Hitchcock put a light bulb in that glass of milk.

that is never a bright idea.

Uh...?

All 4th of July celebrations and beaches were closed in Los Angeles. All fireworks were banned in Los Angeles, including "safe and sane" fireworks.



After 4 days looting and a month of daily protests in my area, it was nice to see something else for a change.

He is risen!

Welcome back Dave!

The prodigal son returns.

Riotous living even.

welcome back, homie

Started investing in stocks. My initial toe-dip is in Vanguard ETFs. Did a little bit of normal stock buying as well. Nothing crazy.

It's a lot of fun learning about this stuff, like EPS, P/E Ratios, what "underweight" and "overweight" means, and other stuff. I'm liking the vanguard website quite a bit. I don't see how people are using phone apps for this stuff.

It is quite surprising how awful and scummy a lot of the advice is. In any case, I'm investing long.

good for you. vangard funds are about the lowest cost funds. and that is important if you are a fund buyer. that should be the first thing you look at.
buying individual stocks and holding them is no cost. you can build a nice portfolio by just adding some as you go along. if you like a manged fund then you can just buy a couple of their top picks and hold them. once you have a few diversified stocks it will follow the index closly anyway.

for instance say a fund has .5% expense ratio. that means say if it averages earns 5% a year the fund is taking out about ten percent of your profits.

manged ? like a dog? Ray ray

many stock funds are a dog. schlitzy schlitzy

i am a lousy typer. even mavis bacon dumped me

i bought heavy after it crashed too low to not be a steal. big companies losing half their value in a few weeks isnt logical. sold just as they found the virus growing again. but ive mostly kept my core positions intact. but dumped ones that would be affected the most and take long to recover.

astute investment strategery

Welcome back Dave.

Vanguard is the nuts. Hard to go wrong with them. That is where I have almost all my investments.

I found out about Vanguard by reading a Consumer's Digest article almost 40 years ago and haven't left them since. They are indeed the nuts.

These guys trading on cell phones are action junkies blowing through trust funds. I think I've met every one of them while playing PLO during the Series.

what's the minimum amount I can invest in Vanguard?

tree fiddy

you dont invest in them. they are a brokerage who sells services.

i like fidelity better but their mutual funds are more costly in expenses although you can still buy vanguard funds. but i personally dont buy funds and manage my own money.

with fidelity i can get a c.c with 2% back on everything you charge. free checking. having money in money market fund getting interest that you can write checks from and can buy stocks and things. also can take margin loans against your stocks without selling them at a low interest rate if you choose. you can buy treasury bills and bonds without having to go through a bank and can sell at any time you choose.
i dont use the other services where they manage your money or give advice. as someone getting paid to do that isnt really credible.

Whatever the price is of one share.

ETF listings are here: https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/li...th-end-returns

Then the price of a single stock is whatever the stock is. I always buy at night, so the price I have by 9:30am is always lower than the price I bought it, for reasons we need not discuss.

It is amazing how tightly correlated poker and stocks are to each other...

$3.50 stocks?

Nice.

I think (?) most of the mutual funds are a $3000 minimum initial investment. Some of the funds are specific to certain areas of the market and the target date funds are basically a combination of some of their etf's which are mainly VTI (vanguard total stock index), VXUS (vanguard total stock index sans USA) and bonds. You can pick a date with these kinds of funds to coincide with retirement date and they are automatically rebalanced each year.

But the individual ETF's themselves can be just one share or even fractional shares. But then you need to figure out what balance of domestic, international and bonds on your own which is beyond most to do properly. I have a variety of the mutual funds myself.

look at your mutual funds and see what the expense rate is and if they also have 12-b1 fees. you could easily be paying away much of your profits for no reason as you can just buy that funds top holdings yourself and pay nothing.

most mutual funds people buy are managed. and that means someone is taking fees out. also they are managed for profit to themselves and will churn their stock portfolio to hold stocks that are in favor. which usually means overpriced stocks and added expenses.
plus you are paying for accounting fees and such..

I need new glasses. Optometrist appointment is Saturday at 5:45 pm.

Tell us how this goes. I had an appointment in March that was cancelled, and may be approaching the point where I can make a new one. I'm skeptical as to whether I want to be stuck in a chair with somebody breathing on me.

I really need new glasses and things are better in RI. My optometrist is an old friend from high school and college, so I can threaten him.