My Investing Plan.... Its interesting as hell....

[KaneKungFu123]

I feel that my hourly rate playing poker is high enough that the time it'd take me to actually learn about investing is actually -EV. I dont even find the stock market very interesting. Of course, I dont want to get my money in as a huge fish. I plan to choose low risk investments. If I could average about 7% accros the board Id be satisfied.

I currently have about 100K I want to invest.

It looks like EFT's are a good way for me to go. So do I pick 10-20 EFT's and put 5k-10k in each of them?

I was considering diversifying by putting money into a bunch of the forign index EFT along with US indexes.

France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, S.Korea, Hong Kong, Australlia, Latin America, etc.

also, how safe are these internet trade websites. ive got 30k in www.sharebuilder.com right now. is my money insured if they pack up and leave?

[tek]

Diversification is good, but I wouldn't put all your money into several related funds. A foriegn eft or two, along with other types of funds, such as enrgy, precious metals, various size cap equitie funds, etc would be the way to go.

If you look at various countries you will have three economic macro trends: up, down, sideways. You certainly don't want down or sideways (stagnant) countries in your portfolio. And you don't want too many up ones (decreases diversification).

At any given time, there will be one or two countries on the move up. I haven't kept track of foreign indexes, but I used to notice that Asia and Latin America moved inversely.

[KaneKungFu123]

bump

[TGoldman]

First determine your asset allocation plan. Do you want to put 30% in foreign equities and 70% in the US markets? Or some other mix? You could also consider adding in other asset classes such as fixed income investments, real estate investment trusts, or a commodities index. Spend some time looking up each asset class and deciding what % of your portfolio to allocate to each class.

Then you'll need to pick the index, mutual fund, or stocks to fill in each asset class in your allocation plan. You would want to weight the international ETFs you listed so they all add up to your target for foreign equities. One caution is to watch out for expense ratios on some of the international ETFs. They can be right up there with actively managed mutual funds. The South Korean ETF index EWY carries an expense ratio of 0.94% which is very high for a passively managed index fund.

Anyway, you should get the idea. I use Sharebuilder for my ETF investing and have been pleased with them so far.

[KaneKungFu123]

[ QUOTE ]
First determine your asset allocation plan. Do you want to put 30% in foreign equities and 70% in the US markets? Or some other mix? You could also consider adding in other asset classes such as fixed income investments, real estate investment trusts, or a commodities index. Spend some time looking up each asset class and deciding what % of your portfolio to allocate to each class.

Then you'll need to pick the index, mutual fund, or stocks to fill in each asset class in your allocation plan. You would want to weight the international ETFs you listed so they all add up to your target for foreign equities. One caution is to watch out for expense ratios on some of the international ETFs. They can be right up there with actively managed mutual funds. The South Korean ETF index EWY carries an expense ratio of 0.94% which is very high for a passively managed index fund.

Anyway, you should get the idea. I use Sharebuilder for my ETF investing and have been pleased with them so far.

[/ QUOTE ]

are eft fees fixed into thier price?

[TGoldman]

The 0.94% expense ratio that I quoted for the South Korean ETF index EWY would be 0.94% of your money invested in it. For example, if you had $10,000 invested in that particular ETF, it would cost you approximately $94 per year in expense fees. Generally speaking, the more "exotic" the ETF the higher the expense ratio.

[Your Mom]

If your brokerage goes belly up, you are insured. It is called SIPC insurance. You may want to ask your brokerage house about the specifics of their SIPC policy. Normal SIPC insurance is up to 500,000, but only 100,000 of that 500,000 can be cash.

[RunDownHouse]

What ever happened to your hot dog cart scheme?

[Sniper]

Kane,

Why are you using sharebuilder instead of a regular online broker?

[KaneKungFu123]

[ QUOTE ]
Kane,

Why are you using sharebuilder instead of a regular online broker?

[/ QUOTE ]
which regular online brokers do you recommend?