Investments?
 

Recently I have been looking onto making small investments aside from my 401k. I was looking at E-Trade.com, but I am kind of over my head when it comes to this. Has anyone ever used sites like this? Are these sites only good for people that make a crap load of trades? If anyone has any insight, I would appreciate it.

I use E Trade. I was using whatever the were before they became E Trade, HarrisDirect of something like that. Those are good places for investors who know what they want and want to maintain control over their accounts all the time. If you want advice and recommendations all the time, a full service broker might be better.

I used to trade options through a broker and have done some of the with E Trade, but you have to devote a lot of time to it, if you're using a service like E Trade. Mostly, I'm a buy and hold investor and don't usually feel the need to move in and out of positions a lot.

I use etrade for my taxable account and was also with Harris previously.

I find it easy to use.

Sharebuilder.com allows you to purchase fractional shares if the $$ invested are very small.

Whichever you do, start slow, research and learn. Stocks go up over time. Its tough to get ahead being a day trader or trying to hit home runs on story stocks. You'll usually get your hat handed to you.

As someone said, "It's not 'timing the market,' it's time IN the market that counts." Buy good quality stocks in companies you know something about, whose business you understand, and who have great management. Prices will go up and down over time, just like they do on your house. In the long run good companies will continue to appreciate.

You can also reduce the risk by investing in an index fund, Some examples are S&P 500, Dow 30, etc. You are not putting faith in an advisor, rather betting the index that the fund mimics. The fee ratio is typically low on this type of fund.

Yeah, index funds are good, too. Low fees and they will do as well as the overall market does. That in itself would make them out perform most actively managed mutual funds.

You usually set up a trading portfolio with a sweep account first. The sweep account is kind of a funnel where you initially put your money into, and then distribute it amongst your investments. It's usually a money market fund that pays a better interest rate than a checking or savings account.

Likewise you can have your stock dividends and capital gains get reinvested back into those stocks, or they can be diverted into the sweep account if you want to be a more "hands-on" investor. Any money from sales of investments, options, etc., also goes into the sweep account.

You don't need to be a big time trader, but some brokerages make you have a minimum number of transactions per year. Read the fine print.

So when you use E-trade and just hold on to a few stocks, does it cost a signifigant amount of money to just sign up and buy some stocks? I have a couple of stocks in mind I want to buy, and I want to procure some, and keep doing it on a monthy basis.

I believe I pay about $7-8 per trade for any number of shares. I can remember paying commissions years ago between $80-120 per trade at full service brokers.

I suppose I'll just have to read up some more on this. I have never been much of an investor. More like a spender of every penny I have.

Well, then your investments are bound to pay off in spades. There's a book that I read years ago by Peter Lynch that you might find interesting called Beating The Street. there are many, of course, but that one is eay to read and anecdotal as well as informative.

What does that mean?

http://vanguard.com/

I am looking at some of these funds, index/stock/bonds.
Goal is to have emergency $ available for car repair/replacement.
home maintenance etc and earn better returns than bank savings.
The only question I have is how easy it is to transfer funds to and
from our bank account?

Index funds have low fees and tax advantages.

Individual stocks seem too hard for me at this time.

Unless you are maxed out on your 401K ($15.5K/yr) I would
build up emergency savings and then start increasing 401K investments.

After this weeks news on spending, jobs and now prime ARM's failing it is hard to
be a bull.

Maybe this weekends FM's bailout, paid for by the tax payers, will boost the market
or at least help the financials?