Investing megathread extravaganza

[DaFace]

A place to talk about investing stuff.

[JohnnyHammersticks]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Would be curious if anyone else wouldn't mind sharing their individual stock picking success this year. I'm here to show it's ****ing hard! I opened my first brokerage account to start this year. All the things you read discuss the difficulty in beating the market with individual stock picking. Something like 5% of individual investors are successful in this. It's why there's so much talk about passively investing most of your money in mutual funds and index funds that track sectors of the market.

My brokerage account has 5% of my total invested money, so not a lot. I also chose some fairly risky investments across the board but that can technically be true of much of individual stock picking it seems. However, the percentage growth on the stocks in it and the portfolio overall is somewhat interesting when comparing to the great year the market has had.

My 401k/Roth IRA combined has gained 17.8% year to date.

Here's the current stocks I own and percentage of gains/loses for the year:
X- US Steel+28.86%
UA- Under Armour -15.76%
TWMJF- Canopy Growth +2.27%
UBQU- Ubiquitech Software Corp -62.50% (total penny stock. I bought when shares hit $.02-I don't have a lot of cash in this but quite a few shares given it's price)
PEMIF- Pure Energy Minerals Ltd +22.47

Total Growth +1.31%

So pretty big swings on almost all those stocks! It's definitely a learning curve and I think in future purchases I'll be selecting more stalwart companies Obviously pales in comparison to my retirement accounts.

Recent considering Ford stock due to the yearly dividends they always pay out. The stock itself has always been a rather dud with few swings/gains, but it's paid a yearly dividend from 4.6%-7.2% every year no matter what (I find this amazing coming from an automaker!). That seems somewhat attractive.

I totally agree with your $PEMIF idea, and am holding 125K shares myself. They're a couple years away, but I love their lithium extraction technology. Evaporation ponds are wasteful and wreck havoc on the environment. 90% extraction rate vs. 40-50% for evaporation ponds. I think the share price will continue channeling between $0.30 and $0.50 for the next year or so, but I think their future is really, really bright.

[A Salt Weapon]

Thinking I need to setup a Roth IRA, tossed between Vanguard and Fidelity. I plan on doing the max $5500/yr in addition to my 401k through work (currently 6% with a 3% match).
I have about $11k in a savings account right now and that should let me do the max for this year and next in 1 shot.
Preferences on which company to use?

My only debt currently is my truck I bought in Jan17 at 3.04%, (43k financed, 31k left, I’ve been paying extra on already, but thinking it might be smarter to invest the extra money instead of paying it off early.)

I am single HOH with 2 dependents (~60k/yr gross income), so my tax liability is lower now than it would be later, unless lowering my taxable income drops my income into the free shit eligible category (EITC, etc), which I should look at before the end of the year.

Anyone have some free ChiefsPlanet advice for me?

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by A Salt Weapon

Thinking I need to setup a Roth IRA, tossed between Vanguard and Fidelity. I plan on doing the max $5500/yr in addition to my 401k through work (currently 6% with a 3% match).
I have about $11k in a savings account right now and that should let me do the max for this year and next in 1 shot.
Preferences on which company to use?

My only debt currently is my truck I bought in Jan17 at 3.04%, (43k financed, 31k left, I’ve been paying extra on already, but thinking it might be smarter to invest the extra money instead of paying it off early.)

I am single HOH with 2 dependents (~60k/yr gross income), so my tax liability is lower now than it would be later, unless lowering my taxable income drops my income into the free shit eligible category (EITC, etc), which I should look at before the end of the year.

Anyone have some free ChiefsPlanet advice for me?

I won't assume anything, so do you have some sort of emergency fund savings somewhere else that would cover living expenses if something happened where you got laid off or had to take time off work?

[A Salt Weapon]

Originally Posted by lewdog

I won't assume anything, so do you have some sort of emergency fund savings somewhere else that would cover living expenses if something happened where you got laid off or had to take time off work?

About 3-4K set aside after this first 11k gets invested. I’m netting about $1k/mo to save/invest currently.

[A Salt Weapon]

I’ve reduced my min living expenses to about 600/mo give or take, so if I did do something stupid like lose my job or something, I could get a part time job at McDonald’s to pay the bills. So my thinking is while I have this disposable income, it might be smart to start investing it instead of just letting the savings account build up 20k/year.

[SAGA45]

Thanks for all the advice guys! Greatly appreciated!

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by A Salt Weapon

Thinking I need to setup a Roth IRA, tossed between Vanguard and Fidelity. I plan on doing the max $5500/yr in addition to my 401k through work (currently 6% with a 3% match).
I have about $11k in a savings account right now and that should let me do the max for this year and next in 1 shot.
Preferences on which company to use?

My only debt currently is my truck I bought in Jan17 at 3.04%, (43k financed, 31k left, I’ve been paying extra on already, but thinking it might be smarter to invest the extra money instead of paying it off early.)

I am single HOH with 2 dependents (~60k/yr gross income), so my tax liability is lower now than it would be later, unless lowering my taxable income drops my income into the free shit eligible category (EITC, etc), which I should look at before the end of the year.

Anyone have some free ChiefsPlanet advice for me?

If you're completely indifferent, I'd probably go with Vanguard. It was started by John Bogle, and he's really made a name for himself for putting together options for everyday Joe's to succeed in investing. Though others have caught up a bit recently, Vanguard was THE place for low-cost index funds for a long time. Philosophically, I have a soft spot for Vanguard even though I personally use Schwab since 1) my work IRA goes there and 2) I love their checking account.

Other than that, you're probably on the right track with a Roth, and the roadmap I posted a page or two back should give you a decent plan to follow for overall strategy.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by SAGA45

Thanks for all the advice guys! Greatly appreciated!

Looking back at the posts, we tend to get a little scattered. Beyond just "use index funds," look into "3-fund lazy portfolios" or just plain "target date funds" to get you started. Pay particular attention to "expense ratios" since those are the fees that you lose on an investment no matter what happens. You can grow into more advanced stuff if you have interest over time.

And again, ask if you have questions on the specifics. There's so much you can do that it's hard to give advice in general rather than saying "dive in, and let us help when you need it."

[A Salt Weapon]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Looking back at the posts, we tend to get a little scattered. Beyond just "use index funds," look into "3-fund lazy portfolios" or just plain "target date funds" to get you started. Pay particular attention to "expense ratios" since those are the fees that you lose on an investment no matter what happens. You can grow into more advanced stuff if you have interest over time.

And again, ask if you have questions on the specifics. There's so much you can do that it's hard to give advice in general rather than saying "dive in, and let us help when you need it."

Crap my bad, I tried to hit the thumbs up button and it won’t let me change it, sorry.

[Cornstock]

Originally Posted by A Salt Weapon

Thinking I need to setup a Roth IRA, tossed between Vanguard and Fidelity. I plan on doing the max $5500/yr in addition to my 401k through work (currently 6% with a 3% match).
I have about $11k in a savings account right now and that should let me do the max for this year and next in 1 shot.
Preferences on which company to use?

My only debt currently is my truck I bought in Jan17 at 3.04%, (43k financed, 31k left, I’ve been paying extra on already, but thinking it might be smarter to invest the extra money instead of paying it off early.)

I am single HOH with 2 dependents (~60k/yr gross income), so my tax liability is lower now than it would be later, unless lowering my taxable income drops my income into the free shit eligible category (EITC, etc), which I should look at before the end of the year.

Anyone have some free ChiefsPlanet advice for me?

My first piece of advice would be to make sure you have 3-6 months of reserved in your savings account in case of job loss or inability to work. It's good you feel confident that you could find a job to offset job loss, but don't rely on it.

So after you decide what amount is appropriate. Decide if youre going to be thinking serious retirement money or if this will be a "playing around" account. If it's serious, you will want to be doing indexed funds so you are diversified. This is much more reliable long term than picking individual stocks.

I think someone with limited investment experience, or who will have a long term buy and hold approach should go with Vanguard. Their in house funds/etfs have microscopic expenses, and they don't charge to make trades of those funds. Pick up an etf or a few that track the S&P 500. If you want to add some more diversity besides that to stabilize your portfolio, an intermediate bond fund is not a bad idea.

If you're an active trader, fidelity has more research tools. You can buy Vanguard funds through them but they will hit you with a trade commission. I don't think this is what you're looking for.

I think you should go with Vanguard.

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by A Salt Weapon

About 3-4K set aside after this first 11k gets invested. I’m netting about $1k/mo to save/invest currently.

Originally Posted by A Salt Weapon

I’ve reduced my min living expenses to about 600/mo give or take, so if I did do something stupid like lose my job or something, I could get a part time job at McDonald’s to pay the bills. So my thinking is while I have this disposable income, it might be smart to start investing it instead of just letting the savings account build up 20k/year.

Sounds like you've got the budget part down. Nice work.

And in a sense, a ROTH IRA can be treated like emergency savings. If something catastrophic happened, you can withdraw contributions without penalty at any time. So maxing out this each year should be done if you have money sitting around and don't think you'll need it in the short term.


I am a Vanguard fanboy but nothing wrong with Fidelity either. Both offer low cost funds and customer service. If you don't know much about investing but are planning for retirement, a target date fund will switch your allocation as you age and can be left untouched.

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by SAGA45

Thanks for all the advice guys! Greatly appreciated!

Did we miss something?

This thread tends to go quiet for weeks at a time. Post again if something wasn't answered.

[A Salt Weapon]

I’m leaning towards Vanguard, I have them in my 401k currently and this is not something I want to have to worry about managing. More just something to put my extra money working for me instead of sitting in a savings account or being blown on more stupid toys. Plus if anything happens to me it can be used by my children.

[Munson]

My Roth IRA has done very well the last couple months. September and October are the best back-to-back months I've ever had.

And overall this year, I'm enjoying a 22.6% rate of return!

[scho63]

Originally Posted by Munson

My Roth IRA has done very well the last couple months. September and October are the best back-to-back months I've ever had.

And overall this year, I'm enjoying a 22.6% rate of return!

BUT TRUMP SUCKS! WORST PRESIDENT EVER!!!!