Fine by me, Andrew. If the stick-in-the-muds want to waste their time (and money, in some cases) doing stuff manually that could be done automatically, let them waste their resources!! Intuit and the other financial institutions surely needs their money more that these non-progressive inDUHviduals do!! And, uh, is this not still an ALT type newsgroup?!
Precisely. And, surely, it is NOT reason enough to go back to the Stone Age, and do everything manually.
Sucky dicky Ken plays the last refuge of the fool--kill filling those who challenge his unsupportable b.s..
My ex-broker seemed, in retrospect, to have a preference for investing in securities which produced a maximum commission for him. Co-incidence? I think not.
Those are certainly excellent results. I, too, recommend the "sleep test". If anyone asks me what they should discuss with their own advisors what they should invest it, I suggest that they mention the "sleep test". If they can't sleep considering the risk on anything other than, for example, municipal bonds, then, by golly, that's what they should invest in.
Doug, I relate to your comments about your phone company. My telco, Telus, now routes many customer service calls to points in India, the Philippines, etc..
I thought that my rejoinder was kinda cute!!!!!!!!!!
Sadly, all too often, their results fail to even match the relevant index.
You don't have to avoid equities or risk to get a good night's sleep. When I started 30 years ago I was 90% in equities, 10% fixed income. What you need is proper diversification. If you are very broadly invested over several areas, large and small cap, US and foreign, emerging markets, money funds in non-US currencies, and maybe a bit of REITs and gold if the portfolio is larger, you are pretty much taking on only the risk of the world's economy. The rest is diversified away. The biggest decision is equities vs fixed. AS time has past, my equity:fixed ration has been reduced in order reduce volatility, which gets to be of more importance as you get closer to retirement.
Unless your advisor charges a nominal fixed fee and makes nothing on trades, there's little reason to discuss anything with them. You can do as well without them, probably better since you can now add there fees to your returns instead of their pockets.
A big factor in the financial sector meltdown was the result of generating fees simply by creating things to charge fees on and, as Paul Volker says, moving around the rents on the money, which creates no value. Your broker does pretty much the same thing. He makes his money on buy, sell, or trade, regardless of what you make.
Han wrote: :: "Andrew" wrote in :: news:4e183471$0$23620$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net: :: ::: (Han: Totally off topic - Check the GPS forum about my post about Rt ::: 128 and the 'real' name!) :: :: Andrew, I don't see it. Which GPS "forum" do you mean? I had a :: crash, andmaybe I was subscribed to another newsgroup that I forgot :: about. :: :: -- :: Best regards :: Han :: email address is invalid
It was is alt.satellite.gps.garmin : "This type of error should be reported, IMNSHO. Or you should bear it and grin.
What is Rt 128 aka I95 around Boston called nowadays? I lived near there from '69 till '76, and still visit more or less regularly, so I don't use a GPS to get around ... "
Boys, boys, boys!
About 2 or 3 times a year you get into these squabbles, which in some ways are fun to read ("let's watch you and him fight"), but REALLY, the things you say to each other are like little kids on a playground! Sharx, I thought you had moved on from this! I can't remember who else is in the mix, but you've been thru this so often that you stand out, so I'm not really picking on you, except for your low blow FO type retorts. Do any of you talk to people in person the same way ? I bet not!
As someone said, you can't convince anyone who has his mind made up that your way is better than his. It'd be nice, and sometimes it's very helpful, to see how others implement an approach in Quicken, and I personally love to read how people do different things to solve the same issue, but not everyone wants to be educated to the degree that you guys attempt or, more accurately, with the condemnatory approach you use. Believe me, I sure understand the joys of the "my way is best" philosphy and I've tried to ram my "policies" down a few people's throats and it always backfires. You gotta give up and be gracious at some point.
FYI, I have lots of direct withdrawals coming out of my Wachovia ->
Wells Fargo account and have never had an error. (I wish I had everything on direct withdrawal, but I've been lazy.) They don't come out early, but on the exact date due. Of course you check your bills! After all, you download these transactions into your accounts, so it has to be a reminder to cross check for reasonability at that point, if not before. That said, I had not thought of the idea of charging recurring payments to my credit card, as some are doing. That would centralize expense payments even more than I've done, and might have other benefits that I haven't thought of before.
I also am not paying anything for Quicken (but am not using Bill Pay), probably because I had a Crown Classic account before.
Re brokers: Prior to 2009, my broker at Smith Barney was not doing a good job, but I didn't know enough to understand exactly what I didn't like besides lack of performance. I had an inheritance sitting with my father's old broker, at the same company in another state, and pulled everything out to go with her. My dad didn't suffer fools at all, so I felt she was at least competent. I know the market has gone up, and it's hard to tease apart that increase from her performance, but I am much happier with her choices. She goes for transparency: no mutual funds, no unit trusts.no ETFs or Reits so far. Every security, except for the left over ones from the old broker, on the statement, is something I can identify, understand, monitor, etc. She is conservative, maybe too much, but spends an inordinate amount of time discussing everything with me, even if it might be considered minutia. My accounts have recovered from 2008, and are also spinning off more income. They are diversified in ways I would never have considered, and she understands investing in ways I would never in a million years have learned (and don't want to deal with). I don't know how she makes a lot of money (which I'm sure she does) given how much time she spends talking to me and and my sister, and we are small potatoes compared to her other clients (no, she does not name them, just uses their situations or portfolios as examples). What she has picked has been appropriate. Nothing world beating, nothing awful. Is she the best 'stock' picker in the world? Probably not. She's certainly not a gambler. I just know that she isn't gauging me, is thoughtful, understandable, and has created order out of the chaos of years past. So there's my position on brokers. Some are horrible, some are good, and the rest fall in the middle.
Let's all kiss and make up now, ok?
I remember watching a Robert Schiller interview on CNBC. He thanked all the stock pickers, because they allowed him to just hold the index ;-)
The real issue is whether you are getting the best return, not just making money. If you are using any stock broker who picks stocks or times the market (and most do because otherwise you don't trade and they make no money) the returns are virtually certain to be suboptimal. All the academic research in the financial economics journals supports this.
Here's a link with an entertaining anecdote and why it's not a suprise.
Actually the stock market isn't hard to analyze, people think it takes knowledge of stocks, economics, financial matters, etc. which isn't true.
Stocks go up/down based on peoples 'perception' of the company and the overall economy. Want to predict the market? Forget economics, study mob psychology, that's always been the driving force in the stock market.
I asked one of my portfolio management professors at the Wharton School if there were really no better strategy than buy and hold a widely diversified portfolio. Is there no analytical "silver bullet" to outperform such a simple minded strategy? His response was "no one has ever found one, but if I had one, why would I work here?
Apparently the only silver bullet he missed was going to Wall Street and playing the subprime mortgage derivatives game, but his comments were well before this kind of thing was even possible.
Mob psychology is easy to predict? The people working in behavioral finance haven't found any silver bullets either.
It certainly has an effect, but likely not one the long term investor should care about.
The studies of trader performance that show they do worse than the market over the longer term don't ask what method they use, like economic, behavioral, technical, astrological, etc. They just look at the results.
And that has been impossible to predict!
Hmmm. So you want to kiss and make up, eh? Uh, does Jo stand for Joe or does it stand for Joanne?? Kiss-kiss is MUCH more fun than arguing. If Jo is short for Joanne or something similar, I'll even accept a turn on your knee for a good paddling, on account of my previous "potty talk"!!
Call customer service. I have been with WF for years with grandfathered accounts and paid $3/month for Quicken online banking. I don't use Quicken bill pay, just the WF bank site for that. When they send out new instructions this year to change zWells Fargo, I called customer service to switch to web connect. Instead the friendly lady said she would be happy to waive Quicken fees, including Bill Pay, and that she "loves waiving fees." After that the fee stopped coming out of my checking. Talk to someone; and if you don't like the answer, wait a day and talk to someone else, etc.
.............................................................................................................................................. "I don't remember any of that. I've been defragging my hard drive and got rid of all those lost clusters."
Green Eggs & NoSpam has written on 7/10/2011 8:26 PM:
Like playing one parent against the other!! :-)
BeanSmart website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.