For a project I need to pick 12 to 15 stocks, mutual funds, or bonds with the 1st six using $227.640.  I will just invest 37,940 for amount of investment.  What or where can I find these with the estimated annual growh rate and estimated value at retirement?
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You can find a lot of past performance of mutual funds on this web site.     http://www.micropal.com/\nalthough past return is no guarantee of future results - still, it could be used as an estimate.\n\nIf you want to calculate what an investment of $37,940 would add up to if it grew at 5% per year, just type this formula into an excel sheet:\n  =FV(0.05,30,,-37940)\nA whopping $163,974!
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Start with mutual funds. I suggest reading The Zacks Method and How to Make Money in Stocks. These books will teach you how to pick stocks on your own. I dont recommend following advice from magazines. Their picks tend to be old news by the time the magaine is printed.
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It depends on how old you are.  Most retirement plans depend on the economic conditions at the time of retirement.  One person can take their 401k out this year and might get more money then the person taking it out the year after.  See, its all economics.  On top of the economics, its what you invest in.  When you put money in a 401k, you have experts putting it into mutual funds for you.  They take alot from you.  So, theoretically, you can buy your own stocks and make a heck of a lot more.  And instead of investing in them for 45 years, you can invest for 8 years and make the same amount or more.  This is true, however, you dont know what to invest in.  So, I suggest you start small and on something a bit more safe.  I will show you 2 or 3 of the best ways to do this.  I am a rare coin expert.  These ways are not fool proof because the economy goes up and down in a cycle of booms and busts.  But, they do cut out the risk because you only have 10 years left.  \nThe first method is through gold.  I suggest you buy the physical form and not stocks or anything of that nature.  You can buy the physical form and allow the sellers to store it for you.  Do not allow them to store it for you if they are just a small company.  I would rather take the physical gold with me.  There is a fee to take this gold with you though.  But, its better then not having it.  With gold, its always hovering at about $278 to about $315.  I would say that anything less then $290 is a good buy.  When you buy, they always tack on an additional couple of dollars because the gold was assayed into a gold bar for you.  When gold is high, they add like $4.  When it is low, they might add $7 dollars.  Dont worry about this.  Just pay for it.  I would rather buy bullion coins then the gold bars in the packages.  They cost $10 dollars above the gold value in the bar form.  Now, there are certain gold bullion coins that you should and shouldnt buy.  Its always best to go for the pure gold ones.  The reason being is, sometimes a jewelry store will take it in, but they will only pay for its content because they were going to melt it anyways.  And if it wasnt pure 24k, then they might have to take a couple dollars off to turn it into 18k or 14k, etc etc.  So, the purest ones are the Canadian gold coins, and the Chinese gold coins.  When gold goes down, you buy, when they go up, you sell.  Its that simple.  You cant lose because gold goes up and down all the time.  So, dont sell if you lose.  Just keep it there.  Whats the point of saving if you are going to dip into it?  So, over the course of 10 years, I know you can make a sizeable profit.  The question is large or small because you will not know when to buy and sell.  All you see is a profit when you sell, and you see a cheap price when you buy.  What you do is buy when its around $290 or less.  Sell, when it goes up.  And with the excess, you can buy more gold.  Just continue doing this.  I know for a fact that you can start off with $3000 dollars today and make at least 20 trades in the next 10 years and make no less then 100% of your investment back.  Gold is currently at $500 plus.  What if you bought it when it was $290 or less, which is what is preferred.  Thats over 200 per ounce.  So, in a year or two, do you see that you would have had over 5k?  You just have to wait till it goes down to around the 300 mark.  I mean, even if you buy for 290, and it goes up to 310 in 2 weeks, you can still sell and make 300 dollars.  That would add almost another ounce to your portfolio.  Continue to do this until you are about to retire.  During the last year, you will be waiting for the highest price you can find to sell.  Another thing to look into is instead of gold coins, you can buy grain gold.  They are just little balls of pure gold.  They are usually a couple dollars cheaper, but they are hard to obtain sometimes.  \nSecond way of investing is buying coins from the US mint.  They will be the cheapest price you pa
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Buy a diversified series of HIGH QUALITY, LOW EXPENSE mutual funds. One good piece of advice is that especially when just starting out, owning individual stocks is just way too risky. In many cases, it's more akin to gambling than investing. So go with mutual funds, which are much more diversified, and therefore spread the risk among many, many more holdings. The key, of course, is buying quality. So make sure you hit ALL the asset classes, like Large cap stocks, small/mid cap stocks, international stocks, emerging markets stocks, government debt, corporate debt, hi-yield debt, foreign debt, emerging markets debt, real estate, commodities, and precious metals. That's 12 categories right there, so with $1200, you're talking about $100 each. This is called asset allocation, and it's a step beyond simple "diversification", which most idiots think is buying a hardware tech stock AND a software tech stock.\n\nAdd systematically on a monthly basis. That means make sure you put the same amount of money in every month, no matter what. Soon you won't even care what any of the markets are doing. They're up? Great! Some of my investments are worth more. They're down? Great! Now I'm buying quality investments at an "on sale" price.\n\nThen sit back and re-balance each year, back to your original percentages. Again, this is called asset allocation. It's is very important, perhaps the most important thing you can do with your money. The thinking being, what's BEEN hot is more than likely not going to STAY hot. All markets are cyclical. There's hundreds of years of data to back this up. Yet some people still think they can ride the next hot wave. They usually wind up begging on the street for beer money.\n\nNow, this sort of portfolio should average 8-12% per year, so just split the difference and say 10% on average. Will it do 10% EVERY year? Of course not. I'd be surprised if it EVER did EXACTLY 10%. That's an annual average. With that average, your money should double roughly every 7 years.\nSo, if you're starting with $1200 or so like I said in my example, then in 7 years , even if you added no more money, you should have about $2,400\nin 14 years you should have about $4,800\nin 21 years you should have about $9,600\nin 28 years you should have about $19,200\nin 35 years you should have about $38,400\nin 42 years you should have about $76,800\nin 49 years you should have about $153,600\nin 56 years you should have about $307,200\nin 63 years you should have about $614,400\nin 70 years you should have about $1,228,800!\n\nOf course, if you keep adding money in that $100 a month, you'll become a millionaire MUCH sooner. The key is discipline, and sticking in when markets are up OR down. Don't try to time the market--you'll NEVER get it right.\n\nBy the way, here's a handy formula:\n\n$100/month x 12% x 20 years = $100,000.\n\nSo if you need $300,000 in 20 years and have no idea how to get it, just save $300 a month and you're there. If you don't get 12%, you'll wind up with less naturally. But IF you still wind up with $250,000, I'd call that one hell of a failure.\n\nOh, and if you qualify on income limits (generally, if you're a single filer and make under $90,000/yr), and do this all in a Roth IRA? Then every penny will be 100% TAX-FREE. That's a deal that's too good to pass up. That's why I tell anyone who's under 30--if you make under $90,000, and therefore qualify to do a Roth, you'd be a fool not to. Just having the power of youth (and therefore time) on your side is such an advantage, to squander it would be such a waste!\n\nHope this helps!\n--J.
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Not that I'm convinced that any tools help an investor trade, but I don't see much at this site that I like. But then I'm not a trader, I'm an investor. I won't invest in a single stock anymore as I learned my lesson the hard way, only once and it wasn't a big deal but that's all it took. Then I went to Morningstar, enrolled in their education workshop, I think they call it Personal Learning or something like that. Took every course they had to offer and I still read almost daily newlestters from them. In addition when it comes to mutual funds I simply like low cost, no-load, long tenure management, top notch Total Returns, and because of that I like reading msn moneycentral and look for Jim Jubak and others. But even here be cautious as even the best of the best have bad year returns once in awhile, link #1:\n\nThen watch MOFQX, I'm not saying to buy it but it is the most interesting mutual fund I've ever heard of. It's a relatively new fund and it is quirky but what an idea. And it is still climbing. Who knows. Read, read, read and then sleep on it. If you want the really easy way out, go with TRowe Price or Vanguard's Life Strategy style funds. They match your risk with your age and they are the cheapest arounf. Other than that if you will promise yourself to keep up with the markets, ETF's are great but only if you drop all you are going to at once as trades dimish your returns because of trading fees. Good luck.
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Buy a diversified series of mutual funds. Make sure you hit all the assets classes, like Large cap stocks, small/mid cap stocks, international stocks, emerging markets stocks, government debt, corporate debt, hi-yield debt, foreign debt, emerging markets debt, real estate, commodities, and precious metals. That's 12 categories right there, so with $1000, you're talking about $83 each. Why not spring for an extra 200 bucks, and start each off with $100 even?\n\nThen sit back and rebalance each year, back to your original percentages. This is called asset allocation. The thinking being, what's BEEN hot is more than likely not going to STAY hot.\n\nThis sort of portfolio should average 8-12% per year, so jsut split the difference and say 10%. Will it do 10% EVERY year? Of course not. I'd be surprised if it ever did EXACTLY 10%. That's an annual average. With that average, your money should double roughly every 7 years.\nSo, if you're starting with $2,000 or so like you said in the question, then in 7 years you should have about $4,000\nin 14 years you should have about $8,000\nin 21 years you should have about $16,000\nin 28 years you should have about $32,000\nin 35 years you should have about $64,000\nin 42 years you should have about $128,000\nin 49 years you should have about $256,000\nin 56 years you should have about $512,000\nin 63 years you should have about $1,024,000\nin 70 years you should have about $2,048,000!\n\n\nOf course, if you keep adding money in, say $100 a month, you'll become a millionaire MUCH sooner. The key is discipline, and sticking in when markets are up OR down. Don't try to time the market--you'll NEVER get it right.\n\nOh, and if you qualify, and do this all in a Roth IRA? Then every penny will be 100% TAX-FREE. That's a deal that's too good to pass up. That's why I tell all my under-30 clients--if you make under $90,000, and therefore qualify to do a Roth, you'd be a fool not to. Just having the power of youth (and therefore time) on your side is such an advantage, to squander it would be such a waste!\n\nHope this helps!\n--J.
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Hi, i suggest a great site with plenty of Issues related to your Investing and everything around it. it also provide clear and accurate answer to many common questions.\n\nI am sure that you can get your answers in this website.\n\nhttp://investing.sitesled.com/\n\nGood Luck and Best Wishes!
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Put $5,000 into an international mutual fund and the other $3,000 into a domestic S&P 500 mutual fund.  Put the remaining $2,000 into a small company fund.\n\nI recommend e-trade mutual funds as they have the lowest management fees (under 1%).\n\n\nInternational - ETSPX\nDomestic - ETINX\nSmall-cap - ETRUX\n\nI recommend mutual funds because you don't want to be spending all your time researching and keeping up with the market.  Let the profesionals do it for you.
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18 is old enough to buy stocks.  The symbol for Target is TGT.  You can use that symbol to check out the stock on Yahoo Finance.  Here is the link.\n\nhttp://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=TGT\n\nAs you can see, it sells for about $57 a share.  There are several ways you can go about buying TGT.  One is to open an on line brokerage account.  Sharebuilder is very inexpensive for buying a small number of shares.  About $4.  You can very likely buy it through your bank.  Give them a call and ask them how much they would charge to buy the number of shares you would like.  \n\nThere are other on line brokers who are also very reasonable.  TDAmeritrade and Scottrade but they both require depositing a minimum amount of money in the account to begin buying stocks.  Your bank most likely will be more expensive but less of a hastle.
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You didn't say how large the overall portfolio is, which is a key issue, but I can understand not wanting to feature your entire financial life on a public message board.  In general, mutual funds are ideal for people with small portfolios, say under $25000, because it allows them to get diversification that they couldn't afford any other way.  Once you get past $50,000, or $100,000, mutual funds become much less attractive.  At those levels, there are independent financial advisors who could handle your portfolio for less than you'd pay a mutual fund in fees, and  provide much more individualized service. (We'd be happy to talk to you if you're interested) Plus, you'd have a large enough portfolio that you're effectively able to diversify on your own, without the need of mutual funds.\n\nIn general, my impression of mutual funds is that they're all pretty average.  I almost would feel silly commenting on 'good' or 'bad' funds, because they are normally all so close together that it's not incredibly relevant.  Further, their investment strategies often change overnight, and you have little way of knowing until after the fact, so really, your guess is as good as mine.  Basically, you can look at their past results (over the long-term, not just the past year) to get an impression of their management ability, but that doesn't give you any true indication of the future, so it's largely estimation.\n\nStocks, on the other hand, can be judged more concretely.  Of course, we can never know for sure with them either, but at least we have something concrete to look at.  So:\n\nI'm a big fan of IACI.  The future looks strong, and the assets are valuable.  Definitely hold on to this one for a while.\n\nMSFT: Boring!  I dunno what's up with Microsoft, but it's been among the most uninteresting stocks for at at least the last half dozen years.  I suspect it's a size issue.  There comes a point where it's difficult to grow without cannibilizing your own sales on another product.\n\nHLT: Not sure what the attraction is here.  If you've held this for a while, perhaps you've gotten a nice profit already.  Can't say if it's at its end yet, but it's definitely not something that I'd be buying right now.\n\nECA & BHP: Resource stocks like these are definitely popular right now, with good reason.  I think there's still more upside here, but these are definitely not long-term plays.  It's hard to say exactly when you ought to sell this type of stock.  This is just a situation where you have to observe the world and the industry on a consistent basis, and make the assessment over and over.  But, for now, I'd say hold on.\n\nYou didn't ask for stock recommendations, but if you're interested, I'm a big fan of MI and TMX right now.\n\nBest of luck to you.\n\nP.S.  I've included a link to a story that disagrees with me on Microsoft.  Who knows...maybe there's some value there after all.  But I'm still not convinced.
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You should try www.suzeorman.com or themotleyfool.com for this kind of info about retirement, savings, and investment for the future.
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go to http://www.investopedia.com/\nand use there info and there simulator before you spend your money.
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You can open accounts at Vanguard or Fidelity, both have lower expense ratios compared to the competition. Most funds have a minimum initial investment of $2500, unless it's for an IRA. You can set up automatic deductions to buy into the fund monthly.\n\nAlternately, you can buy ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). There may be an ETF that tracks a specific mutual fund you are looking at. Vanguard has a huge list on their web site. You can buy the ETFs through a discount online broker like scottrade.com or etrade.com. You pay per transaction but the maintenence fees are usually slightly lower than buying an actual mutual fund.
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None.  IMHO, you should start by learning how to invest, determining WHAT to buy through Fundamental Analysis and determining WHEN to buy with Technical Analysis. \n\nIMO, newsletters only make narrow recomendations based on their system of analysis and investment strategies, and often they are compensated heavily for their recomendations and therefore dangerously biased.   I firmly believe that to get a clear picture about any stock, and to determine whether you're actually going to invest in it, it's best to do your own research and adapt a system that meets your investment needs, style and risk level.  There are many stocks ripe for the picking just about at any time if you know how and where to look.\n\nStart with Investors.com, it's William O'Neil's online version of Investors Business Daily.  The How To Invest section is the best place to start learning the importance of Fundamentals and the basics of Technical Analysis.   The site has the IBD 100, a cross index list of the market leaders, the Stock Checkup, a great tool for checking fundamentals on any stock, and articles and analysis of stocks and general market conditions.  They also run various screens every day which in addition to the other lists, (IBD100, New America, stocks under $10, CANSLIM select, ect) are very helpful for finding investment ideas with solid Fundementals that are ready to move.  The CANSLIM method alone is a very successful and popular trading system, but I prefer to use a combination of Fund & Tech Analysis, rather that just the rating system alone.\n\nFrom there you can move on to more detailed study of Technical Analysis.  \n\nStart with StockCharts.com, they have an excellent free Chart School which helpfully explains various chart patterns and Technical Indicators and overlays.  Pay particular attention to the Chart Patterns section, and make sure you learn about Zig Zag patterns, Bollinger Bands, Moving Average, Volume, RSI, the MACD (Mac-D), The Williams %er, Stochastics, and the Chaikin Money Flow.  Sounds complicated, but when you start chart reading you'll want about a half a dozen or so of these overlays and indicators.  I personally rely heavily on the ZIG-ZAG, MACD, Chaikin Money Flow, Volume, Moving Average and RSI.\n\nStockTA.com is also an excellent Technical Analysis site, with charted Fibonacci resistance and support lines and will tell you if the stock is bullish or bearish in the short, medium and long run.  The site also has an extensive Candle Pattern Glossary and a fantastic technical screener.\n\nThe above sites do have premium services, but all the services I mentioned are free.  After you've absorbed some of the Technical information, do some reading on Fibonacci numbers and Elliot Wave theory, there are good links in the "School" section of StockTA.com.  I've been using Elliot Wave and Fibonacci's to help refine my in and out points.  StockCharts.com's "ZigZag" overlay helps me plot and count the waves and that helps determine where I am in the overall pattern.  \n\nSo basically I'll find interesting stocks through the screens on Investors.com or StockTA.com, run them through the Stock Checkup at Investors.com, if they measure up I'll run them through the Analyisis & Fib Analysis at StockTA.com and do an extensive chart study, examining the 2 yr, 1 yr, 6 mth, 3 mth, 1 mth & 5 day.  I'll also do my due dilligence, studying the profile, key statistics, headlines, etc. through Yahoo Finance and web searches.  If it all measures up and the stock is in a base or in a pull back and it's starting a wave 1 or wave 3, it's time to buy.\n\nRemember, always protect your downside with a stop loss or a trailing stop loss.  Once you have absorbed a few of the things I've mentioned, the fog will begin to lift and you'll start seeing which stocks should be bought or sold and you'll be able to do your own analysis on any stock, no matter where
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The answer is by using simple mathematics.\n\nFirst you need to decide how much of each stock you are going to buy - since not all stocks are priced equally some would be $20, other $400 and some 0.05 cents.\n\n$100,000 over ten stocks... Decide what ratio you will hold of each stock. E.g. 6:3:4:1:9:4:3:7:9:2\n\nSo totalling the ratio is 48. Now you can use a combination of the ratios and fractions to find out how much stock you can hold with your $100,000.\n\nI may have left you out on a limb there - but this calculation is uneccessary. Why don't you just buy your stock one by one until you run out of money? :P\n\nOK Lets try the example with 2 stocks and $100K\nyou want the weighting to be 3:4\nso you want \n3/7ths of your money to go to 1 stock\n4/7ths of your money to go to 1 stock\n\n3/7*100K=$42857.14\n4/7*100K=$57142.85\n\nNow say stock ZXC was $5 each and stock ABC was $67\n\nNow you go:\n$57142.85/$67=852.88 Stocks\n$42857.14/$5=8571.43 Stocks\n\nThere you go. Now do the similar calculation with your ten stocks! Haha!\n\nGood Luck!
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I have found the best way of saving.  I was able to put away approximately $8000 in 18 months.  Look for www.sharebuilder.com.  Its an investment site.  You can purchase stock for $4.00, no matter how much stock you buy.  Do some research.  I chose companies based on the products i use in my daily life.  I found it be fun to save and also enjoyed shopping for new stocks.  The dividends usually pay better than any savings account, so give it a try.  It worked for me.
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Just so you know, Mutual funds aren´t for everyone.  Personally, I wouldn´t invest in them unless I had to.  For more detail on that, just do a search for where I´ve addressed this question in other answers.\n\nHowever to answer your question, there are several rankings of mutual funds.  Here are some of the sources with appropriate link.\n\nLots of sources for Mutual fund reports that you´re looking for.  Here are some.\n\nMoney Magazine\nhttp://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestfunds/indexfunds.html\n\nMorningstar\nhttp://www.morningstar.com/Cover/Funds.html?pgid=hetabfunds\n\nKiplingers\nhttp://www.kiplinger.com/personalfinance/investing/funds/?\n\nMutualFundRankings\nhttp://mutualfundrankings.org/\n\nAnd you may want to take a look at this article on mutual funds too just so you have a little more info if you´ve got tax concerns.\n\nhttp://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/93/930429Arc3288.html\n\nIf you have any questions, please let me know.\n\nHope that helps!\n\n\n\nInfo on mutual funds\nhttp://beginnersinvest.about.com/cs/mutualfunds1/a/aa031501.htm\n\nInvesting for Beginners\nhttp://beginnersinvest.about.com/popular.htm