Stock Market Thread

[Apoc]

Yeah but AMZN is down 2.5% and I have a vest coming 11/29!

[WRXtranceformed]

Yeah but AMZN is down 2.5% and I have a vest coming 11/29!

Figure out how to help them sell more stuff! At not a loss!

[Apoc]

I got in on ALK a day too late on the announcement of the proposed merger with Virgin. It bottomed out at 30% below my purchase - not sure why investors bailed. It's rebounced since the merger was approved by the feds and jumped in the last two days. I'm now up 15%.... shoulda doubled down when it was low!

They paid dividends of $1.10/share in 2016, so I recommend taking a look at it for a long term play.

[BLINGMW]

I'm terrified of this market, have been selling off over the last week or so when I find high points. I hate to sell Ford today but I must.

[Ryan T]

You guys are all a lot more knowledgeable about the stock market and investments than I am, so I'm looking for some input. What are ya'lls opinions on apps like Acorns and other similar services? Acorns basically works by rounding up how much you spend on your debit or credit card and depositing that into an investment account that you manage via their app. You spend $12.25 at the gas station and it rounds up and deposits $0.75 into your investment account. Anyone have any thoughts on these sort of programs? Yay? Nay?

[Apoc]

I don't have any experience with them, but saving is better than not no matter the form... as long as you aren't paying any fees. If you're paying someone else to remember to save your own money, you'd be better with an automatic deduction from your checking account every month.

Where does the money go? A savings account or an actual investment? The best place to put it depends a lot on your financial situation and if you're saving in other places. At your age, you can afford to be a bit aggressive as long as you have a rainy day fund.

[Ryan T]

I don't have any experience with them, but saving is better than not no matter the form... as long as you aren't paying any fees. If you're paying someone else to remember to save your own money, you'd be better with an automatic deduction from your checking account every month.

Where does the money go? A savings account or an actual investment? The best place to put it depends a lot on your financial situation and if you're saving in other places. At your age, you can afford to be a bit aggressive as long as you have a rainy day fund.

We've got a pretty solid savings base and rainy day fund. Fee's are only $1/month until you reach $5,000, then it is a percentage after that. From what I can tell it is an actual investment account where you choose your investments based upon the risk level you want. I just want to get involved in the market again. I played in it a few years ago, but I'm now at the financial point in my life where I can really start to invest some discrecionary income and hopefully make some gains. This seems like an easy and inexpensive way to get started, but I'm open to other ideas. I know I'm young, but I tend to be a pretty conservative investor based on the other accounts I have.

[WRXtranceformed]

Some banks will do that for you, look into yours to see if you can participate into that kind of rollover program.

The thing with investment accounts, mutual funds, even 401k/roth 401ks is you have to understand what the account fees will be too. So I would do some research into the accounts that they are putting your money into to see if they carry any additional fees themselves, or you may get double dipped on fees to them and the account administrative company. Since you have plenty of savings, it probably makes more sense to just save up a chunk of money, research funds that have low fees / historically good yields and then buy-in when the market takes a dip. Auto-investing options (also true for 401ks) don't give you the benefit of buying in at a low mark. If you don't feel comfortable doing the research yourself you can find a reputable Certified Financial Advisor to assist (my brother happens to be one on an elite Merrill team in DC if you need someone you can trust). CFA's aren't just for rich people. My feeling has always been unless you are an expert in investing (basically no layperson is no matter how much they think that they are) I would prefer to leave it to professionals that research and track the markets for a living and have the results to prove it. CFAs come with their own sets of costs and the plans of course usually have administrative fees as with any investment, but you get the benefit of knowledge and access to stuff you probably wouldn't normally know about on your own. The biggest advantage is you can set up a specific game plan to reach your financial goals, vs just throwing money at the market to see what happens.

[BLINGMW]

Fee's are only $1/month

Seems like not a great deal. Let's say there's two of you using the card, each once a day, so 60 transactions a month. Average deposit per transaction should be approx $0.50, so you're saving $30/mo. You're losing %3 of that to the $1/mo, and only gets worse if you aren't making that many transactions. Seems easier and better (instead of linking some other app to your credit card history I guess?) to just auto draft the $30/mo from your account into a tradeking, etrade, or other account. However, I'll go ahead and add that saving $360/yr into a retirement account isn't much of a "start". I would suggest instead opening a roth IRA and making it your goal to get to the $5500/yr that it allows.

[Apoc]

I wouldn't do it, given the fees. You'd probably save more by paying in cash and putting the change in a jar.

Stay away from any expense ratio over 1% and I'd target less than 0.5%, if possible.

[WRXtranceformed]

Anyone looked at specific investment options for saving for childrens' college funds? Wifey and I want to start trying here this year and I would love to get way out ahead of the financial planning for their future. I met with Ben yesterday and he gave me some really good options with the pros / cons....UTMAs, 529 plans or just setting up a separate mutual fund that I can spend on whatever if we got scholarships.

[D_Eclipse9916]

Anyone looked at specific investment options for saving for childrens' college funds? Wifey and I want to start trying here this year and I would love to get way out ahead of the financial planning for their future. I met with Ben yesterday and he gave me some really good options with the pros / cons....UTMAs, 529 plans or just setting up a separate mutual fund that I can spend on whatever if we got scholarships.

I researched some 529 plans. Gotta be real careful. Since bonds are so low, it seems to be killing the "buy in" for prepaid 529 plans.

We are on hold putting anything into a college plan till we decide what we are doing this summer in terms of where we live. Since I don't see large gains to be made in the next 6 months, we are finishing paying off our last car/home reno loan in the next couple months, and then dumping money into a "college fund" once I see a correction come through.

[WRXtranceformed]

Anyone looked at specific investment options for saving for childrens' college funds? Wifey and I want to start trying here this year and I would love to get way out ahead of the financial planning for their future. I met with Ben yesterday and he gave me some really good options with the pros / cons....UTMAs, 529 plans or just setting up a separate mutual fund that I can spend on whatever if we got scholarships.

I researched some 529 plans. Gotta be real careful. Since bonds are so low, it seems to be killing the "buy in" for prepaid 529 plans.

We are on hold putting anything into a college plan till we decide what we are doing this summer in terms of where we live. Since I don't see large gains to be made in the next 6 months, we are finishing paying off our last car/home reno loan in the next couple months, and then dumping money into a "college fund" once I see a correction come through.

Nice yeah, I have pretty much ruled out UTMAs. The 529 definitely has some notable pros and cons, although what's great about SC is that contributions to 529s are tax deductible, that is definitely not true in every state. It's also tax free money if you spend it on education stuff, which they have a pretty broad definition for. The big hurdle for me is that you have a pretty hefty penalty (10%) plus you have to pay capital gains if you don't use the money for education related expenses (ie in the case of a scholarship), but you can always change the beneficiary in case your next kid isn't as smart or good at golf/soccer/softball/whatever :lol:

Setting up a separate investment account has the most flexibility for the future and although I would have to pay cap gains no matter what when I want to access those funds I believe it would be significantly less of a penalty than "breaking the rules" on a 529

[Apoc]

Dom has a savings account for spending money people give him, but I decided not to open a separate "college fund." A lot can happen in 18 years and I didn't want the lack of liquidity and/or penalties associated with education accounts. I just dump everything into the same mutual fund account we have for whateverthehellweneed. If he gets scholarships or we need it for say, medical, we have it. It's also one less account to worry about. At some point I'll have one in his name, but it'll still be a mutual fund account. Most of my research said save 100% for retirement before saving for college, so this can flex either way.

[Apoc]

So TSLA has been kicking ass as of late and I got nothing to show for it.

Lee's comment on a post about life insurance as investments got me looking at my annual rate of return. Here's mine for all my major investments, including both retirement and liquid assets. Rates 8-10% seem to be the conventional wisdom, but I don't know how hard you guys are managing your money in an effort to exceed that. Where are you at?

1 Year - 16.9%
3 Years - 10.9%
5 Years - 12.7%
10 Years - 8.5%

[WRXtranceformed]

So TSLA has been kicking ass as of late and I got nothing to show for it.

Lee's comment on a post about life insurance as investments got me looking at my annual rate of return. Here's mine for all my major investments, including both retirement and liquid assets. Rates 8-10% seem to be the conventional wisdom, but I don't know how hard you guys are managing your money in an effort to exceed that. Where are you at?

1 Year - 16.9%
3 Years - 10.9%
5 Years - 12.7%
10 Years - 8.5%

Putting the pure liquid assets aside because they fluctuate due to life stuff (ie savings/cash accounts, savings nest egg is recovered now that we are past all of the big home purchase expenses) here is what I dug up. The Merrill dashboard is really complex so I can't find the year specific breakouts, I will have to shoot Ben a note for those:

ML Bank Deposit Program - N/A (slush fund for CD ladder strategy funds and other random stuff IIRC that changes every purchase cycle)
ETFs - MGV: +21.14% Unrealized Gain/Loss, MGK: +34.14% Unrealized Gain/Loss, Combined: +26.51% Unrealized Gain/Loss
Mutual Funds: +19.94% Unrealized Gain/Loss, +56.73% Cumulative Investment Return
Indexed UL Policy: N/A (I hit the 5 year compounding mark last year so the cash value is starting to rise pretty quickly, but I probably won't see "gains" until 2021 when it hits the next mark and the compounding more than doubles, and then again in 2026)

Roth 401k through work/ADP is a little easier to pull it:

Quarter: +6.05%
One Year: +16.10%
Three Years: +5.35%
Five Years: +8.38%

It's pretty cool to see how close our short and long term gainz are on my 401k vs. your portfolio Chris. Without diving into it with the Weber-Wise team I am going to guess that the three year dip was due in part to the market fallout but also the weight that I had on natural resources funds during that time. We caught that and reallocated everything out of those asset classes in my 401k and it seems to have straightened the ship.

The only asset that is tough for me to gauge growth over time is the land ownership in VA. My brother and I are partial partners in the family farm at about 6.474% each. Land is really only worth what someone will pay for it at any given time but land in Loudoun County doesn't seem to have depreciated in the last 10 years. I am sure it will work out alright if my dad every decides its time to sell.

[Apoc]

I didn't count as true cash or individually traded stocks. They're in different accounts and, like you said, are pretty fluid. I have less than 10% of net worth in there, so I don't bother trying to look at it other than to track my total total via Mint. I also don't bother counting home equity because that's the funniest money of them all.

I went pretty heavily into bonds when the market shit the bed a few years ago, so I managed to preserve some unrealized gains.

[BLINGMW]

My rolled up retirement savings currently in a roth IRA:

1 year +24.4 %
3 year +13.8 %
5 year +51.7%

You guys should just give me your $ :dunno:

[WRXtranceformed]

My rolled up retirement savings currently in a roth IRA:

1 year +24.4 %
3 year +13.8 %
5 year +51.7%

You guys should just give me your $ :dunno:

Those seem more like a Cumulative Investment Return values than Unrealized Gain/Loss

[BLINGMW]

It's "annual rate of return" as per the definition I found...
You were looking for unrealized gain/loss?