Investing Your Cash!

Off Topic
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investopedia.com and fool.com are two great sites to get you started.

In my opinion, with something like 6k to start with stocks are your best bet. I know you mentioned you wanted to avoid them, but your alternatives are pretty pedestrian in comparison (ie: gov bond earning you a whopping 2.4%). You could look into things like microloans but these also carry inherent risks.

If I had 6 grand and was just starting out, I might look at…

1.) Gold and/or gold mining stocks. In my opinion, its a pretty safe bet that gold is going to keep going up for some time to come. Some conservative estimates indicate 1500$, other guys like Peter Schiff are leaning towards 5 grand. I’m sure you’ve seen all the “we buy your unwanted gold” ads popping up everywhere…a lot of people are banking on the hypothesis that gold will shoot up.

2.) CANROY (Canadian Royalty Trusts). Many of these are related to natural gas and oil exploration. They pay great dividends (8%-15%). Some are targets for foreign buyouts…one of my holdings (HTE) just made me a mint when it got bought out by the Koreans. Keep in mind that these dividends will only last until December of 2011, when the Canadian government changes the laws about CANROYS. Enjoy it while it lasts.

3.) Natural Gas. This is a long term investment. Right now the prices are getting beaten into the ground, but its only a matter of time before the US starts relying heavily on nat. gas.

4.) Beaten down Blue Chips: Awesome companies that are at very low points. My favorite is Alcoa (AA)…if you think the US will ever need aluminum again you might want to look at this one.

I’m not a pro at this, just an average investor who has done a decent amount of homework. The key to investing is to study stuff yourself and make your own conclusions.

22

[quote]Petermus wrote:
The one thing im sure you should do is keep on saving…a large percentage of people have no money saved or owe money so the day they lose their job they are fucked.[/quote]

right here

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[quote]Artem wrote:
http://investopedia.com/university/stocks/
is a good start. I’ve begun research on stocks recently as well.

Also been making good cash off of liquidation buying and re-selling over the net. I do drop shipping, so I don’t even have to go package shit.

Or you could set up a drop shipping account; there are lots of companies that do it, but do some research before you invest any cash. Start out with like a $500. buy tops. Like some silverware sets or some shit. And sell on lots of sites, not just Ebay. Amazon, Ebbay, Craigslist in every major city

Just some shit to look into…[/quote]

Artem… you did not heed my advice on becoming an astrophysicist did you?

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This might not meet your investing criteria but you could probably find 2 MAC series transferable sub-machineguns (used at $3000/ea) as long as they’re legal in your state. Surely not a highly liquid investment but the number of transferable machine guns is limited (there are abot 186,000 registered, transferable ones) and demand will only increase for them in the future.

In 1986 a full auto M16 was maybe $1500, they are now close to $15,000! An H&K trigger pack was $500 - they’re now about $13,000. It’s a rich man’s toy now.

My opinion is that all stocks and mutual funds are nothing more than a form of GAMBLING, plain and simple. I do have $ in Roths but only disposable money that I can afford to piss away and a good place to piss them away would be Vanguard’s more conservative funds. The Mairs & Power Growth fund has been a good performer for me. Only place I’d put money in now is in CDs. I’m really jaded - too much GOVT interference in the market and only geniuses, akin to those professional poker players can make money in this convoluted game.

And another thing - never trust most financial advisers. They’re only there to make money for themselves. All you need to know, just like steroids, is out there and it would not take long to EDUMACATE yourself. I’ve known many “financial advisers” who don’t have SHIT to their name.

WAYLANDER - for the kids look into your states 529 Education Plan. Family members other than yourself can throw in $12,000 a year (maybe more) and it’s STATE tax deductible. Just put it into something REAL CONSERVATIVE, not the ones that adjust for age.

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[quote]countingbeans wrote:
waylanderxx wrote:

  1. I would like to save it to either pay off college loans when I’m done or use it as a down payment on a house later on

This would tend to make me stay away from the market. Only because your not thinking long term. Unless you are going to educate yourself, and learn the shit the last two dudes are talking about, the risk might be too high for your purposes.

  1. At least 2 years, no idea if I will be interested in grad school or not though.

  2. I’d say in the range of 12-15k right now. Sad huh? haha

That rules out real estate, which typically pays back slow, but is a great long term investment if your not a retard and can use a hammer and screw driver.

  1. The 6k is the “emergency fund” haha.

This is where and why I would suggest CD’s. Stagger their maturity dates to take advantage of changing interest rates, and avoid massive penalties if you need the funds. You won’t keep up with inflation, which may or may not explode soon. Depends on which article you read. But you will at least hedge against it, and it’s guaranteed and FDIC insured. You can buy T-Bills or Muni Bonds too, but that is going to have fees associated with it.

Thing is, when you say invest you mean stash away and make some money for free for a few years. When I say it, I mean put my money somewhere for the next 40 years. Nothing wrong with your way, you’re in college. You’re not ready for the risks of the market, nor do you have a true long term focus.

When investing in the market, as a small guy not day trading, you have to think in decade long blocks, not day-to-day.

  1. Yah I have 2 sons.

Jk, no kids :wink: haha

LOL! at 15k a year, try and keep it that way. But I had a great time in college making just over 12k, so you are fine man.[/quote]

I second this after reading over your situation. In your case going with CDs or government issued bonds would be your best bet. They give you a solid guaranteed return (if you hold your bonds to maturity, trading them gets more complicated) and do so in a short period of time. Both CDs and bonds come in varying lengths, so you can purchase accordingly.

Investing in securities and the like would be the path you want to take if you had a larger amount of money, and could accept more risk, but in your case I would advise against this.

Once you have a larger egg, I would suggest creating a diversified portfolio, comprised of everything from bonds and cd’s for guaranteed growth, to both small and large cap stocks to provide opportunity for extreme growth.

Starting an IRA as soon as possible is also important when your young. It sucks to think that you won’t be able to use that money for a long period of time, but by starting now you will have an exponentially larger amount of money to relax with when your old. Also, by looking at some growth charts for IRA’s you can see that the difference between starting them when your 20 vs when your 30 can be as much as a million dollars, and that is nothing to laugh at.

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Ditto what WestCoast7 said but just keep in mind that with IRAs you can still lose a great GREAT amount of your “investment” in the matter of a few months depending on the market.

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[quote]saveski wrote:
Ditto what WestCoast7 said but just keep in mind that with IRAs you can still lose a great GREAT amount of your “investment” in the matter of a few months depending on the market.[/quote]

That depends strictly on what you invest in. If you direct your IRA contributions towards certain bonds (gov) and hold them until their maturity, than you are guaranteed to make money. Just as in any other market, there are more stable paths, they just yield lower returns, which in the case of an IRA is usually fine.