idk thats what one or two people itf recommended when i posted a list of all possible funds like 3 years ago. so 100% TR fund is whats recommended now?

it is my standard advice, yes. with more context, sometimes there are better answers.

i tried for like 15 seconds to find your previous post which i think is more than generous. if you can provide a link, maybe i'll take a look.

ok ill just pick the FID FRDM INDX 2040 W fund. it just seems like they tie up a lot of money in bonds. i would think that this is bad for me as i dont have much in there right now and im still 30 yrs from retirement. thats why i was trying to be a little more aggressive early on. but i really have no idea wtf im doing and you guys are the experts, so ill go with it.

having some bonds generally has higher expectation than having just stocks. but if you'd rather have 90/10 or 100/0, the tools to do so are probably available in your 401k.

Wow. What a ****ty collection to chose from. The Fidelity Freedom Funds really suck, but I guess that's your only option.

fwiw, if you want to be a bit more aggressive, why not do the 2045 fund? It's only 15% in bonds, which is pretty insignficant. You could also do something like 85% in the 2040 funds and then ramp up the risk by doing 15% in one of the POS excuses for a smallcap fund. That would slightly lower your overall bond holding while overweighting your portfolio to smallcap stocks. At the same time, you keep a really good core with the 2040 fund.

i didn't see your image when i posted last night. i agree with dale that those choices are not very good.

i don't understand it. your 401k is with fidelity, which obviously has access to a wide range of funds. my 401k is also with fidelity and i have many more choices than you. why does this happen? is it a deliberate decision by truth's company and/or 401k administrator? my company is medium-sized; perhaps we get more options as a result? can truth talk to someone in hr about getting some more reasonable options?

First time posting in this thread:

Recently, I've invested a good chunk of money in a very diversified way across mostly ETFS. I'm pretty much in everything you can think of. 1/3 of it is in an IRA, so for those trades I've been forced to use an FA, because of the way it was set up. For the other 2/3'rds of the portfolio, I've done the trading myself.

Two questions:

1. Recently, I had about 4K left over in the IRA, and I decided I wanted to use that money to buy PFN, which was trading at $11.37. I gave the go ahead, and my FA said it would cost around $120 to do the trade (i hate paying these fees to begin with), and I said ok. So, then when I looked online the next day, it said I bought PFN a $11.73 per share, which looked like a misclick to me, with the 7 and 3 being inverted. I immediately called him and asked him, and he gave a vague answer and assured me, that the fee had been incorporated into the price of the share price, but he wasn't sure....not sure, really? When I do the math it does come out to around $120 difference.

Shouldn't the fee be separate of the share price considering this is an investment? Is this standard, or an I being scammed?

2. Secondly, is there anyway for me to be in control of this SEP IRA myself, without having to deal with an FA and his ridiculous fees?

Thank you very very kindly in advance.

ok thanks a lot for the advice guys. ill do what dale suggested and go 85% 2040 and 15% something more aggressive. idk why my funds suck so much.

world,

1. sounds sketchy. i've never purchased investments through an adviser, but my understanding is that the fees are generally billed separately. taking a fixed cost and amortizing it over the share price sounds dumb and wrong and makes it confusing to calculate important financial numbers like your basis.

regardless of how legit your adviser's actions, his unwillingness to break this down for you step-by-step is a huge red flag.

2. i personally own and know many people who own IRAs which are not encumbered by an adviser. it's possible sep iras are different, but i seriously doubt it. i would open a new sep ira with a discount brokerage and transfer the funds immediately.

I have never even heard of a situation in which you are required to have a FA with an IRA. Also, brokerage fees of $120 to buy $4,000 worth of an ETF is outrageous. It shoud have 12 bucks. Maybe $20 at most.

what are your thoughts on proper metals exposure? I don't want to be over exposed but I have very little foreign currency/investments as a hedge and it's much easier to deal with gold than it is open a foreign bank etc.

i own zero precious metals as i think there are better ways to get exposure to international markets (like total international stock index) and better hedges against inflation (like ibonds).

I agree with Tyler, but if you're going to do something like that, you might as well do a commodity fund instead of just gold. If you are going to do that and/or gold, I'd probably go in the range of 5-10%. 15% at the absolute most. And honestly, at those percentanges, it's not going to have a signficant impact on your portfolio anyway.

International
VEU = Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF (ER .15)

Inflation Hedge
I Bonds
TIP = Barclays Capital TIPS Bond Fund (ER .20)

Metals
Physical
GLD = SPDR Gold Shares (ER .4)

I recommend a small portion of your portfolio in international and inflation hedge. Metals are fine if you feel that you must. I would do a general commodity fund instead, but don't have a great recommendation off of the top of my head.

as long as we're on this topic, this question has bugged me for some time and maybe someone can answer it rationally:

the purpose of holding precious metals as i understand it is a hedge against hyperinflation or some other kind of global economic meltdown. in an environment like that, how would anything other than easy, unimpeachable access to physical bullion help? i.e., how are you going to exchange shares of some stock or mutual fund for food/shelter/protection if the economic machine ceases to function?

that's why some people want to have physical metals

I don't think it's necessarily against a dooms day occurrence, but more of a basic hedge against one of the other sectors falling. As I understand it, when one sector is bullish, usually the other is bearish.

The Harry Browne book I read advocated for a simple no brainer, 25% Bonds, %25 Total Stock Market, %25 Gold, and %25 Money Market/Cash. He basically said this was a perfect, safe, no thinking approach and that you should re-balance yearly.

My brother has been doing this exactly for a few years.

I'm not a huge fan, of it, because I think it's oversimplified, and I don't get having %25 in gold at this point, but it does seem that historically when when is down another is up and vice versa.

I want to buy a an aggriculture commodity ETF. For example, FUD.

-seeks to reproduce the performance of the UBS Bloomberg CMCI Food Index Total Return
-the ETN measures the collateralized returns from a basket of 12 futures contracts from the agricultural and livestock sectors.

I am trying to determine whether I should hold this in a retirement account or a non-retirement account. I am not that familiar with these exchange traded notes but does anyone know if they pay out some sort of taxable income. In other words, do they keep incurring taxes whenever they have a gain on a futures contract that ends up in the money?

Its my understanding that it trades like a stock. Unless it pays out a dividend, or you sell it for a profit during the taxable year, you won't owe any taxes.

Since I'm a "man without a country" my options where to buy ETFs from are very limited.

Basically I have two of them:

- I can use a "discount" online broker through a bank in my home country which I'm already registered with. Fees are decently low, even 50 or 100% discounted for some products. problem is they automatically take 28% tax on any winnings - which I actually don't have to pay legally, but to prove this to the bank I'd have to prove to them that I don't live there anymore (which is true) - but then they wouldn't serve me anymore. So either get with them and put up with the 28% tax on winnings or

- Use my HSBC Malta account. They don't care where I live and won't deduct any taxes automatically. Their fees are quite high though, 1% with a min of 20€ for ETFs, also a bunch of other fees like 0.1% yearly "custody" fee and so on.

Which one would you prefer? I guess the more I plan to invest (or win haha) the more likely it gets the HSBC option would be better for me?

I have one other option, that is trading through an offshore company I own with a partner but there is the added fact that my partner isn't so keen on trading so I'd have to talk him into it. Didn't find many online brokers I can register as a non US company with, http://www.tradestation.com seems decent but has a $5k minimum - which I could do no problem but would rather start smaller if possible.

Seems like you should definitely go with the discount online broker. Figure out a way to make this happen. Avoiding fees is a huge part of investing.

Unless you sell the ETF shares, you will not have to pay taxes on it. You can hold for as long as you like, or sell and face the taxes. The beauty of this is that you can sell right before the year is up and take a loss if you're down, or if you're up, you can wait until the next taxable year to decide and put off the tax implications, etc.

Obviously, I'm not familiar with the way your country's tax laws but this seems like it would be universal.

This is not true and is a great example of why you shouldn't trust advice you get on a forum. Many ETF's, especially commodity ETF's, are set up as limited partnerships hence their taxable characteristics flow through to you as you essentially become an owner in the limited partnership when you buy shares in the ETF.

To understand the tax implications of the ETF you are investing in you should do your own research prior to making the investment. This includes reading the prospectus and doing your own research on the internet.

You are correct, always best to hold physical metals, the kind you actually hold in your hands. Holding an ETF that tracks to gold or silver may leave you with nothing more than a piece of paper.

If you don't believe this scenario is feasible then I suggest you track down an MF Global customer and ask them what happened when MFG went belly up.

I stand corrected.

That wasn't b/c MFG went bankrupt. It was because something untoward happened with client accounts that were suppose to be segregated. Unless you plan to convert all your assets to gold and bury them, then it's pretty hard to guard against such fraud except to do business with firms you trust (or use multiple firms, I suppose).

Anyway, MFG is a completely separate issue from the one brought up itt.