The Stock Market

[yoopersmith]

Originally Posted by toasterwater

Okay, this is what i want to try and accomplish with my stock market ventures. I want to use the "pyramid" method of investment. The pryamid method is symply having most of my money in a more conservative investments, and having less money in more risky investments.

Toasterwater,

Most of my money is in the funds below. I put money in based on a percentage of the total amount invested and rebalance the money in Jan of each year. Rebalance means that I buy or sell to get the levels back to the target percentage.

I didn't start with enough money to fund each category, so I started working from the top down (I worked on putting my total pot of money in the 20, 15, and 10's until I had enough money to purchase the fund at its minimum investment level). It took me several years to fund all of them this way, but it worked.

US Large Caps - 20% - Funds (VTSMX, MDY, QQQ, SPY)*
Foreign Large Caps - 15% - Fund (VGTSX)
US Small Caps - 10% - Fund (NAESX)
Foreign Small Caps - 10% Fund (RISIX)
US Large Value - 20% - Fund (VIVAX)
US Small Value - 10% - Fund (VISVX)
Foreign Large Value - 10% - Fund (VTRIX)
Emerging Markets - 5% - Fund (USEMX)

MDY and QQQ are not really Large Cap Funds...but I don't want to sell them and this is the closest category that I have in the list.

These funds are NOT the best ones out there...these just happen to be the ones I picked. If you look them up on the internet you can find other funds in the same category.

Now for my risky investments, I subscribe to a newsletter called "Rule Breakers" from the Motley Fool. Each month they recommend 2 new stocks to consider and also have a list of five rulebreakers stocks for "new money now", so if you had money to invest you would have 7 stocks to pick from every money. These investments are VERY risky, they will either tank or make a bundle. I bought equal ammounts of 7 stocks one month and so far 4 are up and 3 are down...that's the way it goes.

I am a LONG term investor...I'm not interested in working on investments everyday. I read the newsletter every month, but I don't put money in every month. I wait until my wife gives me money to invest

[yoopersmith]

Originally Posted by toasterwater

So just to summerize: my new goal is to find an investment for my extra money that will yeild more than a bank account (or a lame CD- im looking for something closer to 10%/year) and that i dont have to invest much time into (id really like to use the "get it and forget it" strategy.

So if you have suggestions on how to go about doing this, Im all ears! (and i know that there are lots of suggestions previously, but i would like to divert the rest of this threads interests into that)

Thanks for all of your help!

Toasterwater,

If you want to buy one fund and forget about it, I suggest VTSMX.

Since you sound like you want to long term invest instead of day trading, this is a nice safe place to park money and should make you more money than a CD.

[Razzaq]

hi everybody..

Thank you to all of you for providing very good information for stock business... as i am planning to start one....

nice to find the place .. by the way

thanks

[steve0617]

Originally Posted by b__p

In a similar vein as the current discussion, here's an interesting story about a guy whose parents let him open a brokerage account during his senior year of high school with his bar mitzvah money thinking he'd lose every penny. He turned his $12,500 into $1.6 million and now runs his own hedge fund.

DealBreaker.com

True, then Timmay made a crucial mistake and went on Wall Street Warriors on the Mojo network and acted like an ass. His hedge fund, returns and credibility is pretty much toast.