Quick follow up to this: I went to my bank today and they gave me their rates, and I'm thinking about putting 20k that I really doubt I'll need into a 2-year CD with a 2.25% APY. I've tried googling but the websites seem confusing and spammy to me. Is this an ok thing to do if I'm looking for a very passive no-effort no-risk option? Is that rate decent? I'm told rates are really bad due to the economy, but am I correct in thinking that it's still better to do this then let the money just sit and wait for them to improve?

Thanks.

Well rates are low because the fed funds rate is basically at 0. If you have a two-year timeframe and don't want any risk, a CD is fine. I have seen 2.5-3% for some CD offers lately.

Compare CD rates here:

http://www.bankrate.com/funnel/cd-in...False&prods=16

You could also put in a high-yield savings as well (average is something like ~1.3% right now) if you want it to be liquid.

I'm sorry if this question has been asked before, but I didn't want to look through the entire thread to see if it has.

What's the shortest time frame a small-scale 'investor' could consider investing for in this current climate? I have a small amount of savings that I won't be touching for a year and a half, but after that will probably need all off.

Is it worth investing in equities/bond funds for this length of time? Or is it too short a time frame to bother?

Thanks for any help.

Hi everyone,

Let me introduce myself. I'm 24 years old, I play poker about 10 hours a week (I am looking to use small amounts of winnings and wage, £4k-£6k per year to invest). I work for hargreaves lansdown, which is where my interest in investing came from.

About 4 months ago I opened an ISA and SIPP (self invested personnal pension) with Hargreaves Lansdown. Both of these accounts hold Unit Trusts only in emerging markets and multi-manager funds, I'm using these as a core to my portfolios.

Eventually I would like to invest in equities, but was wondering at what stage I should start thinking about this, or what percentage of equities I should have compared to Unit trusts for example?

You might look into some short term bonds for the duration. Yields will better then just sticking it in a savings account. I would stay out of equities if its money you definitely will need in a year.

Maybe just a CD at your bank.

I decided to pay for my credit score since I hadn't done so in a few years. Like the noob that I am, I paid $8 for the TransUnion VantageScore - which I sadly discovered is not a FICO score! My VantageScore is 843, grade B, 65th percentile. What is the roughly equivalent FICO score?

http://www.bankrate.com/brm/news/DrD...Vantage_a1.asp

Per that, don't know if its changed at all, you'd have about a 740 FICO using their 86% formula.

I guess that's pretty good. Thanks!

dunno why I used 860 when I did the calculation...kajfdlkj32

Anyone?

Is it possible to get a reduced trading fee at Ameritrade if you show them you've just made a large deposit?

is there a very popular stock forum? seems like theres alot and not one huge forum like 2p2.

they all seem to be like the trading equivalent of pocketfives ....

A good trading forum is kind of an oxymoron, no one is going to give you good stuff. Elitetrader, forexfactory, t2w, and woodies club all do a 2p2 kind of thing, but if you think about the major differences between trading and poker you'll understand why a quality board doesn't exist.

Hell, even 2p2 isn't very good for learning poker, I see bad advice all the time.

This question may seem trivial but where can I actually buy tradingsoftware and a connection to the markets. Also, where can Europeans trade? tradeMONSTER, tradeKing etc. only allow US citizen. I tested their interface btw. and I don't really like it, I much rather prefer some kind of software installed on my PC rather than a java applet. Can you help me out?

I think you have to have a significant account balance AND make a large volume of trades (so they can make up for it in the sales fee).

eSignal and Sharescope fit the bill

Any idea about what sort of volume will get you what sort of discount?

huge push in Apple after hours......ship profit.

Hi guys!

I came across the investing forum on 2p2. First, thank you so much for the primer in books, blogs and websites you have stickied there.

As a sort of an expert, do you believe that you can manage your own stocks and be starting to invest in options after reading your primer investing books or do you think one needs more time/resources to really understand the market? Is it like poker, where you get a lot of your knowledge by experience and yes, forums are ok, but mostly it's you figuring out stuff?

On a related question, how did you get your start? Did you have a mentor on how to go about investing?

Thanks

I'm not sure in what country you are but I guess you have local brokers where you can trade. But I suggest taking an account with Interactie Brokers or one of the local affiliates.

I've only been trading for 4 months now (all equities), and although I'm still a dumb noob, I'v learned alot in that short amount of time (although whether it's all good... who knows?).

I think I'm more comfortable on entries now than I was at the beginning, but exits are still giving me some problems....

Typically, I seem to wait either until I'm either winning or losing .5R before I set a trailing stop; however, I'm now thinking that maybe I should set that stop after I buy the stock and let it go from there. The reason I haven't been using trailing stops since purchase is a few months ago, I was stopped out of HCBK on a down-wick that sorta made me a bit gun-shy as far as entering stops in immediately after purchase.

Anyone have any advice or are the market and/or certain stocks just prone to more volatility at this time?

In all honesty, I just think I need to find something more comfortable for me personally with regards to exits on stocks.





FYI - I don't have a large amount of capital to trade (<$10K) and I usually look to hold stocks for no longer than 2-4 weeks (I do have a nice dividend stock that I've held since day 1 or 2, but that's it).

They just provide me with charts though, right? I tried their demos and their interface is nice and clean but why should i pay 100-200$/month for some charts I could get for free when I sign up for papertrading at some other companies?

I live in Austria but I want to trade mainly NYSE and NASDAQ (due the markethours and higher volume). Local Brokers charge lots of money per trade for trades in the US and they don't really offer a good trading interface.
Interactive Brokers sounds very good even though their homepage is crap in terms of usability. I tried their demo and I really liked it. But am I right that they don't charge any fees for your acc. except the commisions for the trades you do? How come e-Signal etc. costs ~150$/month and I get it here for free?

You have to pay an activity fee. If you pay less than x (I believe $20) a month on commissions you will have to pay $10. Also, you have to pay the NYSE data fees ($5) if you don't pay a certain amount of commission every month.

I really think IB is the cheapest broker around.

How much difference is there in different exchange rates when converting currencies? I remember when I was starting playing online and on Betsson (Ongame skin) the cashier differentiated between your normal cashier which was in euros and your poker cashier which was in dollars. I costly bounced about 700e to the poker cashier and back and about 10e was lost in the process when it got back which felt like a ******ed difference between the give/take rates (more than 1%). Is this normal?

I use euros for living/spending and have since for a long time only played on a network which operates fully in euros. Lately I've started building a roll on a dollar site again. I now have about 20k there and am looking to withdraw 10-15k off it since I mostly only grind small stakes. And of course hopefully I'm going to be withdrawing more in the future. Is it worth the hassle to do something like first open a dollar account in my bank and then run it through some kind of a currency exchange company to my euro account or am I bound to pay that 1-2% at some point to someone?