Do You Invest Yourself Or Call A Financial Planner?
Many investors try to play the game of picking individual stocks rather than picking solid mutual funds and then often wonder why they experience both difficulty and stress making money in the stock market.
I sometimes tell investors that they should not be afraid to own individual stocks if they are willing to take the time to learn enough about the individual company or stock to make a rational businessman's decision. And don't forget about valuation. Sometimes it is just a lot easier to pick fabulous mutual funds, and let professional money managers make the individual stock selections for you. If you go this route, and for many it is the way to go, than I suggest your big decisions are what sectors you want to invest in, and what are your asset allocations. Sounds like fancy language, but really it is not. It's just plain common sense investing. What is your aversion to risk? Do you want to embrace investment risk, or do you seek to encounter as little risk as possible.
Funds are expensive but most are not. Depending on the amount of money invested, most people cannot find better value for every dollar invested than they can when they invest in mutual funds. While the fund companies generate an expense for their administrative efforts, they almost always come in cheaper than investing individually through a discount broker. With most fees at 1% or less, an investor with just $10,000 to invest could only make 10 trades in 1 year at $10 each to achieve the same cost savings. This tells us that funds are owned by so many different unit holders that the collective pays a reduced fee, not the individual investor.
People who invest in Funds lost 50% of their savings when the market crashed. While many people certainly lost much of their portfolio's value thanks to the recent market crash of 2007-2009, funds actually offer enough different flavors of funds that smart, properly diversified investors would have lost much less than nearly any other type of investor. Between high yield investments, money market funds and specialty asset class funds, investors can find properly diversified investments for any and every need they may have. There is an abundance of selection; one does not need to be limited to domestic stock market-linked investments.
It never hurts to do a little homework, have reasonable expectations, pay a low load, or even used index funds, have a long term outlook, and you should be okay. More than that, you should be pleased with the wealth creation process that you have put together for yourself. If you insist on taking all kinds of risk, than you should do it with only about 5% of your investable assets. Most stock analyst will agree that it is a sound financial idea to diversify your stock portfolio with some type of money market investment, such as the Principal Money Market Fund. However, few will make that recommendation to you because they do not study or analyze this type of security investment.
Commodities operate in a little different fashion than stocks. Buying a commodity means you actually own something, or in the future you will own something, whether it be so many bushels of corn, pounds of gold, or barrels of oil. You are dealing with real goods, not the performance of a company. Typically, you are buying a contract for a future buy or sell of these goods. And it is a contract you never expect to complete.
Article Source: FxTradingStock.com
About the Author
Want to find out more about a Financial Planner, then visit Arthur McCain's site.
by: Arthur McCain
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Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010
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