Market crashes will happen. What should you do if you are getting worried about losing all your money in a downturn.
Here are four things you should do to avoid panicking when the market goes from green to red and you start feeling dread.
On October 1, Charles Schwab announced that they were reducing their online trading commissions for U.S. and Canadian-listed stocks, options, and ETFs to $0, effective October 7. That’s zero dollars, as in completely free. Schwab previously charged commissions of $4.95 per trade before this announcement. In rapid succession, other major brokerage firms announced they too will be eliminating trading commissions.
Eliminating trading fees may have cost the major discount brokers each hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue, this is actually great news for the individual investor. Here is a list of online brokers who’ve dropped trading fees, and find out how this is possible.
Last month I was selling 1000 shares of a stock and I got a trade notification for a measly 20 shares. This is known as a partial fill. A partial fill occurs when you put in an order to buy or sell a stock and your brokerage can’t fulfill the entire order because there was insufficient shares at a particular price.
Find out how much commissions you can expect to be charged on a partial fill, and what you can do to avoid partial executions and paying extra commissions.
It is easy for a newbie investor to get overloaded by all the options that you need to think about when placing their first order. You are faced with things like market orders, limit orders, time-in-force, and more that you need to think about when all you want to do is buy a few shares of Starbucks.
On this post, I’m going to explain the various options that you will likely come across on the stock order placement page, what they do, and some things you will want to think about when buying a stock for the first time.
When companies compete, customers win. This is no different in the financial services industry. Last month Vanguard fired their shot with an announcement that in August they will be offering nearly 1,800 ETFs commission-free for all online trades on their platform. Now Fidelity has responded with one of their own and it’s a doozy. This is a huge win for investors.
An exchange-trade fund or ETF is a basket of securities that tracks a particular index, bonds, commodity, or asset class. First created in 1993, ETFs have grown to over 2,100 funds available today just in the U.S., and over 6,000 funds worldwide containing over $4.5 trillion in assets.
ETFs have become very popular since they’ve become available. They are attractive to many investors because of their low costs, diversification, tax efficiency, and ability to be traded just like stocks. Read more to see if ETFs are a suitable investment for you.
For most people, professionally managed investing means buying mutual funds. For the wealthy, this may mean getting access to hedge funds, the exclusive investment vehicle available only to qualified investors. For outsiders looking in, hedge funds are how the rich get richer.
In 2005, what is possibly the greatest investor of all time, Warren Buffett offered to make a $1,000,000 bet with anyone that over ten years, a boring; low cost; passively managed S&P 500 index fund will outperform any collection of hedge funds. This is what happened.
There are many banks, brokerages, credit unions, and insurance companies that are offering HSA accounts these days because 97% of HSA accounts are in cash. All this money sitting in accounts are allowing these companies to make loans with that money to earn more money while only giving you a fraction of interest back in return. With interest rates being so low, those who keep their HSA funds in savings accounts are actually losing money to inflation as health care costs continue to increase each year. This is why it is better to find a provider that lets you invest your HSA savings.
With so many choices, choosing a HSA provider that meets your investment needs can be a little challenging. To help you get started on your search, this is a review on some of the popular HSA providers that allow investing of your funds and their fees.
If you are young or just graduated from college, the last thing on you mind might be saving for retirement. After all, you still have plenty of time right, since retirement is still over 40 years away. Wrong. The best time to start saving for retirement is right now.
Yes, you could start saving in five or ten years and live it up in your twenties traveling and going out every weekend, but it will cost you. It will cost you a lot more than you think because of a phenomenon called compound interest.