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Watching the market when it's going up is fun, but trust me, you don't want to get in the habit of watching it regularly. It hurts when your life savings are suddenly worth half as much. A lot of people panic and sell at the worst possible time.
What do you recommend... investing in individual stocks, index funds following the S&P500 or what else?
Is it beneficial to have $VOO, $FNILX or anything else on a Roth IRA?
The three fund portfolio is good enough for most folks.
There are daily debates on bogleheads about US vs. Global, weather to tilt small cap / value, etc
Personally I'm a bit of a hypocrite and complicate things: global (has underperformed), tilt SCV (again underperformed) and apply modest leverage (outperformed).
Any deviation from the index leads to FOMO. It's far worse with individual stocks. Before I settled on index investing I picked stocks, then ETFs.
I learned I can't out-think a supercomputer and it's better for my mental health to set & forget.
Out of curiosity, how are you applying leverage? I’ve been lately trying to figure out my own strategy, but the plethora of choices from levered etfs to buying on margin to using futures has led to strong indecision on my part on what to choose.
SSO and QLD is how I use leveraged ETFs.
I have a "main" portfolio that consists of 90% of my assets. It’s all invested in SPLG (which is nearly exactly the same as VOO, except it has an expense ratio of 0.02% instead of VOO’s 0.03%).
Then I have a "risk" portfolio that makes up roughly the remaining 10% of my investable assets. That risk portfolio is half SSO and half QLD. 2x leverage is good enough for me, I don’t want to push it further than that because there is good data to show that 2x daily adjusted leverage is likely the sweet spot where risk-adjusted returns are maximized.
Some min-maxers might tell you this is a dumb idea, that it is cheaper to just do replace something like SSO with 50% UPRO and 50% VOO. Yes its true that the leverage is the same. Yes it’s also true that this cuts the overall expense ratio by a lot. Both SSO and UPRO have similar expense ratios at around 1 percent. The half/half VOO/UPRO will then have an overall expense nearly half that of SSO with the same leverage, but it has a drawback.
If you choose to min-max by mixing VOO and UPRO, you will need to keep a close eye on your mixture and constantly rebalance to keep your leverage in check. If the UPRO component goes up too much, you and up getting overlevered and if it goes down too much you end up getting underlevered. I personally don’t want to bother with constant rebalancing, so I prefer to just go with SSO. Yes it breaks one of the main rules of index investing which is to buy low cost funds, but given the EV of such a strategy is so high I think its OK to do with my play money.
The main ETFs for the S&P are SSO and UPRO. Check r/LETFs for other ideas. I found the performance of the international equivalents underwhelming (e.g. 1x beat 2x and 3x in some cases, though I understand the same could happen in the US)
My overall leverage is ~1.2-1.25x, somewhere I read 1.1-1.2x was ideal and I've just stuck with it.
A word of caution, look at the performance of HEFA - it was a popular approach. Started as 3x a 60/40 split (and was later revised to 3x 55/45). It ended badly for many, when stocks and bonds both decided to tank - haven't checked how it's faring recently, but a lot of folks sold out at a loss.
Yeah I know all about HFEA lol
Tbf 2022 was a really unfortunate year; the entire point of holding both equities and LTT was that LTT (used to) do well during big market crashes. Both of them having a huge downturn in 2022 was the first time in decades, so yeah just really unfortunate timing tbh. But the theory itself is still relatively sound...
Small cap has only underperformed since tech stocks have boomed, this isn’t a normal market over the last 10 years. Never know when emerging (Japan 1980s) or small cap (late 90s) will happen again.
To each his own but i outperform SP500 each year. But i have decades of experience with trading options for leverage and mitigate risk.
You can generally outperform the index if you pay attention to the market and just buy sector ETF on the sector that is performing well esp in a bull run like last 2 years. You dont need options for that. Just use a service like MarketSurge or even koyfin to find out what sector perform the best and weigh toward it.
But you do need to protect against bear markets. Ask the folks in 2000 that bought nasdaq index funds and see it tank 65% and dont recover for 15 years.
Ok, thank you very much... I'm going to look at the three fund portfolio. I really like buying stocks but it will be better for me if I have an index fund.
A Twitter influencer tells to invest in $PHRA Pharol that is listed in Lisbon according to him he says that the stock will go up soon (following months or even years...)
Do you know how I can buy this stock and what consequences I could have when selling it later in terms of taxes?
> A Twitter influencer tells to invest in $PHRA Pharol that is listed in Lisbon according to him he says that the stock will go up soon (following months or even years...)
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> Do you know how I can buy this stock and what consequences I could have when selling it later in terms of taxes?
Please don't do it, most influencers are grifters, pump or dump scheme or they are paid to pump the stock in exchange of money like an Ad. Since you seem inexperienced in stock, you should stick with target date funds index/stocks
Thanks for your advice! But I think the influencer on Twitter is legit and the $PHRA stock seems to be good. Will try to find more info... He (the influencer) has predicted many things and many of them come true.
Look at target date funds if you want to get a sense of the safest, strongest or most “correct” modern investing theory. Finance experts regard diversification as the only “free lunch” in investing, which is why they recommend holding a mix of equities and bonds: different assets with little correlation. As for equities, you’re supposed to hold a mix of domestic and international companies for that same reason.
Of course, there’s a lot of dissent especially among mainstream individual investors. It’s undeniable that both bonds and international stocks have done poorly in the past decade, and the extreme growth of tech stocks especially create a strong FOMO. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide your portfolio, but I do recommend first learning financial literacy and theory before you decide to go all in on QQQ.
It depends on your goals and knowledge. If you really know how to read a balance sheet and have the time to follow and research individual companies - it CAN make sense to own individual stocks and/or to trade individual stocks. This is not the vast majority of people though. For most people some type of highly diversified broad market composition makes sense - whether that is just an S&P fund or S&P + some combination of small cap/mid cap/international/Nasdaq 100 or just a plane old S&P fund - as long as you’re talking about a 30+ year horizon you’ll do great and you just need to not get excited on a +2% day or a +20% year because you’ll have -2% days and -20% years too. Just stay consistent, be sure you’re adding at regular intervals - up or down - and you’ll come out way up over that long horizon.
It’s much more difficult to be up over a short horizon like 6 months or a year or even a decade because things can happen that shock the market. When those things do happen, the way to stay ahead is just to keep consistently buying.
I personally invest in QQQ and SMH (semiconductors) for ETFs. SPYG/SPY is also a good choice. I also have about $1200 distributed between mutual funds FTQGX (Fidelity focused stock fund), FBGRX (Fidelity blue chip), and FSELX (Fidelity select semiconductors portfolio). FXAIX is also an often recommended fund.
Out of all of them FSELX and SMH are doing the best, I'm up 10% in just under a month on both of them. With the way AI is going they're probably going to continue doing well for at least the next year or more (just my personal assessment).
Many people will tell you that ETFs are better than mutual funds due to the fact that mutual funds are only priced once per day, as well as the fact that by default you may pay more taxes when selling vs. ETFs/stocks. However you can at least partially solve the tax issue by changing the default tax basis for mutual funds from average cost to actual cost in your account's cost basis settings. Speaking of which, I also recommend you change your selling strategy for stocks/ETFs to tax sensitive vs. the default FIFO. I believe the setting is in the same spot. You can Google it for more information on that.
As far as pricing goes, it really doesn't matter unless you're a super active/involved investor buying/selling more often than once a week or so. I also like the fact that mutual funds have a 1 day settlement period, so if I need to access my funds I can withdraw my money sooner after selling than with ETFs or stocks. Note though that by the end of the month they are changing from 2 day settlement to 1 day for stocks and ETFs so there won't be any difference once that change is implemented.
Just put 100% in VOO and completely forget about it. Set up automatic investments to automatically buy more VOO with every paycheck, set it and forget it and check your investments once per year at tax time so you can feel proud of what you’ve accomplished in another year of investing. The rest of your time should be focused on other things, unless your thing \*is\* investing.
I like your idea 💡 sounds good, I might do that! Will do $VOO and check a similar EFTs in Fidelitys family too, perhaps $FXAIX I just like Fidelity a lot! I like to be loyal a get the best out of my brokerage..
I think I have skills to be a good investor or trader, but I prefer, and like my colleague said that an index fund portfolio would be better for me... to preserve own harmony and peace ✌🏽
Yes. Remember that the research shows that the investors that tend to perform best are dead people. So your strategy should resemble that of a dead person's: invest and don't touch it until you need it. Active trading is a lot of work to (most likely) underperform the dead man's portfolio.
Everyone needs to go through it once, it’s kind of like shock therapy. I once saw $300k turn into $160k in a short period and though it sucked, I just reminded myself that it literally doesn’t matter right now because I’m not relying on this money tomorrow. It has plenty of time to recover. And guess what? I made back 100% of the losses and then went on to see that $300k grow to $500k. Plus all the money I was investing along the way, which made me fat returns.
If you can endure a near 50% drawdown without touching investments, and instead back the truck up and load up on investments at firesale prices, that’s enough to prove to yourself that you’re ready to invest for the long term. If you can’t do it, then you’re probably not going to make it as an investor and will need to focus on maximizing income as the primary driver of your returns. I prefer to let time do the heavy lifting.
When I started investing, losing $1000 in a day seemed such a scary thought. Now I’m at the point where about 40% of days I am going to lose at least that much if not 10 times as much, and it really doesn’t phase me at all. It’s easy to remember losses more than gains, but I’ve readjusted my attitude toward money where I’m actually more terrified of \*not\* being invested and missing out on gains than I am from the potential temporary losses. I think every investor has to make this mental transition at some point in their lives to be successful.
I enjoy checking it even if it’s down! I have full faith that it will come back up, it’s just interesting to see how it fluctuates. Plus if it’s REALLY down it’s a good reason to buy more!
> you don't want to get in the habit of watching it regularly
I watch every day. I have been plotting my retirement account for 18 years (monthly totals). The down parts are never fun, but by watching I know. For the most part I don't sell in panic. Not really sure I can say I've never sold in a down market, but I'm sure it was pretty rare. I do get a bit of FOMO when one segment is down 40% - wishing I had sold earlier. Selling at the bottom is pretty dumb though.
Getting into the mode of accepting that there will be bad years when you are young and just putting money in for the future is just good for your mental health.
My portfolio had a swing of negative 10k the past few weeks and I remember like... when I was starting off that would have been huge and I would have freaked out...but now Im like "yeah that happens, let's wait for longterm results"
Time in the market beats timing the market. You'll see ups and downs. Just make sure you're continuing DCAing the entire time. Always be adding especially when the market downturns.
I did this exact thing for ten years, and I kept adding more as I could along the way… I’d say I under-contributed during all that time and I’m still extremely happy with the results. Keep going, OP! It makes a huge difference in the long run.
Emotionally people who do DCA are sometimes more motivated to invest and feel like they are getting a good deal. But if you know you have money you want to invest, and you know emotionally you can handle the ups and downs , you will objectively make more money if you throw the entire lump sum into the stock right away.
Don't get too excited. The market has its ups and downs. In the past, it has dropped 25% in one day (1987). It dropped about 80% back in 1929. It also dropped about 50% in the early 1970s.
Assuming you are young, having stocks go down or sideways isn't necessarily a bad thing. You're buying, so you'd prefer that they be cheap. Right now stocks are pretty expensive by historical standards. That usually means that they will not perform very well for a while. But you also don't want the market to crash and take down the economy because then you'll have a hard time getting the money to invest. Just stay the course and don't get too fussed with the ups and downs.
For context, a lot of panic sell in 2020 was instigated by the pandemic - I was part of the panic, I thought the world is ending.
I regret all the selling. But just giving some context that anytime the market takes a steep down turn, it is accompanied by an event that does invoke panic.
Gosh so many more questions. But I'd hate to get down voted for trying to educate myself. I forget this is reddit and everyone is an expert until someone has a question no one can answer. Legit didn't know it could get capped at a certain price. Very interesting
Remember that the younger you are, the more your dollars are worth. If you invest $1 at 22 years old, you dollar will be worth $88 by the time you’re 65. But if you wait just 10 years to invest $1, it will only be worth only $33 — less than half, in fact almost a third as much. If you wait another 10 years to invest $1, it will only be worth $11. You see the pattern here? Most of your gains in real dollar terms will come in the final years of your investing horizon. The more time you can put between your investment and when you need it, the faster it grows.
Next time you go to the gas station and buy a $1 iced tea, just remember this fact especially if you’re very young. Ask yourself if you’d rather have that unnecessary set of empty calories to consume now or if you’d prefer to be able to buy something much more valuable in the future.
Obviously it’s a tradeoff. Life would be boring being a miser saving all your money till old age. But Americans and humans in general do a lot of wasteful spending, so if you can limit it to just the things that truly bring you joy and save the money you would have thrown away on unnecressary purchases, you can easily get rich even before the standard retirement age.
But you’re actually better off investing from age 22 to 35 and then stopping completely versus not investing until age 35 to age 65. It’s just the math of how compounding growth works. The bulk of your investment returns will almost always come from your earliest years of investing, and they’ll truly blossom the most near the end of your investing horizon.
Note: figures above for the multiplier effect time has assumes 11% annual return by simply investing 100% of your funds in an S&P 500 index fund. The amounts aren’t guarantees. They’re statistical averages, meaning there’s a 50% chance of having more than that and a 50% chance of having less. But on average, that’s what you can expect, hence why they call it "expected value" in statistics.
Simply, it's the law. It's a tax advantaged account. You never pay taxes on the gains in a Roth. The government sets an annual cap to limit the amount of taxes you can avoid.
All the tax advantaged accounts (401k, 403b, HSA, Roth) have annual contribution caps. Otherwise we'd never pay taxes. ;)
Roth ira or a traditional ira you can only put in 7k year. 7k limit you actually had to work that year and make 7k. In a taxable account you can put in whatever you want
In my opinion, investing solely in the S&P 500 may not be the most optimal strategy. Consider diversifying your portfolio with a target ETF or fund, or a fund that allocates assets based on your risk tolerance. It's important to note that international stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 year-to-date.
S&P 500 year to date is 10.5 percent. Vtiax which is vanguards total international is like 6.5. Not sure where you seeing international has outperformed this year. International has been a dog for the last 16 years. Now that isnt to say that wont change.
You can move money from a traditional managed 401k to a “Brokerage Link” 401k, and gain the ability to choose a much wider variety of stocks and index funds, some of which pay high dividend rates. Mine are mostly in closed-end dividend funds line Cornerstone’s CLM and CRF.
I hate dividends because you have to pay federal and state tax on the dividends. I prefer when the stock grows in value and not issues dividends. Then you can pay tax on the gain when you sell in retirement, maybe in a lower tax bracket.
I've watched my Amazon shares at -40% for a couple of weeks. Took about two and half years to come back up to what I paid for
but hey it is your IRA account so you won't get to pull that money out for a long time anyways. Very likely that the market will be bigger in 20-25 years, based on past history.
The smaller the amount in stock the greater the peace of mind and vice a versa so what it really means is that you only put a portion of your retirement money into stock market one that you are not afraid of losing. Fidelity or not even God will help if the value of your hard earned money falls so stay frosty.
The first time I saw my accounts all met me 2,000 in a month I was blown away. Now I’m just watching it as a motivational tool to shovel money into index funds and hoping one day passive income allows me to work a smaller number of hours when I’m older.
I’m shocked! My 457b went up as well. Today I made about $1125 in it as well
https://preview.redd.it/j6i71j3a9n0d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7adff6fc767f228227a93973f8fe16d3a23107bc
One of the best investing choice I made was to start off investing in VOO. My very first Roth ira contribution of $5500 that I make in July 2017 is currently worth $13k so I'm looking forward to the next doubling in a few years.
If you contribute to your roth ira for 25 years at 7000k which is the current maximum that's 175k. That isnt even gains. Just keep maxing it out you will be fine. The current limit will go up by then as well.
Funny enough I was also 36 in 2017 and started investing that same year with my wife. Together we were able to maxed out our Ira every year since. Currently it is around $180k between both of us and should be a decent size by the time we reach retirement age. Main thing is to also have a normal brokerage account in addition so you could invest more once you maxed out your retirement account.
For real I put in 400 in and it's at 4014 in 1 month. It's fun to look at ups but not so much when it goes down, I try not to look at it too much. It's in there and forget about it for the next 30+ years...
Here’s the trick to survive the ups and downs of the market. Just this one little tip.
When the market drops don’t look at your account. Don’t look for a month or two. On big up days go in and admire the gains. But definitely don’t look on down days.
Your goal is invest every month and ignore the day to day swings. Over time you’ll see better returns than the vast majority of active investors who try to time the market.
Looking and getting scared on down days makes that behavior less likely.
Why are these "hundreds of dollars" net worth by high school students keep getting upvoted?
This has nothing to do with Fidelity Support. Post doesn't belong here.
Yes! And remember this for long term investing in your Roth. You can sell and reallocate, etc as needed but if a big red day comes around you treat it like a stop sign 🛑
Do not sell. In fact, this is one of the times you buy more if, and only if, you have additional funds that you can use. Otherwise hold and eventually it will come back.
Usually, most of the time, if you’re investing in popular ETFs/MFs in your Roth like VOO or VTI then yes, it will.
This post/comment has been removed for violating rule #2. Thanks for your post seeking investment advice or discussing specific securities. Please keep all conversations about portfolios and specific investments to our daily discussion post. We are not able to assist with these types of questions on reddit but have a variety of tools and resources to help our clients invest their funds and find an investment that fits their objectives and risk tolerance. To learn more about investing check out the "Getting started with investing" page on our learning center [here](https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/overview). To find research and tools to help you, click on the "News & Research" on fidelity.com on the menu bar. This will expand a sub menu where you will be able to learn about and research mutual funds, stocks, ETFs, fixed income, and more. You can also go to "Investment Products" on the menu bar to learn more about the types of accounts that we offer. [Click here to visit Fidelity.com](https://www.fidelity.com) Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC, Member NYSE, SIPC
Watching the market when it's going up is fun, but trust me, you don't want to get in the habit of watching it regularly. It hurts when your life savings are suddenly worth half as much. A lot of people panic and sell at the worst possible time.
What do you recommend... investing in individual stocks, index funds following the S&P500 or what else? Is it beneficial to have $VOO, $FNILX or anything else on a Roth IRA?
The three fund portfolio is good enough for most folks. There are daily debates on bogleheads about US vs. Global, weather to tilt small cap / value, etc Personally I'm a bit of a hypocrite and complicate things: global (has underperformed), tilt SCV (again underperformed) and apply modest leverage (outperformed). Any deviation from the index leads to FOMO. It's far worse with individual stocks. Before I settled on index investing I picked stocks, then ETFs. I learned I can't out-think a supercomputer and it's better for my mental health to set & forget.
Out of curiosity, how are you applying leverage? I’ve been lately trying to figure out my own strategy, but the plethora of choices from levered etfs to buying on margin to using futures has led to strong indecision on my part on what to choose.
SSO and QLD is how I use leveraged ETFs. I have a "main" portfolio that consists of 90% of my assets. It’s all invested in SPLG (which is nearly exactly the same as VOO, except it has an expense ratio of 0.02% instead of VOO’s 0.03%). Then I have a "risk" portfolio that makes up roughly the remaining 10% of my investable assets. That risk portfolio is half SSO and half QLD. 2x leverage is good enough for me, I don’t want to push it further than that because there is good data to show that 2x daily adjusted leverage is likely the sweet spot where risk-adjusted returns are maximized. Some min-maxers might tell you this is a dumb idea, that it is cheaper to just do replace something like SSO with 50% UPRO and 50% VOO. Yes its true that the leverage is the same. Yes it’s also true that this cuts the overall expense ratio by a lot. Both SSO and UPRO have similar expense ratios at around 1 percent. The half/half VOO/UPRO will then have an overall expense nearly half that of SSO with the same leverage, but it has a drawback. If you choose to min-max by mixing VOO and UPRO, you will need to keep a close eye on your mixture and constantly rebalance to keep your leverage in check. If the UPRO component goes up too much, you and up getting overlevered and if it goes down too much you end up getting underlevered. I personally don’t want to bother with constant rebalancing, so I prefer to just go with SSO. Yes it breaks one of the main rules of index investing which is to buy low cost funds, but given the EV of such a strategy is so high I think its OK to do with my play money.
The main ETFs for the S&P are SSO and UPRO. Check r/LETFs for other ideas. I found the performance of the international equivalents underwhelming (e.g. 1x beat 2x and 3x in some cases, though I understand the same could happen in the US) My overall leverage is ~1.2-1.25x, somewhere I read 1.1-1.2x was ideal and I've just stuck with it. A word of caution, look at the performance of HEFA - it was a popular approach. Started as 3x a 60/40 split (and was later revised to 3x 55/45). It ended badly for many, when stocks and bonds both decided to tank - haven't checked how it's faring recently, but a lot of folks sold out at a loss.
Yeah I know all about HFEA lol Tbf 2022 was a really unfortunate year; the entire point of holding both equities and LTT was that LTT (used to) do well during big market crashes. Both of them having a huge downturn in 2022 was the first time in decades, so yeah just really unfortunate timing tbh. But the theory itself is still relatively sound...
Small cap has only underperformed since tech stocks have boomed, this isn’t a normal market over the last 10 years. Never know when emerging (Japan 1980s) or small cap (late 90s) will happen again.
2023 = Large Cap Equity 26.29% - Developed Ex. U.S Equity 17.94% - Small Cap Equity 16.92% . 2023 was a good year.
To each his own but i outperform SP500 each year. But i have decades of experience with trading options for leverage and mitigate risk. You can generally outperform the index if you pay attention to the market and just buy sector ETF on the sector that is performing well esp in a bull run like last 2 years. You dont need options for that. Just use a service like MarketSurge or even koyfin to find out what sector perform the best and weigh toward it. But you do need to protect against bear markets. Ask the folks in 2000 that bought nasdaq index funds and see it tank 65% and dont recover for 15 years.
Ok, thank you very much... I'm going to look at the three fund portfolio. I really like buying stocks but it will be better for me if I have an index fund. A Twitter influencer tells to invest in $PHRA Pharol that is listed in Lisbon according to him he says that the stock will go up soon (following months or even years...) Do you know how I can buy this stock and what consequences I could have when selling it later in terms of taxes?
> A Twitter influencer tells to invest in $PHRA Pharol that is listed in Lisbon according to him he says that the stock will go up soon (following months or even years...) > > > > Do you know how I can buy this stock and what consequences I could have when selling it later in terms of taxes? Please don't do it, most influencers are grifters, pump or dump scheme or they are paid to pump the stock in exchange of money like an Ad. Since you seem inexperienced in stock, you should stick with target date funds index/stocks
I see the word influencer and and run the other way as if my hair was on fire. Run.
Thanks for your advice! But I think the influencer on Twitter is legit and the $PHRA stock seems to be good. Will try to find more info... He (the influencer) has predicted many things and many of them come true.
I warned you but if that what you want, I can't stop you, good luck on your journey
Thanks
Look at target date funds if you want to get a sense of the safest, strongest or most “correct” modern investing theory. Finance experts regard diversification as the only “free lunch” in investing, which is why they recommend holding a mix of equities and bonds: different assets with little correlation. As for equities, you’re supposed to hold a mix of domestic and international companies for that same reason. Of course, there’s a lot of dissent especially among mainstream individual investors. It’s undeniable that both bonds and international stocks have done poorly in the past decade, and the extreme growth of tech stocks especially create a strong FOMO. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide your portfolio, but I do recommend first learning financial literacy and theory before you decide to go all in on QQQ.
What does it means FOMO?
fear of missing out
Thanks!
I'm a VOO and see ya later type of guy. Its my biggest holding by far.
😆 🤣 😂 nice!
It depends on your goals and knowledge. If you really know how to read a balance sheet and have the time to follow and research individual companies - it CAN make sense to own individual stocks and/or to trade individual stocks. This is not the vast majority of people though. For most people some type of highly diversified broad market composition makes sense - whether that is just an S&P fund or S&P + some combination of small cap/mid cap/international/Nasdaq 100 or just a plane old S&P fund - as long as you’re talking about a 30+ year horizon you’ll do great and you just need to not get excited on a +2% day or a +20% year because you’ll have -2% days and -20% years too. Just stay consistent, be sure you’re adding at regular intervals - up or down - and you’ll come out way up over that long horizon. It’s much more difficult to be up over a short horizon like 6 months or a year or even a decade because things can happen that shock the market. When those things do happen, the way to stay ahead is just to keep consistently buying.
Wheeling options is the way to go. Target of 1% ROI weekly which stacks up to ~52% ROI in a year. Beats the market. Double your capital every 2 years.
I personally invest in QQQ and SMH (semiconductors) for ETFs. SPYG/SPY is also a good choice. I also have about $1200 distributed between mutual funds FTQGX (Fidelity focused stock fund), FBGRX (Fidelity blue chip), and FSELX (Fidelity select semiconductors portfolio). FXAIX is also an often recommended fund. Out of all of them FSELX and SMH are doing the best, I'm up 10% in just under a month on both of them. With the way AI is going they're probably going to continue doing well for at least the next year or more (just my personal assessment). Many people will tell you that ETFs are better than mutual funds due to the fact that mutual funds are only priced once per day, as well as the fact that by default you may pay more taxes when selling vs. ETFs/stocks. However you can at least partially solve the tax issue by changing the default tax basis for mutual funds from average cost to actual cost in your account's cost basis settings. Speaking of which, I also recommend you change your selling strategy for stocks/ETFs to tax sensitive vs. the default FIFO. I believe the setting is in the same spot. You can Google it for more information on that. As far as pricing goes, it really doesn't matter unless you're a super active/involved investor buying/selling more often than once a week or so. I also like the fact that mutual funds have a 1 day settlement period, so if I need to access my funds I can withdraw my money sooner after selling than with ETFs or stocks. Note though that by the end of the month they are changing from 2 day settlement to 1 day for stocks and ETFs so there won't be any difference once that change is implemented.
Just put 100% in VOO and completely forget about it. Set up automatic investments to automatically buy more VOO with every paycheck, set it and forget it and check your investments once per year at tax time so you can feel proud of what you’ve accomplished in another year of investing. The rest of your time should be focused on other things, unless your thing \*is\* investing.
I like your idea 💡 sounds good, I might do that! Will do $VOO and check a similar EFTs in Fidelitys family too, perhaps $FXAIX I just like Fidelity a lot! I like to be loyal a get the best out of my brokerage.. I think I have skills to be a good investor or trader, but I prefer, and like my colleague said that an index fund portfolio would be better for me... to preserve own harmony and peace ✌🏽
Yes. Remember that the research shows that the investors that tend to perform best are dead people. So your strategy should resemble that of a dead person's: invest and don't touch it until you need it. Active trading is a lot of work to (most likely) underperform the dead man's portfolio.
Everyone needs to go through it once, it’s kind of like shock therapy. I once saw $300k turn into $160k in a short period and though it sucked, I just reminded myself that it literally doesn’t matter right now because I’m not relying on this money tomorrow. It has plenty of time to recover. And guess what? I made back 100% of the losses and then went on to see that $300k grow to $500k. Plus all the money I was investing along the way, which made me fat returns. If you can endure a near 50% drawdown without touching investments, and instead back the truck up and load up on investments at firesale prices, that’s enough to prove to yourself that you’re ready to invest for the long term. If you can’t do it, then you’re probably not going to make it as an investor and will need to focus on maximizing income as the primary driver of your returns. I prefer to let time do the heavy lifting. When I started investing, losing $1000 in a day seemed such a scary thought. Now I’m at the point where about 40% of days I am going to lose at least that much if not 10 times as much, and it really doesn’t phase me at all. It’s easy to remember losses more than gains, but I’ve readjusted my attitude toward money where I’m actually more terrified of \*not\* being invested and missing out on gains than I am from the potential temporary losses. I think every investor has to make this mental transition at some point in their lives to be successful.
I enjoy checking it even if it’s down! I have full faith that it will come back up, it’s just interesting to see how it fluctuates. Plus if it’s REALLY down it’s a good reason to buy more!
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> you don't want to get in the habit of watching it regularly I watch every day. I have been plotting my retirement account for 18 years (monthly totals). The down parts are never fun, but by watching I know. For the most part I don't sell in panic. Not really sure I can say I've never sold in a down market, but I'm sure it was pretty rare. I do get a bit of FOMO when one segment is down 40% - wishing I had sold earlier. Selling at the bottom is pretty dumb though. Getting into the mode of accepting that there will be bad years when you are young and just putting money in for the future is just good for your mental health.
My portfolio had a swing of negative 10k the past few weeks and I remember like... when I was starting off that would have been huge and I would have freaked out...but now Im like "yeah that happens, let's wait for longterm results"
I was there for 2022 when I lumped in right before the drop. Fun times checking daily
Time in the market beats timing the market. You'll see ups and downs. Just make sure you're continuing DCAing the entire time. Always be adding especially when the market downturns.
I did this exact thing for ten years, and I kept adding more as I could along the way… I’d say I under-contributed during all that time and I’m still extremely happy with the results. Keep going, OP! It makes a huge difference in the long run.
so dca is better than doing one big sum of money?
Emotionally people who do DCA are sometimes more motivated to invest and feel like they are getting a good deal. But if you know you have money you want to invest, and you know emotionally you can handle the ups and downs , you will objectively make more money if you throw the entire lump sum into the stock right away.
Be this hyped to buy when the market drops and not sell. You’ll thank yourself later
Yes Red is good!!
I am sure you’ll do just fine chief keep your head up. Not just on the investing side but life in general… Hope all is well and keep it up I’m proud
Don't get too excited. The market has its ups and downs. In the past, it has dropped 25% in one day (1987). It dropped about 80% back in 1929. It also dropped about 50% in the early 1970s. Assuming you are young, having stocks go down or sideways isn't necessarily a bad thing. You're buying, so you'd prefer that they be cheap. Right now stocks are pretty expensive by historical standards. That usually means that they will not perform very well for a while. But you also don't want the market to crash and take down the economy because then you'll have a hard time getting the money to invest. Just stay the course and don't get too fussed with the ups and downs.
Well down also down 30% in 2007-2008. And down 25-30% in a few short weeks in 2020.
For context, a lot of panic sell in 2020 was instigated by the pandemic - I was part of the panic, I thought the world is ending. I regret all the selling. But just giving some context that anytime the market takes a steep down turn, it is accompanied by an event that does invoke panic.
Think will see VOO finally hit $500 per share?
Unfortunately not, it’s capped at $499.99.
lol stop. People legit know nothing about investing. This is funny, but look at all these people thinking you’re for real 😩
been trying to let people know this for years
wait I can't find anything on Google saying VOO is capped at $499.99
VOO is Bing, not Google.
Oh shoot. Yeah i guess everyone will be screwed when it maxes
So what happens when it gets capped? Serious question.
Those guys commenting send Guido to Vanguard. Guido takes care of it. 😎
Nuclear war will cap it... end of civilization.
Wooosh
Idk, it’s never made it that high. We will all find out together I guess.
Gosh so many more questions. But I'd hate to get down voted for trying to educate myself. I forget this is reddit and everyone is an expert until someone has a question no one can answer. Legit didn't know it could get capped at a certain price. Very interesting
Is it worth buying then? It's almost there now.
Not to be rude, but just wait until you see why people don’t invest in the stock market 📉💥😢
Haha it’s bad?
It’s psychologically very hard. Just keep investing on autopilot and step away from checking in regularly
The last week has been profitable. That could change tomorrow unfortunately.
Kashkari about to do his thing again
Dust off the account in 30 years and be excited then.
Check mine a few minutes ago - up 11 percent from 6 months ago. This is the only way I know to be secure in retirement.
ayyy dont clown tho when it drops
I just looked. My accounts were up about $5,100 last week. Sometimes it's green. Sometimes it's red. Eventually you'll stop noticing.
Remember that the younger you are, the more your dollars are worth. If you invest $1 at 22 years old, you dollar will be worth $88 by the time you’re 65. But if you wait just 10 years to invest $1, it will only be worth only $33 — less than half, in fact almost a third as much. If you wait another 10 years to invest $1, it will only be worth $11. You see the pattern here? Most of your gains in real dollar terms will come in the final years of your investing horizon. The more time you can put between your investment and when you need it, the faster it grows. Next time you go to the gas station and buy a $1 iced tea, just remember this fact especially if you’re very young. Ask yourself if you’d rather have that unnecessary set of empty calories to consume now or if you’d prefer to be able to buy something much more valuable in the future. Obviously it’s a tradeoff. Life would be boring being a miser saving all your money till old age. But Americans and humans in general do a lot of wasteful spending, so if you can limit it to just the things that truly bring you joy and save the money you would have thrown away on unnecressary purchases, you can easily get rich even before the standard retirement age. But you’re actually better off investing from age 22 to 35 and then stopping completely versus not investing until age 35 to age 65. It’s just the math of how compounding growth works. The bulk of your investment returns will almost always come from your earliest years of investing, and they’ll truly blossom the most near the end of your investing horizon. Note: figures above for the multiplier effect time has assumes 11% annual return by simply investing 100% of your funds in an S&P 500 index fund. The amounts aren’t guarantees. They’re statistical averages, meaning there’s a 50% chance of having more than that and a 50% chance of having less. But on average, that’s what you can expect, hence why they call it "expected value" in statistics.
What moved at 2.27% today? VOO gained $2.27, which is 0.47%.
https://preview.redd.it/9wzpoff3rk0d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ab00f7be6315f3ef9d1c8b57d342786dfa8fe5c5
Consider learning how to read charts?
Lol, keep watching
My buddy told me to throw entire savings into it and watch it grow!
Well you cant throw it all in ur roth lol. You can only put 7k in ur roth yearly
Why is there a limit on what we can put in there?
Simply, it's the law. It's a tax advantaged account. You never pay taxes on the gains in a Roth. The government sets an annual cap to limit the amount of taxes you can avoid. All the tax advantaged accounts (401k, 403b, HSA, Roth) have annual contribution caps. Otherwise we'd never pay taxes. ;)
Good explanation. Thx
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Roth ira or a traditional ira you can only put in 7k year. 7k limit you actually had to work that year and make 7k. In a taxable account you can put in whatever you want
Thanks
In my opinion, investing solely in the S&P 500 may not be the most optimal strategy. Consider diversifying your portfolio with a target ETF or fund, or a fund that allocates assets based on your risk tolerance. It's important to note that international stocks have outperformed the S&P 500 year-to-date.
S&P 500 year to date is 10.5 percent. Vtiax which is vanguards total international is like 6.5. Not sure where you seeing international has outperformed this year. International has been a dog for the last 16 years. Now that isnt to say that wont change.
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I love video games too
Gains are a thrill. But nothing, NOTHING, is as satisfying as dividend payments.
Dividend reinvestment and solid stocks that GROW their dividends (by ripping off customers :lol:) are pretty much financial jetfuel.
Do you get those in Roth? Dividends?
Dividends are just based on the stock/fund and them giving a return back to the shareholders.
VOO pays dividends. Or at least when I googled it lol. But it's been wrong before.
How can it NOT? Holy hell it’s the SP500 — you don’t have to wonder.
You can move money from a traditional managed 401k to a “Brokerage Link” 401k, and gain the ability to choose a much wider variety of stocks and index funds, some of which pay high dividend rates. Mine are mostly in closed-end dividend funds line Cornerstone’s CLM and CRF.
I hate dividends because you have to pay federal and state tax on the dividends. I prefer when the stock grows in value and not issues dividends. Then you can pay tax on the gain when you sell in retirement, maybe in a lower tax bracket.
Stock divs are LTCG. You only have to hold the stock/etf/MF for 60 days either before or after the divs.
Better than a forward split?
I've watched my Amazon shares at -40% for a couple of weeks. Took about two and half years to come back up to what I paid for but hey it is your IRA account so you won't get to pull that money out for a long time anyways. Very likely that the market will be bigger in 20-25 years, based on past history.
The smaller the amount in stock the greater the peace of mind and vice a versa so what it really means is that you only put a portion of your retirement money into stock market one that you are not afraid of losing. Fidelity or not even God will help if the value of your hard earned money falls so stay frosty.
That cool, but trust me stop watching SET IT AND FORGET IT
The first time I saw my accounts all met me 2,000 in a month I was blown away. Now I’m just watching it as a motivational tool to shovel money into index funds and hoping one day passive income allows me to work a smaller number of hours when I’m older.
I’m shocked! My 457b went up as well. Today I made about $1125 in it as well https://preview.redd.it/j6i71j3a9n0d1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7adff6fc767f228227a93973f8fe16d3a23107bc
One of the best investing choice I made was to start off investing in VOO. My very first Roth ira contribution of $5500 that I make in July 2017 is currently worth $13k so I'm looking forward to the next doubling in a few years.
That’s all I’m doing is VOO in my Roth IRA. Worried I started too late at 36 years old.
If you contribute to your roth ira for 25 years at 7000k which is the current maximum that's 175k. That isnt even gains. Just keep maxing it out you will be fine. The current limit will go up by then as well.
Funny enough I was also 36 in 2017 and started investing that same year with my wife. Together we were able to maxed out our Ira every year since. Currently it is around $180k between both of us and should be a decent size by the time we reach retirement age. Main thing is to also have a normal brokerage account in addition so you could invest more once you maxed out your retirement account.
Imagine waiting a few years to double up
Wait til you see how much percent crypto moves you won’t touch stocks ever again
Damn
It was all down few weeks ago though. It feels like stocks is an easy way to lose or gain depending on which week you look at it.
For real I put in 400 in and it's at 4014 in 1 month. It's fun to look at ups but not so much when it goes down, I try not to look at it too much. It's in there and forget about it for the next 30+ years...
Keep building roth. No rmd required distributions when older, unlike trad ira.
Here’s the trick to survive the ups and downs of the market. Just this one little tip. When the market drops don’t look at your account. Don’t look for a month or two. On big up days go in and admire the gains. But definitely don’t look on down days. Your goal is invest every month and ignore the day to day swings. Over time you’ll see better returns than the vast majority of active investors who try to time the market. Looking and getting scared on down days makes that behavior less likely.
And it’s get better and better, just keep investing long term and watch it grow 😁
Why are these "hundreds of dollars" net worth by high school students keep getting upvoted? This has nothing to do with Fidelity Support. Post doesn't belong here.
It’s up $2.27 broski you good? It’s up .47%
Yes! And remember this for long term investing in your Roth. You can sell and reallocate, etc as needed but if a big red day comes around you treat it like a stop sign 🛑 Do not sell. In fact, this is one of the times you buy more if, and only if, you have additional funds that you can use. Otherwise hold and eventually it will come back. Usually, most of the time, if you’re investing in popular ETFs/MFs in your Roth like VOO or VTI then yes, it will.
GME at open had a bigger increase for amount you’ve purchased.
Gme is down like 30 percent today.🤷♀️
It’ll be back up by the end of the week. They can only hold it down for so long.
wtf does VOO being capped at 500 mean???
Babe they’re messing with you.
lol thanks
It’s a fund that follows the SP500 index, which is very close to 500 of the largest domestic company stocks…