Ask HN: Where do you invest online?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3646660

by maguay • 14 years ago

5 11 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm looking into investing into stocks/bonds and potentially an IRA, and was wondering what online broker others are using. Any reason why you picked the one you did?

patio11• 14 years ago

Sharebuilder. Super low fees for buying stocks/ETFs, they have good automated investment options, and you can buy partial shares. This means that if you are doing, e.g., $250 a month in a Roth IRA and telling it to buy $1,000 of shares in an index fund ETF every time it hits $1,000 balance, this will result in vanishingly little loss to trading fees and you'll always get that $1,000 invested no matter what the share price is.

It automatically grabs money from my main checking account every week from April to December ($100 a week because the yearly limit on a Roth IRA is $5k) and I top it off when I do my taxes every year. That's also when I take a look at the portfolio and set it to put money towards whatever bit needs rebalancing. About 75% of my money gets invested in index fund ETFs and 25% in funny-money investments. I understand that the math is very much against me if I pick stocks for myself but, hey, I played WoW and enjoy the feeling of seeing pixels move on command, so that 25% is essentially buying myself permission to not touch the other 75% ever. (Ironically, I lucked out on one of my picks -- Chipotle -- and now burritos are a larger contributor to my net worth than anything but bingo cards.)

maguay• 14 years ago

Thank you so much for the advice! Sharebuilder, for a number of reasons, looked like a good choice to me so far, so it's nice to hear your thoughts on it.

Now, to find my own Chipotle for 2012...

chromatic4• 14 years ago

I understand that the math is very much against me if I pick stocks for myself...

Don't sell yourself short! If you learn a few things about how to value companies and if you're really disciplined about waiting for great opportunities (with the proper margin of safety) and letting undervalued prices turn rational again, the math is on your side. Picking a good stock is very similar to buying into a good business.

tptacek3• 14 years ago

This is more or less the opposite of the conventional wisdom on this topic; Malkiel, Bernstein, Swensen, Andrew Tobias all wrote whole books more or less dedicated to the premise that you should invest passively through indexing.

Here's a great Derek Sivers comment:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1157768

I'm sure a bit of stock picking isn't going to kill you, as long as your portfolio is mostly passive. (Every time this discussion comes up, someone points out Malkiel picks a few stocks for himself).

On the other hand, there is a whole financial industry lined up more or less directly against your interests in picking stocks; they have better research, direct access to company principals, influence over the markets, a drastically lower cost of trading, and the ability to wait out irrational conditions far longer than you can stay liquid.

I'm doing what Sivers suggested; it makes sense to me.

On the other hand, I've been telling a friend of mine to stop investing Apple since, oh, 2006. So, grain of salt.

flagman5• 14 years ago

check out vanguard mutual finds, funds such as VSCGX, VASGX, VASIX, VSMGX are all very diversely balanced and their past performances weren't too shabby consider how low risk the funds are. if you were looking to take risks and actively buy/sell your positions, then those funds arent for you. but if you are looking to just grow your money conservatively because online savings are pay close to 0%, these funds are the right vehicles for your investment. as with all investments, do your homework and research and never put down what you cannot lose.

actionbrandon• 14 years ago

getcollc.com

Ask HN: Where do you invest online?

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