Retirement Investing Crisis
The meltdown on Wall Street has taught us all many lessons.
"You Better Learn To Make Your Own Investment Decisions - And Not Let Brokers Make Choices For You!"
This is a basic fact we have been preaching for years now. Many times investors either blindly throw money at the market or let a broker do it for them. With a little effort you could learn to direct your investment accounts and retirement funds on your own.
In this article we want to point you in the right direction, and give you a few crisis tips too.
ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) are an excellent alternative to mutual funds as an investment vehicle for your retirement or other accounts.
There are now ETFs that cover every sector of the market. ETFs offer many advantages over mutual funds. Here are just a few:
* Tax Advantages - ETFs seldom sell any equity positions or create a taxable event. Mutual funds often do this. With mutuals, you could owe tax on part of the funds holdings (the winning stocks they sell at a profit) even though you lost money over all. A double whammy!
* Less Management Costs - Even No-Load Mutual funds have become top heavy with many "Professionals" employed and eating up GIANT parts of the profit. You might think of ETFs as Electronically Traded Funds. MUCH less management costs (in some cases no management costs) and the ease of trading them.
* Diversification - Let's face it, this is what was attractive about mutual funds to begin with. Instead of picking out stocks on your own, you had "Professionals" (with the meltdown we can see that most of them are not too professional) putting together a diversified portfolio for you. With ETFs, you can get the same if not better diversification without the hassle of dealing with a mutual fund giant eating up all the profits.
* Easy To Trade - With true mutual funds you can only get out of a position After the market closes. You can trade ETFs just like a stock in your discount brokerage account. If you were locked into a fund when the market was in crash mode, it was not a good feeling. Had that been an ETF you could have bailed at any time (before the DOW closed down 777 points!)
We could go on with the benefits of ETFs, but you should be starting to see the picture. An even better way to call your own shots with your investments is to trade the index (or indices for plural). We are referring to the mini Dow, the S&P eMini, the mini Russell and others. (there are also ETF's the mirror the indices such as "SPY" for the S&P 500 index)
While we focus on mini-Dow trading, any index will do. With Index trading, you just follow the overall market up, or ride it down with a short position.
While we are on the subject of shorts it would be good to mention that while most US mutual funds are not allowed to short a stock, you can actually buy ETFs that do good with the market is dropping. One such fund is ticker "DUG" which does well when the Oil price is dropping (a tip we gave our readers after the big run up in oil to over $140 per barrel - at the time of this writing it has been dropping since).
You can find other ETFs that do well in falling markets. So, you don't have to short the market (statistics show that 80% or more of investors never do short the market - but are always looking for a upward bull run), you just buy the right ETF and let it do the shorting for you.
By now, many investors see the importance of having a strategy for making money when the market is dropping. Most investors have yet to develop this strategy. We prefer to do it with simple index trades. Whatever you do, find a way to make your own moves and don't depend on someone else to invest your money for you. No one will take care of your money like you will!
*********************************************************** NOTE: To learn more about ETF's visit Yahoo Finance and look under the Investing Tab at the top of the page - then select ETFs www.finance.yahoo.com ***********************************************************
"You Better Learn To Make Your Own Investment Decisions - And Not Let Brokers Make Choices For You!"
This is a basic fact we have been preaching for years now. Many times investors either blindly throw money at the market or let a broker do it for them. With a little effort you could learn to direct your investment accounts and retirement funds on your own.
In this article we want to point you in the right direction, and give you a few crisis tips too.
ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) are an excellent alternative to mutual funds as an investment vehicle for your retirement or other accounts.
There are now ETFs that cover every sector of the market. ETFs offer many advantages over mutual funds. Here are just a few:
* Tax Advantages - ETFs seldom sell any equity positions or create a taxable event. Mutual funds often do this. With mutuals, you could owe tax on part of the funds holdings (the winning stocks they sell at a profit) even though you lost money over all. A double whammy!
* Less Management Costs - Even No-Load Mutual funds have become top heavy with many "Professionals" employed and eating up GIANT parts of the profit. You might think of ETFs as Electronically Traded Funds. MUCH less management costs (in some cases no management costs) and the ease of trading them.
* Diversification - Let's face it, this is what was attractive about mutual funds to begin with. Instead of picking out stocks on your own, you had "Professionals" (with the meltdown we can see that most of them are not too professional) putting together a diversified portfolio for you. With ETFs, you can get the same if not better diversification without the hassle of dealing with a mutual fund giant eating up all the profits.
* Easy To Trade - With true mutual funds you can only get out of a position After the market closes. You can trade ETFs just like a stock in your discount brokerage account. If you were locked into a fund when the market was in crash mode, it was not a good feeling. Had that been an ETF you could have bailed at any time (before the DOW closed down 777 points!)
We could go on with the benefits of ETFs, but you should be starting to see the picture. An even better way to call your own shots with your investments is to trade the index (or indices for plural). We are referring to the mini Dow, the S&P eMini, the mini Russell and others. (there are also ETF's the mirror the indices such as "SPY" for the S&P 500 index)
While we focus on mini-Dow trading, any index will do. With Index trading, you just follow the overall market up, or ride it down with a short position.
While we are on the subject of shorts it would be good to mention that while most US mutual funds are not allowed to short a stock, you can actually buy ETFs that do good with the market is dropping. One such fund is ticker "DUG" which does well when the Oil price is dropping (a tip we gave our readers after the big run up in oil to over $140 per barrel - at the time of this writing it has been dropping since).
You can find other ETFs that do well in falling markets. So, you don't have to short the market (statistics show that 80% or more of investors never do short the market - but are always looking for a upward bull run), you just buy the right ETF and let it do the shorting for you.
By now, many investors see the importance of having a strategy for making money when the market is dropping. Most investors have yet to develop this strategy. We prefer to do it with simple index trades. Whatever you do, find a way to make your own moves and don't depend on someone else to invest your money for you. No one will take care of your money like you will!
*********************************************************** NOTE: To learn more about ETF's visit Yahoo Finance and look under the Investing Tab at the top of the page - then select ETFs www.finance.yahoo.com ***********************************************************
posted by Credit Counseling at
6:54 PM
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