<p>Now that I have a little free time on hand, I am thinking about investing the small savings I have myself. Is that a good idea?</p>
<p>Lots of CC members do their own investing … myself included. I can’t say whether it’s a good idea for you or not. Consider why you want to do this yourself. I spent more than fifteen years figuring out what didn’t work. Do you have that kind of time? Do you have the requisite personality? Do you have enough investable money to try several approaches at once?</p>
<p>My belief is that a well chosen professional will do a better job than I can. Well chosen being the operative phrase and a caveat is the less money you have to invest, the lower chance you’ll have of finding a good professional. The good ones quickly rise in their careers and the minimum net worth you must have for them to work with you quickly goes up.</p>
<p>15 years? Is there a way to speed it up like 15 months? I do have time. I took an early retirement.</p>
<p>“Well chosen” is the tough part. It think it has the asset size has to match the firm/professional.</p>
<p>Here’s one way to start: try a free trial subscription to Investor’s Business Daily and work through the online tutorials. This will give you an understanding of technical and fundamental market analysis. In two weeks you should have an idea of whether or not you want to pursue your own investments, or if you’d rather turn your money over to a mutual fund or other professional manager.</p>
<p>[Stocks</a>, Investing, Business, and Finance News - Investors.com](<a href=“http://www.investors.com%5DStocks”>http://www.investors.com)</p>
<p>Thank you for the excellent link.</p>
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<p>That’s not true. Several of my relatives have their investments with GS and in comparison, I am not impressed with their returns, considering their outrageous fees.</p>
<p>Igloo, you may be interested in this</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.marketwatch.com/lazyportfolio[/url]”>http://www.marketwatch.com/lazyportfolio</a></p>
<p>cbreeze, Thank you for the link. I like the term LAZY investor.</p>
<p>I have found the emotional side of investing surprisingly difficult to master–alternating between euphoria and panic! LOL…</p>
<p>I would do a little dabbling first–set up an account with $5000 and buy 5 stocks, doing your research initially and continuing to do so. 5 stocks in different areas will give a good bit of diversification.</p>
<p>Besides controlling emotions, one of the most important things to understand is your time horizon in the investments. Don’t confuse or interchange short term speculation for long term investments.</p>
<p>We are sloths. Nothing is short term. The emotions are going to be a problem. Maybe I should put everything in the index fund and forget about it?</p>
<p>^
Yup, you should invest in index funds. Find ones with the lowest MER. You can also use ETFs to invest in index funds. </p>
<p>[ETF</a>, Exchange Traded Funds Research, ETF Investing | Morningstar](<a href=“http://www.morningstar.com/Cover/ETFs.aspx]ETF”>ETFs | Morningstar)</p>
<p>DS recently opened a Roth IRA at Vanguard. I asked him what he fund he put his money in-- “Target Retirement 2050”. I had to laugh; I’ll probably be dead by then. :p</p>
<p>buy in round lots (multiple of 100). Less than 100 may incur an odd lot charge.</p>
<p>LDSH was a good buy on Monday. Not so good today. </p>
<p>Reading: The BIG SHORT. Michael Lewis (The Blind Side)</p>
<p>OMG The Big Short was the funniest horror story I’ve read in a long time. I laughed out loud in places.</p>
<p>One the serious side, for the OP another strategy for long-term investing is asset allocation, with re-balancing every year. There’s a book on this, I’ll try to remember the author’s name. The idea is to pick 4 mutual funds and put 25% of your investments in each: bond, large cap, small cap and international. At the end of every year, cash them in and repeat.</p>
<p>I’ve been shifting money to stocks that pay dividends. Heaven knows, interest rates on savings accounts are non-existent.</p>
<p>I use a brokerage account where the commissions are $9.99. Doesn’t seem to matter that I rarely buy 100 shares.</p>
<p>I invest in the total market, through an exchange-traded fund called IWM. </p>
<p>If you do a lot of research, it boils down to: the vast majority of investors (professional and amateur) do not beat the overall market. So if you want to invest in the stock market, it makes sense to invest in a broad-based index fund.</p>
<p>I have to admit that sometimes I think the most sensible “mutual fund” is Berkshire Hathaway, but I worry about what happens when Warren Buffett is no longer actively involved.</p>
<p>1moremom,</p>
<p>I did the same for DS. I work with people at Fidelity and Vanguard. Most important is to get a good night’s sleep.</p>
<p>turned over UGMA to DS in the form brokerage account.
turned over his Roth IRA in the form of brokerage account with stock and couple MF.
He added a couple of stocks and no-load MF.</p>
<p>In our experience, MF is mostly slow and mostly predictable, vs Stock as fast and unpredictable. It was stock and lowly EE that funded his college. </p>
<p>He got lucky in the stock and the EE.</p>
<p>The book I was thinking of: “The Intelligent Asset Allocator” by William J. Bernstein.</p>