Where to invest today/right now??

[azinwood]

With the uncertainty in which direction our economy is headed what are good suggestions for investing your money. I'm talking stocks/bonds/mutual funds/money market etc.

I know it is important to diversify, but how much of the portfolio should be in mutual funds (im thinking a mix of index funds, international, small cap MFs). Should I keep more money in insured savings due to volatility?

Just confused about what to do, what is everyone else doing?

[Brooklyn]

had a client do a quarter mil in long term mutual funds and another quarter in fdic products. Not bad of an idea if you ask me.

[axio]

Really, you should ask yourself how much risk you want to take on before you make decisions on what kind of financial instruments you purchase. The easiest way I figure it for people is to get them to pull data from their previous years and then give them an average return per year (alternatively, you can just call your brokerage house and ask them what your annual returns were each year you were with them). Then ask yourself if you are comfortable with that return or if you want more. It will give you a percent return to shoot for and makes the decision a lot easier.

FINRA has been recommending about 30% in foreign investments of any sort - Canada and Mexico do not count as "foreign" since their economies are so closely tied to ours. They recommend 10% in highly liquid low risk instruments (take your pick, there are a lot of choices).

Personally, I've been keeping 5% in low risk instruments and have staggered most of my portfolios towards foreign investments (65% as of right now). I'm trying to milk the dollar's volatility in markets like Russia, Argentina, and Singapore. Specifically, ING Russia (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=letrx&d=t) has been great to me.

[LiLS]

loooked into the VISA IPO yet?

[azinwood]

good info, thanks sami.

[mikesrex]

i heard the mikesrex college fund is an excellent choice with promising returns

[lyttleviet]

i heard the mikesrex college fund is an excellent choice with promising returns

Is that a 16 year plan? :hsugh:

[yungintl]

invest in foreign mutual funds and raw materials and metals

[Lauren]

Currently, my foreign funds are my highest performers, but there are a couple diff ways I could invest right now. I, personally, wouldn't take this time to eliminate my current positions due to the low market to avoid low gains or in many cases no gains. Now, if I were in a position for a tax advantage by taking losses, then by all means, I would sell off and try a low risk investment like a money market which most have a 3.15-3.96 ROR since the Fed decreased rates. This isn't really suitable for my current income level/age bracket.

Fortunately, at our age, Franny, some risks are easily afforded. This is the time to buy equities. The markets current state is perfect for buying low and selling off when the market rallies should that be your prerogative. Use morningstar to do your research.

If one is looking for consistency, then looking into a portfolio of ETFs might be worthwhile. Since there is obviously no guarantee which indices are going to be high performers each year, then build a diversified portfolio with equal percentages of each of the major indices both in the US and globally. Say you have $100k, then do 10k invested in ten different ETFs.

[azinwood]

wow lauren - barely recognized you with that post.

reason i was asking is we sold our house and i had a decent chunk of money to invest. i ended up breaking it up into 3 pieces. all index funds - long term bond, intl and s&P.

hope it works out!

[dimsume]

Currently, my foreign funds are my highest performers, but there are a couple diff ways I could invest right now. I, personally, wouldn't take this time to eliminate my current positions due to the low market to avoid low gains or in many cases no gains. Now, if I were in a position for a tax advantage by taking losses, then by all means, I would sell off and try a low risk investment like a money market which most have a 3.15-3.96 ROR since the Fed decreased rates. This isn't really suitable for my current income level/age bracket.

Fortunately, at our age, Franny, some risks are easily afforded. This is the time to buy equities. The markets current state is perfect for buying low and selling off when the market rallies should that be your prerogative. Use morningstar to do your research.

If one is looking for consistency, then looking into a portfolio of ETFs might be worthwhile. Since there is obviously no guarantee which indices are going to be high performers each year, then build a diversified portfolio with equal percentages of each of the major indices both in the US and globally. Say you have $100k, then do 10k invested in ten different ETFs.


I don't know about her, but my Foreign Funds are not doing as well as they should be. I have both Latin America and China Index Growth Funds through fidelity and usually, they return 30%. I can't even break even right now, especially with Latin America about to go into chaos, i'm not too sure about that.

Equities, are a way to go. Oil is predicted to hit four dollars a gallon at the pump, and Opec isn't going to do anything about it. Investing in oil is a pretty safe bet that its going to go up.

Shorting the dollar is something that you can consider. We're hitting new lows with Euros every week, and nothing is being done about that.

But your best bet right now, if you wanna say, get at least 30-100% return is to invest in undervalued stocks. My two best bets would be Apple and NVDA. Both stocks have taken 50% hits since December because of the economy, and both are very strong companies with more growth potential.

We'll see how AAPL does March 6th after the SDK announcement.

[djsony]

The US market will continue to be bad for atleast almost the rest of the year. Right now everything is on sale....now is the time to continue to invest in the US market and not abroad b/c it's CHEAP!! It'll blow up when things get back to normal or atleast "normalize" to today's standards. All this shit happened back in the 80's...

Actually, the only thing i'm intimidated by is the overhaul of the US Finance system that the US Treasury Dept is considering...we'll see what happens.

[tit$]

currency trading, do your research - plenty have made billions (and lost them) doing it.

i love it because even if the US economy goes to absolute shit, you can still make money IN the US trading other country's currency.

[tit$]

made $450 today trading :)

[RACER X]

exxon-moibl

OIL FTW!

[danny]

ryan- i tried that currency trading and if you don't know what you're doing, you can loose a lot very fast.

like sami said, you should determine how adverse you are to risk and go from there.

real estate.

[tit$]

ryan- i tried that currency trading and if you don't know what you're doing, you can loose a lot very fast.


yep - i've been playing with it on and off for about two years now and am just finally getting the hang of it.

[danny]

it scares me too much to even try again, is there a explanation or any classes/books you could reccomend to learn?

last time i checked fool.com they didn't have much on it

[tit$]

fxcm.com and dailyfx.com have some tutorials on how to do it, go to google and type currency trading and quite a bit will pop up

[Enron Exec]

If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.

With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1000.00.

With WorldCom, you would have had less than $5.00 left.

If you had purchased $1000 of Delta Air Lines stock you would have $49.00 left.

But, if you had purchased $1,000.00 worth of beer/wine one year ago, drank all the beer/wine, then turned in the cans/bottles for the aluminium recycling REFUND, you would have had $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment advice is to Drink heavily and recycle.

:rofl: sorry i just had to.

[Enron Exec]

Personally, I've been keeping 5% in low risk instruments and have staggered most of my portfolios towards foreign investments (65% as of right now). I'm trying to milk the dollar's volatility in markets like Russia, Argentina, and Singapore. Specifically, ING Russia (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=letrx&d=t) has been great to me.

I got into LETRX back in 04 at 28 then sold it at 57 in late 06. :rock:

I agree, a sure bet right now is to invest outside the US mainly due to the weakening dollar. Watch out for anything that will be tied to the financial market.