Categories
Disclaimer
Investments or strategies mentioned on this site may not be suitable for you. This material does not take into account your particular investment objectives, financial situation or needs and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for you. You must make an independent decision regarding investments or strategies mentioned on the site. Before acting on information on this website, you should consider whether it is suitable for your particular circumstances and strongly consider seeking advice from your own financial or investment adviser.
November 20th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
Hi,
I really like your site, and I’ve started visiting more and more often. Right now I’m considering rolling my 401k into an IRA. The process of rollover looks simple enough, but where to get the IRA, what to do once I’ve moved the money over (is it all just picking mutual funds? Which ones?), etc., are questions that don’t looks simple to me. I want to be able to get an IRA (or a Roth even), and allocate my retirement money smartly.
Are there any books you’d recommend that would help me with this? I’ve looked around, but I’m uncertain which is good for what I need.
Thanks!
November 24th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
You can open an IRA at any of the Brokers (Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, ETrade, ScottTrade) or Financial/Mutual Fund Companies like Fidelity, Vanguard, SmithBarney(Citigroup). The decision of where to open an IRA would be based among other things on the services, customer support and fees that the company charges. The difficult part begins after rolling your money over into the IRA. Selecting whether to invest in Mutual Funds, ETFs or Stocks is based on personal needs and the amount of time you are willing/able to spend on research.
If done right buying individual stocks beats mutual funds, but doing it right means a lot of research, you need to understand the company, the business, be able to read financial statements, go over the annual reports, listen to the quarterly conference calls etc.
Even with mutual funds you need to pick good money managers because most funds cant even match the performance of an index fund. For mutual fund investing you can start by looking at “Morningstar Guide to Mutual Funds”. You can find good mutual fund managers in “The Winners Circle:Wall Street’s best Mutual Fund managers”. For a comprehensive reference I recommend the “Morningstar funds 500:2006″.
If you decide to go the stock route then you must read “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham and “Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits” by Philip A. Fisher.