Investing General Discussion

Jumping in here as a poor person

Small history with stocks: I got "hooked" on penny stocks about 6 years ago, followed a half dozen email lists - TLDR: made some money, lost almost everything - buckled down on trigger impulse - cleared out the crappy lists - managed to make back everything +1500$ cashed out and haven't touched a penny stock since. The stress of watching every tick + or -, the frustration of the limitations of tools I had being a sub 10k investor - the fees sometimes making or breaking the deal- It was just, not how I wanted to live lol- actually, I still have some of one stock floating around because it was a flop down below the trade fee price- so I have had it for years lol.

So now, family, kids, whatever- the wife is like "we need to invest for the children etc." - then I saw an add very randomly for Stash Invest - Start Investing Today | Stash Invest - honestly in my forever history on the internet, I have actually clicked on like 5 adds lol.

Looks interesting, basically mutual funds or whatnot - 12$ a year or 0.25% for accounts over $5000 and no transaction fees.

So looking at it, it seems a decent way to do some basic investing in diversified funds and not have transaction fees every time you want to move it- and a decent cost for the service at 1$ a month.

I know this is no high level investing nor something really "good" for the big $ people - but it looks interesting for a normal easy entry and I do not really see that much downside, other than well...potentially poor gains.

I highly recommend you don't try to do active trading for long term investing.

And if you're not doing active trading, .25% is abysmal. Open an account with Vanguard or Fidelity, pick one of the numerous .04-.07% index funds, and stop trying to think you're smarter than the market.

Or smarter than the people who created those index funds

I aint smarter than the market, that's why I never will touch day trading again lol - been there and done that as I said.

Its 12$ a year till 5k to use their service, I can buy into their funds and move money around their funds and do daily, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly investments etc. all for the 1$

As I said, I know this is not some inception high level shit- its very basic funds that, at least according to their listed % returns are actually good for such ease of access.

Blazin said:

Not knocking their services but I fail to see how that is better than Vanguard .

Click to expand...

It's not. It's a .24% fee just to use their services, at the absolute minimum (higher the less you have). And that's before you even get into whatever the fee is for the fund.

That's versus Vanguard where you're looking at probably .1 to .15% for having that small of an amount. I'd also guess that with what he's talking about, your fees get higher once you go over $5k, whereas with Vanguard once you're into their Admiral funds, they plummet (like .04% for VTSAX).

Hurm, haven't looked at what Vanguard is... I have not looked into anything in years honestly - I have my pension and some small investments from before that and my wife's 401k.

12$ a year and the ease of entry looked good to me. Most things were fee and charges per transaction etc. were what was annoying to me as just a "normal poor guy" that does not have a huge portfolio of tens of thousands of dollars. I mean count my house and pension sure, but in terms of just normal liquid $ no.

I will look at vanguard, this thing was just quite easy to get into simple sign up, bank account link and done.

Vanguard is just as easy - Had bank account, investment account, and IRA's all set up in an hour.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words but in investing it is worth so much more. Having a few extreme charts on your wall can be a helpful reminder that there is no such thing as “can’t”, “won’t,” or “has to” in markets. The market doesn’t have to do anything, and certainly not what you think it “should” do. The market doesn’t abide by any hard and fast rules; it does what it wants to do and when it wants to do it.

That’s what makes it so hard and at the same time so interesting. And that’s why listening to the endless prophesies of gurus and pundits can be so dangerous. They don’t know anything more about the future than you or I, which is to say they don’t know anything about it at all.

Find some charts that speak to you personally, and post them on your wall. Hopefully they’ll serve as a constant reminder that the range of possible outcomes is much wider than you think. You will need to suspend your disbelief at times to succeed, because the market is forever doing things that it has never done before. There is no impossible in this wonderful game, only more or less probable. Truly understanding that can go a long way toward controlling your emotions and becoming a better investor.

Click to expand...

I have to say. This might be the worst 3 paragraphs of advice I've ever read on investing.

was that a case...for...or against diversification.

Or did he get butt-hurt at the quote "the market historically has always had a return of about 9%" or whatever it was.

.

There should be a disclaimer in this thread about scams and bad deals.

If you want to invest and you're new open a Vanguard or Fidelity account.

If you want to invest and you're a pro just keep dumping money into your Vanguard or Fidelity account.

Beat 99% of investors, case closed. Done.

So the Fed announced they're going to start cutting back 10 billion a month of the 4.2 trillion in mortgage backed securities that they bought up after that 2008 meltdown. How does this play out for the markets?