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Buy, Sell or Hold?
What should I do? My investments are down and I don't know what to do? Should I be buying now, selling or waiting the market out? What are the successful investors doing? Here's a few ideas that could fatten your portfolio and give you a greater...
How To Pick A Profitable Mutual Fund
We have all heard the advantages of investing in a mutual fund
over trying to pick individual stocks. First of all mutual funds
hire professional analysts that are market experts and devout
many hours of study to the various stocks. Unless you...
Investing Psychology - Know Thyself
America will continue to be the land of opportunity and regardless of what course our economy takes over the next few years, it's likely that investment opportunities will be numerous and attractive. Companies driven by the ever increasing...
Market Timing Facts vs. Market Timing Fiction
The phrase "market timing" has been terribly misused, and
misunderstood, by market commentators, analysts, traders and
investors.
A stock, mutual fund, commodity, is purchased with the
expectation it will be worth more over "time." It is...
The Convertible Craze Brightens The Future Of Equities
Convertibles are stealing the show with their safe investment image in today's "protective" market. They seem to be overshadowing the stocks and bonds, and this holds true for the mediocre issuers. A convertible bond, as the name suggests, can be...
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Exchange Traded Funds
EXCHANGE TRADED FUNDS
They call ‘em ETFs.
There are hundreds of them.
The mutual funds don’t want you to find out about them.
Why?
Because they beat the socks off mutual funds in so many categories. The expense ratios of most mutual funds runs about 1.5% and many are much
higher. To buy a mutual fund you must wait until the end of the day to find out what price you paid. Many mutual funds have instituted redemption charges should you decide to sell out early. Early is whatever definition they want to apply and could be a year out, maybe more. The
fee at this time is about 2% for many funds.
Fund managers tell you it is to discourage overnight trading that adds to their expenses and therefore penalizes shareholders, but that
is not true.
The two most popular ETFs are SPY and QQQ. SPY is composed of the stocks in the SP500 Index with 500 stocks and it is priced every few minutes. It can be bought and sold any time during the day. The mutual funds who tell you it
is too expensive to price their funds more than once a day are either lying or stupid. ETFs prove that. And that same logic goes for short
term trading.
The investor buys and sells ETFs the same as any stock. The big brokerage companies charge
high commission whereas investors who place buy and sell orders with discount brokers will find commissions around $7.00 to $15.00 to buy or sell. That charge is for one ticket and not per
100 shares. The commission is the same for 100 shares or 1,000 or more shares. Big Wall Street firms charge many times this
Associated Websites
for the same
execution.
You can do research on ETFs just as you do on mutual funds. If you want to determine what stocks an ETF manger holds they will tell you in their prospectus. What you want to know is what Sector the ETF represents. The internal structure does not change often as does the stock ownership in a regular mutual fund.
At this time there is one drawback to buying and selling certain ETFs. Do not place Market Orders when buying and selling most ETFs unless
it trades more than 250,000 shares each day. As with stock there is a Bid and Offer Price. In thinly traded issues where the ETF has a volume
of less than 50,000 shares daily the Spread can be as high as 20 cents and many times more. In these issue it is suggested Limit Price Orders be entered. If the last trade was $20.50 the Bidcould be $20.40 and the Offer $20.60. A market buy order would be filled at $20.60 and a sell
order at $20.40. It is best to place a Limit Order at $20.50 and most of the time these will be executed at the Limit Order price. Stop Loss
Orders are also poorly executed in low volume ETFs.
Over the next few years as more and more investors discover these advantages they will be buying ETFs in preference to both load and no-load mutual funds.
About the Author
Al Thomas' book, "If It Doesn't Go Up, Don't Buy It!" has helped thousands of people make money and keep their profits with his simple 2-step
method. Read the first chapter at
www.mutualfundmagic.com
and discover why he's the man that Wall Streetdoes not want you to know.
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