Had a certificate for 100 shares of STI given as a Christmas present two Christmases ago. It's been in a file cabinet and I just kind of forgot about it and whenever I remembered I just didn't take the time to mail it in. Finally sent it in to my etrade account. Going to trade it separate from my main assets and do some more high risk trading for fun.

Play along?

Sold - 100 shares STI at 25.33
Balance - $2523.02

WAT DO WE DO 2P2

:

Country: USA although im moving abroad.
Income: play online poker so i don't have a standard income, anywhere from $50k-$300k
Capital to invest now: $30k-40k
Risk Tolerance: medium? I'm pretty clueless to the magnitude of variance in certain investments though.
Timeframe investment: 5-10 years
Debt: None
Age: 23

23 year old online poker player, I don't have any debt or major expenses. Only real investments is a Roth IRA with Fidelity, only about $6.5k invested in VT, VEU and VTI Vanguard index funds. The rest of my money is split between online poker sites and bank accounts/cash on hand.

Country you live in: US
Income: None
Risk Tolerance: Medium
Timeframe for investment: Week or longer
Debt: None
Any other information you might have that would help us:

Im a college student who has about 10k in savings. I have a few hours at night to do research and stuff, but mostly would be wanting to do work on the weekends. I was thinking the best strategy for me right now would be to pick up some ETFs with decent yields and low volatility and reevaluate every weekend. What do you guys think?

Country: USA
Income: $45k
Risk: Medium
Timeframe: Longterm
Debt: $20k student loans

30 year old new teacher with 403b TIAA/CREF retirement account. Non-matching for first year, will be contributing $300/month pre-tax for first year. Current savings negligible. Advice on equities/bonds/money market/other breakdown desired.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Country you live in - United Kingdom, England
* Income - N/A
* Risk Tolerance - N/A
* Timeframe for investment - 2-5 years
* Debt - none
* Any other information you might have that would help us - im a student, and ive made 20k from poker, don't need it just sitting in my poker account. plan to invest it then imagine il take it out in 5 years time when i need to buy a house etc....

I have $5000ish to invest where sould I put it

Uhh you can't enter N/A for income/risk tolerance, are you willing to risk making less than what interest is giving you in order to have a higher +EV?

Country - UK, England.
Income - Made 80k (£) playing poker in the last 12 months.
Risk tolerance - Low (Not too bothered if I lose it)
Timeframe - Short term (1-3 years)
Debt - none
Other information - I'm a student and would be willing to invest around £5000 and wouldn't mind taking risks.

buy a house in your hometown close to where your partents live and rent it out so someone else can pay your mortgage and having it close to your parents will allow them to be able to deal with problems if you are away for extended periods of time due to poker.

Country: Australia
Income: Student, so roughly 12k/yr
Capital to invest now: $5k-10k
Risk Tolerance: I'd say medium? And possibly Medium-High if I get a grad position
Timeframe investment: 1-3 years
Debt: Student loans, but I won't need to repay until I earn more than 33k/yr
Age: 23


Very new to this trading/investing scene (from a science background), been reading through lot of the pages in this thread and it seems like I should go with Vanguard? It seems to be the main "thing" for the US but they also have an Australian branch so yeah is it good to go with that?

1. I've looked into their options and the "Investment" and "ETF's" are in different sections, is an ETF different from general investments or is a subset of it?

2. When I select "Diversified" funds and under Index/Benchmark they have different % like 70% income, 30% growth, 50/50 etc. What does the income and growth actually mean?

3. Taking into account my profile, should I go into diversified or one of the other ones like shares?


Thanks in advance.

Country: USA
Income: $40k/yr
Risk Tolerance: Medium
Timeframe for investment: 2-5 years
Debt: none
Age: 26
Any other information you might have that would help us:
Inherited $40,000 about a year and a half ago, was thinking about putting it into a condo but home prices are pretty high where I live (Boston area) so the money has been sitting in a savings account. I would be willing to invest probably $10,000 of it, willing to take some risks.

Hurrrrr: Don't invest in stocks with such a short time frame. Use the high interest rates that Australian accounts pay and park your money there.

Ahh right thanks. I was actually working out the buy/sell spread and it actually seemed if I just used a term deposit with 6%+ P.A. return it's actually a better risk:reward ratio (I think lol).

If I do want to invest in the sharemarket I should be doing it with more capital and a longer term focus right? (By longer I'm assuming 7yrs+)

capital amount is fine, but I'd be looking for at least a 7 year time frame. It all depends if you want to expose yourself to risk, in the end the stock market is more +EV but higher variance. Investing for only 1 year isn't close to worth it though.

Country: USA
Income: 16k/year as a TA, 26k so far this year from poker
Debt: none
Timeframe: between 9 months and 1 year
Additional info:
I have some money that I've saved for taxes and some other expenses. Since I have a steady source of income I can accept some fluctuation in value and would like higher returns than a money market or savings account can offer. Would the vanguard total bond market ETF be appropriate for this timeframe?

ETF stands for exchange traded fund. Like a mutual fund it's a basket of securities but it's "traded" on an exchange. That's the major difference. It's closed end vs open end which a mutual fund is. Important thing is ceteris paribus it behaves like a mutual fund as far as what u want it to do for you bc it tracks the securities. It can trade at slight premium or discount to the NAV(net asset value) of the securities but anyway yes it can be used as an instrument to invest. Like a mutual fund. For low expense ETFs check out

http://www.ishares.com

To get a quick analysis of mutual funds and ETFs I like Morningstar. Type a ticker symbol of a fund/ETF in the quote box up top.

http://www.morningstar.com/Cover/Funds.aspx

To put it one way, generally, income is less risky than growth and income investments being overweight your portfolio would have a shorter time frame to hold and could preserve your capital better. You prob looked at funds with bonds "as income" and stocks as growth. You and a poster before you had short timeframes like 2 or 3 yrs max i think. If you need the investment for sure in 2 yrs you shouldn't be heavy in growth. I'm not sure I understand what u guys mean by having a large tolerance for risk/variance but only have a 2 yr timeframe? If you buy mostly growth for only a year or 2 hold it is potentially feasible that u could loose a big, big chunk of your capital.

with your risk tolerance it seems you want growth but im confused about this with the time frame of the investment...

Thanks for the link.

I am trying to pursue the dream of home ownership with my better half. Where should I invest our money while saving for a down payment?

Country you live in: USA
Income: Not enough
Risk Tolerance: High - I'm almost 26 and young enough to rebuild
Timeframe for investment: 3-5 years
Investment amount: 1K initial deposit + $300 per month
Debt: Irrelevant, we've already planned a strict repayment budget
Any other information you might have that would help us: My car will be paid off in Sept. 2012. Afterwards, I'll invest an extra $460 per month ($760 total)

I want a hands off kind of investment that doesn't require my input. I just want to deposit monthly payments. Would an index fund be a good choice?
Should I pay off my car early (7.7% interest) with the extra $300 per month before investing?

pay off your car then invest in index funds

Hey Art. Is this podcast still available? The link doesn't work any more. Thanks

hey guys,

moving servers at the moment, will re-upload it all tomorrow, will post here when its ready, thanks!

Country: USA
Income: play online poker , anywhere from $150k-$300k
Capital to invest now: $15k
Risk Tolerance: High (although I dont really know)
Timeframe investment: 15-20+ years
Debt: No debt except 185k note on a duplex I own (House I live in and cars are paid for)
Age: 29

Accountant told me to set up a SEP IRA and put $15k into it last year. Got a recommendation for a broker that works at a bigger name company. Being clueless about investing I set up an appointment with him. He outlined a plan where we would buy a bunch of different types of mutual funds. Seemed solid in the meeting. Then he began to fail to return my emails several times and this annoyed me (15k not enough to get his attention maybe?). I don't ever pull the trigger on actually buying the funds bc I am scared that market is to high. Then last week I decide Im gonna fire it all at party poker stock when the poker bill made it out of commitee. He is again slow in returning my emails and stock obv jumps 25pct from when I want to buy it till when he could actually do it. Also he informs me that it would be $500 comission on 15k. I tell him that I would be extra stupid to pay $500 for him to do a trade that he is recommending against me doing. I move my funds to Scottrade where I can make my trades for $7 commision. Prob is now I have no clue what to do with the money. Ideas please?

Country you live in: United States
Age: 20
Amount to invest: $5k
Income: 0
Risk Tolerance: High
Timeframe for investment: ~8 months until I put everything into Roth IRA.
Debt: 0

Hey everyone, given my timeframe, what should I do? My risk tolerance is high since in the worst case I lose money, I can always borrow from my parents, but obviously I'd prefer to avoid having to burden them.

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about investing...

I'm in college, and I don't have any loans since I have full scholarship. I don't have any expenses aside from food, which is already covered in the scholarship.

Thanks!

Have £50k lump sum and 100k EUR (which i would like to remain as EUR as i feel the euro will bounce back?? )

[*]Country you live in: UK

Age: 24

[*]Income: ~ 10k/month From Poker

[*]Risk Tolerance: Prefer Lower risk Investments but its for LONG term so really dont mind a higher risk approach either. somewhere between 5-7

[*]Timeframe for investment: 10/15++ years

[*]Debt: None

[*]Any other information you might have that would help us

Already maxed out my investments ISA for this tax year. That has ~45k in it, invested in various funds and stocks. Geared to the higher risk side.

I am "dripping" money into each fund/share every month and i plan to do this for a LONG time yet... Maybe rebalance every year or so.

Will be starting work next year and will fall into the higher tax brackets within a few years if not straight away (Doctor).

Considering slowly building up some ETFs for commodities like Oil and Gold, and keeping them also for a very long term.

My Holdings so far:
http://img836.imageshack.us/f/hnlfunds.jpg/
http://img820.imageshack.us/f/iiisnapshot.jpg/

(the amounts are not massive but as i said earlier, i am averaging down and hoping it all evens out in the long run).

Any direction would be apreciated. Is going so see an IFA really worth it? Can i justify paying him 1k/year (what i was quoted) for him to select some funds for me. Or should i wait till i have something in the 500k+ regions before going to seek one out?

Country you live in: United States
Age: 22
Amount to invest: $5k initially, and another $15-20k or so by March of next year.
Income: 65k + 5-6k yearly bonus
Risk Tolerance: Medium-ish
Timeframe for investment: 3-7 years depending on how things go.
Debt: 0

Income is from a regular job with good job security. I currently have 16k in bank accounts, I'd like to keep at least 10k of it available and start off by investing 5k or so. I also have a CD that matures next march for 13k, and I will most likely invest all of that money, along with most or all of my yearly bonus which also comes in March.

My goal in the near future is to save up for a down payment and renovations on a home (possibly an apartment in Boston or NYC with my girlfriend). When and how much we'll have to spend will depend on a lot of things though so I don't have a target date or amount.

I was thinking of opening a Vanguard Roth IRA and contributing the max of $5k now, and going with the Total Bond Market Index Fund. It seems pretty safe and has a low expense ratio. I'd then contribute a bit more to it next year, with the goal being to hit 10k in that account by the time I'm ready to buy so that I can withdraw it and not pay taxes on the earnings. Since 10k is basically the limit for what I can withdraw from this account in the next several years, it seems to make sense to put it in something lower risk.

Then, on or before next March I'd open another account that I can be more aggressive with and probably go for something like an S&P500 index fund or the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index.

Thoughts?