quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Thanks again for the insight.

Trying to learn about investing for the long term. I'm using TD Ameritrade, but I have no idea how to choose a good mutual fund...if anyone wants to share their knowledge. Please do.

I'm looking at Vanguard Short-Term Bond Index Fund Admiral Shares...but I have no idea if it's something I should put my money into. Let's say I have 15k to invest...is that a good fund?

Please do not buy any mutual fund. Mutual funds often have sales charges (loads) and high management fees. Most managed mutual funds do not beat the indexes.

Buy a good Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). When last I checked the SPY was the largest ETF in terms of assets at $260 billion. It tracks the S&P 500 index and they (State Street Bank, State Street Global Advisors) charges just .09% for expenses. The dividend yield is 2.02%, and the ETF is down 11% for the year to date.

State Street has about 200 different funds. You seemed interested in oil stocks, and SSGA offers the XLE, which has an expense ration of .13% and a dividend yield of 6.76%, and it is down 43% year to date.

You can easily spend a weekend browsing thru the State Street site. I also like the ETFs sponsored by Charles Schwab.

ETFs trade all day and you can put in limit orders. So if you like the SPY, which closed at $286, but you want a better deal, you can put in (online) a limit order to buy at $280, or whatever price you like. The limit order can be for the day or for "good until cancelled", which varies by broker, but maybe for a couple of months anyway. In times like this the limit order is your real good friend.

For a short term bond ETF, I use Schwab's SCHO with a .05% expense ratio and a dividend yield of 2.1%. Put your $15K in SCHO, and then when you want to buy something else, sell enough SCHO to cover what you want to buy.

I own the following ETFs: XLE, XLV, XLC, XLK, XAR, XSD, SCHO and SCHD, among others.

The oil patch may very well have a long way to go down, but this week I bought RDS.B, CVI and MPLX.

Don't put all your funds in at once. Just nibble at a position, say 10 shares at a time and keep some powder dry.

I think you are picking a pretty good time to get in the market, but it is likely that the S&P will drop another 10-25% from here over the next few months. It's a risky market. But it may be the buying opportunity of the next decade, too.

Oh, and read the whole thread!

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Anyone have thoughts on buying OIH?

VanEck Vectors Oil Services ETF

Can you explain why you would consider this?

Good advice Haybale, and pretty much what I just recently did with some money we put into my wife's IRA last month for tax reasons. Our timing was good, and I chased shares of SPY all the way down to $220/share thanks to a limit order. Since I completed the purchases it's up about 16 percent over the DCA of the shares we bought.

quote:

Originally posted by Hay2bale:

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Anyone have thoughts on buying OIH?

VanEck Vectors Oil Services ETF

Can you explain why you would consider this?

Thanks for the advice! I’ve been trying to learn on other forums, but there’s so much noise and trash compared to the civility of sigforum.

To answer your question. I was just going back through this thread and saw someone mention it. I’d figure I’d start there and try to learn what the difference is between all the difference options.

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:
To answer your question. I was just going back through this thread and saw someone mention it.

May I humbly suggest that you need to do a lot more research and analysis before you spend your hard earned savings.

Like a police officer, you need a reasonable suspicion, and/or an articular basis, for making an investment.

I don't know what TD Ameritrade offers with respect to analyst's reports. But you can use CNBC (dot) com to do preliminary research on OIH. You see that the ETF has gone down 75% over the past year. It's largest holdings are Schlumberger 18%, Halliburton 9%, and Baker Hughes 6%. These are all companies that drill oil wells. With the price of oil very low, there may be few wells drilled. Many small oil producers may go bankrupt. But maybe the current price has already taken that prediction onto account. OIH closed at $90, up 8.21% today. There were a million shares traded, and each seller thought he was making his best deal - and each buyer thought he was buying a bargain.

I would consider this a high risk investment with the potential for high returns. I am not going to buy any, but that is just my personal taste for risk.

Good luck.

quote:

Originally posted by apprentice:
The earnings reports are indeed going to be ugly, but what keeps me guessing is that everyone has to know that already. Right?

If so, no one will be surprised and without the "OMG the earnings are bad!" how much less of a sell off should there be?

There's no clear end to the virus in sight. Sure, everyone knows earnings are going to be ugly, but what nobody knows is, HOW BAD and HOW LONG earnings are going to be in the gutter.

quote:

rying to learn about investing for the long term. I'm using TD Ameritrade, but I have no idea how to choose a good mutual fund...if anyone wants to share their knowledge. Please do.

I do. VANGUARD has the cheapest no loads available. Dollar cost average monthly regardless of income. Pay yourself FIRST. Stock fund for long term. I paid for two expensive college degrees and postgraduate studies for both through funds I started when they were born. They went to private elite Universites. Both were college athletes in tennis but no scholarhips just Dad. The total cost was over 200k. I am self employed. So there.
I never took a business course. Read WSJ daily, Barrons and of course Buffet. Oh Morningstar has free reviews. The cheapest is he S and P index fund.

The fund is generally irrelevant. The money is made by dollar cost averaging over the years. Do not try for home runs. Lots of singles win the game.

For even better advice see what JALLEN would have said.

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:
Anyone have thoughts on buying OIH?

VanEck Vectors Oil Services ETF

And anything you guys keeping your eye on stock/investment wise? I need something to do this weekend, figure I'll do some research.

I don't consider any sector fund, if that's all you're invested in, to be diversification.

As others had said, use limit orders and buy at what you think to be good entry point(s) for either SPY or QQQ and forget about it for 10 or 20 years. You're almost guaranteed to win (big).

Even Warren Buffett confessed that it's extremely hard for him to beat SPY on a consistent basis, year after year.

The famous Peter Lynch beat SPY for only 11 years of his 13 years running the famous Magellan fund.

If you map out QQQ vs SPY, you'll see that while QQQ is a bit more volatile, it actually beats SPY.

QQQ is an ETF that tracks the NASDAQ 100 largest stocks traded on the NASDAQ exchange. It's technology heavy.

SPY is also an ETF that tracks the S&P 500, 500 largest US companies. It's more diversified than QQQ.

In this coronavirus mess, QQQ is actually more stable than SPY because some technology companies did very well during the home lockdown such as Amazon, Netflix etc. So personally I think SPY is a more attractive value to enter now than QQQ. However both ETF are excellent.

I understand the mechanics of it but it is still just incredible to see oil trading at $1.03 a barrel right now.

I'm becoming more and more of the opinion that the correction we had to 18k levels on the DOW a couple weeks back was not the worst of what's to come.

quote:

Originally posted by LBAR15:
I understand the mechanics of it but it is still just incredible to see oil trading at $1.03 a barrel right now.

I'm becoming more and more of the opinion that the correction we had to 18k levels on the DOW a couple weeks back was not the worst of what's to come.

I cannot for the life of me understand WHY the DOW is just sitting where it is. From what I hear of small business owner friends of mine. They're taking these SBA loans they're getting and just plowing them into the market versus doing other things with them.

quote:

Originally posted by LBAR15:
I understand the mechanics of it but it is still just incredible to see oil trading at $1.03 a barrel right now.

$1.02 PER BARREL of West Texas Intermediate Light Sweet Crude.

My God. Had to double check, but you are correct on that price. Should we buy oil???

Crude Oil price is NEGATIVE right now!

quote:

Originally posted by nhracecraft:
Crude Oil price is NEGATIVE right now!

I gotta follow that. Do you have a link??

Should we buy oil? If so, what?

And thank you to saigonsmuggler for the info.

Halliburton was mentioned earlier. I put some money into it a few weeks ago and have gained around 40% so far.

quote:

Originally posted by JohnV:
Halliburton was mentioned earlier. I put some money into it a few weeks ago and have gained around 40% so far.

I bought some HAL today. Any thoughts on USO?

quote:

Originally posted by RAMIUS:

quote:

Originally posted by JohnV:
Halliburton was mentioned earlier. I put some money into it a few weeks ago and have gained around 40% so far.

I bought some HAL today. Any thoughts on USO?

I am just a layman so take this with a grain of salt. Looking at the 5 year history you can see it’s been between about $10-16 for the last 4 years. Not really an upward steady growth like you see with other stocks but you can see the sharp drop off when all this stuff hit the fan. IMO stocks like this will come back so I wouldn’t consider this a long term (over 5 years) investment for myself, but can easily see this getting back up to where it was in the 10-16 range after everything settles down. So, might be a good way to make a little money in the next year or two but I wouldn’t put my retirement in it. Just my guess anyways!

I just tried to buy some USO and I got a message that said "Trading Halted" WTF???

I'm pissed. I finally get the guts to buy in, and trading is halted on USO.

Oh well.

$USO is a managed crude oil futures ticker, and it's about gone. Trading is/was halted since they are switching to become a CEF just to stay listed.

I avoid giving financial advice, but here's an article from WSJ which should be viewable by everyone:
The Fund That Ate the Oil Market

quote:

Originally posted by rh:
$USO is a managed crude oil futures ticker, and it's about gone. Trading is/was halted since they are switching to become a CEF just to stay listed.

I avoid giving financial advice, but here's an article from WSJ which should be viewable by everyone:
The Fund That Ate the Oil Market

Yeah, I was researching USO last night. Didn’t really understand what it was, but now I know. Me no likey.