Welcome RealMoneyIssues!
Hi RealMoneyIssues, good to see you here.
Ok, so I am trying to find a good method to divest myself of the individual stocks and get into ETFs... Allows diversification in one stock like product. Oh, and less STRESS
Also, a METHOD. Nothing is worse than putting money into the grist-mill and not having a plan...
I would also like to use ETFs and a method in a taxable investment account to make money (and pay for premium services) better than a 1% CD...
Just my thoughts![]()
How active do you want to be in the account? Short-term (days to months), intermediate-term (weeks to months), long-term (months to years)
-- Tom | My Trades
Hi RMI,
I thought I saw over on the other site that you use Schwab? I use SCHX for 'C', SCHA for 'S', and SCHF for 'I'. They trade free online inhouse ETF's and don't require I do anything different as far as the research I already put into that aspect of things. It gives a bit more flexibility to the 2-trade per month restrictions in the work retirement account. They are a bit clunky but have very low expense ratios, and you can fine tune a bit among value vs. growth or emerging markets or even TIPS if so desired. Most online brokerages offer some variant of this too.
Once in a while I chase commodity ETF's or lately looking at individual stocks, but the commissions at my levels eat up gains pretty fast, mostly just a hit and git thing when the iron is hot.
In fact, these accounts were funded mostly with a work retirement account loan to diversify my eggs into more than one basket, and although they offer instant access to the cash if needed, I treat them the same as work account and leave the money in there. I continue to contribute to all accounts as before and pay the loan back out of discretionary funds, had to tighten up the budget a bit, but it's like a forced savings account. Suze Orman would be proud. I'll get to that 6-month emergency fund target one of these days. She probably would have told me not to buy that $80 watch with some of the profits, but screw her, got to live a little too.
As active as I need to be to make more than 1-2% per year... I don't want to be buy and hold... Not sure if that answers the question
I did have a Schwab account but transferred it and other loose 401k/IRA accounts to USAA. I find USMIX is a good fund for S and there was another (don't remember the symbol off the top of my head) for C equivalent. I figured I would put the money in cash or TIPS when I am out of equities. I will just have to play with it over the next few months.
I just need to get out of individual stocks. Sell SIRI when it hits 2.50, C when it hits 5.00 (again) and the others once I determine a good exit point. I just think using the index funds/ETFs will be better if I figure out a good methog/plan.
Thanks for the comments !!!
Well, I seem to have had decent luck with swing trading TNA/TZA especially my TZA holdings over 4/5 trading days netted me 4.5%+. I have a little in TNA now to see how tomorrow goes, but Friday concerns me.
I am running into settlement issues, so I am going to have to figure that out.
I also am all out of SIRI since it did a double pop to 2.42 with my target at 2.40 (lowered from 2.50). Overall, probably got a little over 100% (~112 I think) on my SIRI holdings since last Sep/Oct. No complaints.
Still have a few stocks to divest myself of so that I can get solely into ETFs. C, O, CIM at this point and I am really only looking to get 0-1% out of them. Citi is killing me. I should have sold before it split. Oh well. O and CIM will move up once the market gets its Bull legs underneath it again. Probably be able to sell them sometime over the next couple months.
So, up ~3.5% for the year, but I definately think I can improve that once I get rid of all the stocks and figure out the swing trading tricks.
Ok, thats enough. Have a great day.
I guess if I had held my TZA for just another couple days (til today) I would have made another 5%... oh well, I just didn't positively know the market would dive again, so I took the profits I knew I could get.
I bought a little bit of TNA with the cash I had for a long until next week. I am still stuck with unusable settlement funds so I couldn't get more into TNA today when it was down ~4%.
Maybe I can buy a little TNA in the morning on Monday before it starts shooting up...![]()