So, who's actively investing? Who used to but is too scared after the bloodbath of '08? I'm currently putting about a grand a month into ETFs (exchange traded funds) of various kinds at an online broker. Still paying way too much in fees (monthly trading amounts to about 135 bps each time round plus around 50 bps for the account itself - which is purely based on the very low level of my current investments, as it's a fixed price) but no way to avoid that at this stage (and no, I don't need your suggestion on American online brokers as I can't use them anyway...). Given my age (22), risk appetite (fairly high) and financial literacy (educated), I don't think there's any other investment product you could convince me of currently - but why don't you try. For those into details: ~40% MSCI Europe ~40% S&P 500 ~20% Emerging Markets (something from ishares - I forget) What about you?
Right now I'm putting all my money into fixing up my house and rebuilding my cash reserve for in case I wind up on the job market. Well that and I automatically get 5% pulled from my paycheck for my 401K with matching from my company. I should bump it up to 10%, which is the max they'll match, but I haven't gotten around to it. Once I get the house under control I plan to reopen my Vanguard account and buy into the Vanguard Lifestrategy Growth Fund (VASGX). Not very sexy, it's a balanced no load index fund and I pump a set amount into it every month (or I did when I was investing). It's done well for me. Actually that isn't entirely true. Right now, while real estate is a bargain my next investment will likely be another house. Then I can rent one and live in the other.
Come on, there's gotta be someone else investing - or "speculating", if that gets people involved! No one playing the stock market (here's a hint: you shouldn't and the only one profiting is your broker)? Update on my portfolio: Shifted towards ~50% European, ~35% U.S., ~15% Emerging Markets. I'd originally planned to buy some more Emerging Markets but that still seems a little bubble-y whereas the European ETF is, once again, pretty low and I still have a painfully high entrypoint (currently down 11% on that position). Anyways, at this point I'm pretty sure that the main risk in my portfolio is exchange risk - both directly (U.S./Emerging ETFs are denominated in USD) and indirectly (the European one is in CHF but I strongly suspect that the adverse EUR movements are fucking up my returns ). Since I'm pretty sure that CHF is at an unnatural level of strength, the only thing I'm sad about is that I can't buy more at this point.
I've got a bunch of Buy & Hold stocks (WAG, WMT, C, ORCL, DELL, JNJ, GE...to name a few) that I rarely deal with. More recently, most of the investment $ the Mrs. & I have has been put into a more dynamically balancing portfolio product offered by Edward Jones Co. I forget the name of it...basically there are several flavors, based on risk tolerance, and they each have target percentages in various categories, and they invest in a variety of products: Mutual Funds, ETFs, common stocks, Treasury notes, etc... The stuff is programmed to sell off at certain breakpoints, and then periodically everything is redistributed to re-conform to the pre-defined percentages again.
34% old family stocks, 15% large cap, 9% small cap, %16 international developed, 10% emerging markets, 16% muni bonds.
Aaaand after a rather nervewracking >4 hours where I was, literally, the ONLY person trading it at all (I'm not kidding - one trade from 9 am to 13:15 - which was me - the day ended up with a total of 4 trades) - the position has gone to a mere -6.6%. Don't ask me why, don't ask me how. Honestly though, I'm more shocked because of the low volume and the high volatility - 4 trades all over the place (mine was 1% higher than the last one yesterday and the last one today was again about 1-2% than my trade). Not sure I like it. What kind of expenses are you looking at for the Edwad Jones product? If they're investing in mutual funds, it sounds like you're getting raped quite badly (imagine they're charging you 1% and then you're paying another 1.5% for the mutual fund...)?
Got shares in XTR, OTC, SPH, KMR and BARC currently. Almost 100% up on XTR and OTC, and wishing I'd pumped more into then rather than BARC... Mind you, doubled up on GKP, so can't complain too much. Probably jump out of XTR and OTC around 2.5-3p, making them triple-baggers for me, then look at some other small scale oilies. KMR probably exit around 30p, SPH I'm thinking of taking a loss on, and BARC is more of a long term proposition. Can't break out of the overall 20% profit though, although that may change when I start day trading properly. Can't do that just now though. I want to get into ETF's and also forex, but haven't really got the time to do due dilligence.
Oh, also debating buying some Facebook share privately as I expect them to shoot up after any IPO and make a profit there, but I find that a tad risky given Google are looking into social networks again (although going off Orkut, they're not very good at it)
I've actually had fun picking up a couple of things dirt cheap during the Debacle of '08 and watching them appreciate since.
That was one of my regrets. I was on the job market at that point, so I couldn't sink any of my cash reserve into stocks when they were low. I wound up using every dime before I got positive cash flow going again. Fortunately, I didn't have to tap all my holdings to buy the house.
Sold SPH for a minor profit (better than a loss!), and ploughed it into MVC who were trading around half a pence a share. Made a whole 5p profit on that so far Reckon they'll hit 2p in the new year and so quadruple my very modest investment in them. Almost at 30% profit now.
Not entirely sure, but for the past quarter or so my account is up 11.4% and my wife's (slightly more conservative) is up 9.7%, so even after expenses, they're beating their benchmarks by a significant margin. I don't think the expenses are quite as high as you're imagining. EJ is *HUGE* and can easily buy millions of shares of various funds, so they get decent volume breaks from the fund companies.
At the moment, I'm putting everything I can into paying off debts that have a higher interest rate than the average rate of appreciation in the stock market. I expect to be finished in a few months, but haven't decided what to do about investments after that point, besides bumping my 401(k) contribution up to the full 6 percent.
I got very lucky in '08 because it was the first time I started making real money and therefore I had almost nothing previously invested. When the market crashed I was just starting to get paychecks large enough to allow me to invest. So during that year I put a lot of money into Energy stocks and that money has more than doubled. I can sit here and say I wish I had more money to put in back in '08 but the truth is in order to have that money I would have needed to start making real money the year before which means I would have bought in at the peak and lost no telling how many dollars. Timing was perfect for me. I spent '09 buying and selling certain stocks as they dipped and climbed, this year I just let everything ride. The results have been about the same. I diversified from all energy to some retail and tech stocks and so far I've had good intuition. The only thing I regret was selling Amazon while it was at $135 a share.
I've bailed out of BARC, taking a 15% loss, however I'm over 40% on my investment thanks to the performance other shares. Given I first bought shares 6 months ago, I'm quite happy with that
Make that 50% up Just sold XTR for 4 times I purchased it for, and will buy back in on a retrace I expect to occur when a number of sells occurs. Reckon it'll hit over 10p next year... I may regret selling now if the retrace doesn't occur, but there are plenty of other small stocks about with good potential.
