You pick one stock at a time, and when you get the next 2K to invest, go for stock #2.

Yeah that's kind of what I wad thinking Tom, like since most of my portfolio is indexed I don't really see the point of immediately active managing everything. Also right now I'm real busy and can't realistically actively manage it all, but I want to be capable of doing it when I can.

Yeah you should keep indexing I think. Unless you have some insatiable desire to learn the ins and outs of the market and invest on your own, even then I'd probably wait another 3-5 years.

I mean if you have time, you could technically just simulate buys now, and record it somehow, and just hold yourself accountable. Think they even have simulated sites for this if you are trying to learn.

That being said, actively managing a portfolio is heavily overrated unless you enjoy it.

[QUOTE=RikaKazak;44107122]Open a wellstrade account (through wells fargo) and if you have PMA checking you get 100 free trades per year.

I have Bank of America/Merrill Edge-with $50,000 in combined account balances they give 30 free equity trades a month and I think they just lowered the required minimum balance

Yeah think its 20k now.

Dont see anything wrong with OP taking his couple grand and buy some large cap value or growth stocks. He said he wants to buy and hold. His money grows and he will get some dividends. Not many people have 50k just sitting around so they can start day trading their life savings away.

One quick piece of advice if you actually care about your website and plan on keeping it going, you should really fix your links. You want your links to be the title of your article instead of "/?p=70".

I haven't looked at your site yet but wanted to point that out.

The key to invest successfully is not to know where to find the stocks, it's how to spot a great opportunity. Great opportunities are extremely rare and you need to read a lot about business and investing to know if something has potential and even then, you might be wrong.

It also takes years and years of practice to develop a framework that work for you and your temperament. You have to tweak your strategy over the years so when the bear market is here, you won't have a fire sale.

Simulation with fake money is a waste of time. Can you imagine improving your poker game with monopoly money? You learn faster when it hurts a little. It's also more difficult to delude yourself into thinking you're a winning investor if your ROI is negative after a few years.

Lastly, I use Twitter to follow sites like WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg, etc. Yahoo Finance is surprisingly helpful since it aggregates a lot of content.

In short, learn how to spot opportunities. Everything is easy after that.

The reason i wont trade is because i dont know **** and even though i could take the time to learn i always feel that hedge funds and big fat cats who have the money to hire analysts and consultants would take the biggest cuts from themselves and leave the scraps for everyone else.

I feel theres only so much research u can do and isnt all information public nowadays so whats your edge here?

to say that you cant take a few grand and make money with it is absolutely false. Also "long term investing" is not exactly the best method to get a better return on your $$ anymore. The market has changed completely. I think the longest Ive held a stock for the past 10 years is maybe 8-9 months. Im a swing trader. If you know how to read charts, its pretty much the best way to get a return on your $$. Yes you will pay short term cap gains, but your account will continue to grow and grow if you are disciplined.

to the OP, you can take a few grand or a larger amount and just stay disciplined. Learn to read charts, look for low risk entries.

Look at the IWC multi year chart right now....

$IWC - http://scharts.co/1pnsgZR

looks like a great low risk entry to me!

GL

to summarize:

1) disiplined = holding period of 8 months
2) technical analysis, very similar to tea leaf reading, is the way to go

It comes down to what you mean my make money -- someone cam make money by collecting empties and returning them.

sigh. and this is why less than 1% of people here make any $$ trading. Everyone has some silly remark that has zero value.

Im not here to have a pissing contest. I can go into great detail and provide verified trades over the last 20 years if I wanted to but Im not going to waste my time.

Being disciplined is not being greedy and taking profits. Thats smart trading.

I can take 5k and make 3% a day on the account and in 14 months ill have over a million bucks. If you know how the market really works 3% a day is not hard at all.

GL buddy

I agree with you there, but it isnt hard to generate returns with small amounts of $$$. trading small/mid caps is very profitable once you learn what to look for and how to trade it.

I havent traded small amounts in years but its all relative really. % roi is the same just more or less 0s and ,s

I would be interested to learn how to read charts to earn 3% per day pm me

lol

doubledownSS has been earning 3% ROI every day, trading for 20 years, started with 5k, and the market is open approximately 251 days a year. He is worth approximately:

$134,586,283,197,070,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.00

Pretty sure my expectation in trading is more like -3%

OP this sounds like the best tip for the problem you have described.

I would peruse these blogs and pick one or two ideas you like the sound of, and literally repeat the analysis they have posted, as well as any other you think is worthwhile that you have picked up from your reading, to see if you agree that the ideas are worthwhile.

Once you have repeated this process a few times you will likely get less lost when looking out for other ideas as you will have in mind things to look out for.

I can second the recomedation for alphavulture.

You're full of ****!

Also your maths is crap, 14 months = ~308 week days. Starting with $5k and making 3% a day you're going to end up with $44,960,922.51

+1

Like right now I'm going to keep indexing my retirement accounts and focus on learning some new tools for work (in currently spending alot of time learning to program) but this sounds like the best spate time learning tool until I'm ready

Warren buffet said if you invested $20 - $40 (i forgot) in coke in 1906 it would be worth millions today. Than again $20 or $40 back than is worth around $500 - $600 today but still you get the point.

Investing a couple grand is no big deal - you just won't make a ton of $$$ doing it. After you max your roth IRA with a vanguard fund I see nothing wrong with buying a few stocks. I really like REITs - they are kinda snoozers but I like the dividends every month.

I bought some ARCP and I really wanna buy two more REITS so I can make $500 in dividends a month. If you want to trade and be more active I like commodities. Look at natural gas - corn - wheat - silver - ext. Just stay away from gold right now as I think that's really high.

And nothing wrong with blue chips ether I just think they are all a tad high ATM and it seems that's where every one is dumping $$$. Only one I own is AAPL but i've had that forever and it seems solid for now.

if you invested $40 in KO in 1920 it would be worth 11 million today. However, very few investors have that type of time horizon and very few are true buy and hold investors. Most investors have terrible psychology and constantly buy high and sell low.

If human lifespans were 200+ years this might be something that matters but they're not.

It is also easy to say that going from today and looking back. I could say the same of Apple -- $2000 ten years ago is more than $70,000 today. (off top of my head so rough est) but that is like saying roulette returns 3500% per minute because I happened to pick the correct number. If we took a group of 2000 people with average knowledge of investing and had 1000 of them put $2000 into an index and 1000 go the individual stock picking route a small percentage of Group B would beat Group A over 10 years but the vast majority would do much worse even without considering the non-monetary cost of time required to do the individual stock picking.

I'm glad someone else did this math so I wouldn't have to.



And assuming you made that investment on the day you were born, you'd be 108 years old today. Good luck enjoying your millions at 108. But still you get the point.

Also, lol survivorship bias.