<p>Dstark ,any ideas. ;)</p>
<p>I don’t have 20/20 eyes, but to look back, I bought heavily into Cisco and am still holding the stick. At that time I could brought into Apple and made a kill, but Ebay would be a dud… Who knows!</p>
<p>Qdogpa, what’s your planning horizon? The closer you get to needing the money, the less you want to be in volatile equities. At the same time, it’s hard to get excited about “safe” investments like government bonds that pay next to nothing in interest and which will get killed if inflation rises. With our crazy spending, inflation and interest rates are bound to go up eventually, and you don’t want to be holding long bonds when that happens.</p>
<p>I’d avoid tech hi-flyers as too risky. Maybe Amazon will take over the world, maybe not. Some nice dividend stocks could be a good compromise. Look for companies with plenty of cash and a reasonable business outlook, plus a steady/rising dividend history. You’ll have a little protection in modest market downturns and a decent return from the dividends. You could protect yourself with diversity by using an ETF or mutual fund geared to dividends. If the market crashes, though, you’ll still see a loss. And be careful, sometimes a high dividend rate indicates a poor prognosis or at least higher risk.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>I don’t know if you’ll find dstark for awhile. I’ve heard he’s running around, munching on chocolate at the hedge fund billionaire funded protest against Wall street today. :)</p>
<p>But I sure would love to find a stock that might actually have a chance at increasing in value. I swear, everything I pick just instantly plummets. Good thing I have a day job.</p>
<p>And if anyone has any stock pick ideas for my son to look into, he has a project where he’s trying to find stocks that will increase in value within 3 months. But unless you can find a stock that profits on bankruptcies and foreclosures, I don’t know what could increase in that short amount of time!</p>
<p>In my opinion, the best thing to do is to invest in an index fund (such as the S&P 500).
And gradually put your money into it, not all in one day.</p>
<p>My advice: Don’t do stocks.</p>
<p>Look for fixed growth. Save aggressively and do not gamble with your kids education.</p>
<p>We’ve liked the TIAA-Cref Michigan 529 fixed growth fund. Slow and steady. The money was there when needed.</p>
<p>Straight A’s and not having any money put aside for college specifically is the best strategy for college planning.</p>
<p>“With our crazy spending,”</p>
<p>I guess we can’t really comment on this anymore… ( I would suggest looking up John Mauldin’s column that was sent out Oct 3, 2011…an interview with Paul McMculley ;)</p>
<p>qdogpa…</p>
<p>I am not really an investment advisor…and I really don’t know which stocks are going to do well…and not too many people do know. :)</p>
<p>I have a large cash position and I am just waiting…</p>
<p>I invest in biotech because that is the area I’m most familiar with. However, one has to have nerves of steel in this volatile sector: our “portfolio” could have 10% swings on any given day. Although D’s biotech stock did very well, I consider this pure luck (perfectly timed buy/sell) and do not recommend this strategy for college financing. Go all cash 1-2 years prior to the due date of the big bill. Miami and sewhappy’s strategies are good ones.</p>
<p>*Straight A’s and not having any money put aside for college specifically is the best strategy for college planning. * AND, what funds you do have, locked into legit retirement accounts. I actually am a dimwit about investing, but think MaimiDAP’s comment should not go unnoticed.</p>
<p>Certainly MiamiDap is right although I don’t think that much merit comes from high grades alone, usually need high scores as well. Also, parents with young kids can hope their kids will be great students but that can be as hard to predict as stocks.</p>
<p>My hs senior’s first two applications were to a state university where she will automatically get free tuition based on her stats and an LAC where merit is very likely.</p>
<p>I understand the sentiments about what miamidap said, but I would prefer to have the money.</p>
<p>Blue chip stocks with generous dividends (relative to savings rates) should become attractive as money reenters the market. Clorox, Pfizer and good old Microsoft come to mind.</p>
<p>From a portfolio management perspective, one should never ‘bet’ on just one stock, as you are betting. Betting it will outperform the market, never have bad company-specific news (the investment term is ‘Idiosyncratic Risk’) or be in an un-loved sector. The theory of mutual funds is that through diversification you eliminate this Idiosyncratic Risk and if you are benchmarking to a broad market index you eliminate sector risk and therefore perform like the market. </p>
<p>Ok - so now I’ve sold you on why you want a fund…now you have to make the difficult decision of Asset Allocation. What’s your time horizon and risk tolerance? Do you need the money in 3 years for college tuition and you can’t lose any? Is this for college in 15 years and you will like have earnings you can apply in the event the markets go down? </p>
<p>For retirement funds, a rule of thumb was your age is the % you should have in Fixed Income/Bonds. With the 10 year treasury yielding 1.82%, there’s not much upside or return for the risk you will lose principal. (right now for every 1%/100 basis point increase in rates, the price of the bond will decline 9% - not a great risk/reward). </p>
<p>I don’t have great answers. Personally I have much of my money in balanced funds or income-focused funds. I do own a few stocks individually as part of my portfolio, but they are boring consumer products companies such as Pepsi with a 3.3% dividend yield.</p>
<p>“AND, what funds you do have, locked into legit retirement accounts. I actually am a dimwit about investing”</p>
<p>-Completely agree with 401K or whatever, lookingforward. We seem to be on the same page. Hopefully, there is no black hole ahead of us…but then everything gets sucked in, retirement accounts or others, cannot live your life thinking about it. Yes, not paying UG tuition because of Merit scholarships is awesome and no tax liability.</p>
<p>I would suggest going to a Fidelity office and sitting with one of the reps to discuss the various fund alternatives. Fidelity has a decent stable of funds and they are a reputable company with very few funds that charge ‘loads’ or commissions to buy into them. You can do far, far worse than Fidelity. </p>
<p>Personally, I find the Vanguard Wellington fund offers one of the lowest expense ratios and good diversification for a single fund.</p>
<p>It is good to do our best to have funds to supplement whatever possible merit our kids can get so they and we have more options. Wish my crystal ball worked well but unfortunately it hasn’t and we have not done too well with the “market” ourselves. 
Oh well, what works best for us is spending less than we earn as having increasingly conservative investments as it comes closer to when we will need the funds for particular purposes, like our kids education.</p>
<p>Fortunately for us, in 1989, our state issued zero coupon bonds with 9% compounding interest that would mature on whatever year you wanted. We plunked down as much as we could towards our kids college fund in that so we could sleep at night and know we were helping them toward college. It fared better for us than the funds we’ve had in the market, maturing nicely as we needed it. We did put some funds in the Coverdell Account. Some folks we know did some sort of pre-paid 529s in their state so their kids could have everything covered–that worked well for many of them as well, allowing them to dodge the much of the huge tuition & lodging expenses.</p>
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<p>For real investing, avoid stock tips from any and every source (unless Warren Buffett happens to call you up).</p>
<p>For stock investing games, to win you have to get lucky by picking a risky stock that pays off. Conservative choices almost never win these things, particularly as the number of players increases. Acquisition candidates, small biotech firms that might benefit from an FDA approval, tech companies involved in litigation that might come to a conclusion in a month or two - all the kinds of things you’d never want to put real money into. Diversity is your enemy in these games, too. Spread the money over multiple stocks, and someone who put everything on one stock will beat you. There are two outcomes - win, or crash & burn.</p>
<p>Back to reality: like some of the folks above, I’m a fan of using low cost funds and ETFs. While index funds are the lowest overhead and should likely be the foundation of your portfolio, you may want to diversify with some specialty funds too - emerging markets, dividend funds, etc.</p>
<p>For small investor like us, stock market is a gamble to say the least, hard work will win and it is probably the only way. And I am speaking from some client who has $24 million dollar in net asset. She still do small repairs to her 100+ units apartment hereself when her crew is busy on other things.</p>
<p>I could offer stock advice based on my personal choices, but I don’t think I’m expert enough at it to offer advice.</p>
<p>The opinion I will offer though, is take care about taking advice from anyone that works with stocks, investments, banking, or even anyone that works, actually. The reason why should be obvious. I feel if they had all the answers to investing, they’d be retired, on a beach, with an umbrella drink in their hand. I recommend a person take their advice as a broad guideline and nothing more.</p>