Investing question?

Question

Am looking at investing in some small way and working my way up the scale. Any ideas?

Answer 1

You can contact someone like Scottrade, which only charges $7 a trade at the moment. You only need about $500 to open an account, but you could make it into your IRA for up to $2,000 (unless you are as old as me, they let me do $3,000 these days) and you have some tax breaks on what you put in the IRA.

May I suggest a good website for solid information on solid companies? Businessweek.com You can register for free and open a practice portfolio to see how you plans work out if you are apprehensive at using real money. Another good site is ishares.com (or powershares.com), with their ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). These are like buying into mutual funds except there is no sales charges beyond the brokerage fee to buy the shares, and the operating costs are dirt cheap compared to mutual funds which often follow the same stocks.

Check the links and look them over, but don't get bogged down in the details too much at first, just go with what you can figure out (Businessweek has lots of good helps). Let me suggest a few items to ponder, if I may: (ishares) IAU (gold); IOO (Global 100); and PXN (Nanotechnology). Currently, the dollar is taking a beating in the international markets, so gold is a possible good buy, but buying a piece of the top 100 companies across the world is worth considering. I suggested the nanotech because while it may not be "the next big thing" it soon enough will be and this is owning a piece of the basket of the biggest players in that amazing technology. With choices along these lines you can get a lot of bang for your buck. You are buying into winners, top winners of the world with the Global 100, but there are oodles of other good choices, so take a look and go with what you are comfortable with. BTW, and this is important, "investing" is holding something for a year or more, the rest is speculating or trading. Don't do that until you know more and can see the patterns of the way things work. Right now, think of it as planting a tree and trees can be boring if looked at too closely too often, but they can grow enormously if left to do their work.

Answer 2

You might want to visit sharebuilder.com. This is a great online stock brokerage company to use to make small investments in the stock market. It is particularly great if you dollar cost average into your stocks. I'd begin by investing in only great blue chips such as General Electric, Proctor and Gamble, Pfizer, etc. You could also begin investing in the spyders (SPY) which is essentially a fund of the 500 great companies making up the Standard and Poors 500. You can invest for as little as $4.00 per investment. Although to make this investment cost effective...I'd at least invest $ 250 or more per investment. You can also park your cash in their account until you build up to your next investment increment and receive a quite good interest rate on your idle cash. They have research screens, etc. to help you also. They love small investors and beginning investors...and the website will not intimidate you. It's a place for you to roam and grow and invest for the future. Good luck!

Answer 3

Mutual Funds provide an excellent way to get started with a small amount, while stil being diversified. No investment is guaranteed so it's good to do some research and ask a lot of questions if necessary.

Fidelity has been great in my experience, but many other companies can assist in your "quest" for info. As always it's a good idea to get info from multiple credible sources.

Good Luck.

Answer 4

I think you should look into a Roth IRA or some other kind of IRA. Checkout www.buyandhold.com . and www.moneymatters.com I'm starting a 401k at work and investing my money in bonds. You can also put your money in CD's and some kind of mutual funds. I would recommend going to your bank and checking out your options. Don't get into the stock market unless you know what your doing. You could lose everything in just a few minuets.

Answer 5

Great idea! Your cheapest option is a mutual fund company where you choose just one fund to start or divide your money into several. there's lots of information at Yahoo Finance-some of the best free investment resources on the web! You'll find lists of mutual fund companies there and long term performance of each. Remember risk goes up as return does and pick funds that are no-load and have a balanced track record(performance). Good luck!

Answer 6

For someone with a small amont of money wishing to balance risk against return on investement I STRONGLY recommend www.prosper.com. You can get in for as little as $50 a shot. All investments are amortized over 36 months. Rate of return is based on disclosed risk to private individuals and their group affiliations (anywhere from 5% to 29% based on how much risk you are comfortable with). Prosper is like an eBay for consumers of credit and those of us who wish to put ourselves in a position to earn credit card interest from them (the better the risk, the more of us want a part of the action and the lower the ultimate interest rate to the borrower). Diversity of risk is built right into the site. I LOVE prosper. I'm doing better on my investments with them than I am in my Ameritrade account right now. Enjoy!

Answer 7

Hi, i suggest a great site with plenty of Issues related to your Investing and everything around it. it also provide clear and accurate answer to many common questions.

http://investing.sitesled.com/

I am sure that you can get your answers in this website.

Good Luck and Best Wishes!

Answer 8

the best trading software http://tradingsolution.info
i have attended a lot of seminars, read counless books on forex trading and it all cost me thousands of dollars. the worst thing was i blew up my first account. after that i opened another account and the same thing happened again. i started to wonder why i couldn,t make any money in forex trading. at first i thought i knew everything about trading. finally i found that the main problem i have was i did not have the right mental in trading. as we know that psychology has great impact on our trading result. apart from psychology issue, there is another problem that we have to address. they are money management, market analysis, and entry/exit rules. to me money management is important in trading. i opened another account and start to trade profitably after i learnt from my past mistake. i don't trade emotionally anymore.
if you are serious about trading you need to address your weakness and try to fix it. no forex guru can make you Professional trader unless you want to learn from your mistake.

Answer 9

Hi, see http://ibooyah.com for some investment ideas. The guy appears to know what he is talking about. His picks has been dead on so, visit it and see for yourself. It is free!