SeCsTaC

Hey again

So i'm trying to get a head start on all the other people my age, and get a head start in life. I have ~5000 saved up, that I'm willing to invest to invest for the long run... meaning 1 year.

So basically, how do I start buying shares, and how do dividends work?

If I have financial aid, will playing stocks screw me over? This 5k I have saved up is from working, and not from financial aid btw.

The 3 stocks I want to invest in is 1. AMD, 2 nVidia, 3. TOMTOM

so yeah... help me get started!

Never Summer

I vote that now is not the right time to invest, the market seems to be shit. I don't really follow it too much, but my stocks in Frontier Airlines just keep getting more and more worthless.

Renegade

fcx, cf, pbr long term...wait for the market to get even shittier before buying.

SeCsTaC

^ dude those stocks are expensive as shit lol

So how do I go about buying stocks? Is there a good website?

r3mix3r

If I were you I would just toss it in HSBCDirect right now, and in a year you'll make a guaranteed (if they don't adjust the rates) 4.25% on your $. Which is about $18/month

OR

To throw a wildcard at you, you can check out Prosper.com and fund a loan and recieve about 10% returns on your 5k.

OR

Buy some random stocks, but ehh I dunno.

doopstr

Not making any trades until after next week feds meeting at the earliest. No way to tell right now if the bottom is in until we see the market reaction to that.

Street Spirit

My advice would be to speak with a professional (perhaps at the bank) and get advice on how to best invest your money, and not to base it on what people on a car forum say to do with $5,000.

PolishPete

CD is your safest route, though rates suck right now. 6 months ago would have been a great time...so wait on this one.

Try Etrade. That's what I did. But if you're not into the market and understanding of economics and how things work monetarily, I wouldn't do it. You'd basically be gambling, and in which case you're better off telling a friend who's 21 to take your $ to the casino and putting it all on red.

You want a cheap stock...VYST. Great product, but low sales. Check em' out. I'm playing that they will get bought out.

Street Spirit

BTW, you may want to consider investing this money and basically forgetting about it for a while instead of putting it away for only one year (and then spending it?). Invest, re-invest, and keep it going. That money will be SO much more useful to you in 5 or 10 years, when you're finished school, looking to buy, or have bought a home, perhaps have a wife or family. That money will come in so handy! Spending it on 'material' things over the next few years might feel satisfying for the short term, but consider how amazing it would be to have $5,000+ at a time when it'll help you get your life started.

I put money away a long time ago and just kept re-investing it. It was a great gift to myself when I finally decided to use it after buying a house. It was like 'finding money you forgot you had'. I'm glad it wasn't wasted on retarded things when I was younger cuz it really came in handy and was put towards much more important things than anything I could've thought of when I was young.

Zippee

Don't worry about what the market is doing today or tomorrow, look at the long term (several years) and you will see the trend is up.

Put it in a good no-load growth mutual fund, reinvest the dividends and forget about it. Some years down the road you will have a tidy nest egg. I like T. Rowe Price and Janus but there are many to pick from.

hornyleprechaun

Am I the only one who read that his long term commitment is 1 year? To me 1 year is not a long term.

I'd just throw that money into a high yield savings account. You have a lot to win/lose in 1 year if you put the money in a stock(s).

Will Y.

HSBC, Emigrant Direct, any bank that gives you 4.25%+ on a CD or savings account > stocks.

Buying stocks = brokerage and transaction fees (per stock, it's $20-50 depending on brokerage) plus risk of loss of principal, unlike CDs and savings accounts. Also, the transaction fees on buying a couple of stocks for $5K would require a higher return to equal the interest from a CD or savings bank account.

hornyleprechaun

IMO if you don't want to touch the money, find a good 1 year CD to put the money in. That way you won't be able to touch/use the money without penalty, and you will be locked in at a decent rate.

SeCsTaC

Fair enough. But I'd still like to know how to get started in stocks, like what the good trading companies like etrade or scottstrade or something like that.

As for CDs... what % is considered a good deal?

ING is at like 3.65% which isn't that great right?

r3mix3r

HSBC is at 4.25% right now. For 1 year, I'd say its your best/safest option.

Fossil_TL

WAMU is at 4.75%, I have an account with them, so far everything looks good

SeCsTaC

^ Is this the traditional one, liquid one, or online one? All of them are in the 3% range for me.

NSXNEXT

iTrader: (2)

Dude, 1 year is your definition of long run?

WITHOUT A DOUBT DO NOT INVEST IN THE MARKET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

With the way the market is fluctuating, you'd be better off sticking it under your mattress.

Stick it in an ING or HSBC account or buy a CD and be done with it.

No one bothered to ask you what it was for?
How much liquid $$$ you have in savings?

If this is the only cash you have, DO NOT INVEST.

moonraker

if you have high risk tolerance you can start scaling into the market in a week or two and be fully prepared to average down as the market slowly starts to bottom. if you do jump into the market i would pick a basket of 5 or 6 stocks and diversify yourself along strong industries, especially 'recession proof' names just in case things get worse. also, you'd want to consider adding SDS or DOG which are etf's that short the indexes. those can hedge your portfolio to downside risk (they go up when the market goes down. and, in SDS' case, it gives you twice the inverse performance of the s&p)

if you can't stomach the risk and absolutely need the money in a year then do some CDs especially now to lock in rates before fed possibly takes further rate cut action

if you're still wanting to look into stocks don't look at their price to assume they're "expensive" as you did earlier. Look at GOOG for instance.. its over 500 a share and you think its "expensive" just because it costs a lot per share. well, guess what, it's really not expensive on a valuation basis at all (pending their earnings coming up). and, that stock can fluctuate $50 a day on any given day. You need to be looking at price to earnings multiple to determine whether a stock is "expensive". Don't look at share price.

based on your thinking you are looking at AMD for an investment just because you can buy a lot of shares and you think you're gaining leverage.... you need to lose that mindset right away. AMD is priced that low for a reason, they are getting spanked by intel on margins and overall management performance.

if it were my money and i had a 1 year timeframe i'd go with: MA (pick up after their earnings) to play the transition from cash to plastic, they have no credit risk like american express, FCX for precious metals and mining, not to mention they're a buyout candidate for sure for a rio tinto or a bhp billiton, RIG for deepwater drilling oil exposure, or VLO here for the next 4 months as refining margins seasonally kick off, POT or MOS for agriculture/fertilizer exposure because those companies have pricing power and i firmly believe that soft commodities will be the new oil as strong demand continues and weak supply continues for food/crops. MO or JNJ for recession proof names, MRK for pharma exposure and then i'd easily give 25% of your portfolio exposure to SDS as your hedge

also key thing to remember is do not buy all your shares at once... ever. average in and take advantage of the downward trending market we are in. buy 20% of your position in 1 stock now, 20% more in a few weeks, 20% more in a month. that way, you can average down with the market for your long names all while your hedge of SDS is offsetting the losses. and, if for some reason the market decides to go higher outta nowhere, then you've already got some of your money in the positions and you're already making money

oh and yea i agree with not taking financial advice from a car forum haha next 3-6 months for the market will be rough and tricky, and that's half your timeframe so keep that in mind.

Renegade

ETFC...buy and hold...you will be heavily rewarded 2 years from now

r3mix3r

Can you go into detail?

SeCsTaC

I don't need the money after 1 year, I'm just saying that 1 year is a lot of time for a company to turn around and such but I guess not.

The 5K that I have is not all of my money, it's what I'm willing to invest/risk.

AMD sparks my interest because it's in the gutter right now IMO and I believe they WILL come back. I don't think people will let Intel have a monopoly on the computer chip market.

nVidia because they're about to release their new line of Video Cards in the upcoming weeks/months.

But I think for the time being I need to get my money into a CD ASAP because its just sitting in the bank doing nothing.

I think I'll put it in Bank of Americas 4month CD @ 4.1% interest.

New Car TL-S

UTX, CRH, DIS have been real winners for me since 9/21/01. But for a long term "1 year term" try Emigrant, E-Trade, ING online savings. Stocks are great for the long haul and 1 yr isn't long.

KCPreki11

Great advice!

Sly Raskal

iTrader: (1)

How good is that website? have you done it before?

Renegade

Hey sorry, I forgot about this thread. There is a lot of information out there about E-trade if you look...hope some of you guys got in..it was like $3.80 when I called that now at $5.17...holding until at least $9

iamhomin

Since Etrade is nearly impossible to valuate given their current position (Selling their mortgage backed security at 30 cents a dollar, market volatility, etc) don't even touch this stock unless you plan to keep it short term and can take the loss. This is a gamble stock that's being traded at a bulk volume of 100,000 per trade.

I bought their stocks earlier in Jan for a little less than $3 dollars and sold it this past thursday at $4.75. The gain was nice, but I don't plan to touch this stock until I see their 1Q/2Q08 earnings.

Renegade

I disagree, etrade at these levels is still dirt cheap since they will not be going bankrupt and will be turning things around. If you buy now and hold for 2 years I think you'll be more than happy.

iamhomin

Hmm, that's optimism. How can you say they will turn things around in two years? They lost about 25% of their account holders, sold significant part of their portfolio, and gave Citadel a lot of equity when they accepted the cash infusion. I'm just brushing the surface here..

Plus if their stocks continue to rise purely on speculation before their earnings release, I'm pretty sure it would be too richly valued and will be a matter of time before the stocks dip to the 3-4 dollar level where it belongs.

Renegade

Tell me why the stock belongs at the $3-$4 dollar range. Thats not true. First off I bet you a lot of their old account holders are going to come back now that they are in the clear from bankruptcy, they offer the best combination of banking services with a brokerage. We will see whose right but I bet you in a year from now the stock will be closer to $7+ then $3-$4

CrockPot

i'm an E-Trade believer, and i don't even have a brokerage account with them.

https://acurazine.com/forums/showpos...2&postcount=64

also got in at $2.50.

New Car TL-S

anyone a American Airlines believer (AMR)? Bought 100 after 9/11 for about $18/ea, Bought a few hundred more a couple years ago @ $1.40. Its at $15 now, what should I do???

Trojanman750

if you got 5 grand you can buy two boats (2000 pills) of extasy. if you sell each pill for 5 dollars, you make 10 grand. sell each one for 10 dollars, you make 20 grand. investing money into drugs can generate returns of over 100%, which is much higher than any bank.


j/k


i have around 7,000 in a CD account at patelco which i dont touch. i earn about 40 bucks a month on interest, but i got to keep it at least 5,000 for a year or else i lose the special rate.

Trojanman750

you can also become a lender, if you think you can collect easily.

i lent a good friend of mine $800 to help him cover some "expenses", and i will be getting $1000 next weekend, very quick return.

i would not mess around with stocks right now, the whole market seems pretty bad. put it into something where you can get a set percentage with no risks. check out credit unions and the such.


and i wouldnt invest in AMD or Nvidia, my friend just bought those exact same companies in his "make believe" portfolio, where you invest with play money. he had something like a %40 loss or some shit.

New Car TL-S

made $200 on a "good friend"...like the saying goes, with friends like you who needs enemas.

Trojanman750

well lets just say that he made more than i did off my grand in cash, i took a small percentage of his cut. he wasnt paying bills with that money.

Trojanman750

he found a cherry GSR for a good price and flipped it, needed some extra money. it was clean white/black coupe, 92, manual, shoulda kept it but moneys money.

CrockPot

wrong, now's the time to consistently buy and hold.

iamhomin

I completely forgot about Etrade until someone was asking me about them the other day and I felt the need to bring this thread back up just to say... I told you so.

ETFC is still not worth it at its current price of a buck and some change.

Fossil_TL

isn't Etrade bankrupt?

I haven't following it for a while, but right now it seems trading in basic material and energy stocks are the way to go, cus right now we are in deflation period, when inflation hits, these stocks will take off from their 52week lows