Investing 102

[bdahlg68]

Originally Posted by dhutton

I have 12 stocks spread across several sectors in the Schwab account I opened in January. Now I want to invest some additional money. Some have done considerably better than others. A couple are down a few percent and I have a handful that are well above 10%. Should I invest the additional funds in the better performing stocks, or spread it evenly across the board? I also have a few that have done well in my 401k, would it be a good idea to add them to my Schwab account?

Thanks,
Don

Another thing to consider is whether or not you will continue to have these chunks of money to invest and how big the chunks are. If you are going to continue to have these chunks of money to put in, pick one or two of the stocks you currently hold or a new one and put your money to work. With the next chunk pick one or two other stocks and just rotate through. If this is a one time chunk, diversification is really the way to go. Make sure you feel like you've got the best of the best. As long as you have the confidence in that like Greg is preaching you'll weather the bumps in the road much better.

As far as sizes of stock purchases, I like to keep the commission below 1% to get in. So if your commission is $7, buy at least $700 worth of stock. The lower you can keep this percentage, the better. Keep this in mind when thinking about the # of positions you may want to add to. In Greg's world, he is looking at 0.01%!

[GregWeld]

I got a good laugh out of the .01% commission comment -- but it is somewhat true I guess...

Here's the trade on Banco Santander (STD)

20,000 shares = $125,590.86 commission was $8.95 so total was $125,599.81


I think that works out to even less than .01%

[Bow Tie 67]

Originally Posted by GregWeld

I got a good laugh out of the .01% commission comment -- but it is somewhat true I guess...

Here's the trade on Banco Santander (STD)

20,000 shares = $125,590.86 commission was $8.95 so total was $125,599.81


I think that works out to even less than .01%

Holy crap, $8.95 for any size trade?

[GregWeld]

Yes Matt! That's Schwab! Any trade -- $8.95

I don't know what account "size" that starts at -- or if all trades regardless of the account size are that amount.

[bdahlg68]

That seems normal. Sometimes it depends on trade volume or account size, sometimes not. For my accounts, Zecco has $4.95 commission and Fidelity has $7.95.

It's just important to keep an eye on commission cost. You really want to try and avoid paying 5% to establish a position. If you're just starting out with a small amount of dough this is important. If you're buying $1000 - $2000 of a stock at each purchase, then don't worry about it....

[GregWeld]

On these "big" (they're actually not so big) down days --- when you start to wonder why you're in the market.... go back and look at the 5 and 10 year charts of your stocks. Traders (a definition) are always talking heads and always have some reason for why the market or a particular stock is doing "X".... INVESTORS look for the underlying value and long term reasons for stock ownership.

If you have some "new money" to put to work -- WAIT until this summer... the market is always down in the summer.... I usually don't start buying again until AUGUST. This is a very short horizon in the scheme of things.

[WSSix]

Cool! I'll have some more money to play with then I do believe. So I'll keep an eye on things until then.

[GregWeld]

I can't find any definitive answer as of today -- but I "THINK" Coke (KO) just voted to split it's shares 2 or 1.....


It was talked about at the annual meeting - but I can't find where it was voted on or not.

[GregWeld]

Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) wants to do something it hasn’t done in years — offer a stock split.

The company’s board of directors voted to recommend a 2-for-1 split this morning. If approved by shareholders, it would be the 11th stock split in Coke’s near-century as a publicly traded company, and the first in 16 years.


Under the plan, which shareholders will vote on July 10, the number of outstanding shares of the beverage and snack food maker would double from 5.6 billion to 11.2 billion in August — the number of outstanding shares will go from roughly 2.26 billion to 4.52 billion.

KO shares have gained about 7% this year — including a roughly 1% boost Wednesday — and currently trade around $75.

[96z28ss]

Originally Posted by GregWeld

Coca-Cola (NYSE:KO) wants to do something it hasn’t done in years — offer a stock split.

The company’s board of directors voted to recommend a 2-for-1 split this morning. If approved by shareholders, it would be the 11th stock split in Coke’s near-century as a publicly traded company, and the first in 16 years.


Under the plan, which shareholders will vote on July 10, the number of outstanding shares of the beverage and snack food maker would double from 5.6 billion to 11.2 billion in August — the number of outstanding shares will go from roughly 2.26 billion to 4.52 billion.

KO shares have gained about 7% this year — including a roughly 1% boost Wednesday — and currently trade around $75.

from that article sounds like they voted to recommend it this morning. In july the shareholder will vote yes or no on splitting.
One thing I'm wondering is since they split the shares, does the dividend also get cut in half also? Only got 82 shares would be nice to have 164 shares.
Got like the compunding dividend.

I read this in another article
"If the latest proposed split is approved, the company noted that a single share purchased in 1919 for $40 would be worth more than 9,000 shares and $341,545. If dividends were reinvested annually, the share would be worth $9.8 million.