Originally Posted by ChiliConCarnage:
People have been predicting for a few years that we'll see Brokers pay us to make trades. DaFace is right. I'm sure they hope you'll turn on margin, trade some options, banking, credit cards, financial planning. Even if you never touch any other service though they sell your order flow for profit, loan your shares out short, most traders keep cash in their account which they profit off of. It's probably a loss leader going to 0 but it likely makes sense to get people into the ecosystem.
I thought they'd drop to 2.95 or something first. JP Morgan came out with a 2.95 service last year. Vanguard made 99% of ETF's free trading last year.
I could see the rise of index funds working in their favor, too. Get people in and comfortable with the free stock trades, but even that 0.1% fee if you buy one of their index funds adds up to a shit ton more than a handful of $9.95 commissions when the amounts are high enough. [Reply]
Originally Posted by lewdog:
Fuck yes! I’m with TD and been paying $6.95.
When TD Ameritrade took over Scottrade, I quit my account. I HATED TD and their platform.
Scottrade was the best I've ever seen and their Java applet for real time quotes was incredible. I had immediate executions on trades, their bank account tied to my Visa card was second to none and better than most banks, and easy to get my money in and out of their account. :-) [Reply]
Can anyone recommend a budgeting app w/drag and drop capability? We were using EveryDollar from Dave Ramsey and loved it. Problem is, my little credit union isn't letting us connect to the app any longer.
The great feature with it was a drag and drop function to move each transaction over to the category in the budget it went with.
I thought they might hold out a while and see if it hurt them much. Both Fidelity and Vanguard make a lot through corporate retirement accounts. Maybe they'd collected enough feedback already from ppl willing to transfer [Reply]
What's worth putting 2500 on right now? This is a my small portfolio right now should I just add on to one of these or buy something else? And should I keep FBIOX? It's been pretty shitty lately after going going up at the beginning of the year. I'm a novice when it comes to all of this so please dumb down your advice for me lol. [Reply]
So you have both the Fidelity and Vanguard total market funds. Not sure why, but whatever. Beyond that, you have a sector specific fund (biotech) and a few random stocks.
I personally like index mutual funds (or ETFs) unless you really plan to work the market -- track your stocks, figure out when it might be a good time to sell any specific stock, etc. Most of us aren't going to do that, which means that getting a wide range of stocks via a mutual fund or ETF makes sense. I would probably invest the money in a 500 index fund, or ETF.
I'm not much of a fan of sector funds unless you've done your homework on it. Your portfolio just doesn't seem large enough to dabble in quite that way.
Rain Man and I quite like investing in dividend yielding stocks. There are several you could consider. We both like MPW, which is a REIT (and therefore required to distribute most profits via dividends) which owns property rented by medical professionals (a field not likely to shrink in the near future, unlike malls). MPW is at the top of the range for its price over the last year, however, so it's not cheap at the moment or anything.
Hope this helps (or at least gives you some options to research and consider). [Reply]
Originally Posted by Amnorix:
So you have both the Fidelity and Vanguard total market funds. Not sure why, but whatever. Beyond that, you have a sector specific fund (biotech) and a few random stocks.
I personally like index mutual funds (or ETFs) unless you really plan to work the market -- track your stocks, figure out when it might be a good time to sell any specific stock, etc. Most of us aren't going to do that, which means that getting a wide range of stocks via a mutual fund or ETF makes sense. I would probably invest the money in a 500 index fund, or ETF.
I'm not much of a fan of sector funds unless you've done your homework on it. Your portfolio just doesn't seem large enough to dabble in quite that way.
Rain Man and I quite like investing in dividend yielding stocks. There are several you could consider. We both like MPW, which is a REIT (and therefore required to distribute most profits via dividends) which owns property rented by medical professionals (a field not likely to shrink in the near future, unlike malls). MPW is at the top of the range for its price over the last year, however, so it's not cheap at the moment or anything.
Hope this helps (or at least gives you some options to research and consider).
I have both Fidelity and the vanguard because my whole strategy is to just follow what I hear other smart people recommending. My sister recommended the fidelity find and I think I read about VTI on here lol. Like I said, I'm a novice so not too much of my own research or knowledge goes into it. I just see a recommendation, do about 10 minutes of reading up on it and that's basically it.
When I get some time today I'll try to do more than my usual 15 minutes of reading up on MPW. And as far as stocks vs funds, yeah I'm not interested at all in buying and selling and trying to time markets. Just want to put money in and see a steady return. [Reply]
