The Investment Thread

[Boomer5]

What’s the safest stock (oxymoron I know) you can buy? I’m thinking dividend aristocrat stuff like JNJ, XOM, BP type stocks. Any ideas for what will surely be a correction at some point.

This is obviously a loaded question, but I’ll bite and say check out PFF - the iShares US Preferred Stock ETF. Minimal upside, but low volatility and a 5% dividend yield.

 

That’s perfect for what I have been looking for. My bond funds have been a joke so it feels like dead money. Your idea is better. I’m very overweight in BP and need to diversify.

[KeithStone53151]

What’s the safest stock (oxymoron I know) you can buy? I’m thinking dividend aristocrat stuff like JNJ, XOM, BP type stocks. Any ideas for what will surely be a correction at some point.

This is obviously a loaded question, but I’ll bite and say check out PFF - the iShares US Preferred Stock ETF. Minimal upside, but low volatility and a 5% dividend yield.

 

That’s perfect for what I have been looking for. My bond funds have been a joke so it feels like dead money. Your idea is better. I’m very overweight in BP and need to diversify.

 

You could also go for something like WE Energies, which is basically a government guaranteed monopoly and pays good dividends. I haven't done the research, but I'd think they'd be basically immune to a recession.

[Boomer5]

That looks good too. I really want to rotate into stable dividend paying instruments. The market can't possibly keep going up and the climate feels shaky??

[homer]

What's your investment timeline?

[Boomer5]

What's your investment timeline?

 

I’m a buy and hold guy. The first stock I bought was DE to give you an idea.

[homer]

What's your investment timeline?

 

I’m a buy and hold guy. The first stock I bought was DE to give you an idea.

 

OK if you're going to hold then I'm curious why you are worried about the safety of the stock? If you would like dividend income that's another story. Obviously everyone's risk tolerance is different.

[Boomer5]

What's your investment timeline?

 

I’m a buy and hold guy. The first stock I bought was DE to give you an idea.

 

OK if you're going to hold then I'm curious why you are worried about the safety of the stock? If you would like dividend income that's another story. Obviously everyone's risk tolerance is different.

 

My risk tolerance is low. Anyone who has been in the market has done well. I can't imagine this will continue so I'd like to go for high dividend low risk going forward.

[nate82]

 

My risk tolerance is low. Anyone who has been in the market has done well. I can't imagine this will continue so I'd like to go for high dividend low risk going forward.

 

Then I suggest going for one of the bigger banks like JPMorgan Chase. They just increased their dividend share to .80 cents per share for the 3rd quarter of this year. Another large bank that pays a nice dividend is Wells Fargo beyond that the only other safe bet would be Apple.

 

You might be late on the wave but the ETF AMLP has some nice dividend stocks which pays about .20 cents a share. These are all energy companies in this ETF.

[nodakfan17]

Preferred Stock is an underrated tool for conservative investors.

[Boomer5]

 

My risk tolerance is low. Anyone who has been in the market has done well. I can't imagine this will continue so I'd like to go for high dividend low risk going forward.

 

Then I suggest going for one of the bigger banks like JPMorgan Chase. They just increased their dividend share to .80 cents per share for the 3rd quarter of this year. Another large bank that pays a nice dividend is Wells Fargo beyond that the only other safe bet would be Apple.

 

You might be late on the wave but the ETF AMLP has some nice dividend stocks which pays about .20 cents a share. These are all energy companies in this ETF.

 

I have JPM, that’s the type of stock I like. I’ll look into AMLP seems up my alley too

 

You guys know your stuff!

[Boomer5]

Preferred Stock is an underrated tool for conservative investors.

 

I agree. Sounds like a good strategy.

[superfly]

Apologies if this has been discussed (I know I’m late to the party), but is anyone using Robinhood, the brokerage platform?

 

lovvvvvvvve it for the trading i do.

[GAME05]

A thought came up after I just got a "Your password has been blocked" email from Fidelity (I haven't used it in a long while). But if you've got many thousands of dollars in an online investment agency like them, you've just gotta trust that the double-authentication you have on your account is secure enough? If for whatever reason someone was able to access your computer, isn't that a really big risk with that much money?

[PlayerHader]

Apologies if this has been discussed (I know I’m late to the party), but is anyone using Robinhood, the brokerage platform?

 

lovvvvvvvve it for the trading i do.

 

More info, please. I’m considering opening a small account to deposit a few dollars in each paycheck just to play around and learn about the market, basically. How easy is this to do?

[nate82]

A thought came up after I just got a "Your password has been blocked" email from Fidelity (I haven't used it in a long while). But if you've got many thousands of dollars in an online investment agency like them, you've just gotta trust that the double-authentication you have on your account is secure enough? If for whatever reason someone was able to access your computer, isn't that a really big risk with that much money?

 

Use two-factor authentication. It can be annoying basically putting in your password and a code but it is the most secure method.

 

Also doing a password that is a sentence like TheDogEats@2AM is more secure and easier to remember.

[nodakfan17]

Apologies if this has been discussed (I know I’m late to the party), but is anyone using Robinhood, the brokerage platform?

 

lovvvvvvvve it for the trading i do.

 

More info, please. I’m considering opening a small account to deposit a few dollars in each paycheck just to play around and learn about the market, basically. How easy is this to do?

It’s pretty easy to set up a Robinhood account.

 

It took me less than 5 minutes to open an account using the mobile app, but they also have a desktop version. You will likely have to wait 2-3 days for the account to be approved. Once it’s OK’d you can start trading immediately. I transfer $100 once a month manually without an automatic contribution. Then I buy $100 worth of whatever I like. The no-fee model makes this feasible. Buying 1 share of Disney (for example) at a time would be impractical on any other platform. The whole process takes me 2 minutes each month (cash transfer and purchase). Very easy.

[PlayerHader]

Anyone else use Robinhood? Looking for more insight into this before taking the dive in.

[nodakfan17]

What do you want to buy?

 

The user experience is excellent, but the platform has some limitations (you get what you pay for, right?). For example, I was interested in a recent preferred stock issuance from a bank, but it was not supported by Robinhood. Overall, I’m quite satisfied. Just take the plunge. It’s free. You can always look for a different platform if you’re dissatisfied.

[owbc]

Robinhood makes money by routing orders to high frequency trading firms so the idea is to make it as easy as possible to do trades since that's how they make money. The amount that gets skimmed off of each trade is minuscule, so as long as you aren't trading constantly every day it probably is a small price to pay for having 'free' transactions.

[PlayerHader]

What do you want to buy?

 

The user experience is excellent, but the platform has some limitations (you get what you pay for, right?). For example, I was interested in a recent preferred stock issuance from a bank, but it was not supported by Robinhood. Overall, I’m quite satisfied. Just take the plunge. It’s free. You can always look for a different platform if you’re dissatisfied.

 

That’s a good question. I know nothing about investing in individual stocks. Going to learn as I go a bit, adding a small amount each month as I learn more.

[PlayerHader]

What do you want to buy?

 

The user experience is excellent, but the platform has some limitations (you get what you pay for, right?). For example, I was interested in a recent preferred stock issuance from a bank, but it was not supported by Robinhood. Overall, I’m quite satisfied. Just take the plunge. It’s free. You can always look for a different platform if you’re dissatisfied.

 

That’s a good question. I know nothing about investing in individual stocks. Going to learn as I go a bit, adding a small amount each month as I learn more.

[nodakfan17]

JP Morgan is coming out with a free trading app similar to Robinhood. If you trust the name brand better, you could wait until it’s out. Otherwise, I don’t know of another place where you can invest in individual stocks $100 at a time without the commissions making it impractical.

 

You don’t wait to invest. You invest and wait, right?

[PlayerHader]

Jumped in the market for the first time today. Used Robinhood app. I'm the owner of a tiny amount of shares of Aurora Cannabis, which has jumped $.14 a share in the minutes since I bought. Sell high, right!?!?

 

Just kidding. Should be fun. Going to educate myself along the way.

[GAME05]

"Rule #1" by Phil Town is a favorite book of mine. There's a lot of "Get rich in minutes per day!" nonsense he peppers in throughout, but all in all it's a good intro on analyzing a company and evaluating its value vs. list price.

 

Dataroma is a great website I like to use, which tracks the buys and sells of $100M+ investors since they have to report them to the SEC. There was a study done by UNLV which tracked Warren Buffett's buys and sells for 30 years when they first became public. If you just copied him and bought that stock at its highest price that day, and then sold it when the sell again became publicly available, at the worst sell price that day, you'd still have had a return of 20%. On the site I don't like to use the investors who own a lot of companies because they're more active than I want to be, but instead follow the folks who only own a few companies because they are more buy-and-hold people. I also like to use Graham Number calculators for an initial quickie valuation.

 

I'll also note which I've probably done on this thread before, that oftentimes public libraries have subscriptions to financial sites. For Town's book you need 10-year data, and free places tend to just give you 5 before they want money. But I go through Middleton's library and use their subscription to Morningstar at no cost to me.

[PlayerHader]

Anyone use Acorns app or anything like it? Thoughts?