Stock investments

Time in market is generally better than timing of market. The house always wins.

 

1. wrong forum.
2. until you know you are doing, just by an S&P 500 index fund and call it a day.
3. here's the stock thread: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/index.php?threads/stock-market-lets-talk-stocks-and-investing.149250/

 

I would suggest dollar cost investing (eg invest 10% of what you got over a 10 months period) in a total market ETF like VTI. Be prepared to loose your ass in the short term (30-50%) but win in the long term (10+ years).

 

OP,

When you read that thread, note that there are two types of posters generally. There are traders and there are investors. Traders have a very short term outlook on their trades; they are looking for a relatively quick score. Investors have a longer time horizon. Both make money, just in different ways.

 

Find out what your actual financial goal is (specific dollar amount by a certain age or year), reduce your expected annual return to 1.8% (1966 - 1982), then increase your monthly spend accordingly.

Find some interesting value stock screens by people like Benjamin Graham, Joseph Piotrosky or James P. O'Shaughnessy solely to force yourself to understand different accounting concepts from balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements and ratio analyses, you can then look up definitions and calculation formulas for just about any of those accounting metrics in Wikipedia, investopedia or some free online college business textbooks.

Then look for some decent free or paid stock screeners and try to filter and search based on the criteria from the investment screens in the second paragraph above, and if any of the stocks that come up are "respectable" large cap American stocks for companies you've heard of, invest in them and ignore all the others. Do enough screens on enough different sites to get 20 - 30 large cap blue chip stocks out of 100s of individual screening results, and then buy 5 of those stocks each month so it would take six months to get through one purchase cycle for the whole portfolio.

 

Ford is garbage, they only have 1 profitable vehicle (F-150) and nobody is driving trucks anymore. They need a major corporate shakeup to restore themselves. Truth is, just like Sears, you could have another major blue chip brand go poof!

 

hit the nail on the head.

Ford will go the way of Blue Chip Stamps.

Warren Buffett's co bought controlling interest in it,
and eventually a merger between the two.
​

Ford's buyer will likely be some private equity firm, not Buffett's co

​

 

I read a book called, "The Millionaire Teacher" by Andrew Hallam. It basically explains anyone, even a teacher, with a modest salary, can become a millionaire by making certain life choices and buying index funds, as quickly as they can.

Here is an example from the book that should hopefully give you a sense of urgency:

Both women are born at the same time:
Woman #1 invests $45 dollars a month from age 5 until age 65
Woman #2 invests $800 dollars a month from age 40 until age 65

Woman #1 invested $32,400 over the course of those 60 years and now has $1,050,180.
Woman #2 invested $240,00.000 over those 25 years and now has $813,128.00

Time is the most crucial ingredient by a long shot. Invest in the U.S. market through Large, Medium and Small cap index funds. Over the last 90 years the U.S. stock market has averaged over 9% annual returns.

For me, for a lot of my 20's, I've prioritized paying off my student loans. Paying thousand(s) of dollars a month to get rid of my debt as expeditiously as possible. Now though, my student loans will be gone very shortly and I will then take that money and invest it in the market shoveling as much as I can in as quickly as I can. Buying individual stocks is more for funsies for me, the right play is to buy indexes.