What would you say is a good amount of money to start with this type of investment? How many transactions will a Fund such as this do in a month? I'm really afraid the transaction fees and of how much it costs to maitain an account... What kind of ROI should you expect? Sorry if these are the usual "I need to make money fast or I'll pee my pants" questions... Any feedback will be greatly appreciated
Such a fund will typically not make any transactions, unless stocks are added to or removed from the index. An index fund in a discount broker platform should probably only cost a few bucks or so a year. If you've got a couple hundred bucks, it may be a good place to start. You'll ideally want to add to it as much as you can over time. And setting up such an account as a Roth IRA will enable it to grow tax-free.
I would recommend investing in silver. Silver is good because it's cheaper to buy than say, gold, but is still a valuable commodity that tends to retain or increase in value, especially recently considering the state of the economy. Plus it's a physical, palpable object, not some account on the internet (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just more confusing for a beginner).
I'm a beginner in investing too and I got interested in investing in silver. Please enlighten me. My husband is a small-scale miner and every time he's up for recovering gold he wouldn't include recovering silver too. I always tell to recover the silver too so we can sell it if the value goes up but he says it's never going to be up and it would be of less value as time goes by. Is silver up for export too? Thanks in advance. for taking a peek at my post.
Index funds are a smart idea. You'll protect yourself from major losses and it's a safe bet that you'll see gains over time. When I first started investing, I jumped into stocks and chose companies that I thought were going to grow. I didn't make bad picks, but I don't think you should guess like I did.
I'd suggest you do your research and go with stocks that provide a steady dividend. Dividend stocks benefit you two ways. One they will generally always go up in value over the long term, two they payout small amounts per share on a regular basis. If you reinvest your dividends into more shares of stock then you will compound your growth over the long term. Investing is all about the long term. Short term profits always cost someone money even if you make a profit. And while that might sooth the savage greedy beast in you, its not a long term strategy for success of an economy...or a retirement. Find you ten stocks paying dividends and buy one share each. Watch them and learn about the companies. Buy a little more each month to be determined on what you learn about the companies you own.
I would buy a few books on investing first. The classics like The Intelligent Investor, Common stocks and uncommon profits, etc. There's also good recent books, like You Can Be A Stock Market Genius (Great introduction to special situations). Value investing for dummies is pretty good too. Take your time to find the one single best idea out there, and jam your $1k in it. There's no point in diversifying $1k, and jamming it all on one idea makes you REALLY pay attention to what you pick. TAKE YOUR TIME. Repeat with the next $1k's you get until you are comfortable with your number of picks. Eventually, your interest might develop a lot and you want to delve into more advanced stuff. There are tons of valuation books/courses out there. It's not an absolute necessity, but valuation is definitely a great tool to have in your stock picking arsenal. You can practice this without investing your money. You'll need lots, lots of practice. These are my recommendations, good luck.
Agreed. Better managed mutual funds are generally the best way for the vast majority of unsophisticated investors with substantial assets to invest much if not all of their money.
A stock mutual fund. Choose an index fund tied to one of the major indices--NASDAQ, S&P, etc. There are some starter programs at some places (try Vanguard or Fidelity) where you don't need much to set up an account. Hope that helps.
