Well, another couple of months have passed and I'm STILL taking a beating on my Mutual funds and stuff. I send money in every month, and at the end of the month it is wipped out and then some. Seems reduculious ....

Are you guy's sticking with it or what? Lately I've been thinking that instead of sending my hard earned money in and watching it vanish, I should maybe think about upgrading my place of residence and move into something that has a bigger driveway.

Whadda ya think?

 

Mayfair are you referring to your companies 401k? What's their match? If you're having a hard time picking a solid plan you may want to look into bonds and CDs, if your company matches then that's already a 100% return.
The 3 years I was at my last co I avg well over 30% each year. International sector is a good pick.
I'm on my iPhone so don't want to get into it too much.
Do you rent or own right now? Housing market still isn't great, if you already own, talk to your mtg co bout lowering their rates. If you appear to not be able to make the same payments they will be willing to work with you on a more affordable int rate, the banks are doing whatever they can to reduce the number of forclosed homes on their books.

 

Typically when the fed cuts int rates the stock market is a better place to be as current bond and cd rates decrease, but these past rate cuts are trying to stop the bleeding. Investing in banks that have taken it on the chin due to the mtg loses so they're trading well below wha they'll be at once all this **** it sorted out. If you have foreign currency buying the dollar is a good idea. Ive already sold most of my euros, sold the bulk of it for $1.20-€1, made about 6 grand off of it. Still have €5k tied up right now so that's about $8k and it only cost me about $4k to buy the €5k years ago.

But bottom line, if you're not big into the market and are losing money, ESP if there a company match then CDs and bonds are a good way. Now there's tons of bonds, munis, tax exempt, state bonds, etc etc.

 

My company doesn't offer a 401 plan or ANY kind of plan that I can invest into ( tax free [:@]). They offer a employee profit sharing program. All of my other investing is done on my own into a Roth, and 2 or 3 other Mutual funds. ALL of the funds, the profit sharing as well as all of the other funds are taking a beating. I haven't seen an up month in months. I just opened up 3 statements and totaling all 3 I just lost almost 4K again, and that is only THREE !! It effing kills me

I own my home outright, so I don't have a mortgage. Instead, I've been sending the equivalent of a mortgage payment into my funds. My goal was to live a simple life and to be able to retire as early as possible so that I can see this country of mine before I die. As it is right now, I get 2 weeks off a year with no increase in sight. Sucks ...

See where I'm at?

 

Mayfair you SOB you made me get out of bed cause i didnt want to type all this on my iPhone

I dont know how old you are, married single, kid?

Do any of your investment plans require a min monthly addition or can you just leave whats in there and not invest any more without incurring penalties? also can you withdraw your money from the mutuals and have them put it into a money market account? this way its kinda like a time out, youre staying with them, theyll pay you a OK int rate on the money in the MM account but you dont have to worry about taking it on the chin each month.

Were you military by any chance? do you have USAA?

what you should look into is laddering your CD's, instead of having a huge lump sum tied up into one CD thats locked into a long term, have multiple CDs, like me, i set aside 24 $1,000 dollar CDs and have them evenly throughout the 1 year term, so basically i have 1 renewing every 15 days, this way if i need some extra cash i dont have it all tied up in one thats not gonna mature till november or whenever. A lot of companies will base the int rate on your cd based upon 2 things, amount invested and length of CD, the reason i asked if you had USAA is they have good rates and as far as rating your int rate based off of how much you are investing its the same between 1k and 98k, i never like BOAs CD program and havent checked into any other banks.
Youre not gonna lose any money in a CD, sure you could have gained more in the market, but you could have lost in the market as well, and thats what youve been doing, along with tons of other people. A CD is a good way to ride out the storm right now. Investing in foreign currency right now is not a good idea as the dollar is really weak. Recently the canadian dollar was valued the same, thats the first time in history....
you may want to look into some foreign companies that own container ships, they are hurting right now as the US is not importing as many goods so they are a good buy as once our econ picks up, our spending will, thus increasing the waterway traffic.
Oil isnt a bad investment either, it wont go down, the only way it will go down is if what happens in the (**** i dont know 70s or 80s, was born in 83 so cut me some slack on dates) but the towelheads saw that we were exploring electric cars and hybrids back then and it was a good possibility that we would shift to these vehicles, well the towels just simply cut the cost of oil by half so nobody cared about the mpg any more. If diesel dropped to 2 bucks a gallon would you give a flying F about getting 14mpg? but other than that or simply we (our gvt) figures out something with opec and they get the price knocked down which is highly unlikely, oil will still go up. I still dont know why ailrines didnt invest in oil so they could offset their fuel costs, oh well, as warren buffett said, Invest in a company any idiot can run because sooner or later any idiot is going to run it.

unless your house is falling apart or it really is too small then i would stay in it, make some nice upgrades to your house to make you like it more, put a flatscreen tv in the garage, hell i have 9 tvs throughout the house, even have one for when im on the ****ter.. the housing market still needs a while for the correction to be pretty much complete, so even if youre getting a good deal on a new home, you wont be getting a good deal on your old home, also what appears to be a good deal on a new home would have looked like a steep price 5 years ago, so you may be buying still at a lil too high of a price. you could look into renting out your home but then you have maint issues, problems with finding a tennant.... I was advising one of my clients a year or so ago, she started up buying one house, her husband was a full bird so she used all her money to buy the one house and paid it off in 2 years, then went back and bought another one, rented that one, used the income from both rentals and her job to pay down that house and then bought a 3rd, well you can see how this is going, she now has 34 rental homes, makes about 40k a month off of the houses and theyre all paid for..... but just owning one rental house isnt worth it, just like insurance you need the law of large numbers to help you turn a profit...

your truck is paid for as well right?

bottom line, if you can stop investing in your current funds and switch into a money market and start putting your money towards CD's that will def turn your portfolio around. keep an eye out on the economy because when theres blood on the street, buy property. well in this case buy stocks, but they need to be down because of the economy, not because of poor managment, that way once the econ is back in gear they will be able to respond and start posting profits... like Southwest Airlines, theyve been expanding their market because a lot of other airlines that cant manage their business have been cutting back on flights, SW has been a great pioneer of budget airtravel which is what is needed in todays market. If a big airline goes belly up then theres gonna be a surplus of passengers out there that SW would love to pick up..

I used to day trade, all day, from 1 hour before market opens to 2 hours after, had 3 screeens. my brain was fried every day, but i had up to 4 or 5K trade fees a month (just giving you an idea on how many trades i made)


gonna head off to bed, want to change my brakes tomorrow before it gets hotter than hell, but im turning my rotors so thats gonna take a while so need to get up early...

 

mayfair....remember the golden rule...buy low, sell high. it's only money when you put it in and take it out. yes, your funds are down right now...then again, with the same dollar amount contributed each month, you're buying more shares of each fund. it will come back and when it does, you'll be that much better off.

 

Yep bet all the bear sterns shareholders would agree. LMAO.

The issue is he's not buying individual stocks, he doesn't control what that mutual fund does, it could have easily dumped the shares it held of the companies the companies that tanked and invested in a more blue chip stock.

I never trust anyone other than myself with my money.

The logic you're talking about is designed to lower your avg share price, while long term that can be good, but bankruptcy and insolvency is quite common these days and could make as much sense as buying a larger room on the Titanic while its sinking because its cheap.

So much for going to bed early, I'm gonna curse you Mayfair when its high noon and I'm sweating ***** doing my brakes.

 

I put about 50K inseveral mutual funds loaded up with energy stocks about a week before that early march 400 point jump. I was riding high that day it went up $2000 then over the next few weeks it went down about $4000 now I'm back even again. I probably should diversify moreinto growth funds but I'm willing to take the risk on the energy thing. It'spossible I bought into these funds atthe peak of the high oil price craze then again maybe I didn't. I really belive $150 a barrel oil is in our future. It wouldn't take much. Trouble with Iran ora terrorist attack somewhere..

 

Mayfair, to answer the question in your subject line, yes, I am sticking with stocks and mutual funds.

The other fellas are giving you good advice. You don't want to sell a bunch of shares right now after the recent losses. Look at it as an opportunity to buy more shares at a lower price. Do you understand the premise of dollar cost averaging? If you keep making regular purchases of mutual funds or stocks, especially when the market is down, you will do well over the long run.

If your investment horizon is relatively short, meaning you are going to need to live off your investments within the next 5-10 years, then you should start to gradually taper off from a heavy mix of stocks in your portfolio. Transfer a small percentage each month (or quarter, whatever) to a fund that is less volatile. I suggest the Hussman Strategic Total Return Fund (HSTRX). John Hussman created that fund to minimize market risk and it holds primarily government bonds, yet it has still averaged an 8% return since inception. I have a good share of my investments in Hussman's other fund (HSGFX), but as I get older I intend to start putting it in the Total Return Fund.

 

Thanks guy's for your advice. I wasn't thinking about selling off anything, just merely sending my hard earned cash into the purchase of a home rather than send it into a group of funds and watch it dissapear. It makes me sick. If I send 1G in, and in the next months statement on that fund I lost 1200. With homes now dropping as well as rates, would it make sense to send that same G to a mortgage company KNOWING that real estate is going to grow over time? I'm not thinkng about a McMansion like behindbars has ( ), what I was thinking about was a small upgrade that I can lowball the crap ot of because they're everywhere right now. If nothing happens, so be it.

That's where my heads at.