Here is the AVERAGE ANNUAL RETURN PRE TAX....

So here's the thing -- If I can get a 5% DIVIDEND annually -- that's near where your total return is on some of these! And that's discounting any growth in the share price! Still -- there's a couple good ones in there and if you can get 10% annualized growth rate - that's doing pretty well. Not great - but "okay". The GOLD fund -- TGLDX is the one that's gone exceptional... so lucky you IF you bought it 3 plus years ago. I wouldn't buy it now thats for sure because that would be to assume gold is going higher from here... and I wouldn't make that bet.


The OBIAX 10.47%

The SAMIX 5.29%

The LSBRX 9.71%

The TPICX since inception is DOWN 7.67%

The TGINX 10.04%

The PTTDX 6.47%

The TGLDX 23.80%

Hate is not a strong enough description....

What I hate the most about FUNDS - is the comparisons -- because it's so hard to do... and there's so many BAD funds out there...

People say to me - man the stock market really sucks - my mutual funds are down 20% and I just want to slap them! Because somehow they think "their mutual fund" is hooked to the hip of the stock market... and they're NOT...

Being the novice, it is hard for me to compare my funds to anything other than similar funds of it's kind. But they are so sliced up, I can't compare them to anything individual ..

A lot of my stuff doesn't follow the Market...Heck, some of my Gold funds don't even follow the price of Gold...

So I am still figuring things out.. I am just trying to limit my errors, and any:cheers: under performing..

but the process of learning, and the rewards of doing something, are well ....addicting..:lateral:

P.S. If their funds are down 20%, they have the wrong funds...

Well -- that's the big issue with funds -- it's really so hard to accurately gauge the performance. Most are just mediocre... and when you factor in the 1% fees (many are slightly less and many are more)... that's just money for nothing. You funds - except the one - are decent. But I still would be willing to bet that you can do BETTER on your own.

Ya know -- 1% fee on a 100K IRA account is 1 grand.... after 10 years -- that's 10 grand in someone else's pocket. It's one thing if I'm paying people to MAKE me money - then one could argue that the 1% is money well spent... but when people wake up and after 10 years they're barely ahead... then that fee is beyond stupid! 100 grand - after 10 years - better be 200 grand or something is wrong!

Thanks Greg..

Man, I will have to run some other holdings i have , by you on another day. I really do appreciate your taking the time to give me your opinion.:thumbsup:

Yes, most of my buys were in 2008/2009, so I am a happy guy..:) :)

Again I kept most of my money out of my 401K and self invested. the hidden fees in a company plan are madness..:willy:

On another note, I go by the car shop tomorrow to get pictures underneath before they take it off the lift..Then it is a test drive....WOOT.

Ok, I thought I would wait , but here are some other holdings I have.

BPT, KMP, SDRL, SLW, SPH,CEF, GTU, TIP,SCHO for cash on hand

You need to get diversified.....

Thanks, I thought so...

Here are the top 10 holdings in the only fund I have left:
FSTMX Fidelity Spartan Total Market Index Inv
Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM) 2.75%
Apple, Inc. (AAPL) 2.48%
International Business Machines Corp (IBM) 1.58%
Chevron Corp (CVX) 1.45%
Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) 1.33%
Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) 1.25%
The Procter & Gamble Co (PG) 1.24%
AT&T Inc (T) 1.21%
General Electric Co (GE) 1.19%
Pfizer Inc (PFE) 1.09%

The current value of the fund is $12,530.74 after my initial investment of $10,000 about 3 years ago. I believe that if I were to divide that $10,000 between those top 10 holdings 3 years ago I would be in a much better position. Something I will be considering within the next couple of weeks. I may not go with the exact 10 listed but I think I can do a lot better than this.
Once I can get my Rollover IRA working for itself I will focus my attention on my Schwab account and my Roth IRA.

Yep -- you see that over and over again with mutual funds. The top ten are dragged down by the bottom 100

Greg,

Thanks for any tips. I am going to be changing some things around within my portfolio, in regards to some of my Mutual Funds vs. Some Top Holdings .

I know I have been heavy Commodities since 2008. I have and will be riding the Fiscal policies of the Euro, and the Dollar. Still in 2012, I think I will do really well. I never day Trade, but Commodities are a form of speculation or feeling ,on which way things will go. I calculate as best as possible what I think the FEDS, and others will do.. Not for this thread, and I won't comment too much.

Your way of investing seems solid, most of mine is, and I know some is added risk.

But again, being the Novice, I want to stick with Investing 102, and what you have been saying on this Thread.:lateral:

I can be doing better. Not that things aren't good, but there is so much to learn, and so many ways to Make money.

You have many Readers thinking and doing something really IMPORTANT.

We are never taught this in school, certainly most Bankers, Advisors, and GOD forbid, a Broker, they won't tell you this stuff..It is Voodoo.

But like anything, we have to Study wealth, if you want to be Wealthy. It ias not going to come to you unless you work at it.

I read this last night while watching some TV and I swear I busted out in laughter. It reminded me soo much of one of those late night infomercial, get rich quick shows. You hear testimony from someone who's bought into the plan (Woody) and then host comes back to say "This is so simple ANYONE can do it..." soon to be followed by "...all you have to do is make 4 easy payments and I'll send you this highly valued packet of secrets to get you started." This just emphasis how valuable this information is we are getting here for FREE from REAL people who are doing it. Solid, non-biased information from great people. Thanks again.

It's somewhat biased, but this time the catch is it's in our best interest. :thumbsup:

EXACTLY.....

Here's WARREN BUFFET on Coke (he's a very large shareholder in it) === And I cut and pasted this here because it really shows all the trials and tribulations that occurred SHORT TERM during Cokes first few years.... but then read on.




“Coca-Cola went public in 1919. The stock sold for $40 a share. One year later it’s selling for $19. It had gone down 50% in one year. And you might think that’s some kind of disaster. And you might think that sugar prices increased and the bottlers were rebellious and a whole bunch of other things, you can always find a few reasons why that wasn’t the ideal moment to buy it. Year’s later you would have seen the great depression and you’d see World War 2, and you’d see sugar rationing, and you’d see thermal nuclear weapons, the whole thing. There’s always a reason, but in the end if you’d bought 1 share for 40 bucks and reinvested the dividends it’d be worth about $5 million now... And that factor so over rides anything else. I mean if you’re right about the business, you’ll make a lot of money. The timing part of it is a very tricky thing. So I don’t worry about any given event if I’ve got a wonderful business... You can figure out what will happen, you can’t figure out when it will happen. You don’t want to focus too much on when; you want to focus on what. If you’re right about what, you don’t have to worry about when very much.”

Do you feel the market is about ready to climb for a while or are we going to see another dip or two before historical trends repeat? Election year impacts on the market trend with the exception of '00 appear positive?

If you're asking me? I never think in those terms -- I just buy and cash the checks.... Sorry.

Understood and the answer does give a better understanding of the mindset. I was researching on a couple short-term revenue building opportunities to fund additional steady Eddies.

Again, I am the Novice Newbie to the thread, and I only share what I am doing with Greg to get his input.

What I think will happen , is not for me to say..

Trying to time the market is nearly impossible. As Greg mentioned in an earlier post, there is some dude somewhere watching to see if you you are a buyer or a seller. As soon as you make your move, that dude calls his buddies and moves the stock in the opposite direction. They attacked me twice today!

Earlier this week I decided to reduce a little risk in my portfolio and decided to sell ~50% of one of my speculative position and put that money into a something with less volatility. I wasn't trying to time anything, but ran into some bad timing. That dude was watching me!

One of my speculative positions is in a small, thinly traded biotech (FOLD). I've owned it for a couple years with an average cost of around $5.50. It has been trading between $2.10~$4 for the past few months with lots of volatility. So I sold ~1/2 my FOLD position for ~$3.55 and added to my Chevron (CVX) position.

After the market closed yesterday, Chevron pre-announced they were going to miss their earnings and the stock traded down nearly 2.5% today. And as if that wasn't bad enough, FOLD jumped 30% today and ended the day at $4.54! As I mentioned, I wasn't trying to time anything, just bad timing.

It's NOT BAD TIMING -- there is some SOB back there watching your every move! I'm telling' ya! :willy: :lol:

That's EXACTLY why I throw that into my posts once in awhile! Because I swear - a stock can go up every day for a month - and 5 minutes after you buy in - they take 'er down! Ditto on the sale side. I sold 1000 Apple a week or so ago -- I had a nice (huge) gain in it so didn't particularly care about the very last dollar -- but we all want to get the max -- and it was just kinda floating around 400 --- so I pulled the trigger -- within about two days it was up to $420+ --- and that's 20 GRAND! But.... it never fails so you just have to get over it... and understand it... then it doesn't get your goat.

I understand completely, that dude bites me in the butt 8 out of 10 times. So I do like to attempt to cover it with a little due diligence if at all possible. :D I guess I'm really trying to protect myself from real bad timing but it's still timing. :rolleyes:

I bought a 100 shares of Nike 35 years ago when they first began trading for $5..........that dude convinced me doubling my money was a good thing and I sold it for $10........the rest is history.

But learning what's important to other successful people is where the learned lesson is.

Right now I'm evaluating my portfolio sector diversity vs risk level and plotting the best options to fill the weak spots in Consumer Staples, Energy, Health Care, Industrials, Materials, and Utilities. I'm weighted heavy in Information Technologies but don't feel too bad because the over-weight products are DELL, HP, INTC, MSFT, MU, ORCL.

Thanks to this thread and the research tools Schwab online provides it's becoming a very entertaining challenge. Business is slow this time of year and our sector outlook is not promising, so at least I feel like I'm accomplishing something.

1:06 PM "Time to sell Apple," declares Thomas Kee of Stock Traders Daily, as it doesn't treat its customers properly. Kee isn't refering to the end users but to carriers like Verizon (VZ) and Sprint (S), whose margins are suffering because of the high cost of the iPhone. These resellers will look for alternatives and eventually find them.

I can understand how easy it is for you to fall victim to a short-sell though. :woot:

Wasn't really a "short sale" --- I owned those shares since $85 a share..... :cheers: :woot: I took some of the gain off with a loss in Goldman Sachs... the main reason is - APPLE does not pay a dividend - GS pays a very small dividend... I had a GIANT gain in one and a loss in the other -- so year end house cleaning. I still own 1000 shares of GS and will hold them paper loss and all.

I had half a million bucks in Apple - and needed to just do some rebalancing as I do at the end of every year. While it's THE HARDEST to sell winners.... it's the right thing to do --- so I kept 250 shares and bought some Connoco Phillips and raised my cash position for right now. I had also just lopped off a chunk of cash buying that building for my brother in law... and since I paid all cash for it - I looked at the Apple as a cash replenishment. I've ridden that horse for quite awhile - and the pigs get fat hogs, get slaughtered argument won out.

A quicky little story about the Apple purchase.... We had just bought the house we're in -- and I wanted to get away from having a desktop computer and a laptop (too much computer management!) so went to look at the Apple laptop. Bought one --- and while there - noticed that it was the ONLY STORE IN THE MALL WITH A LINE OF PEOPLE WAITING TO BUY STUFF! -- Pretty simple research in my mind... every other store was empty -- and these guys have a line up! I come home and realize that everywhere I looked the kids had an iPod... we had like 4 or them!

Bought the stock.... every time I went to the mall (once a year MAX - I hate malls) the dump was PACKED with people... buy a little more... and hold.

And the rest - as they say - is history.

KISS theory works.....all said and done it's simple fundamental logic. The amount of marketing clutter these days can really cloud those basic tried and true fundamentals.

It's actually the Peter Lynch school of investing....:unibrow: and he was a fantastic money manager! For those that don't know - he ran Fidelity Magellan fund for years... and that was his way of investing. It worked then - and it still works today.

He has a great book -- "Beating the Street"... which he wrote about his style of investing. Smart guy - and fantastic results over a long period of time.

So......thanks to this thread I've been digging in the files and found a State Farm Flexible Premium Annuity IRA that I opened in 1983 which a fund it and forget about it deal.........total premiums paid $6,500, current value $13,200....cha-CHING!

Then I quizzed the wife about her 401K plan at work which I've paid little attention to..........comprised of 3 Mutual Funds (SUPAX, OUTDX, SMCAX) through DWS Investments (Deutsche Bank Group) asset allocations are Growth & Income and Growth. The Sept 30, 2011 YTD performance was -$13,600. :_paranoid

I researched each fund's performance and Morningstar basically rated 2 of the 3 as dogs and the other mediocre.

I will definitely be making modifications as I figure she's still got a good 15 working years left in her! :D

Having 66% of that fund in say 5 Steady Eddies and one decent mutual fund would have certainly beat -$13.6K over the same period right?

Sadly -- Another reason mutual funds SUCK!

Yes -- you could throw a dart at a board and beat that performance!

Coke/Dividend
 

Just a note on some numbers I read today on Coke (KO)... which I own.

Given the size of - and the maturity of - Coke as a company... they're still 'growing'. And the better part - to me - is something that I look for in a DIVIDEND payer i.e., GROWTH IN THE DIVIDEND because that keeps you ahead of INFLATION even if your share price is static.

Coca-Cola has grown its revenue by 8.7%, its earnings by 19%, and its dividend by 9.5% annually over the past 5 years.

Interesting statistic
 

I found this and clipped it from an article.... and I have two takeaways from it:

Long term - and being counter or contrarian investor (I have LEARNED to be somewhat of a contrarian)... and maybe a third takeaway - eventually your earned interest/dividends will add more than you can on your own!

+++++++++++++++++++++++

As the past two centuries have shown, there has never been a 15-year period in which stocks delivered losses. That means when an investor buys in a given year, they can be reasonably certain of earning positive returns on their investment within 15 years—with gains ranging from just above zero to over 100%. Averaging the returns over the long run works out to 7% to 9% per year.

Investments made during the bullish phases are more likely to have long-term results closer to the zero bound. Conversely, investments made during the bearish phase are more likely to end up closer to the 100% level.

Not to be overlooked is the compounding of returns. Someone investing a portion of their income each year has a good chance of finding that, after 15 to 20 years, the return on their portfolio rather than salary deductions, is making a greater contribution to their retirement fund.

Louis Navellier is a super smart guy... and this is a very good - short - read about super easy to follow things to look for in a stock. Forget the stock advice at the end - that's not the reason for this post -- but rather his "reasoning" behind looking for GROWING EARNINGS... in his stock picks.



http://www.moneyshow.com/investing/a...sting-in-2012/

Thanks, that was a good read. :thumbsup:

Enjoyed it, danke schoen Herr Veld. :unibrow:

Just got a call from my broker today, one of my stocks went up 5.00 today and the company is being taken over, he suggested we sell and move to a different energy stock that pays 7.5% dividend.
my plan ended up with a 20% return over the last year and is up 5% this year already.
He was saying it has been the best performing plan he has reviewed this year sofar. i just wish i had way more in there.
but all i do is look at it and forget about it,i have averaged about 17% over the last 8 years

Some guys are better lucky than smart.... which category do you fit? :lol:

Are you mostly in Canadian stocks and funds?? Eh?? I don't track "their" market but it wouldn't surprise me a bit that overall that market might be better than the US! We have managed to spend ourselves into oblivion... and just about wrecked our housing market (because we're a nation of over spenders!). Maybe we should swap places?!?! But you have to leave the Nova behind. :_paranoid

Glad I wasn't taking a drink when I read those words coming from your keyboard! :lol: :cheers:

Definatly in the SMRT catagory!!!! oh wait I just reread the question, you must be talking about someone else cuz smart and lucky are not in my vocabulary. Now the broker he might be smart??? or lucky i really don't care which it is
yes mostly Canadian bought 2 new ones today one canadian oil company and one us fuel distribution company.

Spending is RELATIVE.... to the income. :unibrow: