Are you a stock market investor (besides the 401K)?

[IHateMyJob2004]

Whether it's Mutual funds or indivudal stocks, it doesn't matter.

I have the following minimum goals (planned):

Capital appreciation of share price: 10%-15% annually (about 12% target)
Average Yield: 3% (2% after taxes)
Options: 8%-12% annually (6%-8% after taxes) (10% target => 7% after taxes)

So, in total, I plan on making 12%+2%+7% = 21% annually.

My capital appreciation was doing good till Merck and Pfizer beat me up PFE isn't hurting me mcuh, but MRK killed me.

I have a 3.15% yield right now.

For options, I'm actually doing 15% annually right now which is shocking. That return is based on portfolio worth 1 year ago. Basically (profit from closed options positions divided by portfolio worth 12 months ago).

My options involvement is limited to covered calls on occasion and naked puts when I find undervalued issues.

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I also have a Roth IRA (FBC and BAC). Basiucally tryting to put high yielding issues i nthere.
401K is 100% GD stock.

I contribute next to nothing in my 401K now and I am no longer contributing to my Roth-IRA.

 

[J0hnny]

Careful with the options! I know so many people who thought they were invincible with options because of the gains they've been making on it. All it takes is a few losses to completely sink your portfolio!

 

[IHateMyJob2004]

Originally posted by: J0hnny
Careful with the options! I know so many people who thought they were invincible with options because of the gains they've been making on it. All it takes is a few losses to completely sink your portfolio!

covered calls and naked puts are all l I do.

Worse that can happen with naked puts is that I get stock put to me that I view as EXTREMELY undervalued anyways. Real example: I find FBC to be worth atleast $22 based on fundamentals. It is trading at $18. I sell naked puts several months out at the 17.50 strike for $1. The worse that can happen is that I have to buy FBC at $16.50. This is a real example and I did make money on it. Also did some $20 puts when share price went up a bit.

Naked puts might involve a margin call which would stink. I can always sell one of my stocks though, in order to fund the purchase of the stock that was put to me.

And covered calls only risk lost upside potential. But if I view a stock I own as overvalued, I do covered calls on them. If it gets called away, I won't cry.

I rarely simply buy puts or calls. You can really loose your a$$ doing that, exspecially if you don't have a solid understanding of fundamentals. if all you do is look at charts, you WILL loose your a$$ by purchasing calls and puts.

Thanks for the warning though. Options definitely arn't for everyone. 8% was my origianl goal, but things are going much better than I had expected with them.

 

[drnickriviera]

I about to leave in an hour to give my initial deposit to scotrade. After 13 years investing in a mutual fund, all I have to show is a $2k loss. I'm hoping I can do much better than that, if not, then it's my fault.

I seriously looking at wmt walmart, tm toyota, and mcd mcdonalds. pfe is on my watch list

 

[J0hnny]

Originally posted by: drnickriviera
I about to leave in an hour to give my initial deposit to scotrade. After 13 years investing in a mutual fund, all I have to show is a $2k loss. I'm hoping I can do much better than that, if not, then it's my fault.

I seriously looking at wmt walmart, tm toyota, and mcd mcdonalds. pfe is on my watch list

Holy crapola. You might want to consider a financial advisor.

 

[GasX]

I am about to sell my shares of CV Therapeutics (CVTX) I am kicking myself for not buying options on this as I KNEW it was going to fluctuate itself up to over $20 again...

Maybe it is just time to sell some covered calls and draw down some cash...

 

[AdamSnow]

I invest... cant say I've made much on anything though... I may be $100-$200 richer, but nothing exciting.

 

[FoBoT]

i have 401K only

well, technically i have a few shares of my company stock that were given to me last year as a "bonus" , they are some type of restricted shares that i have to wait at least 3 years to sell, something like that. the #/$ is so small that i didn't really read the fine print, i'll just let them sit for 5 years or something and then ask HR what the deal is with them

 

[Pliablemoose]

I tried options once, the $10K hit I took was enough to make me realize I wasn't an options player...

My brother in law does them frequently, but I don't see that he does much but break even.

 

[flamingelephant]

I have stock in Home Depot..... grew nicely, sold most of it... I was going vote in the poll, but you spelled annually wrong!

 

[astroview]

I do invest and I like value investing as my primary method. I also like to focus on long term buy & hold with dividend investing as a secondary method for investments. I think I will open a regular scottrade account soon, I have them for IRAs. I'm disappointed that scottrade now has $17 fees for most mutual funds.

On my watchlist: PFE, PHG, ADP, EXPD (not a value stock but I like their management a lot, the CEO actually gets mad at stupid questions from investors, you gotta read his letters to investors on their site)

IHateMyJob2004, thanks for telling me about FBC. Seems quite interesting.

ps J0hnny why dump on those stocks. Those are some really reasonable investments.

 

[Jadow]

I invest in dividend reinvestment plans through www.equiserve.com

I put the bulk of my investment money into 401k and Roth IRA, but I do weasle 100 bucks a month into Exxon stock and Bank of America Stock via a DRP. These are great ways to invest directly into common stock of companies w/o having to pay a comission.

 

[Jadow]

I invest in dividend reinvestment plans through www.equiserve.com

I put the bulk of my investment money into 401k and Roth IRA, but I do weasle 100 bucks a month into Exxon stock and Bank of America Stock via a DRP. These are great ways to invest directly into common stock of companies w/o having to pay a comission.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Brokerage account, 100% mutual funds.

Majority investment:
* S&P 500 index fund (Schwab's fund & Vanguard VFINX)

For balance / additional diversification:
* Small cap fund (Royce)
* Worldwide index funds (have a Eurpoean index now (Vanguard VEURX), adding their VEIEX soon)

I'd rather spend my time doing other things than picking indvidual stocks and trying to time the market to buy or sell them. So instead I buy mutual funds and hold them forever.

If you're lucky you can outperform the S&P 500 in the short term, but over time most full-time fund managers fail to do so despite having much better access to information than individual investors.

Since I'm investing for the long term I don't bother looking for temporarily hot actively managed funds.

Historically, my funds will "only" return 8-12%, but at a tremendously lower risk than stock-picking and with almost zero time and effort on my part. Taxes are also much simpler, since I don't have to track a bunch of trades and calculate the profit / loss.

 

[astroview]

Jadow, I also use equiserve for a few companies. One you might be interested in is WTR, its a water utility. The current P/E is high b/c investors expect them to buy lots of public utilities that privatize and water infrastructure in the USA will be built up too. But I like the stock and it has a 5% discount on reinvested dividends.

 

[alien42]

i have about half of my savings in stocks, mostly otc, its not fun if you arent gambling

 

[minendo]

All I do is invest in a 401K (several different funds) and purchase a few shares of stock through the employee stock purchase program every week.

 

[Nuriko]

Over the past year I ended up about 27% increase in just straight stocks, about 1% of that was from dividends/interest from the money market account. I also started a ROTH IRA and have been eyeing some mutual funds, but haven't decided on anything yet. Both through Scottrade.

 

[Jadow]

27% is damn good! I made 18.1% last year, and I was happy with that.

 

[jmcoreymv]

For the past 2 years Ive averaged 50% a year. But now Im out of ideas.

 

[Literati]

Originally posted by: J0hnny

Originally posted by: drnickriviera
I about to leave in an hour to give my initial deposit to scotrade. After 13 years investing in a mutual fund, all I have to show is a $2k loss. I'm hoping I can do much better than that, if not, then it's my fault.

I seriously looking at wmt walmart, tm toyota, and mcd mcdonalds. pfe is on my watch list

Holy crapola. You might want to consider a financial advisor.

Yea that's what I'm going to school for.

So send me all j00r b4se ar3 b3long t0 uz!

I jumped into the stock market with some money awhile ago and no knowledge, through simple investing and common sense I've managed to double my initial investment.

Since I orginally started off with a small amount of money I was able to take huge risks and see positive returns that reflected it.

I'm just messing around now, but I can't wait untill I get to play with the big boys.