Stock Market Thread

[WRXtranceformed]

One strong investment to consider if you have a good chunk of disposable income to play with is a ULP investment grade insurance policy.

Lee - thanks - that's an interesting idea I'd never even heard of. That said, I'm trying to stay a little more liquid with this extra cash. It sounds like that scheme locks the money up for another ~20 years.

It is definitely a longer term plan. IIRC you can pull out money early once or twice without any fees / penalties for an emergency but you dont want to draw from it a lot. A standard or Roth IRA is a good call as long as your income doesn't opt you out of it.

[BLINGMW]

You could open a Roth and buy mutual funds in it if you want something a little more hands-off. Then you can access much of it after 5 years. You can only contribute $5k/yr though. :dunno:
Or yes, unless you make $125k+/yr which means you cannot do a roth and instead should just start giving some of your $ to me in the form of cars and motorcycles and guns. $14k limit per year please to avoid gift tax.

[WRXtranceformed]

You could open a Roth IRA and buy mutual funds in it if you want something a little more hands-off. Then you can access much of it after 5 years. You can only contribute $5k/yr though. :dunno:
Or yes, unless you make $125k+/yr which means you cannot do a roth IRA and instead should just start giving some of your $ to me in the form of cars and motorcycles and guns. $14k limit per year please to avoid gift tax.

FTFY

Roth IRAs have income restrictions, Roth 401ks do not just for clarity

[Apoc]

Financial gurus of MM - assuming no debt, a healthy emergency fund, and maxed out 401k/IRA contributions - where would you be investing your extra cash outside of individual stocks?

Mine is in low expense mutual funds. If I remember correctly, I'm pretty heavy in large market cap, have a few gambles in international and health care funds and the rest in bonds. It's grown ~65% in the last three years, but the market has been pretty hot so take that with a grain of salt.

[WRXtranceformed]

Best place to invest your extra cash: Helping single mothers feed their children.
- Token Rapper

[HAULN-SS]

Damn - had no idea Roth IRAs had an income limit, thought it was just a contribution limit. Learned something new today.

[Apoc]

This is probably more than you wanted, but here you go.

Domestic vs. international - Includes all of your stock and stock mutual fund holdings, which are 84.3% of All Portfolios.
US 89.2%
INTL 10.8%


Market capitalization - Includes only your U.S. stock and stock mutual fund holdings, which are 75.1% of All Portfolios.
Large cap 63.3%
Mid cap 8.2%
Small cap 28.5%


Industry sectors - Includes only your U.S. diversified stock mutual fund holdings, which are 75.1% of All Portfolios.
Basic materials 3.4%
Communication services 2.8%
Consumer cyclical 11.8%
Consumer defensive 4.5%
Energy 5.4%
Financial services 7.8%
Health care 16.4%
Industrials 9.4%
Real estate 1.2%
Technology 11.4%
Utilities 1.1%
Other 24.8%


International regions - Includes only your international stock and stock mutual fund holdings, which are 9.1% of All Portfolios.
Europe 44.3%
Pacific 29.3%
Canada 7.3%

[WRXtranceformed]

We use ADP Retirement Services for the work Roth/traditional 401k. I don't know if anyone else uses it but here is a free tip. Ben did an analysis of the funds you can invest in 2 years ago and these are the breakout %s he recommended for it based on aggressive growth:

MetLife Reliance Stable Value Fund - Class 50 3%
PIMCO Total Return Fund - Administrative Class 7%
BlackRock Equity Dividend Fund - Institutional Class 20%
Vanguard Institutional Index Fund - Institutional Class 7%
Fidelity Contrafund 13%
BlackRock U.S. Opportunities Portfolio - Institutional Class 12%
Prudential Jennison Small Company Fund - Class A 9%
Harbor International Fund - Investor Class 16%
Prudential Jennison Natural Resources Fund - Class Z 10%
Nuveen Real Estate Securities Fund - Class A 3%

We are redoing the plan for Rachael and I later this year so I may have him take another look at it. Pleased so far though, return rate from this time last year is 18.97%. Like Chris said pretty much everyone's plans are up right now because the market is killing it YOY

[WRXtranceformed]

Got my YTD statement in the mail from ING regarding the UL insurance policy I referenced on the last page. Its official name is "Flexible Premium Adjustable Universal Life w/ Index-Linked Crediting Strategy". Performance is up 37% YOY, wow. Definitely recommend this for anyone looking for a "set it and forget it" longer term tax-benefitted investment. In the DC area (or anywhere really) if anyone is looking for an FA I will also shamelessly plug my brother. He just got hired on to an elite team at Merrill Lynch and has access to all of the same products he did before.

[BLINGMW]

sold VZ (everyone's shorting it for some reason)
doubled down on TSLA :oops:

[G.Irish]

So is anyone going in on Microsoft now that Ballmer is on his way out?

[Evan]

So is anyone going in on Microsoft now that Ballmer is on his way out?

no. markets dont like change.

and ballmer really wasnt bad at all. the direction MS has been going the past 4 years or so has been much more forward thinking and open than google and apple combined.

[G.Irish]

There was a bump when Ballmer announced he was stepping down, I'm thinking that if a strong successor is announced, there'll be another bump.

I don't think Ballmer was the worst CEO, but Microsoft's stock has been stagnant for the last 13 years and their market cap is almost half of what it was when he came on. He missed the boat on a litany of new market opportunities. What's worse is that Microsoft was actually first in some of those segments. Microsoft was making smartphones long before Google or Apple, yet it took Microsoft 3 years to respond to the iPhone. Hotmail and MSN search were out long before Google came on the scene.

Ballmer's failing is that he lacks strategic vision. He has failed to see the future, and he has failed to respond adequately when competitors began capitalizing on new opportunities.

The worst thing he did IMO is implement the stack ranking performance eval system for employees. Now, instead of employees focusing on beating the competition, they're focused on beating their coworkers. It's resulted in people spending way too much energy on politics and turf wars and not on delivering great product. Microsoft used to be one of those places people dreamed of working at, now the smartest people are going to the competition.

Microsoft's new CEO's first order of business should be to get rid of that stupid system. Beyond that he/she will need to get MS on the road to taking advantage of new fronts in computing, not showing up to the party so late that their offering is irrelevant. Cloud services are a place that MS should be the market leader and maybe if they play their cards right they can claw back some ground on mobile.

[BLINGMW]

would kill myself before I buy MSFT

Sold TSLA though it was hard to do. But honestly, it's already way up in insanity land. When even the CEO agrees, I just don't see it going much higher soon. Would like to buy back if it cools off a little for longer term. :dunno:

[Maengelito]

I just bought some Proctor and Gamble (PG) last week for the long haul. I plan on buying a lot of diapers and cleaning products soon so I might as well take some ownership in those products as well.

[Jake]

OK, hi, I need y'alls help. I (somehow) just figured out over the past week or so, that AOL has been giving me company stock every year as part of my bonus. I have money in my 401k, I have cash savings, I'm doing "fine" as fine can be. But I know nothing about the stock market.

So, the AOL stock is split into thirds. One third has already vested, which I guess means I can sell it either for cash or to re-invest in other stocks. The other two thirds vest in March '14 and March '15, so I have to let those sit, I think.

Assuming that's all correct... what should I do with the third that has vested? Part of me wonders if I should wait 'til we do our Q3 earnings report, but I have no idea how that will go - and think maybe I oughta get in on a different company or two before they do their Q3 earnings reports.

Ideas? If I sell and re-invest in a different company(ies) - who's even worth going with or considering? I'm not talking much cash here, so it's not worth dealing with a broker. I'll just do it myself.

[Apoc]

Dump AOL, invest is anything else.

-Sincerely,
Former AOL employee

(Just read through the last page or two for some ideas.)

[WRXtranceformed]

Just met with my brother again to reevaluate my financial plan and goals now that I'm saving for two. Anyone who is on the fence about hiring a good financial advisor should definitely do it after you do your research to find a good one. Through some contacts at my job I was able to help him get plugged in to an elite 2 person ML team who manages between $500-600M in assets. They have incredible resources available to them and the ML dashboard alone is amazing...integrates with my BoA dashboard, is customizable and provides all the monitoring you need. Being able to run projections showing percentages of likelihood of hitting financial goals and retirement net worth based on current strategy and investment is legit. The real benefits are being able to have true transparency of financial fees, access to and understanding of tax sheltered investments and constant monitoring and adjustment of your plan if needed.

[BLINGMW]

Just met with my brother again to reevaluate my financial plan and goals now that I'm saving for two. Anyone who is on the fence about hiring a good financial advisor should definitely do it after you do your research to find a good one. Through some contacts at my job I was able to help him get plugged in to an elite 2 person ML team who manages between $500-600M in assets. They have incredible resources available to them and the ML dashboard alone is amazing...integrates with my BoA dashboard, is customizable and provides all the monitoring you need. Being able to run projections showing percentages of likelihood of hitting financial goals and retirement net worth based on current strategy and investment is legit. The real benefits are being able to have true transparency of financial fees, access to and understanding of tax sheltered investments and constant monitoring and adjustment of your plan if needed.

I have to admit, I'd rather pay someone to do this that actually knows what they're doing, assuming that meant they consistently beat the market and didn't take too much off the top. But I have pretty weak faith that anyone out there really knows what they're doing, and/or why I should trust that they are really doing their best for me instead of themselves. :dunno: I'd have to REALLY know them.

Bought TSLA back this morning, couldn't stand to be out. Earnings report tomorrow. :thumbup:

[WRXtranceformed]

Just met with my brother again to reevaluate my financial plan and goals now that I'm saving for two. Anyone who is on the fence about hiring a good financial advisor should definitely do it after you do your research to find a good one. Through some contacts at my job I was able to help him get plugged in to an elite 2 person ML team who manages between $500-600M in assets. They have incredible resources available to them and the ML dashboard alone is amazing...integrates with my BoA dashboard, is customizable and provides all the monitoring you need. Being able to run projections showing percentages of likelihood of hitting financial goals and retirement net worth based on current strategy and investment is legit. The real benefits are being able to have true transparency of financial fees, access to and understanding of tax sheltered investments and constant monitoring and adjustment of your plan if needed.

I have to admit, I'd rather pay someone to do this that actually knows what they're doing, assuming that meant they consistently beat the market and didn't take too much off the top. But I have pretty weak faith that anyone out there really knows what they're doing, and/or why I should trust that they are really doing their best for me instead of themselves. :dunno: I'd have to REALLY know them.

Bought TSLA back this morning, couldn't stand to be out. Earnings report tomorrow. :thumbup:

Just like doing business in any other way you have to be able to trust the people you are giving your money to. I certainly wouldn't have been able to accomplish what he has in such a short period of time...or come up with a data driven strategy to meet my goals. But i'm also not a finance person.