Doing great with budgeting and saving, but need advice on investment allocations?

Question

I'm doing everything by the book on saving for retirement and emergencies and have it going on. The only thing I'm always unsure about is when and how I should be rebalancing during market changes. I have a pretty good process for picking good mutual funds just using internet tools, but never know when it's time to move from one fund to another, and also if i'm too heavily invested in one type or another. Is there any advisors online who charge like a one time fee for evaluating this a few times a year? I checked with local financial advisors and they seem to deal with clients having over 2mil in assets! I'm not quite there yet :) Fidelity told me since i'm a "platinum" level customer of theirs they'd give me free advice but they can't ever tell you exactly what to do because of laws and regulations.

Answer 1

So.. let me see.. you're trying to have a positive return in your investment and you asked random people for a financial advise?! Good Luck.

Answer 2

First of all, never buy a mutual fund right before it does it's distribution. It's a taxable event, the NAV goes down and your shares go up - each mutual fund documents when they do their distributions (usually Nov - Dec).

That being said, a good time to rebalance is at the end of January or middle of February. The tax issues are over, if there's been a "january effect" you can take advantage of it.

The rebalancing is not that difficult - you should have a % in what you want to balance in (small, mid cap, large cap growth, same in value, and whatever you feel the bond / international fund / real estate etc should be). Then just move whatever gained the most into what hasn't gained to make sure that your %'s are still in sync. Some people rebalance every quarter, but many mutual funds have early withdrawal payments on funds held less than 90 or 180 days, if you only do it once a year, I don't think the difference in impact is that great.

BTW, Fidelity does have a "standard" balancing based on your age - they won't give you specific funds to go into, but they'll weight into the previously mentioned groups, and then you can decide which fund in their group you'd like to pick.

Fund Alarm - http://www.fundalarm.com/hilights.htm

is GREAT for letting you know the winners and losers for mutual funds. They don't charge anytying, but ask that you use their link to Amazon so that they can pick up some cash. They're not beholden to anyone, and they're very entertaining.

Answer 3

Some brokerage firms have a program that is called Managed Investment Programs. Some have investment minimums anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000. Some don't have minimums. These programs were started because of a law change around 2001 as a result of nobody changing their investment allocations during the dot com bust.
What these programs do is take all your money, ask you several questions in an interview that could take an hour or two, and run hundreds of statistical variations about what the market historically has done and what it possibly could do. It then automatically adjusts your investments to achieve your objectives as stated from the interview.
Over the past three or four years, these programs have easily outpaced any other kind of investment. They do have a fee associated with them probably between 1and 2%.

Answer 4

yes, you should learn 3 things:

fundamental analysis( economic report,management,competition,... tell you what to buy

TECHNICAL ANALYSIS( CHARTS+ technical indicator) tell you what to buy

sentiment analysis (bull/bear ratio, put/call ratio) tell you how moody investor can affect your investment too

Yes you could learn invest by yourself. it is your money, you should know how to do with it. for starter check this site out.

http://www.pathtoinvesting.org/index_fla...
http://www.stockcharts.com
http://www.streettalklive.com>... university. a lot amount of information. It will serve you well
I accumulate in good amount in 401k at the young age.I could share with you. when consider invest in stock market. you should consider basic 3 things:

fundamental analysis==(economic data,finincial health, management, business model, competetion)>>what to buy

technical analysis==(chart+indicator)>> when to buy

Sentiment/schycho analysis==>>mood of investor, Contrarian point of view.
Market cycle===>> check out book Trader Almanac by jeff hirsch will give you inside stuff
When you combine 3 thing, It is one of the powerful knowledge goinh with you for the rest of your live

At the age of 32. my 401k is amassed 71,000.00 and 30000.00 in taxble account. by follow simple rule