probably marginally above minimum wage. That Florida fan with the rich uncle with the U.S. Open box = Probably a lot higher than the $20 mentioned in the above analysis.
I get all that, and I completely agree and appreciate the feedback, that's just not what I was asking about. I'm simply asking how one might go about developing a well diversified portfolio with 30 positions. I'm not asking whether or not that's the correct thing to do. I read an article listing the attributes of that and was wondering how you'd even start. It seems to me like something that'd be good in theory but impractical or expensive in reality. I have no plans of trying to do that myself unless I suddenly win the lottery.
But for all the buildup and heated arguments about the Fed's decision, to be announced at 2 p.m. on Thursday, experts agree that even if the central bank holds off on raising its benchmark rate this week it'll most likely act within a few months. And whenever the Fed pulls the trigger, it probably will be just a quarter-point rise from today's near-zero rate.
As someone that sees all of the trades and other dumb shit that PM's (portfolio mangers) and mutual fund companies in general do on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis, I can most assuredly tell you that this is not at all correct. Unless you are talking about something like Vanguard Index Funds, in which case they are not really a PM since they aren't really actively coming up with ideas and doing in-depth investment analysis - they just follow an index and re-balance the fund periodically to match the underlying index. Granted this is still a lot of work, but is a lot easier and less stressful than trying to run an actively managed fund.
Forget what some article on the internet says - go with whatever you are most comfortable doing (the term "know thyself" fits pretty well here), but don't ignore the fact that trying to actively trade and beat the broad market is a game most people will lose at. That includes professionals. As much as I love trading and coming up with ideas, I still leave a portion of my own account and those I manage for family at least 50% in index funds (or other securities tracking an index such as SPX/NDX e-minis, though I obviously am not putting 50% of the acct in them at that point b/c of the leverage involved). That % might go down if I feel like the market could be in store for a rough patch, but in up trends it saves my ass if I go through a cold stretch which everyone, even the all time greats, go through time to time.
I may be in the minority, but I feel like the looming rate hike (be it this week, December, next March, whenever) is a non-event. They will raise the fed funds rate by 25 basis points and probably wait another six months or something to see what kind of impact it has. At that point they'll raise it another 25 basis points. These increases will keep being so small and spread out over time that it will not have near the impact that all of the talking heads are trying to scare people into believing it will.
Excerpt from a note this morning A total of 3,367 days have passed since the Fed last raised rates. In roughly 6 hours, we’ll know one way or another whether the Fed has decided to end this streak (with a liftoff) and in doing so go against the market and the majority of economists or instead stand pat. Yesterday’s inflation data did little to help fuel support that a move is warranted. The probability of a rate hike in September is currently priced at 32%, which is unchanged from yesterday. The probability has shifted within a 4% range for a couple weeks now, but its still well below the 54% peak reached in early August (before the China devaluation) and slightly above the YTD low of 21% back in July. Of the 113 estimates on Bloomberg, 59 are calling for the Fed to stay put and 51 are calling for a 25bp hike, with the remaining 3 estimates calling for a 12.5bp move. fwiw-My call is still that rates are not raised before December.
fed makes their decision at 1cst selfishly, i hope they delay til dec due to my variable SL refi reality, they should do it
25 basis points doesnt matter anyway unless youre a grandparent and all of your stuff is in the bank. the fed should have more transparency and they probably shouldnt be raising rates anyway seeing how there isn't a lot of growth or inflation. but then again theyve historically been overly optimistic with the economy.