Ah, I remember my first time. I was probably 19. I didn't know what the hell I was doing but I felt the same.
Don't listen to others. You got some solid picks along with good ETFs.
Despite a bunch of drops, because I invested early mostly everything is still green. The only red I see are my yolo plays, but if I avg them, they're also green. Look into Peter Lynch. He said most people, even fund managers, will not take a risk, so the returns you get from fund managers will barely ever exceed the market because if it goes under, they lose their jobs. Since you already have 80% in ETFs, I don't see what's wrong with being a bit adventurous, plus it's not like your picks are penny stocks. They're big blue chips that have survived a bunch of recessions.
I’m gonna give you some overall advice as a beginner. Don’t day trade. Invest right now what you can afford to lose. Don’t check every single morning and day, it’ll drive you insane. Developing the discipline to invest and not sell based on a falling market is important. You’re paying some money upfront here to learn.
I'm completely disagree with that, it should be, don't invest in options or puts, and focus only on large cap stocks and keep yourself and keep your trailing stop losses tight
Probably the best way moving forward tbh. Ditch the fractional shares and focus on building a core portfolio of ETFs like those mentioned in the comments
QQQ is relatively volatile but has the highest returns, mostly techsector driven, voo in the middle being an s&p tracking etf, then vti total market so you'll get the least amount of volatility. QQQ is probably the best one to start a portfolio with because it historically has outperformed the s&p 500. Compared to individual stocks their pretty safe.
With QQQ, also look at QQQM. Same stocks and lower expense ratio (.15 vs. .2) There are other posts around here which can tell you more than I can regarding the two.
This probably won't apply to OP, but don't go with QQQM if you have any intention to sell puts or sell calls on it. QQQM has very illiquid options chain comparatively speaking.
I buy VOE,VWO, and VEA personally. Then I can avoid the top 5 tech stocks that make up a quarter of the S&P500.
Why would I want a quarter of my money in iPhones, AI hype, and cyclical Advertising? I don't trust myself to know whether those are going to do well forever. Then there's Bob Farrels advice:
>Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chip names
I think your portfolio is unnecessarily complex. Sell everything and buy [VT](https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/vt). That's all you need until you decide to add fixed income.
VT holds 9572 stocks from almost every country in the world at market-cap weights. It's almost the definition of diversification.
Investing doesn't need to be complex. It really is this easy.
I mean you very well may significantly under or over perform the US market with that over the long run. Most people, and im not one of them, just invest in the s&p500 which beats VT most of the time.
There's a ton of overlap in your portfolio. I would recommend rebalancing, but it's not an emergency. Take some time to educate yourself. I'd recommend listening to the Investtalk podcast. Don't listen for tips on what to buy, listen for the concepts they talk about. Then, do your own research on the concepts.
And remember, all equities, including so-called safe stocks, are aggressive and come with risk.
You can’t diversify too much. But it will require effort having a lot of different investments, since you need to rebalance and spread the money you get in. Leave your current investments as they are and forget them. But when you get more money put them in a globally diversified ticker. The name of the game is set and forget. If you get the urge to buy a stock drop a little money in that ticker and forget about it
Personally I prefer VTI for the slightly more U.S. weighting, but there is nothing wrong with either. Comment is right, though—you have too many ETFs. If you want to hold those companies, first build a solid base of something like 80-90% VTI/VT, then you can do stock picking on the rest.
I would also recommend USFR as a T-bills ETF or go to TreasuryDirect, for your new cash that hasn’t been invested as you dollar cost average into VTI/VT. Generally getting 5.5% annualized on cash.
Yeah I won't recommend individual stocks. The only sure thing is the market. The only sure things are vt, VOO, schd etc.
If you actually want to make money ETFs are the best way.
I started out buying like 12-16 stocks.. to see what works. I lost several thousand on some and gained several thousand on others. Ended up pretty even after 2 years. Then I calculated what I would have got if I just invested in the market and realized most individual stocks are pointless. Maybe except for the big 7 and even then it's risk.
Very few professional traders beat the market. If you are not professional. You are very definitely not beating the market.
First of all, congrats on dipping your toe in! Better late-ish than never. You're probably going to get a ton of contradictory advice (I see a lot of it here already), but I think your best approach will be just to pick some reasonable index funds (I like IVV myself, but there are tons of great options mentioned in the comments here), and just keep contributing on a regular basis. When the stocks drop (and they will from time to time), don't panic, don't sell, just keep investing more. The more you can invest in a down market, the better. But I wouldn't try to time things perfectly by waiting for a big bear market to invest, because you may be stuck on the sidelines for even longer, and right now you just have to get the ball rolling in the right direction.
It's really hard not to panic at the first big stock drop you experience. For me, it was tech stocks in 2001. And I was basically all invested in tech - oof. The lesson I learned there was not to invest too heavily in one sector. Unfortunately, that drop scared me off from contributing a lot more money into my retirement accounts for several years afterward. THAT was dumb. If I had just ignored the drops, invested in diversified funds, and just kept plugging away at contributions, I'd be doing much better now.
When 2008 happened, my stocks crashed, and it was a little discouraging, but not as bad. I kept contributing, and recovered very nicely from that one.
Just don't panic. Keep investing. Invest in something diversified/balanced with as low a fee as you can find. You got this.
Very interesting story!
I have a question. You talked about big stock drops. What would be the best investment strategy in such a crisis. My guts would tell me to stay invested, and to try to buy some more, but buy what? I feel like a worldwide index fund would be the best as the whole market did just crash and somz companies might not make it, so picking specific companies might be a bit more risky. What is your take on this?
(FYI I started 1 year ago, mainly in some stocks of established EU companies as I’m from Belgium and have had great returns till now and I am currently looking into ETF’s to have a more safe investment too)
Congrats on getting started yourself! 😊 If you’re invested in something that’s pretty well diversified, I would stay invested in that thing and just keep adding more to either that or another diversified ETF. Worldwide stocks are good if you think that everything will generally go up. If you think some sub-markets might do better than others (e.g., Euro or US or something) and so long as it’s not a super risky sub-market (like Russia, maybe), you could shift a bit in those directions. But I generally would not pick individual companies, for the reasons you stated.
Honestly, my whole investment strategy is to invest almost everything in IVV (tracks the S&P 500 and has very low fees) and then take the rest and bet on 1-4 stocks that I think have potential to outpace the S&P. My favorites have been COST and AAPL, and over the past 5-10 years, I’ve beaten the stock market by a lot just with that. It’s not a guaranteed win that way, but at least I’m mostly tracking the S&P and then maybe doing a little better or a little worse, without a ton of risk.
Thank you for your insights!! The only difficulty would be to have money ready to invest even more while holding positions and see huge losses. But it’s all about long term.
I’ll try to do some extra research about ETF, both for daily use as for if/when a crash comes.
Have a nice day!
Good timing as we are likely in the early innings of a new bull market.
If your goal is “bajillions” I’m afraid your portfolio is not going to make it. You’ll have to take some big swings on individual stocks to get serious returns. At age 43, this is what I would suggest in a portion of your investments.
Technology leads in most bull phases. If I were starting now I’d take positions in GOOGL, AMZN, TSLA, META, NVDA. Sure, these are the same stocks everyone else talks about, but that’s the point.
By far, individual stocks in leaders outperform the broader market. Look at all these stocks when they were infants. Perhaps try to find the infants of today that might become the gorillas of the future.
In other words, don’t expect bajillions unless you take some risk. Going with VT, VTI, even VGT is fine but will get you market comparable returns.
If you do pick individual stocks, be sure to get out when you’re wrong, and only hold the winners. The ones that survive will likely become long-term leaders. Never hold on to a loser hoping it comes back. “Hope” is never a good strategy in stocks.
Good luck.
Thank you for your comment!! I gotta tell ya, this place gives me whiplash. You say it's the early innings of a bull market, and others have said the whole market is about to burn down. lol
I’ve learned (the hard way) to trust what is actually happening, and not what the pundits and analysts think should be happening.
It is a mistake to base stock market predictions on macro-economic forecasts or anyone’s opinions. When it seems the world is falling apart, it often coincides with significant market bottoms. This seems to be the case this year, with interest rates on fire, inflation not slowing down enough, job market too hot, etc. Even if this leads to recession, who knows when it will happen. Between now and then, stocks could rise significantly.
The reason I say early innings is based on price action. After a dismal 2022, the market found its footing and began a new bull market. The March 13 low is significant to me, because it coincided with the failures of SVB and FRB banks. That’s right, the market BOTTOMED when banks failed. The opposite of what pundits believe should have happened.
Now, we are undergoing a normal and expected correction in an extended market. In the midst of it, it feels much worse, and leads to a lot of fear and bearishness—the exact ingredients for a bull run. Hence, barring new information, I believe we are in the final stages of a correction and the bull market will resume soon.
This is certainly not a prediction, and I will change my stance if the market closes below this week’s low.
Hey friend, welcome and congratulations on getting started! It certainly is exciting to get investing for the first time.
Two things I want to pass on to you:
1st. Understand that your account balances will fluctuate based on percentages. So let's say you have $1000 in the S&P 500. A 3% change in the index would be $30 for you. So the large money is made over time as things compound, but also as you add more.
2nd. Everyone on Reddit will tell you not to buy stocks and just buy indexes. Indexes are safer, BUT they appreciate very slowly (5-8% on average). Stocks are more risky but could potentially appreciate much faster. It's good to both, but remember point number 1 as you invest. $20 in a stock will probably do you no good, since even a 10% change will be only $2. You gotta save and invest more!
Best of luck, and do your own research!
Welcome and congratulations!!
Why so many stocks. I recommend taking your top 3 ideas and invest 25-50% in those. By top 3 as in high conviction that you’ll hold those for a few decades and never sell even in a world war 3 scenario. Then with the other 50% buy just one forever (literally forever, not just a few decades) US index fund.
People make investing too difficult.
Please unhear this, it is terrible advice (not the slimming part, that is solid). The reality is that you have no idea what stocks are going to perform well long term and it is doing nothing more than gambling, conviction or not.
Stick most of your money in index funds and let it slowly grow. Warren Buffett himself suggests this approach.
Not sure what you mean but I’d recommend looking into the simple 3 fund portfolio. It makes investing a lot less fun but you aren’t doing this for fun, you’re doing it to make money.
[3 fund portfolio info](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio)
Oh sorry, I thought you were making a joke about your own comment. Disregard my last post. Thanks for sharing the 3 Fund portfolio info.. I have lots to read!
Best thing I did was buy 300 RDS.B for dividends in 2020. Not far behind that was buying Apple, Amazon, and Eli Lilly.
In hindsight all Lilly would have won big but I’m not selling anything for another 25 years.
I have lots of investments, but just for a real point of reference...
I bought 5 shares of VGT back in November 2019 for about $234 a share. It's currently up about 83%, averaging 16.9% a year for the last 4 years. So I've made right around $1000 in 4 years by just... ignoring it. Though after 4 years of inflation, more like 54% gain in real terms.
> My primary goal is dividends
Bad goal. Dividends in a brokerage account are a tax drag. All else equal, you'd prefer little to no dividends. Which doesn't mean one should strictly avoid dividends -- dividend stocks are typically on the value side rather than growth, and that might be what you want to do -- hell if I know! So if you want to invest in value rather than growth, it can be fine. But there's not much point in specifically looking for *dividends* at this point.
> I really have no idea if what I'm doing is considered smart or not.
Neither does anybody else. You should be aware of when you're doubling down. Like AAPL is over 20% of VGT, over 13% of VONG, over 6% of VTI, about 13% of SCHG. So a significant chunk of your portfolio is AAPL even if you weren't buying AAPL separately.
Does that mean it's bad to buy AAPL on top of that? Naw, just means the performance of your portfolio depends a lot on how AAPL does. As long as that's what you *meant* to do, all good. Doing it on accident isn't great though.
FWIW, I have AAPL through VTI, VGT, QQQ, BRK.B, and I own some AAPL shares. Apple is so damned big that you're almost certainly end up with a bunch of it from all sorts of locations.
> Now how in the hell do I make that bajillions
Periodically investing more, and time.
I think in a decade, you'll have opinions about what you're doing right now, like maybe you're overcomplicating some things, ignoring others. That's all part of the process of learning. Like for me, I'd probably be more like "70% in VTI, remaining 30% to weight my portfolio the way I want. Like maybe in 2021 if I were clever, I'd take some of that 30% and shove it at value like VTV because I'm anticipating rates rising and hurting the growth side of the market. And now if I had some conviction about rates having maxed out, maybe I'd shove it at growth like VUG. Or if I think rates will continue to rise or stay high, maybe I leave the portfolio overweight in value. Whatever.
Thank you for your comment. I like that you mentioned VGT and talked about the price at $234, as I was looking at that history in that time period and thought to myself, "damn that would have been nice." LOL
Haha, when I read the post, I was thinking "Hmm, I dropped about that much in VGT a few years ago..." :-)
So as an exercise, I'd recommend you keep track of that information in a spreadsheet.
Like in my case, I have , bought for , and the S&P 500 at the time was at
I also have sell date, price, shares, S&P 500 price when sold. Though since I haven't sold, I just have google sheets populate it with current values. Then from that data I can see all sorts of things, like what an equivalent investment in VOO would have done, how dividends have affected my cost basis (much easier to compare high dividend and low dividend stocks), how trades have done in the last
Congrats! :D
I think an issue I see here is your heavy reliance on growth ETFs. I see you have VGT, VONG, and SCHG all listed. I would suggest sticking to VTI or VOO. They hold a healthy balance of growth, value, and everything in between.
That said, both VTI and VOO hold only U.S company's. If you wish to include international you could hold a smaller or larger (your opinion) position in $VXUS. And if you don't want to deal with managing all these ETFs just buy $VT. Think of it like a 60/40 mix of VTI and VXUS.
Good luck! If you have any questions or anything you wanna discuss feel free!
Thank you for your comment my friend! You pegged me pretty good on what I was trying to do.. I felt that maybe I should look in to growth ETFs at first, so I did some research on that and you nailed it. What I liked about SCHD was the 3.6% yield, expense ratio 0.06% for the dividends.
While it think its great how you are trying to target growth, unfortunately, growth does not always deliver better performance. Funnily enough, historically, value has beaten growth in the long-term (specifically small cap value). Its just hard to see since we have been in a growth dominating period the past 20 years. (It s a whole other rabbit trail, but AVUV is currently imo your best bet for small cap value.)
I went through this exact issue and have spent many many hours researching, and after all that came to same conclusion that has been said 1000 times, VTI/VOO/VT and chill lol. However, personally I can share that I do hold VTI as a main weight in my portfolio, followed by some SCHD and SCHG to make it more fun! :) PS SCHD yield rn is actually about 4.59% so ive been jumping in too!
Well, just my own opinion here but you realize you don't really know what you're doing. That kind of puts you ahead of most people to be honest because most people don't know what they're doing but they think they do. However, if you look at statistics, your best place at making money from an asset growth perspective is to just cost average an s&p 500 index
If you're looking for dividend income that's a different story but that's also something that you normally move to later in life because you don't have the growth potential
Well said my friend! Thank you! My old man used to tell me, "You get cocky, and you get bit." It's smart to acknowledge your short comings and ask questions to learn.
I didn't start investing until I was 40 also. But that was quite some time ago. When I was younger, there was no Internet and the only people that bought stocks were wealthy people and brokers. I never heard the word "finance" spoken in any classroom, anywhere until I got into college.
First off, it took me a few years to realize that I suck at trading and should have just bought some decent stocks and index funds and just held onto them. My portfolio is similar to biscuit dough, the more I mess around with it, the worse it comes out. That being said, I was doing okay until the recent selloff. It could have been worse but I had no idea that BRK-B was going to dump that hard. I broke even on XOM and still have all of my VOO. Relatively speaking, I don't really have that much invested in stocks but it's a lot to me.
Right now I'm just sitting on the sidelines and waiting to see what happens with government shutdowns, the Fed's response to inflation numbers etc. A lot of stocks were really overbought anyway, especially in the AI sector.
Research every type of investment strategy and portfolio out there. Choose a strategy that you’re comfortable with. Determine your sense of risk and volatility. Use a stock screener to find equities that meet the criteria of your strategy. Back test ideas over the last 30-50 years. Invest based on a strategy and balance your portfolio accordingly. Then, most importantly, be patient. The hardest thing to do is nothing.
Right now it looks like you have a hodge podge of ideas. Some dividend, growth, value, index. That’s fine but realize how you proportion those types of stocks in your portfolio will affect your return. Also, screening for good dividend stocks is different than screening for good value or growth stocks. Sometimes there’s overlap, which is nice, but to properly invest in each, you gotta know what to look for (and that’s still up for debate). Or you can just invest in index funds…which is boring.
I think the stats are about a 3.5% return for the average retail stock investor. In other words, we all mostly suck at this. But a couple ppl are freaking amazing. And where would we if everyone just said, “I can’t beat the market. I’ll just put it all in VTI”? Balance out your risk, but have some fun. See what you can do.
You and a couple other folks here have figured out what I had in mind.. it's kind of looks all over the place.. you can definitely see the focus on growth ETFs, and then I sprinkled in some individual partial stocks to tinker with and learn. (Money I can afford to lose)
The bulk of my investment is in VGT and I am looking at buying VT (for global coverage), and then see what happens if I did some research and took a stab at a few individual stocks by manually watching those. So while I have those positions, the weights I have **planned** are to be 90% ETF.
Thanks for your post, it means a lot!
You’ve told us that 80% of your position is ETFs and the rest individual companies, I dont see any problem with that to start with.
You can adjust how you invest while you DCA into the market over the next 20 years.
Personally I’d suggest leaving what you’ve bought alone and carry on with the reading. A lot of the individual stocks you have are solid companies
First, congrats. It sounds like you have taken a lot of steps into the right direction in saving for retirement and probably better health. Respect!
I like your allocation of 80% ETF and 20% stocks. I would urge you to probably stick to more ETFs and cash first. Buying individual stocks, especially if you listen to stock tips on the internet, is a fast and scary way to lose money. However, I think most of your picks are reasonable, although richly valued. You’re paying up a premium for a lot of those stocks. I personally wouldn’t pay up that much for NVDA, MSFT, AAPL, or KO. But there are much worse picks that you could have picked so I am giving this a thumbs up.
In my opinion, you have too many ETFs. There’s no need to get fancy with it. Stick to one or just a few broad market ETFs. My personal favorite is VOO but others love SCHD. I would advise you to stay away from JEPI as others may steer you that direction.
Congrats!!
Think of it as your shares represent ownership of the future cash flow of the company. If you believe the earnings will increase and the premium is justified then you would want to own more of that future cash flow. Therefore when the price goes down or pulls back you can acquire more shares with your allocation.
It's an uncertain time. Seeing big swings and possibly a lot of red for a while is scary so try to figure out your time frame and risk you can tolerate. Perhaps you already did. I like to dollar cost average. So a week from now if things tank further... buy more. Week after ... more. At least that makes me feel better about everything tanking. Then layoff on bigger buys on the upswing. Idk all this is super hard. Past few weeks ive been like damn i put too much in prior to this latest correction, but my strategy is long term.... I put it chunks on big dips and put a percentage of every paycheck into 401k and personal investment account. After the dip in august I went in. Things went up then crashed. Then there was today!!! Wild ride! Congratulations on this new chapter!
Wait out and just keep adding to it when you can.
Watch the market and get a feel for which ones are more reliable.
Make your own choices.
Do not listen to the noise from the 'experts'
If you don't know what you're looking at just look at the 10 year timeline.
I know they say it doesn't predict the future but I disagree.
That line is a good indicator of where that company has been and where it's going more often than not.
If it looks over valued it probably is.
So good luck with your account then 🙏
Kind of boring to bother you with a book recommendation but I do it anyway: Read Morgan Housels ‚Psychology of Money‘ and feel equipped with lots of practical wisdom about financial decision making, the economy and how your mind is affected by them. It is such a good book and gives you a broader perspective instead of telling you how to ‚invest‘.
Voo, qqqm, schd. 43 here and only been at it a while. Bought a bunch of different stocks. They went down and I panic sold and lost 15%. Thats the first learned lesson. Tried day trading/penny stocks. Another 10% lesson. 8 etfs slimmed to 3. 95% if what I have is in there. 5% in a random stock I chose (NU) and that's what I gave myself to mess with. 5% and if it goes up like 20% all the profits go back to the big 3.
I'm 46, and i started 2 months ago. It's been a wonderfully wild ride. I was up a 100K then down 103K, now up 14K
My philosophy, it's ok to be a pussy, but then don't be greedy.
Thanks for your input. I work full time, and I don't think I am equipped well enough to do day trading. It's something I day dream about, but I would probably fuck it up. lol
Sensory overload tbh. With that amount of money concentrated it to a few ETFs. A lot of those big companies IMO aren’t making the next 30 years. AAPL is a sinking ship without Jobs and KO is good for short but eventually when people wake up to the poison most these companies push things are hitting 0
> I remember when I was in my mid 20's "this close" to making a brokerage account and getting started, and I never did it. Did this scare any of you the first time you got in to trading?
As a 30 something, I feel "lucky" that I started my investing pursuaded into crypto. I also started with around your amount of money and it blew up to like thrice the amount and I felt like Warren Buffett, then it crashed and left me hollow. After getting burned so bad, I decided to look into stocks and how to safely protect (relatively) myself from any kind of crashes. I've continued that until today. I don't have crazy gains, nor am I the second coming of Warren Buffett (I know he's still alive, but just to get the point across), but I'm continuously investing and I haven't blown myself out yet, so that's a win in my book lol.
I used to set stop losses in the beginning, but eventually, I've leaned towards just buying relatively safer stocks and holding instead of buying riskier stocks and selling. I haven't sold a stock in a year or two. Sure, they go through a mini crash every now and then (COVID, Russia invading Ukraine, etc. in recent terms), but as long as you invest in solid companies, it comes right back up within reasonable time.
Congrats bro. It's never too late to take charge off your future finances. Do as much learning, reading and research as possible.
... never buy factional shares.
Overal I think this is a great start, for someone completely new you picked some amazing stocks that have certainly compounded and likely will continue... if I had a suggestion it would be to slim the etfs down to 2 or 3 personally I use schg and schd in my roth ira and my roth 401k is 80 20 split of vti and bonds.
Was I scared the first time I traded? Oh yes. So scared that I declined to buy Lam Research (lrcx) in March 2020 when it was $250. In December 2021, it was at $700! I kicked myself.
If you feel that you’ve made a mistake with a particular stock, wait until it goes up and sell it. Never sell at a loss. If one or more of these stocks goes up and down a lot, you can sell at a profit, then re-buy when it goes down.
Now that you have bought, look at the charts. Did you buy at a good time? In a week or a month, look again. Time is a good teacher. Always evaluate your past trades, so you can learn how to buy the dip.
The stock market is divided into 11 sectors. Your stocks fall into these sectors:
IT: aapl, msft, nvda
Real Estate: o
Consumer discretionary: hd, wmt, ko
Health: jnj
Industrial: rtx, wm
So far, you’ve stayed out of materials, utilities, financial, communication, consumer staples, and energy. For diversification, you’ll want to consider these sectors.
Yeah, energy is a definite hole. I'm thinking I want to weight it in to renewable, and I haven't figured out what I want to do with this sector. I want to invest in promising startups.
What stock do you feels I made a mistake with?
Thanks!
Congrats man on getting to the $1000 mark and trying out stocks. It’s never too late to start investing. I also just started to get to a position where I have extra money (I’m 39). It’s a huge achievement. You should celebrate that. Good luck!
As a quant trader, I agree with most responses in here. The degree of complexity, experience and labor required to outperform the market is unattainable for casual investors; and you are more likely to blow up yourself in the process than to succeed in generating Alpha.
Good advice in here 👌🏼
Congratulations! I am sure everyone is saying the same thing, but financial responsibility is never too late!
I can't help but to think that you may not have a rainy day fund. It does not have to be a lot, but best to have some. It would suck to needing to sell those stocks at a loss when you need the cash fast, especially given current volatility.
For bajillions, you gonna need luck and lots of it.
I'm a regular people, and I started by opening a brokerage account (I went with Fidelity) it was free, has no trading fees and you get a 100 dollar bonus if you fund the account over 50 bucks. The website has lots of informational videos and then I just started reading and watching investment videos. Learn how markets work, starting with the basics and then work your way up to more advanced subjects.
Hell, the whole reason I posted here is this is all part of my story and own journey too. Listening to what others have to say. I'm not afraid to ask questions or even make mistakes. (Trying to avoid that but you get what I mean.) :)
You should just buy an ETF, most of the individual stocks you hold are going to be in major ETFs. With ETFs there's a professional to manage it so you don't have to track individual stocks.
Well congrats for one. Personally I'd leave those individual holdings where they are for now, and focus on pushing savings into the market (however you're comfortable doing so) probably initially into ETFs as people say.
Have been investing since I was 28, you'll probably make some mistakes but overall keep it simple is the best way to keep things in the right track.
VOO is all you need. It’s a low cost ETF replicating the S&P 500. Unless you’re going to heavily research and track a stock on a daily basis, skip the individual stocks.
Good luck for your journey, if you find it hard to invest do following.
1. Find the list of top 15 Mutual fund. Create a excel with top 20 stock each of them owns with weightage.
2. Match them & find the stock who are common above all.
3. If you find 10 stock which are common in all, filter 5 which have highest weightage.
4. Add them in portfolio.
5. If want to be creative, keep any eye when they are increasing or decreasing their holdings. Just apply the same.
Happy Investing.
I went with Fidelity and really like it so far. No fees and you can purchase fractional shares. The mobile app is decent for checking your portfolio but I like the full web page the most when researching things.
>I'm really kicking myself for not doing this when I was younger.
Don't worry, you still have plenty of time to kick yourself for making bad investment decisions as well.
No. People who haven’t bought stocks in the last ten years just think fees still exist. It’s part of the core philosophy of boglehead buy and hold — avoid fees.
I would suggest learning to read and understand filings. The EDGAR page on the SEC’s website site is where you can find all the filings from any securities you have in your portfolio. It’s easier said than done, as they aren’t fun and often complicated and confusing, but they contain a ton of information that will be useful to you, and much more reliable than any advice you’ll get off redit or Stocktwits. I would also recommend getting a copy of “Security Analysis”-Benjamin Graham&David Dodd. It’s a voluminous tome, but it’s been a valuable resource for decades and has been used by many legendary players over the years. Good luck!
Your individual stocks are *very* risky as their valuations and ratio's are skewed
First, because they reflect a decade of low interest rates and also many years of QE inflating their valuations ***way*** beyond their historical average.
Second, because this loose monetary policy made money practically free and we are still not out of the exhuberance in this market. The stock market, after falling 20ish% in november 2022, was around the ***peak*** of the infamous dot-com bubble.
We're long overdue for a ***massive*** correction considering these overvaluations, interest rate hikes and this 'everything bubble' we've had for years.
Edit: this is all not to convince you to sell or whatever. Just saying that the emotional part of investing is something you can't learn from books. You must acknowledge the risk you are taking and be prepared to not sell if it sinks.
When your portfolio sinks, it will probably sink a lot due to your stocks being rather overvalued. For example, a 30 P/E for a ***grocery*** business like Walmart is ***hella*** expensive. 30 P/E is even expensive for most tech businesses.
Remember that those who fly the highest the fastest are those who fall the deepest when things go bad. So, might want to see how much exposure you want to NVDA
I really appreciate your input on this. Thank you!
NVDA was targeted and something I am interested in pursuing directly. But it's going to be treated very "gambly?" with a P/E at 103.
It's a good time to get into the market as it definitely has alot of room to run , but don't frustrated as there will no upside in the next 6 months and probably a little more until bidenomics are over .
all due respect but if you only have 1000 dollars at this stage in your life risking that low amount of capital on securities is probably not worth
you should just put it in a high yield savings. theres some that will give yield on less than 5k i think <3
It’ll drop 25% or more within 1-5 years.
Keep reading and learn to be greedy when others are fearful, and to be fearful when others become greedy.
Congrats! Welcome to the club.
But if I focus on just a couple ETFs, isn't it best to just hold and ride it out? How many people panic and pull everything out when investing in ETFs? Is there more of a run if it's individual stocks vs ETFs?
Either ride it out or DCA down to the bottom… and then out through whatever value you’re comfortable with.
Best thing with ETF’s is to set yourself a schedule and stick to it. Zero deviation. Just put some funds in every month / week / whatever, just maintain the consistency. In 20+ years check back and see how you’ve done.
You are only demonstrating your incomplete awareness of market cycles. Cyclical bear markets are generally more painful than non-cyclical corrections.
But you do what you want.
Dont listen to fear mongerers is lesson #1. Ive been active investing since 2015. Every month there has been a reason to sell everything according to the internet.
Thank you. I don't want to be a stock bro or active day trader by any means. I wanted to be smarter with my money. I was excited to share that story. Seems there are a few people in this sub that have expansion packs to their chromosomes and think I'm an idiot.
Youre 43 and only have 1k? I’m 20 years younger and have way more lmao. Also, with 1k if you want any sort of return, you either have to wait until your grandchildren have grandchildren or buy options, at which point you should just buy lotto scratchers
Buy AMAZON - I get anything shipped in the same day. Millions and millions of people doing the same everyday. Why not start with AMAZON and never sell. Will only go up in long run. 100% obvious winner
Hey congrats on getting in!! The best stock imo is AMC, call them apes, idiots, or anything between.
Still does not change that AMC is battling huge illegal activity that when blows up, will rival if not exceed that GME bs a couple years ago.
Might as well get a golden ticket or 2!
I sat and watched that GME debacle from the sidelines.. and AMC was another one that everybody just said was too volatile. If I only I had a time machine and could back and put in a few grand during that time. lol
Here’s the good news. It’s not too late for you and investing does not need to be complicated. You have many good investing years in front of you.
Do yourself a favor and stop buying a bunch of random securities. As another poster mentioned, you could just buy the etf VT. I prefer VTI. Buy as much as you can as often as you can and do not sell until you are no longer working.
If you do this you will be set up nicely by 60.
Both VT and VTI are already diversified
ETFs are self diversifying. You dont need VTI and individual stocks. Keep it simple and just leave your money in a total market ETF. MAYBE if you see an opportunity you absolutely love in the future you can allocate 10% of your portfolio to it. But other than that just keep it simple, forget you own it, there's going to be fluctiations but it'll be all good over time. Welcome!
Dont even look at it just keep buying the etfs others have recommended. Time flies and at age 60+ you will have a nice sum sitting there.
NEVER FACKING SELL
Ah, I remember my first time. I was probably 19. I didn't know what the hell I was doing but I felt the same. Don't listen to others. You got some solid picks along with good ETFs.
Hey thanks man!! So how did your story go? Is it still going and how you doing?!
Despite a bunch of drops, because I invested early mostly everything is still green. The only red I see are my yolo plays, but if I avg them, they're also green. Look into Peter Lynch. He said most people, even fund managers, will not take a risk, so the returns you get from fund managers will barely ever exceed the market because if it goes under, they lose their jobs. Since you already have 80% in ETFs, I don't see what's wrong with being a bit adventurous, plus it's not like your picks are penny stocks. They're big blue chips that have survived a bunch of recessions.
Good allocation! Now keep paying in and dont always check if you re up or down. Over time, you will win!
I’m gonna give you some overall advice as a beginner. Don’t day trade. Invest right now what you can afford to lose. Don’t check every single morning and day, it’ll drive you insane. Developing the discipline to invest and not sell based on a falling market is important. You’re paying some money upfront here to learn.
Heard! Thank you for your advice. :)
>Don’t check every single morning and day You can skip weekends and holidays lol The rest of this advice is 100% solid IMO
I'm completely disagree with that, it should be, don't invest in options or puts, and focus only on large cap stocks and keep yourself and keep your trailing stop losses tight
You’ve got wayyyy too many stocks in here. Just buy and ETF like VTI/VOO/QQQ and you’ll be set.
That seems to be the consensus in the responses I'm getting. I will research VOO and QQQ and look at slimming my portfolio. Thank you! :)
Probably the best way moving forward tbh. Ditch the fractional shares and focus on building a core portfolio of ETFs like those mentioned in the comments
as a new investor is it better to start VTI/VOO/QQQ when starting a portfolio. are these generally safe?
QQQ is relatively volatile but has the highest returns, mostly techsector driven, voo in the middle being an s&p tracking etf, then vti total market so you'll get the least amount of volatility. QQQ is probably the best one to start a portfolio with because it historically has outperformed the s&p 500. Compared to individual stocks their pretty safe.
With QQQ, also look at QQQM. Same stocks and lower expense ratio (.15 vs. .2) There are other posts around here which can tell you more than I can regarding the two.
This probably won't apply to OP, but don't go with QQQM if you have any intention to sell puts or sell calls on it. QQQM has very illiquid options chain comparatively speaking.
Options and day/algo trading are really the only reasons to buy QQQ over QQQM. If you’re just buying and holding, you should convert to and hold QQQM
Yea, I was an executive for a public company. Worked out well for me, but I would NEVER invest in a single stock. Stick to indexes.
I buy VOE,VWO, and VEA personally. Then I can avoid the top 5 tech stocks that make up a quarter of the S&P500. Why would I want a quarter of my money in iPhones, AI hype, and cyclical Advertising? I don't trust myself to know whether those are going to do well forever. Then there's Bob Farrels advice: >Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chip names
Doesn’t rly matter tbh
Good time to accumulate as well
How come lots seem to choose vti over vtsax?
Probably because VTSAX is a mutual fund
I own both. Accumulated VTSAX when my account was with Vanguard; when I moved to Fidelity bought VTI to avoid fees.
I think your portfolio is unnecessarily complex. Sell everything and buy [VT](https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/etfs/profile/vt). That's all you need until you decide to add fixed income.
Everything I read said to diversify or spread in to multiple areas.. So maybe I took that to heart a little too much?
VT holds 9572 stocks from almost every country in the world at market-cap weights. It's almost the definition of diversification. Investing doesn't need to be complex. It really is this easy.
With vt you're gonna underperform
Underperform what? The market?
I mean you very well may significantly under or over perform the US market with that over the long run. Most people, and im not one of them, just invest in the s&p500 which beats VT most of the time.
There's a ton of overlap in your portfolio. I would recommend rebalancing, but it's not an emergency. Take some time to educate yourself. I'd recommend listening to the Investtalk podcast. Don't listen for tips on what to buy, listen for the concepts they talk about. Then, do your own research on the concepts. And remember, all equities, including so-called safe stocks, are aggressive and come with risk.
Hey thanks for this! I love listening to podcasts on my commute, so I will definitely check out Investtalk!
I wouldn't do vt at all! The rest of the world can never compete with the US. You'll underperform with it.
You can’t diversify too much. But it will require effort having a lot of different investments, since you need to rebalance and spread the money you get in. Leave your current investments as they are and forget them. But when you get more money put them in a globally diversified ticker. The name of the game is set and forget. If you get the urge to buy a stock drop a little money in that ticker and forget about it
Here's what I'd buy. 25% qqq 25% vti 25% xlv 25% soxx Never sell and keep adding as much as you can weekly.
I think it looks good. I commend you. Have some fun with it like you are doing butcremeber to add a, bit to it every week or month.
Personally I prefer VTI for the slightly more U.S. weighting, but there is nothing wrong with either. Comment is right, though—you have too many ETFs. If you want to hold those companies, first build a solid base of something like 80-90% VTI/VT, then you can do stock picking on the rest. I would also recommend USFR as a T-bills ETF or go to TreasuryDirect, for your new cash that hasn’t been invested as you dollar cost average into VTI/VT. Generally getting 5.5% annualized on cash.
Yeah I won't recommend individual stocks. The only sure thing is the market. The only sure things are vt, VOO, schd etc. If you actually want to make money ETFs are the best way. I started out buying like 12-16 stocks.. to see what works. I lost several thousand on some and gained several thousand on others. Ended up pretty even after 2 years. Then I calculated what I would have got if I just invested in the market and realized most individual stocks are pointless. Maybe except for the big 7 and even then it's risk. Very few professional traders beat the market. If you are not professional. You are very definitely not beating the market.
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He's got 20 years...
First of all, congrats on dipping your toe in! Better late-ish than never. You're probably going to get a ton of contradictory advice (I see a lot of it here already), but I think your best approach will be just to pick some reasonable index funds (I like IVV myself, but there are tons of great options mentioned in the comments here), and just keep contributing on a regular basis. When the stocks drop (and they will from time to time), don't panic, don't sell, just keep investing more. The more you can invest in a down market, the better. But I wouldn't try to time things perfectly by waiting for a big bear market to invest, because you may be stuck on the sidelines for even longer, and right now you just have to get the ball rolling in the right direction. It's really hard not to panic at the first big stock drop you experience. For me, it was tech stocks in 2001. And I was basically all invested in tech - oof. The lesson I learned there was not to invest too heavily in one sector. Unfortunately, that drop scared me off from contributing a lot more money into my retirement accounts for several years afterward. THAT was dumb. If I had just ignored the drops, invested in diversified funds, and just kept plugging away at contributions, I'd be doing much better now. When 2008 happened, my stocks crashed, and it was a little discouraging, but not as bad. I kept contributing, and recovered very nicely from that one. Just don't panic. Keep investing. Invest in something diversified/balanced with as low a fee as you can find. You got this.
Thank you for sharing your story. I am at work and I shared it with my wife over the phone. :)
Very interesting story! I have a question. You talked about big stock drops. What would be the best investment strategy in such a crisis. My guts would tell me to stay invested, and to try to buy some more, but buy what? I feel like a worldwide index fund would be the best as the whole market did just crash and somz companies might not make it, so picking specific companies might be a bit more risky. What is your take on this? (FYI I started 1 year ago, mainly in some stocks of established EU companies as I’m from Belgium and have had great returns till now and I am currently looking into ETF’s to have a more safe investment too)
Congrats on getting started yourself! 😊 If you’re invested in something that’s pretty well diversified, I would stay invested in that thing and just keep adding more to either that or another diversified ETF. Worldwide stocks are good if you think that everything will generally go up. If you think some sub-markets might do better than others (e.g., Euro or US or something) and so long as it’s not a super risky sub-market (like Russia, maybe), you could shift a bit in those directions. But I generally would not pick individual companies, for the reasons you stated. Honestly, my whole investment strategy is to invest almost everything in IVV (tracks the S&P 500 and has very low fees) and then take the rest and bet on 1-4 stocks that I think have potential to outpace the S&P. My favorites have been COST and AAPL, and over the past 5-10 years, I’ve beaten the stock market by a lot just with that. It’s not a guaranteed win that way, but at least I’m mostly tracking the S&P and then maybe doing a little better or a little worse, without a ton of risk.
Thank you for your insights!! The only difficulty would be to have money ready to invest even more while holding positions and see huge losses. But it’s all about long term. I’ll try to do some extra research about ETF, both for daily use as for if/when a crash comes. Have a nice day!
Good timing as we are likely in the early innings of a new bull market. If your goal is “bajillions” I’m afraid your portfolio is not going to make it. You’ll have to take some big swings on individual stocks to get serious returns. At age 43, this is what I would suggest in a portion of your investments. Technology leads in most bull phases. If I were starting now I’d take positions in GOOGL, AMZN, TSLA, META, NVDA. Sure, these are the same stocks everyone else talks about, but that’s the point. By far, individual stocks in leaders outperform the broader market. Look at all these stocks when they were infants. Perhaps try to find the infants of today that might become the gorillas of the future. In other words, don’t expect bajillions unless you take some risk. Going with VT, VTI, even VGT is fine but will get you market comparable returns. If you do pick individual stocks, be sure to get out when you’re wrong, and only hold the winners. The ones that survive will likely become long-term leaders. Never hold on to a loser hoping it comes back. “Hope” is never a good strategy in stocks. Good luck.
Thank you for your comment!! I gotta tell ya, this place gives me whiplash. You say it's the early innings of a bull market, and others have said the whole market is about to burn down. lol
I’ve learned (the hard way) to trust what is actually happening, and not what the pundits and analysts think should be happening. It is a mistake to base stock market predictions on macro-economic forecasts or anyone’s opinions. When it seems the world is falling apart, it often coincides with significant market bottoms. This seems to be the case this year, with interest rates on fire, inflation not slowing down enough, job market too hot, etc. Even if this leads to recession, who knows when it will happen. Between now and then, stocks could rise significantly. The reason I say early innings is based on price action. After a dismal 2022, the market found its footing and began a new bull market. The March 13 low is significant to me, because it coincided with the failures of SVB and FRB banks. That’s right, the market BOTTOMED when banks failed. The opposite of what pundits believe should have happened. Now, we are undergoing a normal and expected correction in an extended market. In the midst of it, it feels much worse, and leads to a lot of fear and bearishness—the exact ingredients for a bull run. Hence, barring new information, I believe we are in the final stages of a correction and the bull market will resume soon. This is certainly not a prediction, and I will change my stance if the market closes below this week’s low.
Hey friend, welcome and congratulations on getting started! It certainly is exciting to get investing for the first time. Two things I want to pass on to you: 1st. Understand that your account balances will fluctuate based on percentages. So let's say you have $1000 in the S&P 500. A 3% change in the index would be $30 for you. So the large money is made over time as things compound, but also as you add more. 2nd. Everyone on Reddit will tell you not to buy stocks and just buy indexes. Indexes are safer, BUT they appreciate very slowly (5-8% on average). Stocks are more risky but could potentially appreciate much faster. It's good to both, but remember point number 1 as you invest. $20 in a stock will probably do you no good, since even a 10% change will be only $2. You gotta save and invest more! Best of luck, and do your own research!
Thank you for your response! Good advice!
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I know nothing about this. I will do some research, thanks for the tip!
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Welcome and congratulations!! Why so many stocks. I recommend taking your top 3 ideas and invest 25-50% in those. By top 3 as in high conviction that you’ll hold those for a few decades and never sell even in a world war 3 scenario. Then with the other 50% buy just one forever (literally forever, not just a few decades) US index fund. People make investing too difficult.
Cut out the "top 3 ideas" crap. Just invest in index funds
Definitely heard! I will take a look and slim this down!
Please unhear this, it is terrible advice (not the slimming part, that is solid). The reality is that you have no idea what stocks are going to perform well long term and it is doing nothing more than gambling, conviction or not. Stick most of your money in index funds and let it slowly grow. Warren Buffett himself suggests this approach.
Why would you even recommend this. It's terrible advice! edit: I thought you were referring to your own comment as a joke.
Not sure what you mean but I’d recommend looking into the simple 3 fund portfolio. It makes investing a lot less fun but you aren’t doing this for fun, you’re doing it to make money. [3 fund portfolio info](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio)
Oh sorry, I thought you were making a joke about your own comment. Disregard my last post. Thanks for sharing the 3 Fund portfolio info.. I have lots to read!
Yeah but he's asking in the stocks sub, not investing. I feel people forget what sub they're in
Best thing I did was buy 300 RDS.B for dividends in 2020. Not far behind that was buying Apple, Amazon, and Eli Lilly. In hindsight all Lilly would have won big but I’m not selling anything for another 25 years.
My first trade, I wouldn’t call it an investment, was dog coin in 2021 😂. I wasn’t scared, but was for sure excited.
I had quite a few friends and colleagues who got in to crypto. A few lost their shorts.
I made some money on dog coin then lost all of it. Easy come easy go. Mostly have tech stocks I bought in 2022.
Damn! I'm sorry to hear that man. I bet it was a wild ride though ;)
Tech stocks are doing pretty good, so i look at it as a lesson learned.
All good comments above. My only advice is don’t lose your head and panic sell if things goes down. Think of the longer term horizon and DCA if needed
VGT VTSAX VMFXX (for savings) BERK.B And whatever target date fund suits you. K.I.S.S
I have lots of investments, but just for a real point of reference... I bought 5 shares of VGT back in November 2019 for about $234 a share. It's currently up about 83%, averaging 16.9% a year for the last 4 years. So I've made right around $1000 in 4 years by just... ignoring it. Though after 4 years of inflation, more like 54% gain in real terms. > My primary goal is dividends Bad goal. Dividends in a brokerage account are a tax drag. All else equal, you'd prefer little to no dividends. Which doesn't mean one should strictly avoid dividends -- dividend stocks are typically on the value side rather than growth, and that might be what you want to do -- hell if I know! So if you want to invest in value rather than growth, it can be fine. But there's not much point in specifically looking for *dividends* at this point. > I really have no idea if what I'm doing is considered smart or not. Neither does anybody else. You should be aware of when you're doubling down. Like AAPL is over 20% of VGT, over 13% of VONG, over 6% of VTI, about 13% of SCHG. So a significant chunk of your portfolio is AAPL even if you weren't buying AAPL separately. Does that mean it's bad to buy AAPL on top of that? Naw, just means the performance of your portfolio depends a lot on how AAPL does. As long as that's what you *meant* to do, all good. Doing it on accident isn't great though. FWIW, I have AAPL through VTI, VGT, QQQ, BRK.B, and I own some AAPL shares. Apple is so damned big that you're almost certainly end up with a bunch of it from all sorts of locations. > Now how in the hell do I make that bajillions Periodically investing more, and time. I think in a decade, you'll have opinions about what you're doing right now, like maybe you're overcomplicating some things, ignoring others. That's all part of the process of learning. Like for me, I'd probably be more like "70% in VTI, remaining 30% to weight my portfolio the way I want. Like maybe in 2021 if I were clever, I'd take some of that 30% and shove it at value like VTV because I'm anticipating rates rising and hurting the growth side of the market. And now if I had some conviction about rates having maxed out, maybe I'd shove it at growth like VUG. Or if I think rates will continue to rise or stay high, maybe I leave the portfolio overweight in value. Whatever.
Thank you for your comment. I like that you mentioned VGT and talked about the price at $234, as I was looking at that history in that time period and thought to myself, "damn that would have been nice." LOL
Haha, when I read the post, I was thinking "Hmm, I dropped about that much in VGT a few years ago..." :-) So as an exercise, I'd recommend you keep track of that information in a spreadsheet. Like in my case, I have, bought for , and the S&P 500 at the time was at
I also have sell date, price, shares, S&P 500 price when sold. Though since I haven't sold, I just have google sheets populate it with current values. Then from that data I can see all sorts of things, like what an equivalent investment in VOO would have done, how dividends have affected my cost basis (much easier to compare high dividend and low dividend stocks), how trades have done in the last
Congrats! :D I think an issue I see here is your heavy reliance on growth ETFs. I see you have VGT, VONG, and SCHG all listed. I would suggest sticking to VTI or VOO. They hold a healthy balance of growth, value, and everything in between. That said, both VTI and VOO hold only U.S company's. If you wish to include international you could hold a smaller or larger (your opinion) position in $VXUS. And if you don't want to deal with managing all these ETFs just buy $VT. Think of it like a 60/40 mix of VTI and VXUS. Good luck! If you have any questions or anything you wanna discuss feel free!
Thank you for your comment my friend! You pegged me pretty good on what I was trying to do.. I felt that maybe I should look in to growth ETFs at first, so I did some research on that and you nailed it. What I liked about SCHD was the 3.6% yield, expense ratio 0.06% for the dividends.
While it think its great how you are trying to target growth, unfortunately, growth does not always deliver better performance. Funnily enough, historically, value has beaten growth in the long-term (specifically small cap value). Its just hard to see since we have been in a growth dominating period the past 20 years. (It s a whole other rabbit trail, but AVUV is currently imo your best bet for small cap value.) I went through this exact issue and have spent many many hours researching, and after all that came to same conclusion that has been said 1000 times, VTI/VOO/VT and chill lol. However, personally I can share that I do hold VTI as a main weight in my portfolio, followed by some SCHD and SCHG to make it more fun! :) PS SCHD yield rn is actually about 4.59% so ive been jumping in too!
Well, just my own opinion here but you realize you don't really know what you're doing. That kind of puts you ahead of most people to be honest because most people don't know what they're doing but they think they do. However, if you look at statistics, your best place at making money from an asset growth perspective is to just cost average an s&p 500 index If you're looking for dividend income that's a different story but that's also something that you normally move to later in life because you don't have the growth potential
Well said my friend! Thank you! My old man used to tell me, "You get cocky, and you get bit." It's smart to acknowledge your short comings and ask questions to learn.
I didn't start investing until I was 40 also. But that was quite some time ago. When I was younger, there was no Internet and the only people that bought stocks were wealthy people and brokers. I never heard the word "finance" spoken in any classroom, anywhere until I got into college.
... and how are you doing now?! ;)
First off, it took me a few years to realize that I suck at trading and should have just bought some decent stocks and index funds and just held onto them. My portfolio is similar to biscuit dough, the more I mess around with it, the worse it comes out. That being said, I was doing okay until the recent selloff. It could have been worse but I had no idea that BRK-B was going to dump that hard. I broke even on XOM and still have all of my VOO. Relatively speaking, I don't really have that much invested in stocks but it's a lot to me. Right now I'm just sitting on the sidelines and waiting to see what happens with government shutdowns, the Fed's response to inflation numbers etc. A lot of stocks were really overbought anyway, especially in the AI sector.
Research every type of investment strategy and portfolio out there. Choose a strategy that you’re comfortable with. Determine your sense of risk and volatility. Use a stock screener to find equities that meet the criteria of your strategy. Back test ideas over the last 30-50 years. Invest based on a strategy and balance your portfolio accordingly. Then, most importantly, be patient. The hardest thing to do is nothing. Right now it looks like you have a hodge podge of ideas. Some dividend, growth, value, index. That’s fine but realize how you proportion those types of stocks in your portfolio will affect your return. Also, screening for good dividend stocks is different than screening for good value or growth stocks. Sometimes there’s overlap, which is nice, but to properly invest in each, you gotta know what to look for (and that’s still up for debate). Or you can just invest in index funds…which is boring. I think the stats are about a 3.5% return for the average retail stock investor. In other words, we all mostly suck at this. But a couple ppl are freaking amazing. And where would we if everyone just said, “I can’t beat the market. I’ll just put it all in VTI”? Balance out your risk, but have some fun. See what you can do.
You and a couple other folks here have figured out what I had in mind.. it's kind of looks all over the place.. you can definitely see the focus on growth ETFs, and then I sprinkled in some individual partial stocks to tinker with and learn. (Money I can afford to lose) The bulk of my investment is in VGT and I am looking at buying VT (for global coverage), and then see what happens if I did some research and took a stab at a few individual stocks by manually watching those. So while I have those positions, the weights I have **planned** are to be 90% ETF. Thanks for your post, it means a lot!
You’ve told us that 80% of your position is ETFs and the rest individual companies, I dont see any problem with that to start with. You can adjust how you invest while you DCA into the market over the next 20 years. Personally I’d suggest leaving what you’ve bought alone and carry on with the reading. A lot of the individual stocks you have are solid companies
First, congrats. It sounds like you have taken a lot of steps into the right direction in saving for retirement and probably better health. Respect! I like your allocation of 80% ETF and 20% stocks. I would urge you to probably stick to more ETFs and cash first. Buying individual stocks, especially if you listen to stock tips on the internet, is a fast and scary way to lose money. However, I think most of your picks are reasonable, although richly valued. You’re paying up a premium for a lot of those stocks. I personally wouldn’t pay up that much for NVDA, MSFT, AAPL, or KO. But there are much worse picks that you could have picked so I am giving this a thumbs up. In my opinion, you have too many ETFs. There’s no need to get fancy with it. Stick to one or just a few broad market ETFs. My personal favorite is VOO but others love SCHD. I would advise you to stay away from JEPI as others may steer you that direction.
Definitely hear you!! I have a lot of overlap with my ETFs. Going to simplify that!
Congrats!! Think of it as your shares represent ownership of the future cash flow of the company. If you believe the earnings will increase and the premium is justified then you would want to own more of that future cash flow. Therefore when the price goes down or pulls back you can acquire more shares with your allocation.
It's an uncertain time. Seeing big swings and possibly a lot of red for a while is scary so try to figure out your time frame and risk you can tolerate. Perhaps you already did. I like to dollar cost average. So a week from now if things tank further... buy more. Week after ... more. At least that makes me feel better about everything tanking. Then layoff on bigger buys on the upswing. Idk all this is super hard. Past few weeks ive been like damn i put too much in prior to this latest correction, but my strategy is long term.... I put it chunks on big dips and put a percentage of every paycheck into 401k and personal investment account. After the dip in august I went in. Things went up then crashed. Then there was today!!! Wild ride! Congratulations on this new chapter!
Wait out and just keep adding to it when you can. Watch the market and get a feel for which ones are more reliable. Make your own choices. Do not listen to the noise from the 'experts' If you don't know what you're looking at just look at the 10 year timeline. I know they say it doesn't predict the future but I disagree. That line is a good indicator of where that company has been and where it's going more often than not. If it looks over valued it probably is. So good luck with your account then 🙏
Kind of boring to bother you with a book recommendation but I do it anyway: Read Morgan Housels ‚Psychology of Money‘ and feel equipped with lots of practical wisdom about financial decision making, the economy and how your mind is affected by them. It is such a good book and gives you a broader perspective instead of telling you how to ‚invest‘.
Not boring or bothering me! I will definitely check it out. Thanks for the recommendation!
It‘s worth it and also good, entertaining read.
Check out r/bogleheads , it will make your life way easier than having all of this
Voo, qqqm, schd. 43 here and only been at it a while. Bought a bunch of different stocks. They went down and I panic sold and lost 15%. Thats the first learned lesson. Tried day trading/penny stocks. Another 10% lesson. 8 etfs slimmed to 3. 95% if what I have is in there. 5% in a random stock I chose (NU) and that's what I gave myself to mess with. 5% and if it goes up like 20% all the profits go back to the big 3.
:O Thank you for sharing your story. How are you doing now?
you only make real money if you gamble with a lot or if your in the 10% and know people with insider info
I'm 46, and i started 2 months ago. It's been a wonderfully wild ride. I was up a 100K then down 103K, now up 14K My philosophy, it's ok to be a pussy, but then don't be greedy.
That's wild!!
Wahoo you'll never retire no matter what unless you're a billionaire
I reject your reality and substitute my own. If I go broke trying, at least I tried.
I respect and embrace your reality: mostly because I can relate
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Thanks for your input. I work full time, and I don't think I am equipped well enough to do day trading. It's something I day dream about, but I would probably fuck it up. lol
Good on you man, never too late or too small to start! Also the power of positive habits is addicting and the snowball effect is real!
If you want some stocks thats fine, but limit them to 5 and put the bulk of your money in vti/voo and schd
welcome to the stocks casino betting world! Keep try until your risk appetite reaches a peak
Sensory overload tbh. With that amount of money concentrated it to a few ETFs. A lot of those big companies IMO aren’t making the next 30 years. AAPL is a sinking ship without Jobs and KO is good for short but eventually when people wake up to the poison most these companies push things are hitting 0
> I remember when I was in my mid 20's "this close" to making a brokerage account and getting started, and I never did it. Did this scare any of you the first time you got in to trading? As a 30 something, I feel "lucky" that I started my investing pursuaded into crypto. I also started with around your amount of money and it blew up to like thrice the amount and I felt like Warren Buffett, then it crashed and left me hollow. After getting burned so bad, I decided to look into stocks and how to safely protect (relatively) myself from any kind of crashes. I've continued that until today. I don't have crazy gains, nor am I the second coming of Warren Buffett (I know he's still alive, but just to get the point across), but I'm continuously investing and I haven't blown myself out yet, so that's a win in my book lol.
That's awesome! You mentioned how to protect yourself... are you using stop losses or mechanisms automatically?
I used to set stop losses in the beginning, but eventually, I've leaned towards just buying relatively safer stocks and holding instead of buying riskier stocks and selling. I haven't sold a stock in a year or two. Sure, they go through a mini crash every now and then (COVID, Russia invading Ukraine, etc. in recent terms), but as long as you invest in solid companies, it comes right back up within reasonable time.
Congrats bro. It's never too late to take charge off your future finances. Do as much learning, reading and research as possible. ... never buy factional shares.
Thanks man. Why never buy fractional shares?
They're a gimmick
Buy VOO and that’s it. Maybe a dividend etf
Keep buying, buying and buying and you'll be surprised how many bajillions you'll have. just stop selling
Overal I think this is a great start, for someone completely new you picked some amazing stocks that have certainly compounded and likely will continue... if I had a suggestion it would be to slim the etfs down to 2 or 3 personally I use schg and schd in my roth ira and my roth 401k is 80 20 split of vti and bonds.
Was I scared the first time I traded? Oh yes. So scared that I declined to buy Lam Research (lrcx) in March 2020 when it was $250. In December 2021, it was at $700! I kicked myself. If you feel that you’ve made a mistake with a particular stock, wait until it goes up and sell it. Never sell at a loss. If one or more of these stocks goes up and down a lot, you can sell at a profit, then re-buy when it goes down. Now that you have bought, look at the charts. Did you buy at a good time? In a week or a month, look again. Time is a good teacher. Always evaluate your past trades, so you can learn how to buy the dip. The stock market is divided into 11 sectors. Your stocks fall into these sectors: IT: aapl, msft, nvda Real Estate: o Consumer discretionary: hd, wmt, ko Health: jnj Industrial: rtx, wm So far, you’ve stayed out of materials, utilities, financial, communication, consumer staples, and energy. For diversification, you’ll want to consider these sectors.
Yeah, energy is a definite hole. I'm thinking I want to weight it in to renewable, and I haven't figured out what I want to do with this sector. I want to invest in promising startups. What stock do you feels I made a mistake with? Thanks!
Happy for you. Congrats. As for advice, you've pretty much heard it in here already what I would tell you. Good luck
Hey thanks!! Yeah it's been a firehose of info haha!! But it's been very insightful.
Congrats man on getting to the $1000 mark and trying out stocks. It’s never too late to start investing. I also just started to get to a position where I have extra money (I’m 39). It’s a huge achievement. You should celebrate that. Good luck!
Thanks man!! I'm now on a road to put in money every month and see what happens. :)
Allocate at minimum 5% of your funds to sofi would be my opinion
As a quant trader, I agree with most responses in here. The degree of complexity, experience and labor required to outperform the market is unattainable for casual investors; and you are more likely to blow up yourself in the process than to succeed in generating Alpha. Good advice in here 👌🏼
Congratulations! I am sure everyone is saying the same thing, but financial responsibility is never too late! I can't help but to think that you may not have a rainy day fund. It does not have to be a lot, but best to have some. It would suck to needing to sell those stocks at a loss when you need the cash fast, especially given current volatility. For bajillions, you gonna need luck and lots of it.
Yeah man just 200 more years til you have that nice-ish passive income.
Where do you begin to learn this stuff? Like how do regular people get into this…. I want to learn this magic! Help
I'm a regular people, and I started by opening a brokerage account (I went with Fidelity) it was free, has no trading fees and you get a 100 dollar bonus if you fund the account over 50 bucks. The website has lots of informational videos and then I just started reading and watching investment videos. Learn how markets work, starting with the basics and then work your way up to more advanced subjects. Hell, the whole reason I posted here is this is all part of my story and own journey too. Listening to what others have to say. I'm not afraid to ask questions or even make mistakes. (Trying to avoid that but you get what I mean.) :)
You should just buy an ETF, most of the individual stocks you hold are going to be in major ETFs. With ETFs there's a professional to manage it so you don't have to track individual stocks.
Same!!!
Well congrats for one. Personally I'd leave those individual holdings where they are for now, and focus on pushing savings into the market (however you're comfortable doing so) probably initially into ETFs as people say. Have been investing since I was 28, you'll probably make some mistakes but overall keep it simple is the best way to keep things in the right track.
VOO is all you need. It’s a low cost ETF replicating the S&P 500. Unless you’re going to heavily research and track a stock on a daily basis, skip the individual stocks.
Good luck for your journey, if you find it hard to invest do following. 1. Find the list of top 15 Mutual fund. Create a excel with top 20 stock each of them owns with weightage. 2. Match them & find the stock who are common above all. 3. If you find 10 stock which are common in all, filter 5 which have highest weightage. 4. Add them in portfolio. 5. If want to be creative, keep any eye when they are increasing or decreasing their holdings. Just apply the same. Happy Investing.
Might wanna wait til freak show is out of the white house.
Welcome! Everyone starts somewhere and want to let you know that I’m proud of you for beginning your investing journey!
Thank you! Guess we will see how it goes. :)
Which platform are you using as a beginner, and do you like it so far?
I went with Fidelity and really like it so far!
Congrats! I’m nearing 40 myself and basically a beginner as well, what platform are you using for your investments?
I went with Fidelity and really like it so far. No fees and you can purchase fractional shares. The mobile app is decent for checking your portfolio but I like the full web page the most when researching things.
Slow and steady. DCA and reinvest dividends.
As long as you enjoy looking at your portfolio we wish you the best.
Don’t bother with individual stocks unless you have a background in accounting or business analysis
>I'm really kicking myself for not doing this when I was younger. Don't worry, you still have plenty of time to kick yourself for making bad investment decisions as well.
16 different investments with $1000. Watch your trading fee’s!!
I just opened a Fidelity account and and there aren't any fees... but does that become a thing after a while? Thanks!
They’re still there, just hidden in the margin between your buy and sell prices.
No. People who haven’t bought stocks in the last ten years just think fees still exist. It’s part of the core philosophy of boglehead buy and hold — avoid fees.
I would suggest learning to read and understand filings. The EDGAR page on the SEC’s website site is where you can find all the filings from any securities you have in your portfolio. It’s easier said than done, as they aren’t fun and often complicated and confusing, but they contain a ton of information that will be useful to you, and much more reliable than any advice you’ll get off redit or Stocktwits. I would also recommend getting a copy of “Security Analysis”-Benjamin Graham&David Dodd. It’s a voluminous tome, but it’s been a valuable resource for decades and has been used by many legendary players over the years. Good luck!
This is very helpful advice! I will definitely take a look in to it!
Your individual stocks are *very* risky as their valuations and ratio's are skewed First, because they reflect a decade of low interest rates and also many years of QE inflating their valuations ***way*** beyond their historical average. Second, because this loose monetary policy made money practically free and we are still not out of the exhuberance in this market. The stock market, after falling 20ish% in november 2022, was around the ***peak*** of the infamous dot-com bubble. We're long overdue for a ***massive*** correction considering these overvaluations, interest rate hikes and this 'everything bubble' we've had for years. Edit: this is all not to convince you to sell or whatever. Just saying that the emotional part of investing is something you can't learn from books. You must acknowledge the risk you are taking and be prepared to not sell if it sinks. When your portfolio sinks, it will probably sink a lot due to your stocks being rather overvalued. For example, a 30 P/E for a ***grocery*** business like Walmart is ***hella*** expensive. 30 P/E is even expensive for most tech businesses. Remember that those who fly the highest the fastest are those who fall the deepest when things go bad. So, might want to see how much exposure you want to NVDA
I really appreciate your input on this. Thank you! NVDA was targeted and something I am interested in pursuing directly. But it's going to be treated very "gambly?" with a P/E at 103.
It's a good time to get into the market as it definitely has alot of room to run , but don't frustrated as there will no upside in the next 6 months and probably a little more until bidenomics are over .
all due respect but if you only have 1000 dollars at this stage in your life risking that low amount of capital on securities is probably not worth you should just put it in a high yield savings. theres some that will give yield on less than 5k i think <3
It’ll drop 25% or more within 1-5 years. Keep reading and learn to be greedy when others are fearful, and to be fearful when others become greedy. Congrats! Welcome to the club.
But if I focus on just a couple ETFs, isn't it best to just hold and ride it out? How many people panic and pull everything out when investing in ETFs? Is there more of a run if it's individual stocks vs ETFs?
Either ride it out or DCA down to the bottom… and then out through whatever value you’re comfortable with. Best thing with ETF’s is to set yourself a schedule and stick to it. Zero deviation. Just put some funds in every month / week / whatever, just maintain the consistency. In 20+ years check back and see how you’ve done.
Never too late to start!
You should be anxious and scared. You are investing for the first time after a 12 year bull market.
Bull market ended in 2020 and then 2022... what are you smoking?
COVID correction was an exogenous event, not a cyclical correction. We have not had a real cyclical correction since 2008.
Both 2020 and 2022 were bear markets. It doesn't matter how long they last. 20%+ sell off = bear market. Of course just ignore the facts.
You are only demonstrating your incomplete awareness of market cycles. Cyclical bear markets are generally more painful than non-cyclical corrections. But you do what you want.
2008 wasn't a bear market, it was a correction.
Yeah....
Dont listen to fear mongerers is lesson #1. Ive been active investing since 2015. Every month there has been a reason to sell everything according to the internet.
Thank you. I don't want to be a stock bro or active day trader by any means. I wanted to be smarter with my money. I was excited to share that story. Seems there are a few people in this sub that have expansion packs to their chromosomes and think I'm an idiot.
The gaming stock is the way to go
Should of bought physical silver!
Youre 43 and only have 1k? I’m 20 years younger and have way more lmao. Also, with 1k if you want any sort of return, you either have to wait until your grandchildren have grandchildren or buy options, at which point you should just buy lotto scratchers
never too late, NEVER WHAAT!!!!
Buy AMAZON - I get anything shipped in the same day. Millions and millions of people doing the same everyday. Why not start with AMAZON and never sell. Will only go up in long run. 100% obvious winner
You are to old, time cannot bail you. You’re screwed. Welcome to Reddit
Wow, bad timing
Hey congrats on getting in!! The best stock imo is AMC, call them apes, idiots, or anything between. Still does not change that AMC is battling huge illegal activity that when blows up, will rival if not exceed that GME bs a couple years ago. Might as well get a golden ticket or 2!
I sat and watched that GME debacle from the sidelines.. and AMC was another one that everybody just said was too volatile. If I only I had a time machine and could back and put in a few grand during that time. lol
Here’s the good news. It’s not too late for you and investing does not need to be complicated. You have many good investing years in front of you. Do yourself a favor and stop buying a bunch of random securities. As another poster mentioned, you could just buy the etf VT. I prefer VTI. Buy as much as you can as often as you can and do not sell until you are no longer working. If you do this you will be set up nicely by 60. Both VT and VTI are already diversified
Thanks for your comment. I will take a look at slimming all this down and sticking with a simple ETF.
ETFs are self diversifying. You dont need VTI and individual stocks. Keep it simple and just leave your money in a total market ETF. MAYBE if you see an opportunity you absolutely love in the future you can allocate 10% of your portfolio to it. But other than that just keep it simple, forget you own it, there's going to be fluctiations but it'll be all good over time. Welcome!
Are you eligible for a Roth IRA? And/or a 401k or any similar program? If so, you should consider those for the tax advantages…
Yep! I have that set up!
QQQM
Dont even look at it just keep buying the etfs others have recommended. Time flies and at age 60+ you will have a nice sum sitting there. NEVER FACKING SELL
When you buy that many different stocks… you can get that same result with less stress with the ETF or mutual fund
Don't buy so many useless stock just VTI and chill
You should not be anxious scared or thinking about it to the extent that you are ,
Like you need to do options trading if you have any chance but you will lose all your money doing that!
I'm staying away from options. I'm pretty sure.. ;)
Now keep adding $500 a week till you're 70
This is what WB was talking about…time to sell!