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I'm liking commodities and energy stocks (particularly natural gas). I suppose it's also a good time to by real estate as a long term investment. What are your stratagies and how are they working out for you. I'm up 6.5% on the year.
I also have gains in the energy and materials sectors but its not a large enough percentage of my porfolio to make a big difference. Does'nt say much for diversification.
I've also been hurt trying to play the recent range the financials are in.
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not diversified at all. I'm 19 and opened up my Roth IRA just last year. With fidelity, you need $2500 initial investment with most of their mutual funds. I've only contributed $3500 since opening my account and I only own the fidelity natural gas fund. To be completely honest, I'll probably have to drain it to pay for the last two years of college. But right now, natural gas is looking pretty compared to the rest of the market. I was thinking about maybe bottom fishing financials, but it's still too uncertain for me to pull the trigger. At the very least, things are going to be rocky for 6-8 more months. At the very worst, we could be heading into a global economic depression. Time will tell.
EDIT: I'd like to add that it was a good day on wall street (for me anyway). I was up 2.26% on the day.
Last edited by Philosophizer; 04-14-2008 at 03:20 PM..
Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
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I got 12 grand in a Vanguard 500 index fund. It ain't doing too hot. But I haven't lost any money either. I probably will. HA HA HA! But I don't think the US will sink into the Ocean, and it will go back up again...eventually.
Ooh..ooh...just checked it...it's at $12,206. That's from dropping in 4 grand a year, every year from 2005. I'm gonna wait for the market to tank one more time, then I'll drop in another 4 grand.....
I switched what I had in bonds to Fidelity total stock market index when the Dow dropped below 12000. The Vanguard emerging market ETF is a low cost way of investing in emerging markets. I wouldn't touch financials. They have the whiff of Enron to them.
Just saving up for a condo when I move out in 2011. I have 4k in a 2050 retirement fund which isn't doing good but I don't really care because I'll be selling those funds in 40 years or so.
I'm not in stocks or anything tied to an index, like the S&P 500.
The S&P 500 has been flat for the last 9 years. I think the next 5-10 years will be the same. Minimal upside, maybe a percent or two over a money market fund. But also the possibility of big declines yet to come. The risk reward is way out of whack for stocks.
GE has been flat for the last 10 years.
DELL, INTC, MSFT are all where they were in 98.
Financials are too much like Enron. You dont know whats on their books. Like C or FNM.
Commodities, energy, too high for me. Its the same thing with the dollar, they've gone too far in one direction.
I use to sort of believe in technical anaylsis and looking at charts, but after examples like Bear Stearns, that go from $80 to $5 in a few weeks, the charts dont tell you that these will go to single digits.
A Google short or puts I'm still thinking about. Of course, I was thinking about it two years ago in the $400's, then it went to $700. So much for that. But in 3 or 5 years, I think the odds are very high that it won't be in the $400's, with a market cap of $140 billion.
For a comparison, Ebay is worth $40 billion. Amazon, $30 billion.
Berkshire Hathaway $198 billion, (with $40 some billion in cash!).
Worth more than Intel. Worth more than Cisco. Eventually reality will catch up with Google.
I'm still dollar cost averaging, although slightly less into equities (I rarely buy individual stocks and neither should you) due to my age.
The stock market will outperform consistently over any 10 year period you care to name.
john23 wrote:
Quote:
The S&P 500 has been flat for the last 9 years. I think the next 5-10 years will be the same. Minimal upside, maybe a percent or two over a money market fund. But also the possibility of big declines yet to come. The risk reward is way out of whack for stocks.
GE has been flat for the last 10 years.
DELL, INTC, MSFT are all where they were in 98.
I have 2 points to make about your post; looking at a "snapshot" is not the way to look at investments, look at the long term. And remember it's too easy for others to check up on what you write, you're WRONG on 4 of the 5. Some of them are down over 8 years, but other than Intel all are UP over 20% over 10 years.
Again, look at the timeline/trend, not a snapshot at one particular time.
I think that in the long run one would prefer the midcap S&P 400 funds over the S&P 500. The S&P 400 gets the benefit of the hot stocks being promoted from the Smallcap S&P 600. The dogs usually get discarded to the S&P 600. I can't recall an instance where bad stocks from the largecap S&P 500 were demoted to the midcap index. Even the scandal stocks like Enron, Worldcom, and Cendant seemed to stick around on the S&P 500 until they were essentially worthless. It looks like the same will happen to FNM and FRE.
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