If one has about 20,000$ in savings only, what minimum investment should one make in the stockmarket?

Question

... or what should the minimum amt invested be any way?

ok. supposed the stock market is the only option- nothing else. and you are 30 and earning a respectable income

willing to lose upto 3000$:)

Answer 1

You have to look at your entire financial picture to answer this question. Is this money you have in a retirement plan? in a savings account? at home under a mattress? Do you have other money somewhere else?

I'm going to assume that this is the only money you have saved.

The next issues are how old are you, how much money do you make and what do you hope to use the money for?

The younger you are, the more aggressive you can be because you have a longer time till you retire and need the money (assuming the money is to help you get by when you are older). As you age, you'll want to become more conservative so you have less of a chance of losing the money you have made (hopefully). When you say "the stockmarket", technically you are referring only to stocks but you may mean investments overall. You would want to put at least some of the money into bonds or some other investment like mutual funds instead of individual stocks. Since you seem like an inexperienced investor, I would recommend researching mutual funds at morningstar.com or maxfunds.com to get some ideas of the kinds of places to invest. One easy way to invest if you don't have much experience and find doing so overwhelming is to put your money into a life-cycle fund. These funds are maintenance free retirement funds. You pick a year when you want to retire and put your money into the fund which has that year as its "target date". The fund will move from aggressive to conservative for you as the years go by. If you search "life-cycle funds" on the internet, you will find more information.

Answer 2

Open and max out a Roth IRA.

Vanguard has some good low-fee funds to choose from.

If you have a big debt load, you could also pay that down. If you have a decent steady income, you could keep enough cash in the bank to cover 3 months unemployment and invest the rest.

It really depends on you and your risk tolerance.

Answer 3

Invest as much as is comfortable to you. Keep about 1 or 2k in your savings account as an emergency fund and invest the rest if you can in mutual funds.


Here's a page for finding a good good mutual fund to invest in:
http://www.best-stock-trading-systems.com/mutual_fund_ratings.html

Answer 4

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Answer 5

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Answer 6

Only you have the answer to that, ask yourself, in the worst case senario, how much are you willing to lose?
That is the amount you should be investing.

Answer 7

Only invest whatever is needed for you to continue to have a good night's sleep. Once you start having sleepless nights, you're overinvested.

Answer 8

$20,000.00 USD