Investment advice

[The Sybian]

The NJ deli with $13K in sales valued at $100M.

Pay walled, what's the gist? Money laundering scheme?

Dude. Get a subscription to Defector.com already.

But here's a CNBC article about it.

Eh, I can’t keep up with a fraction of the free media content I’d like to, why pay for something I’ll rarely read? I paid for the Post and Times for a while, and didn’t keep up with them. I never got into Deadspin, always found it kind of douchey and trying too hard to be hip or edgy.

[A_B]

I handle the external e-mails from our website and distribute to the appropriate party. Each week before an earnings call, I get numerous e-mails asking what's going to happen with the dividend/material changes before the call. What's a little insider trading among friends, right?

[Gunpowder]

I handle the external e-mails from our website and distribute to the appropriate party. Each week before an earnings call, I get numerous e-mails asking what's going to happen with the dividend/material changes before the call. What's a little insider trading among friends, right?

"Sure thing, as long as you leave this helpful paper trail"

[Gunpowder]

Johnnie your DFV video autoplays when responding to the thread

[Johnnie]

I just went back 5 pages and deleted 2 links to Reddit that I posted.

Can you link whatever post is doing that so I can just delete everything? It didn't autoplay for me.

[Gunpowder]

It's gone

[sancarlos]

I handle the external e-mails from our website and distribute to the appropriate party. Each week before an earnings call, I get numerous e-mails asking what's going to happen with the dividend/material changes before the call. What's a little insider trading among friends, right?

When I was working, I dealt with that kind of nonsense pretty regularly. Even sophisticated pros who know better would try to get you to cough up inside info.

[HaulCitgo]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.ya ... 39307.html

[brian]

Almost sold my Coinbase (COIN) puts today after clocking a profit but decided to hold until the weekend and y'alls boy Elon Musk might have just made me some serious money. They announce earnings tomorrow so if that news isn't great, between Elon tanking crypto valuations tonight and that might be a very profitable day tomorrow. Here's hoping for poor earnings and an absolutely bloodbath in COIN tomorrow.

[brian]

Thank you, Elon.

[Johnnie]

Amazon's stock is over $3k a share. They've just announced a 20-1 (!!!) split.

So I guess buy a share soon? Tesla split and their stock price crept back up.

https://www.streetinsider.com/dr/news.php?id=19752715

[rass]

[mister d]

So I'm not a big fan of ending the world, but I have trouble seeing the end of the stock market as a big picture net negative.

[sancarlos]

So I'm not a big fan of ending the world, but I have trouble seeing the end of the stock market as a big picture net negative.

Well, for one thing, most people have the majority of their retirement savings in stock market investments.

[mister d]

And that's the half of the country that's already better off. I'm not saying it would be painless, but a lot of shit would improve without the stock market dictating decisions.

[sancarlos]

And that's the half of the country that's already better off. I'm not saying it would be painless, but a lot of shit would improve without the stock market dictating decisions.

To paraphrase Neil Peart, you can get equal height among all the trees by taking the tops off all of them. But I don’t think that’s an adviseable path.

[Johnnie]

Why do interviews for investing feel like a scam in progress?

After Mint said it was going to shut down (or rather, roll into Credit Karma), I sought out a different dash board for all of my stuff.

I chose Empower because it was free. Within a few days an investment person called me to discuss a focus for my investments (TSP, IRA, etc..) and basically said that Schwab isn't cutting it for me. He gave me a slide show presentation to show me when my money goes now, how Empower will alter that, and provide a focus for earnings.

I've been with Schwab for a while. My friend's wife (and financial adviser) works there and I trust her. But I also notice that my investments are kinda stagnant.

I know one of the biggest hits to long term investing is the amount the investment firms will get paid off of your money, but there never seems (to me) to be a clear "right way" to go. And I cannot decipher for myself if Empower is better than Schwab or visa versa.

Anyone have advice on this at all?

[Steve of phpBB]

But I also notice that my investments are kinda stagnant.

Haven't the markets been generally stagnant for the last two years basically? The S&P 500 Index is 4 percent below what it was two years ago.

I made the mistake of looking at my 401k balance for the first time in November 2021. That was basically the peak, and even with continued contributions I'm still not where I was at that point.

If we wanted to make money, we all should've bought TSLA in January when everyone was convinced the company was about to die. It's gained over 100 percent since then.

[mister d]

Haven't the markets been generally stagnant for the last two years basically? The S&P 500 Index is 4 percent below what it was two years ago.

This is essentially why I don't have some active investment planner person, I'd worry their proof of concept would be a risk that paid off and/or that in down times they'd be chasing to try and make it up. I am exceptionally conservative.

[DSafetyGuy]

Why do interviews for investing feel like a scam in progress?

After Mint said it was going to shut down (or rather, roll into Credit Karma), I sought out a different dash board for all of my stuff.

I chose Empower because it was free. Within a few days an investment person called me to discuss a focus for my investments (TSP, IRA, etc..) and basically said that Schwab isn't cutting it for me. He gave me a slide show presentation to show me when my money goes now, how Empower will alter that, and provide a focus for earnings.

I've been with Schwab for a while. My friend's wife (and financial adviser) works there and I trust her. But I also notice that my investments are kinda stagnant.

I know one of the biggest hits to long term investing is the amount the investment firms will get paid off of your money, but there never seems (to me) to be a clear "right way" to go. And I cannot decipher for myself if Empower is better than Schwab or visa versa.

Anyone have advice on this at all?

Before I offer my one idea, please understand I know very, very little about this.

Can you talk to your current financial advisor about how aggressive the investing plan tied to your account is and if it should be adjusted based on current overall financial trends?

I don't know what your "strategy" is, but when my wife and I opened our account, there was a questionnaire that included some items relating to how aggressive we wanted our investment strategy to be. The one of us with a more secure corporate job with benefits (wife) wanted a more aggressive strategy than the one of us who was a freelancer (me) who constantly had to save money to be prepared for leaner times.

Perhaps your thoughts about this have changed in the time since you have opened your account because your situation has changed.

[sancarlos]

Johnnie, it comes down to risk and reward. If you aren’t going to live off the money for decades, you can tolerate more risk to hopefully get more appreciation in your investments. When you get older (like me), you’ll care more about ensuring capital preservation, rather than taking risk for possible rewards. So, I used to be in aggressive growth-oriented mutual funds when I was younger. Now, I have moved a lot of my retirement money to low-risk bonds and other fixed-income investments.

So, you need to sit down with your financial advisor and insist they use your tolerance for risk as a guide when putting your retirement money into investments.

[Johnnie]

I think I set my stuff up a bit ago to be "aggressive," but from what I heard today there's to much in cash to be an actual aggressive portfolio. Plus there's a bit too much in small cap stocks that give it too much volatility.

So I'm going to call my current advisor and go from there.

Also, my moderate annoyance is for the fees that I have to pay for whatever investment company I go with. And also, is a Schwab "aggressive" portfolio the same as any other institutions' "aggressive" portfolio? How can I even tell if one is better than another without knowing the working parts of the entire industry? This is the one area of life I feel so lost about.

[sancarlos]

If you are concerned about fees, you could consider terminating your relationship with the investment advisor and just managing it yourself in an online account. (Should be simple with Schwab.) That’s what I do, and I only pay a fee when I put money into a new investment (and, it’s not that expensive.)

(I realize this may not be an option for people who don’t have a finance background.)

[P.D.X.]

Also you can just buy into retirement target-date funds and they adjust the ‘aggressiveness’ of the holdings as the date approaches.

[The Sybian]

8 years after starting this thread, I'm still completely ignorant and avoidant on learning about investment stuff. We started using a JP Morgan financial advisor through our local Chase bank. We are still incredibly risk averse and he is patient with us. Fees only come out of profits, as we have whatever their highest level of savings account is, so as long as we keep more than whatever the minimum is, there are no fees.

I looked at my retirement accounts for the first time in forever. I was incredibly surprised at how well my government Thrift Savings Plan is doing (gov't version of a 401k). I worked there for 4 years at a very low salary and just assumed there wasn't much in there. I set everything to aggressive rates, it's done well. Not so great on my other accounts. I just put in the max and don't think about it.

It's funny looking back at DC killing me for buying into the employee stock program. I bought in at $13, and the stock is $112 today. It was over $120 a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I stopped buying in when it hit $60 or $70, as I didn't think it'd keep going up. Can't complain, that's a nice chunk of change. Only problem is stocks were purchased pre-tax, so I have to pay income tax on the amount I paid for the shares, then capital gains on the profits. I assume I get taxed at my current income rate, which is significantly more than when I purchased, so maybe I would have been better off paying the income tax back then and investing elsewhere. I feel like you can't win no matter what. Good example is my MiL, she bought a lot of Apple stock a long time ago and constantly bitches that she can't afford to sell it, because the profits will cause her to incur all sorts of penalties and put her over income levels that protect her on other investments. She's explained it several times, I can't follow. All I know is we are inheriting Apple stocks when she dies, and we are getting stuck with tax burdens from it.

[blundercrush]

TLDR: Index funds good, high expense ratios bad. All of this can be learned from a variety of books such as coffeehouse investor or Boggleheads, google either, coffeehouse might be free at this point it's been around so long.

EDIT: Totally forgot retirement investing, Max out the 401k matching your company does, if they do. If they don't, I agree with others using pre-tax money to invest in 401k funds with target years relative to your expected age of retirement.

1) pay down debt - this doesn't include a home mortgage if you have a good interest rate, if you don't have a good interest rate, or it's a variable rate, refinance with a fixed rate, even if current rates make me want to gag.

Any debt other than your mortgage is dragging down your future earnings by charging you the interest rate whoever has loaned you the money to have that money sitting out there owed.

(Car payments CAN fit into the mortgage exception because you need a car, it's just not feasible in the US to not. Where people get into trouble is having a longer than 3 year car payment so they can buy a nicer car that they don't particularly need) this gets murky quickly.

2) Once you have a nest egg for emergencies saved up if you lose your job etc. After that, you should invest.

I want to be clear, I know next to nothing other than what I am mentioning here, I manage the money myself, and have been perfectly fine with it.

3) The things you are looking for as an inexperienced investor are two-fold:
1) Low cost of management - You will lose SO MUCH MONEY having an investor manage your money for you. Check any comparison of mutual funds and index funds over the same time period. Then see if you can find those same comparisons with cost of management for each reducing any net profits. Basically, it's been Warren Buffet, and a couple other people no normal person has heard of who have beat the market, your regular investment manager definitely isn't Warren Buffet. (Notice how Berkshire Hathaway stock is...expensive, this is for a few more complicated reasons but regardless, watch out for money managers who don't actually produce)

Nothing in my account has an Expense Ratio higher than 0.1% and the others are .06%, .07% and .04%. The expense ratio is measured as a percent of your investment in the fund. For example, a fund may charge 0.30 percent. That means you'll pay $30 per year for every $10,000 you have invested in that fund. You'll pay this on an annual basis if you own the fund for the year.

2) Investing where the money is. What are commonly referred to as Index Funds/ Vanguard (who I invest with) call them ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). From Vanguard: https://investor.vanguard.com/investor- ... utual-fund

The major market capital index funds (Some examples include VANGUARD MEGA CAP GROWTH and VANGUARD INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY) That are functionally index funds that spread their investment across the major US corporations, the first one is just all major US corporations, the 2nd one is focused on technology corporations. Functionally, what you are doing is betting that US Corporations are good at making money.

If you invest like this, you literally should not check your account more than once a quarter, and generally closer to once every 6 months. It's just a solid rate of return spread out over years. The only other critical bit is knowing when not to check your investments (both March 2020, for the loses incurred that month, or basically all of 2021, when things were going completely bonkers). I can't claim to be this disciplined, because I like seeing the money go up, and have enough discipline from losing at Magic The Gathering to know how to understand losses.

I am happy to back up any of this with screenshots etc. I take my 8-10% of return over the last 10 years and am happy with it.

[Rex]

If you don’t need or want to pay for a personal investment manager/advisor, but you also want to be “hands off” for the most part, a target date fund for your planned retirement date is a pretty good way to go. As noted, they are designed to readjust their portfolio to become more conservative as you get closer to the target retirement date, so if you agree with that philosophy, you can just buy and hold. There are a lot of them, but I think they are more similar than different. They are also required to disclose their fees (expense ratios), so you can comparison shop on price if that is the most important thing to you.

[wlu_lax6]

Great tool to understand the cost of mutual funds and etfs. My favorite features is you can look at how the fund compares to similar funds (morningstar categories, investment objectives, etc) that are priced cheaper.

https://www.finra.org/fundanalyzer

and I may know who designed the thing.

Also if you are using a professional, please look up their regulatory background
https://brokercheck.finra.org/

and I may know who is responsible for this thing.

[DSafetyGuy]

1) pay down debt - this doesn't include a home mortgage if you have a good interest rate, if you don't have a good interest rate, or it's a variable rate, refinance with a fixed rate, even if current rates make me want to gag.

Any debt other than your mortgage is dragging down your future earnings by charging you the interest rate whoever has loaned you the money to have that money sitting out there owed.

(Car payments CAN fit into the mortgage exception because you need a car, it's just not feasible in the US to not. Where people get into trouble is having a longer than 3 year car payment so they can buy a nicer car that they don't particularly need) this gets murky quickly.

2) Once you have a nest egg for emergencies saved up if you lose your job etc. After that, you should invest.

The normal recommendation for nest egg is six months' salary.

If you do have debt to pay down (personal loan, credit card debt), one method is the "snowball plan". Under this plan, if you have multiple bills to pay, what you do is make normal payments (monthly minimum for a credit card) for every bill except the one with the highest interest rate. Once the bill with the highest rate is paid off, you repeat with what is now the bill with the highest rate, and so on. You get rid of the higher interest rate bills first to reduce your total interest payment.

[A_B]

I like that method better than the Dave Ramsey pay the small stuff off first. I see both approaches but to me the rate is always the most important thing.

[mister d]

I’m sure there’s a mental benefit but the logical part of me can’t get over “you’ll pay more spending the same money each month”.

[tennbengal]

Plastics

[Gunpowder]

Good example is my MiL, she bought a lot of Apple stock a long time ago and constantly bitches that she can't afford to sell it, because the profits will cause her to incur all sorts of penalties and put her over income levels that protect her on other investments. She's explained it several times, I can't follow.

You can't follow it because it makes zero sense

Sorry guys, if I sell this stock and profit $100,000, where am I going to get $15,000 to pay the taxes??!??!?!

[Rex]

If it’s a choice between paying your taxes and not eating, then sure, it’s irrational. But if you have the cash you need, then it makes sense to factor in the amount of capital gains taxes you will have to pay (especially if you have the option of waiting for Trump’s reelection and the capital gains brackets to be revised).

[The Sybian]

Good example is my MiL, she bought a lot of Apple stock a long time ago and constantly bitches that she can't afford to sell it, because the profits will cause her to incur all sorts of penalties and put her over income levels that protect her on other investments. She's explained it several times, I can't follow.

You can't follow it because it makes zero sense

Sorry guys, if I sell this stock and profit $100,000, where am I going to get $15,000 to pay the taxes??!??!?!

She said it’s not about the capital gains taxes, but everything else it affects. Like she loses all of the tax breaks and benefits for low-income people, it puts her in a higher bracket for all of her other income and she said it affects their retirement benefits somehow. There was a long list, I tuned out.

[mister d]

Tell her she can give you $17K annually untaxed. $34K if she’s still married.

[The Sybian]

Tell her she can give you $17K annually untaxed. $34K if she’s still married.

That’s a brilliant idea. She is still married, so that can make a nice dent in college payments

[Steve of phpBB]

Tell her she can give you $17K annually untaxed. $34K if she’s still married.

Is 17K/34K the limit for *untaxed* gifts? Or the limit for not needing to file a return?

I understood that gifts are untaxed until the gifted reaches the estate tax thresholds.

(This came up in a case I had and I never got a good handle on it.)

[mister d]

Untaxed gifts.

[sancarlos]

Tell her she can give you $17K annually untaxed. $34K if she’s still married.

I get that you said this tongue-in-cheek, but that gift wouldn't affect her taxes, since the gift wouldn't be deductible or affect her income.