No, it’s a goofy thing that I’ve seen on a couple sites. They pay dividends just fine. I’ve been receiving them for a few years now. Yahoo finance doesn’t read them properly either. They last paid me on 12/31/09.
The fund BND is suggested as a hedge against market volatility. Price wise they are extrememly stable, so your cash is protected when the stock market has drops. That way you have money available to buy stocks with.
Oh, get moving on that code if you want those free trades. The offer expires on 2/1.
Hey guys. I got another opportunity for some free trading here. Schwab is letting you trade their ETFs for free. The account requires either a monthly contribution of $100 or an opening balance of $1000.
One down side here is that there are no bond funds in the list. You can still buy government bonds for free though so just do that with www.Treasurydirect.gov. I like to buy the series I savings bonds, they’re inflation indexed.
Fidelity is also offering free ETF trades, and they do have bond funds available, but require $2500 to open.
I would love to get into trading though, is it really possible to make money trading for free??? i dunno, but anything sounds better when you consider how Construction work is so fucking bad right now, one week im working then the next not, then im working for 2 weeks then bam 2 weeks nothing, im going to school and have an AA and still jobs are wack. Im gonna get me into saving when the time comes, i cannot stand being broke, these rough times have literally schooled me into saving money. shiit when i do get some cash im paying bills and saving, straight the fuck up.
Trading is really such a bad word for the process. They should really call it accumulating. Yes, you can make money accumulating shares of stock and bond funds. If I may recommend a bit of reading when you have time, pick up a copy of “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham. It will get you headed in the right direction.
I wanted to take a moment here to address something I get asked about a lot. I want to define the word risk. People who have never invested seem to be under the impression that there is a high degree of risk in stock ownership. They associate that word with the same meaning risk carries when you talk about crossing the freeway it seems like. As if you have some kind of chance of being hit by a truck or have all of your money wiped out. I have a different meaning.
The risk in stock ownership shouldn’t be confused with the idea that you could somehow lose everything you put into it. If you are buying shares of a single company, well I suppose that’s possible, but when you’re buying something like an index fund that contains the stock of every company in the S&P 500, well I’d tell you there’s virtually no risk at all. When you say risk in that sense, what you mean is that it’s possible the price of the fund could drop over a short time frame. That’s called volatility risk, and sure, it’s real. But you can mitigate that kind of risk by simply making regular purchases over a long time frame.
You don’t have to be concerned with “Buying low, selling high”. For more than 100 years the long term trend of the markets has been upward. Trying to guess when it’s low or high is a fool’s game. If you make regular investments, once a month say, you’re sure to hit some of the “low” times. If you do that over your entire lifetime you’re going to have way more money than just putting it into a savings account. Many times more.
So no, investing is not risky. And you should do it because not investing makes you poorer every day. That’s the risk of holding onto cash, is that it depreciates over time. There is risk in everything. It doesn’t have to mean that there is danger.
Right on, thanks . With all the free time I have right now, I’m actually going to check that book out. Ive been needing more information regarding finance. Good looking out.
I really like the revised edition that has commentary from Jason Zweig. The english used in the original editions is a little dated so it can be hard to follow sometimes.
Anyone want to run me through my taxes? I think the family friend that does our taxes every year doesn’t get me the most money back compared to what my co-workers are getting.
you should see how much money i give facebook each month. its pretty ridiculous but gotta spend money to make money.
i’d give them more if they would let me but they have caps on how much you can spend a day. bing gets a good portion of my money too but their CTR isn’t as great as facebook. if i could have bing limits on facebook that would be awesome.
btw look for commercial real estate market to collapse by summer, prolly around april/may.this will be much worse than the housing bubble because there’s no incentive to pick up the real estate unlike with houses you could pick them up for cheap to flip or rent them out. so the gov’t will bail the banks out again, bunch will fail and a couple will survive just like last time. actually ironically wells fargo/bank of amer will be in good shape here whereas before they got owned. this will probably effect regional banks more than national ones.
this is the gov’t fault too. they removed restrictions to encourage lending and then let the banks not put the losses on their books.
This is a message that’s been repeated by at least someone nearly every day since we started having problems almost two years ago. It’s not going to go down like that. Most commercial real estate is held in trusts along with property that still does just fine. The collective effect will be a decrease in net income for the whole group, but there won’t be a collapse.
I’ve got my hands in a couple of real estate trusts that still have better than 95% occupancy rates. I get paid really well for owning them because people are still afraid. Things just aren’t as bad as we want to believe.
well i only started saying it since monday but trust me
i predicted the financial collapse in the first place back in 04 on AOL Instant MEssenger
i also predicted global warming was fake on SRK a couple of times and low and behold it is. also that obama would do nothing as president and people are tricking themselves into believing he’ll change the world
Even though there’s some mild sigley trolling, he’s basically right. At work there’s been a lot of focus on modeling of commercial real estate. There are $460 billion in loans coming due this year and with drops in rental cash flow and lack of tenants altogether, the majority of these loans are not able to refinance.
This video is showing that there are buyers out there, at the right price. The majority of the country is not midtown manhattan. The bigger the markup there was, the worse the problem in that area, but overall, things really aren’t that bad.
Don’t look for good information to be on TV. Read the annual reports of companies holding retail properties. Many are doing just fine.
Well alright it is time to get the ball rolling. Right now Ive decided to start with $80 a month to go into sharebuilder. However, I’ll wait it out some until i get $500 bux in my ingdirect savings since I only have $129 ($40 2 weeks ago and $89 from state taxes). The plan is to save $40 biweekly automatically into my ingdirect account to be used in sharebuilder. In a way I can do that $500 to start with now but im on my way to obtain a car this weekend so my refund check from my federal taxes may be gone. I am wondering should I wait until I reach the $500 mark or should I just jump into it now?
it’s because the government is allowing banks to not put some CRE losses on their books so they look better off than they are. Banks are also avoiding CRE losses by refusing to assess property values.
40% of CRE loans are from small banks. it’s higher among the riskier loans.
Fee control is the name of the game for now. If you’re taking advantage of their free trades right now then the smaller amounts are no problem. When you need to pay their fees it will take $4 out of each investment you make, so you should probably wait until you have at least $200 to make a purchase. That will keep you at the 2% in fees that most people recommend.
You can mark up/down assets on a financial report but you can’t misstate what something costs you in interest expense. In the dozen or so REIT annual reports I looked at this year, I saw the opposite of what you’re describing, and that’s properties that were marked way down to current market values. A very large percentage of those properties still are collecting rents. Certain areas have been hit harder. In the REITs that deal with things like retail space and small offices they have retained better than 95% of their occupancy rates. Several of those REITs are buying properties at the now distressed levels, and that’s going to increase future revenues.
If you’ve got a specific example of a REIT that’s cooking the books, let me know. Odds are that they probably weren’t doing all that great before this collapse either. It sounds like some of the sources you’re pulling information from are confusing property value with it’s ability to generate revenue. Focus on what earns money for the business and your perspective will change.
What do you guys think about investing in oil? I want to put like a thousand into oil shares that are tired to gas prices and leave it there for awhile. Any suggestions?