I don't have access to that information anymore. I'm sure there is another broker on here that can find that answer.
i'd like to try my hand in the other form of organized gambling, the stock market. What is your financial goal? If you are a thrill seeker, I suggest day trading. If you are saving for a particular goal (car, house, retirement, nice vacation, ..), your time horizon for your goal will dictate suitable investment vehicles. The shorter the time horizon, the more fixed returned vehicles like treasuries and bonds. The longer the time horizon, the more equities.
Just remember, regardless of time lines, a diversified portfolio should never house individual stocks until the assets have reached a minimum of $250k.
Are you serious? What is the justification for that? Fatty - what do you do? I ask because your advice above would, I think, mean that any stock options or employee purchase plans should not be part of your portfolio. Is that true according to your philosophy? Does this mean you should sell these investments ASAP and move into the cash into funds? Thanks - you sound smart.
I misspoke. Your portfolio shouldn't be composed of only individual stocks until 250k. It is simply too difficult to have even-lots of individual stock in a diversified portfolio under $250k. (unless your going with penny stocks. But in that case, your in trouble anyway.) As for 401k's, I have no problem with putting money into company stock. Typically your company will provide matching options, plus you are buying your companies stock with other employees which leads to even-lot discounts.
This is what I was getting at. Vanguard does charge a fee if you're going to be jumping from fund-to-fund or jumping in and out of them continuously. It goes against their beliefs. Hell if you want to trade like that, just go buy some stocks. Anywho. I was always under the assumption you could buy no-load funds (both front and back end loads) where, sure, you'd have to pay expenses (which for Vanguard are very very low) and the ubiquitous 12b-1 fees. Yes, they are fees, but I thought originally you were stating that all funds had front and/or back end loads. What I don't like about Fidelity is that they fee you to death. They may have changed, I'm not sure.
Most of the no-loads in Schwab's and Fidelity's Mutual Fund Supermarkets have 12b1 fees, which goes to Schwab and Fidelity btw*. 12b1 fee becomes the gift that keeps on giving. * As an exception, fee based RIAs who invest via Schwab and Fidelity can get the 12b1 fees forwarded to them.
So once you get to 250K, you would dump your munis and becomes your mutual fund manager? Not the best plan, methinks.
Most brokerage houses want you to have at least 100k to have a diversified stock porfolio that's spread over all sectors. It seems that 250k is a little on the high end to me Fatty, but I'm sure different firms have different requirements. Regarding loaded funds and no-loads. No loads are clearly better if you want to do the research and handle all of the investing yourself. When you are buying a load fund, you're paying for the advise of your advisor. Make sure that if you go through an advisor you get a good one that will stay in contact with you and not just sell you an A share porfolio and split. How much do you expect it to go down? Most of what I've been hearing is the market will be flat, but not to expect any real bear market.
Its a long/short equity fund. I also am starting a fund of funds hedge fund in the next year as well.
The technical definition for 12(b)-1 fees are the mutual fund’s marketing expenses. This includes the costs for printed sales literature as well as the cost of "entertaining" the broker (think an investment sales seminar). What it really does is compensate the broker throughout the year for placing, and keeping, their clients money into the fund. After the mutual fund scandals surfaced last year, Congress started snooping around and wanted to clarify the various fees charged by the funds companies. After they "uncovered" these 12(b)-1 fees, they threatened to do away with them. It didn't happen so it's up to each fund company to decide as to whether they want to have 12(b)-1 fees imposed or not. It pretty much boils down to how they want to get their funds marketed---thru brokers or directly to the people By they way, I've seen funds with astonomical expense ratios have great results and funds with dirt cheap expense ratios have awful performance and everyting in between. It's all about the portfolio management.
The sharks want 100K? You can get into Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index fund for 3K (or 1K for IRAs). That would be the definition of diversified. Fees 12b-1 = Fee None Purchase Fee = None Redemption Fee = None Yearly Expense Ratio : 0.19% (about as low as it goes) And a real no-load fund to boot. Or for $51.51 you can buy one share of Vanguard's Large-Cap VIPERs (ETF) plus broker's commission (a kind of front end load). This ETF covers approximately the SP500 which is 88% of the US equity market and dang near as of diversified as the Total Stock Market Index fund.
