Let's talk about investing.

[Sugar Adam Ali]

I'm 28, retirement is something that has never crossed my mind and have never had any financial mentor or anybody to show me anything about money. Just starting this year to self educate myself on things.

Being under 30 is a great time to start investing.

There is a difference between investing and trading.

Trading is actually earning a living, short term profit, constant trades, and is very hard and need a fairly decent bankroll to get started, plus a working knowledge of how the market works. This isn't for the average guy

Investing is what normal people do, stick money away and let it grow long term, constantly reinvesting dividends and gains, to hopefully build a nice nest egg for retirement. It's very possible for an average person or couple to be able to build a 500k+ nest egg over a 30+ year period.

Investing is very simple for long term gains.

Here is my advice:

1. I can suggest starting an online account with Charles schwab, it costs nothing but you have to deposit $500 into you account initially. I use them myself, had them for years and can't complain, very simple, good customer service, extremely cheap on fees

2. Setup a Roth IRA. This is a retirement account that you can't touch until your 65 but it's all taxfree when it comes out in retirement. If you take it out sooner, you face you penalties, fees and taxes, so DONT touch it.. it is capped at only 5,500 annually when your young and then rises to 6,500 when you hit 55 years old. Your first goal will be to fully fund the 5,500 every year and "max out"

3. With money in your ROTH IRA, simply invest in index funds using dollar cost averaging which means instead of investing a large sum at once you break it up over smaller payments over time to catch a nice average price point for the year. I suggest investing only in schwab funds because their is no commission/fees, and their index funds are the cheapest fees in the industry. %0.03 for a fee which most are %.0.50 if not a full 1%. I suggest investing in the s&p index swppx and schx which is their large cap index ETF, which is basically the same thing except ETFs are trading like stock, unlike mutual funds which generally are bought in quan****** of money amounts and not number of share. PUT ALL YOUR MONEY INTO THESE FIRST UNTIL YOU MAX OUT YOUR ANNUAL LIMIT OF 5,500.

4. REINVEST ALL DIVIDENDS AND GAINS. You can set this to do it automatically so you never have to worry about doing it yourself. This will have a huge snowball effect on your investment.

5. If you find yourself with more money to invest and have already fully funded IRA then open a normal brokerage account with schwab, this has no limits but different tax ramifications depending on how quickly you buy/sell a stock. 30 days, 12 months, 24 months, usually anything after 5 years of holding will have the lowest tax ramifications.

6. In the brokerage account, do the exact same thing and continue to invest commission free into swppx fund and schx eft.

7. Once you have hit 10k in a year investing into swppx and schx, then you can target individual stocks like Apple, Amazon, etc or just continue to plug money into the index fund and index etf.

8. JUST BE SURE THE FIRST 5,500 GOES TO ROTH IRA, NEXT 4,500 GOES TO BROKERAGE, ALL OF IT INVESTED IN SCHWAB INDEX FUNDS AND ETFS. REINVEST ALL DIVIDENDS AND GAINS

9. Be sure to do dollar cost averaging, which means invest a few times a month rather than once a month. Instead of 1,000 at the 1st of each month, do $250 a week, that way you can catch all the dips and get some bargains and lower your overall price point, which will increase returns. I personally have mine setup to auto invest on the 5th and 20th of each month

10. Follow these steps, and in 30 years, when you are 58, you will have a huge nest egg, and at 65 it will be even bigger. Easily over 500k and close to a million if not more.

[Sugar Adam Ali]

My investing philosophy is, invest in companies that you think that will be around in the next 50 -100 years. Obviously, no one can predict out that far, but pick companies that are sufficiently diversified, are leaders in their respective industries, are innovators, etc.

The last several years I have been investing in Google, Amazon, Apple and Twitter. I sold all my shares (for a loss) of Twitter earlier this year as the company is stagnating and the stock has underperformed since I bought it.

I've also been investing in Pfizer for the last 8 or so years. It's a stable company that posts very modest gains, but pays a nice dividend that I (auto) reinvest every quarter. My long term goal with this stock is to keep reinvesting and grow it so I receive around $50K a year in dividends (I currently receive 7K).

Problem with twitter was they could never monetize it. The actual users make more money depending on their # of followers

[Chief2ndzOnly!]

Just remembered this book. There is a lot of good basic & beyond investing advice in this book. And I think Robbins just came out with another companion book to this one this year although I've not read that one so can't vouch for it.

:stampofapproval::stampofapproval::stampofapproval ::doobie:

[LomaLovkin]

2. Setup a Roth IRA. This is a retirement account that you can't touch until your 65 but it's all taxfree when it comes out in retirement. If you take it out sooner, you face you penalties, fees and taxes, so DONT touch it.. it is capped at only 5,500 annually when your young and then rises to 6,500 when you hit 55 years old. Your first goal will be to fully fund the 5,500 every year and "max out"

Correct me if I am wrong but can't you withdraw money for special purchases? Say down payment on a first house.

[LomaLovkin]

F#ck cars. I think Musk is more likely to take over the lithium battery market & thats where the real money is at anyway cuz everyone is gonna be in hybrid or electric cars sooner or later & Musk will likely be selling all those companies batteries.

Tesla is FOR SURE a good investment & I'd bet it'll triple up to $1k/share within the next few years. Long long term, who ever really f#cking knows cuz sh^t can change quicker today than ever + Musk is a crazy mfer who's been close to broke more than once. I won't be shocked if he does eventually go broke cuz he's a big risk taker & his long term goal is f#cking dying on Mars which is gonna be a big gamble if he ever makes a serious attempt at that. Randomly his biography is a good read too.

Musk is a crazy ass mofo, that is true lol

I can see them going big or tanking here shortly as they are working on the mass production of their model 3 which is supposed to be their grand entry into the "mass" public. All their other vehicles have been higher end models.

I'ma have to read that book man, thanks didn't know that was out there.

[Eff Pandas]

I'm jealous this dude is getting 50% roi while my money rots in the bank and low roi mutual funds

I double checked my numbers & I actually ran at 24.5% per trade according to my spreadsheet.

A little more on what I did.

I only f#cked with penny stocks (buck or under) due to being a bankroll dork from my online poker playing days & the money I was willing to dabble in the stock market with. I was tracking over 100 companies via Finviz.com (which I'd recommend to OP, although there maybe better sites out there idk), but usually had my focus & main attention on just a dozen or less at any given time & was invested in 4 or less most of the time.

My biggest return was on IMNP (Immune Pharmaceuticals Inc) where I almost doubled my money in a week, buying at 17cents on 11/30/16 & selling for 33cents on 12/7/16. I actually brought & sold IMNP 3 different times during the time I was playing the stock market. I was primarily focused on dips in stocks I felt were undervalued currently or with potential to rise in the near future & the longest I held any stock was 4 months which is contrarian to most people working stocks today that are either in it for 20 years or trying to be the cool day trader guy with a computer doing most of the work. I don't got as much patience as the 20 year guys & I'm not a programmer so my formula worked well for me & that thought process was used in deciding what stocks I was buying & I don't believe would be profitable for the 20yr guy or the cool day trader guy necessarily.

[billeau2]

Thank you for dropping some knowledge here. Could you just go into further detail on the bolded?

Sorry for the late response: Sure no problem, this is what you have bolded, if there is anything else let me know...

Finally get in quick if you find a niche! I used tax liens for years, averaged very high, about 12% until all the banks put together syndicates that buy these in bulk now. Crypto is next, the illuminati tried to break it and they couldn't there is a chance to make a fortune in the next year but after that? the big boys will jump in.

Ok Big Picture First:

lets talk about the process of what I call syndiction. I am 53 and when I was a young stud (lol yeah right) real estate was used, especially prior to the Savings and loan Crisis, as a tax dodge. Consequently in times of urban crisis the city would literally give houses away to contractors, and in programs. Baltimore started the dollar house program for example...you could get a huse for a dollar and a great loan for fixing it...

well people got smart, not only can you do a lot of **** with a loan interest loan, but those houses made a fortune for smart individuals. The banks saw this...hop ahead to the great crisis in Detroit where a black Executor sold his own people into financial bondage...the greedy vultures, not content to gentrify a few areas, got together with the banks, and if you look carefully one will notice that downtown Detroit, as one of the few cities with prewar apartments (like New York, Philly, Baltimore) worth a fortune...but if one had tried to get a loan on one of those, good luck! Downtown Detroit was given to the gentrification vultures who went in flush with capital from the banks...you know those same banks who tell people "we don't want your property we can get you a repayment plan"... and together this ad hoc sydication of these investors and bank capital bought downtown detriot en mass.

That is syndication. Where as before a real estate investor (like myself) could come in and maybe buy a few units cheap in one of these prewar buildings, the banks and the greedy saw an opportunity to take over the market and they did and today? the same citizens who lived in neighborhoods cannot afford to live there. or socialize in that area. That market is much more difficult to operate in...As a REal Estate person one must be lucky, smart, or find another opportunity. The next market is the materials in the old houses in Detroit in some of the bad areas: Smart people have found things like Bricks, wood, etc are worth a lot of money, so...you enter that market for a while until the big boys see it is profitable and take it over...See how it works?

Syndication means a bunch of greedy vulture capitalists get together and don't just try to buy things, but...try to take the market over. Romney made a fortune doing this... You get banks to create an ad hoc board that flushes you with capital and you buy the resources en masse. Now lets get specific.

For years Tax Liens were a nice little secret. You go to counties in each state and purchase the option to pay the taxes to the county in return for which, you are rewarded with a handsome return, or...rarely, sometimes (not as often as they say) the actual property itself. Each state and county has its own auction and rules. You now have a lot of hawkers selling information on tax liens but the truth is, to actually get good properties and good, not great, returns is almost impossible because...the syndicates are in on it and institutional investors, vis a vis banks and capital flushed individuals, are buying the liens in bulk.

Crypto currency is the next big thing. Heres what you should know: they have tried for years to break the back of crypto currency, the elites hate it! Banks manipulate currency so it works for them: Try an experiment one day... ask a 3rd grader the following question: " If a bee keeper looks after the bees, and if a milk farmer looks after the cows, what does the flower shop owner look after?" Kid will say flowers because kids are about no bull**** right? You then say "ok good" then ask the following, If the president looks after the country, who looks after money in the country? is it the police? the federal reserve, or the treasurer?" Heres the point: Any reasonablly intelligent kid, much less an adult, knows instinctively (like Meno in the Socratic dialogue knows how to double the sides of a square with a little prompting) that money is "treasure" and that the treasurer is supposed to look after money. This exerscize shows how crazy it actually is that we let the Federal REserve, a quasi private organization profit off our resources.

With that said, crypto currency is like Gold in that it is not diluted. And, because of the Dark Web primarily, which cannot be destroyed by the authorities, the currency cannot be broken.
they have tried to sabatoge it numerous times... The inventor of bit coin (yes he is known* denies inventing it... he lives like a monk in a Japanese hermitage.

Now, eventually the institutional investors will figure out a way to get into the game, but right now is a splendid time to take advntage because these currencies will rise, especially since the trend is not for the dollar to get stronger...the dollar is actually pretty damn strong right now. Once these currencies are bought in bulk they can become overinflated. In other words, they become so valuable that they have to be diluted.

For anyone who wants to know why this is so important: the value of an asset not being diluted, look at Berkshire Hathaway, the company held by Warren Buffet. The cost per a share is very high, something like 20k I believe because Buffet refuses to dilute the value.

So thats the thing with cyrpto currency. There are many details abbout how to buy it, and which ones to buy. If the dollar weakens and the Euro is built on a house of cards to begin with... there could be major ramifications for buying these currencies. Until the big boys determine how they want to play it, this is a great opportunity. They cannot strengthen the dollar too much, and they cannot weaken the dollar too much and, if they flush crypto currencies with cash, that could backfire horribly... Mostly because nobody really knows how much assets are on the deep web and what their value is, including the bad things that sustain the elites: child ****, human bondage, weapons and drug smuggling, money laundering and drugs.

Hope this helps

[billeau2]

Being under 30 is a great time to start investing.

There is a difference between investing and trading.

Trading is actually earning a living, short term profit, constant trades, and is very hard and need a fairly decent bankroll to get started, plus a working knowledge of how the market works. This isn't for the average guy

Investing is what normal people do, stick money away and let it grow long term, constantly reinvesting dividends and gains, to hopefully build a nice nest egg for retirement. It's very possible for an average person or couple to be able to build a 500k+ nest egg over a 30+ year period.

Investing is very simple for long term gains.

Here is my advice:

1. I can suggest starting an online account with Charles schwab, it costs nothing but you have to deposit $500 into you account initially. I use them myself, had them for years and can't complain, very simple, good customer service, extremely cheap on fees

2. Setup a Roth IRA. This is a retirement account that you can't touch until your 65 but it's all taxfree when it comes out in retirement. If you take it out sooner, you face you penalties, fees and taxes, so DONT touch it.. it is capped at only 5,500 annually when your young and then rises to 6,500 when you hit 55 years old. Your first goal will be to fully fund the 5,500 every year and "max out"

3. With money in your ROTH IRA, simply invest in index funds using dollar cost averaging which means instead of investing a large sum at once you break it up over smaller payments over time to catch a nice average price point for the year. I suggest investing only in schwab funds because their is no commission/fees, and their index funds are the cheapest fees in the industry. %0.03 for a fee which most are %.0.50 if not a full 1%. I suggest investing in the s&p index swppx and schx which is their large cap index ETF, which is basically the same thing except ETFs are trading like stock, unlike mutual funds which generally are bought in quan****** of money amounts and not number of share. PUT ALL YOUR MONEY INTO THESE FIRST UNTIL YOU MAX OUT YOUR ANNUAL LIMIT OF 5,500.

4. REINVEST ALL DIVIDENDS AND GAINS. You can set this to do it automatically so you never have to worry about doing it yourself. This will have a huge snowball effect on your investment.

5. If you find yourself with more money to invest and have already fully funded IRA then open a normal brokerage account with schwab, this has no limits but different tax ramifications depending on how quickly you buy/sell a stock. 30 days, 12 months, 24 months, usually anything after 5 years of holding will have the lowest tax ramifications.

6. In the brokerage account, do the exact same thing and continue to invest commission free into swppx fund and schx eft.

7. Once you have hit 10k in a year investing into swppx and schx, then you can target individual stocks like Apple, Amazon, etc or just continue to plug money into the index fund and index etf.

8. JUST BE SURE THE FIRST 5,500 GOES TO ROTH IRA, NEXT 4,500 GOES TO BROKERAGE, ALL OF IT INVESTED IN SCHWAB INDEX FUNDS AND ETFS. REINVEST ALL DIVIDENDS AND GAINS

9. Be sure to do dollar cost averaging, which means invest a few times a month rather than once a month. Instead of 1,000 at the 1st of each month, do $250 a week, that way you can catch all the dips and get some bargains and lower your overall price point, which will increase returns. I personally have mine setup to auto invest on the 5th and 20th of each month

10. Follow these steps, and in 30 years, when you are 58, you will have a huge nest egg, and at 65 it will be even bigger. Easily over 500k and close to a million if not more.

I would like to support Sugar on this advice: Particularly the idea of an on line brokerage. We have been culturally conditioned to think that we are unable to pick a decent stock... One has to get past this nonsense. REmember!! Monkys throwing **** at a board beat the best stock pickers!

Online brokerage accounts usually have relatively high interest money market accounts as well. One of the problems many have is where to park cash...some of these accounts will net abut 2% I believe and some are federally insured. If people are skittish then start with an index fund.

Also if people want to trade, perhaps down the road, one way to practice is to hypothetically make trades (all online brokerages allow one to do this I believe), and to look at graphs of a stock, or fund for different lengths of time... so for example if one looks at the S&P and a graph of time starting with ten years, ten months ten days and ten minutes....notice how different the graphs can look. As Sugar says," the Trader, trying to make money at stocks", is going to look short term and look for volatility. The stock investor is going to look at the greater expanse of time to see a gradual trend.... same stock, very different story! The investor in a sense wants little to no volatility while the trader needs it!

One can even start by trading the S&P short term... My own piece of advice is to learn options. They can become a great piece of leverage and insurance when used correctly. If you incorporate them when starting to practice you will have another weapon in your toolbox, a great one! Especially for guys in real estate who want to look at trading: Options is much like a "rent to own" contract on a property, or buying an option to buy a property. Heck, one can have a REIT, one buys (shares of REal Estate syndicate) and use options to "rent" shares lol. ust saying that owning real estate through shares is done by a lot of savy REal Estate Professionals.

[Sugar Adam Ali]

Correct me if I am wrong but can't you withdraw money for special purchases? Say down payment on a first house.

You can take money out of Roth IRA anytime, but you pay huge penalties, like 50% of something crazy like that, unless you are at retirement age.

A normal brokerage account, you can pull money in and out.

ROTH IRA- strictly retirement

Brokerage account- everything else

[billeau2]

The answer to your question will largely derive from your answer to the title question.

If the idea is that they'll takeover the car business, I'd probably keep the money in my pocket.

If you read between the lines Tesla isn't even a car company anymore. It is a solar technology company and...it just so happens that the connondrum with solar comes down to the battery issue. Solar is a viable technology now which is why Musk, under the radar, made the transition to becoming a solar company. If you don't believe it look at their state of the art facility in Reno. And think... If y0u were making spinners toys and one day came closer to making a perpetual energy machine, what would you do?

If you were smart like musk you would not announce this discovery, you would just sort of lean over to the technology, and still let every one see the spinners being made, if you catch my drift. Musk is at the head of the pack for what will be one of the chief sources of energy in times to come. If he perfects solar battery life he can sell fridges to Eskimos and still write a ticket for anything he wants!

If you look at places like the West in the United States, there is land that cannot be made whole and livable because of three factors: Most important, water and water rights, and then roads and power. Roads can be created with Easements, water can be drilled...though water is a big problem and not to be minimized, and solar used to be useful but not really viable as a system in itself. now solar can be used off the grid. Compost toilets actually work better than most liquid septic systems. This is why solar is so important.