Ok I have a question about investing and mutual funds,

Lets say I have 100, 000 in personal money and 100,000 in an IRA.

I had it invested with Fidelity investments, paid a fee to have them manage my account's and they really did nothing, but move my stuff around now and then. When the market crashed a few years ago I lost a lot, it bounced back to almost where it was after a long time.

Now, about a year go I moved everything to Wells Fargo.  Again I'm letting them manage everything, but same thing...nothing special. it's just sitting there, they move stuff around making me think something is happening.

I'm very close to pulling my money and put it into a crap savings account. BECAUSE  as I see it my money is just sitting there waiting for THE MAN  to take it from me.

The way I see I't good world news makes stocks go up for a few days, and bad news makes the market crash for a long time........I'm sick of it.......should I pull my money ?

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Originally posted by page

Ok I have a question about investing and mutual funds,

Lets say I have 100, 000 in personal money and 100,000 in an IRA.

I had it invested with Fidelity investments, paid a fee to have them manage my account's and they really did nothing, but move my stuff around now and then. When the market crashed a few years ago I lost a lot, it bounced back to almost where it was after a long time.

Now, about a year go I moved everything to Wells Fargo.  Again I'm letting them manage everything, but same thing...nothing special. it's just sitting there, they move stuff around making me think something is happening.

I'm very close to pulling my money and put it into a crap savings account. BECAUSE  as I see it my money is just sitting there waiting for THE MAN  to take it from me.

The way I see I't good world news makes stocks go up for a few days, and bad news makes the market crash for a long time........I'm sick of it.......should I pull my money ?

Honestly if you are looking to get the most out of your money then you shouldn't be using a managed fund and those fees really do rack up over the long term. Its part of the reason why they all pitch the buy and hold for the long term and over the last 70 years the stock market has been trending upward blah blah (rest of their sales pitch goes here).

Broker = Salesman

Financial Advisor = Salesman

They all make money off of you and have a direct gain in selling your something or keeping you paying into something you already got.

I think the intelligent investor book put it like this:

If you don't want to manage your money then your better off in some fund that tracks a major index like the S&P 500 and you shouldn't expect to earn more than 8-10% on average.

its a good book to read and if you want the more advanced get security analysis though read the intelligent investor first if your not some finance/accounting major.

Personally if you are going that route its cheaper if you go with some discount online broker like sharebuilder or whatever where a trade is like 10 bucks and i have some total stock market funds/etfs (IVV) because their fees are 0.1% per year which even makes the crappy dividends they pay cover some of the costs. If you are looking to grow your money faster, I do not recommend this as you are not getting weathy any time fast.

I laugh too cause i went to some of these brokerage firms, I think the last one is Edward Jones and after grilling him about how he made his buy/sell decisions he pretty much concluded that he receives information from the analysts of the company and attached they have their recommendation on what to do. and if it looks good and might match up with clients weird "profile" then he would recommend it.

and the whole thing of your age determines what you should be invested in, like when your young you should invest more heavily in stocks and when you get near retirement you should shift over to income generation. This is BS because risk is not really dependant on what product you buy, but your knowledge about the product and the factors that can affect it. and should your answer be, making as much money as possible with the least risk as possible reguardless of your age!???

Like some people think that real estate investing is really "risky" and they most likely don't do it, or they over leverage themselves and it gets foreclosed on. But to me, a property with good financials is about as good as money in the bank for me and i don't consider it risky because i protect myself with insurance and do the proper inspections and happily enjoy making 40%+ ROI while others are whining and complaining about trying to scrounge up what 8% per year in their mutual funds.

Idea for why you shouldn't invest in mutual funds (aka Open funds): Go to the top companies that sell them, take a look at their funds that are in the same category. Compare what companies they hold and in what proportions they hold. I think you'll find that most either copied each others cheat sheet or they all got brainwashed at the same place.

also when most people talk about diversification, they don't know what the flip they are talking about. Did you know that the Warren Buffet doesn't diversify? He concentrated his investments but did so in companies he knew extremely well and bought undervalued companies when the market was kind enough to drop their share price to a reasonable level.

Example Bad Diversifcation: (Only In Paper)

1. Mix of single stocks

2. Mutual Funds

3. Some Index fund

4. Some sector funds

Example Good diversifcation: (Across Asset Classes)

1. Mix of paper assets (Stocks, bonds, T-bills, Options, Forex etc....)

2. Real Estate (Single family and Mutli-family and maybe some commercial/industrial)

3. Several other businesses (Storage facilities, car washes, ice machines, web stores)

oh well if you want to talk more about investments i'd be glad to chit chat if your actually interested in stuff like that.

Just not about 401(k)/Ira's as I think those are really crappy investment vehicles and pretty much only use them for tax breaks.

Thanks Nikkons017

Well, Your right about managed funds, I found out the hard way. I try and talk to my brokers, first with Fidelity and then with Wells Fargo. Every time I call the Wells Fargo guy to complain about nothing happening he tries to call me in to his office to give me a pep talk and I walk out feeling good, hours later I find my self scratching my head thinking what a load of crap. The next day he moves stuff around and I think "good" he lessoned to me. But still nothing, no improvements.....I tell myself to give them more time,I'm brain washed with there lines that I should be thinking about the long hull.....But Now I'm thinking, if I wait too long with dead funds, I'm waiting for a market crash, only !

Like I say:

Good world news causes the market to go up for two days, then back down.

Bad World news makes the market crash for months.

Both Fidelity Investments and Wells Fargo tell me to not think like that, but with no backing on there part. I've been watching this for years. I'm sorry but it's true.

1) I like what you say Broker, Financial Adviser = salesman

2) I also can't read Mutual Funds reports because I see the copy and paste lines too.

I was hoping I could find someone that could do it for me. I guess you could call me lazy in this respect, because it's not in my area of interest to keep up on the market. I'm starting to find that I have no choice....I had a friend at my last job that was an expert, if you were not talking about the market, he did not even talk to you. He was that into it.  But when I switched jobs he dropped me, as I could understand it was a strain, and he did not need my little fee I offered him.

I would almost like to pull everything, let it sit in the bank doing nothing, and watch the market crash, I have no fate in America. I know this is not a good idea either. I may have to re-read your post a few times over. And take control anyway. And put my money someplace where I can control it, and pull it if needed. Because Advisers intimidate you and make make it hard to pull out if the world goes to hell.

Uh ...no offense, but if you have $200,000 laying around, why are you soliciting financial advice on an MMORPG forum?