possible to invest in an energy mutual fund with less than 25k

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Jouup 19 years ago

situation: family with each member with either roth ira and conventional ira or just roth ira but in each of the various types of ira accounts, they have balances below

25k individually

is there a fidelity or vanguard fund that allows them to invest in an energy fund with just 10k balance(s) ? every one that I looked at appeared to require at least

25k to invest.

also, related to this question is an employer retirement plan 401k. what is the method to ask the plan administrator to make available an energy investment plan within the

401k? in calling the company HR dept, they have a plan counsel and toll-free service for the banking institution that administers the plan but these people are not the money plan makers and noone seems to know who that is. in other words, I can call up the banking institution and ask anything about my investment selections or get statements and make changes (which I can do online also) but these people have nothing to do with the actual investment plans (ie. large cap fund, bond fund, etc.) and they don't know who runs the plan choices yet the prospectus outlines clearly which companies are used to run the components inside the 401k - these companies have no contacts within our HR dept either.

reason, obviously, why I'm asking is that all types of energy is becoming more and more expensive, with natural gas, oil, fuels, all becoming more expensive and it would appear to be a sound position long-term to drop all savings into an energy fund or at least a sizable chunk if possible

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Andrew Koenig 19 years ago

The Vanguard energy fund is available as an ETF (ticker symbol: VDE), which you can buy through any broker in units as small as one share.

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Dave Dodson 19 years ago

Fidelity's Select Energy Fund (FSENX) and Select Energy Services Fund (FSESX) have minimum investments of $2,500.

Dave

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PeterL 19 years ago

Often the entry level for IRA plans is a lot lower. Which funds are you interested in?

Very unlikely. My experience has been companies or their HR dept. don't really want to deal with that. There really is no incentive for them to make changes unless you can get a large number of your fellow employees to demand it. Also sector funds are considered to be more volatile. They also don't want you to put your 401K funds in high risk areas.

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BreadWithSpam 19 years ago

I'm not sure that in a becoming more and more expensive, with natural gas, oil, fuels, all

You're not the only one who's figuring that. Prices of those companies reflect exactly the expectations you are talking about. That doesn't mean you aren't right to want to overweight them - but it also doesn't mean that doing so is a great idea.

Perhaps you'd like to list the funds you do have available in your 401k and folks here can make some recommendations amongst them. For what it's worth, I'd lean towards making the 401k portfolio as "set-it-and-forget-it" as possible - mine's in a target-retirement-fund - and work with some other money for "play" (ie. overweighting stuff, etc). There is an argument for having play money in a tax favored account (ie. no tax consequences for transactions), but you mentioned that you have IRAs in addition to the

401k, so perhaps allocate one (small!) portion of one of those accounts as play money. For the rest - the vast majority of your retirement money - set up an appropriate asset allocation (well diversified and automatic as possible) and just let it do its long-term job.

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Douglas Johnson 19 years ago

It is not reasonable to drop all of your savings into anything as non-diversified as an energy fund. It is a recipe for poverty.

-- Doug

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possible to invest in an energy mutual fund with less than 25k

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