mrken30

With todays ruling that investment advisors can fleece you for what you have. Where is a good place to get unbiased advice, preferably from an advisor with a fiduciary obligation?

http://thehill.com/regulation/court-...fiduciary-rule

Owen778

I only just noticed this. Honestly, in the US, you're generally best off educating yourself enough that you don't need a financial advisor. If you really can't do that, try to find a fee-only advisor.

I'd advise anyone wanting to educate themselves to start with the Bogleheads forum, named after the founder of index mutual funds at Vanguard.
Wiki: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Getting_started
Forum: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum
Recommended reading list (mostly too advanced): https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Book...ns_and_reviews
"If you can", the most simple link on the reading list: https://www.etf.com/docs/IfYouCan.pdf
This is titled as if aimed at Millenials, but the lessons apply to everyone.

Giantaxe

seekingalpha.com

Some of their articles are a little technical, but this is my go to site for investment advice.

Owen778

I would not send someone who wants an introduction to investment to seekingalpha. Even if you believe in active investment management, which I don't, their articles are all about the small picture of active investment - which particular companies, mutual funds or ETFs to invest in, and not about the basics of investment. Clicking on the link, I see nothing that explains how to optimise asset allocation (stocks vs. bonds vs. other investments) or asset location (taxable vs. tax-advantaged), or several other important aspects.

On top of that, I've seen comments that seeking alpha are suffering in the way many media outlets are. They cannot afford to pay enough per article to ensure that they have consistent quality from their contributors.

Giantaxe

OP didn't say they were looking for an introduction to investment, but agree it's not a beginner's site.

Do a search on, say, "IRA" and it will pull up a bunch of well written articles on strategy vis a vis tax etc. Articles often garner a lot of useful and interesting comments as well.

BenK91

Cut out the middle man and invest in crypto currency.

It pretty much paid for my new truck. Every suit that says it’ll die eventually are just pissed they’re not making any money from it as they can’t “regulate” (fix it) in their favor.

LTC is where my investment money is sitting right now (other than a stock purchase plan I have through my employer).

tom169

Uhhhhh no.

BenK91

It’s definitely not for everyone. As I said, it’s served me very well.

Judging by Donald “the art of the deal” Trump and his uncanny ability to single-handedly tank the stock market I’ll be keeping my money elsewhere!

tom169

I'll stick to stable mutual funds with a very long good track record of outperforming the S&P 500. The vast bulk of my investments are for retirement anyways.

Giantaxe

This is a good point - most people's investment horizons extend way beyond Trump. Also diversification has its virtues regardless.

mrken30

Watch this first before investing crypto

Owen778

People have said the same thing about every speculative bubble in history, and those people all lost their shirt. There is a reason the SEC requires all mutual funds, far more predictable than cryptocurrency, to state "Past performance does not guarantee future results" in their prospectuses.

Cryptocurrency has some limited uses, and some potential uses that might become available in the short- to medium-term. But the value associated with that is far less than the current market capitalisation of those cryptocurrencies.
I don't think you understand what you're saying. I think he's an appalling man, and I disagree with almost all of his policies, including the tax act, which I view as mostly tax breaks for the ultra-rich paid for by increasing the national deficit. However, the S&P500 is up 23% since he was elected, even before dividends, partly because the short-term impact of the tax act on corporations will be a significant increase in corporate profits, whatever the long-term impact on the country turns out to be.

cjdrum

Yeah, don't do this. This is the equivalent of someone coming out the casino and saying "Bet on red, you can't lose!"

Investment success should be primarily focussed around avoidance of losses. Anyone that 'invested' in Bitcoin a couple of months ago is 60% down.

BenK91

Can't multi-quote for some reason but:

As I said, it's not for everyone. All the above points are good, it's just a personal preference. I was lucky enough to invest in Bitcoin in January 2016 when it was around $400-$450 a coin. I'll admit it's a risky thing to get involved with now but nothing could make me pull my money out of LTC. It's by fair the most stable crypto due to it actually having to be verified through numerous chains unlike Bitcoin which was the dark-web currency of choice. LTC has seem really promising short-medium term forecasts and some exciting developments coming up with other payment providers.

I'll be keeping my employee stock purchase program through work as that's doing pretty well and the stock has been increasing gradually and that'll be what I use for any potential retirement fund.

Owen778

I'm sorry, those are some really bad choices.

There are many examples of companies unexpectedly hitting serious problems, and their rank and file employees being hit the hardest because they lose their jobs, and simultaneously lose all the money they invested for retirement. Enron is the example most frequently quoted in the US, but there tens of other large companies and hundreds of smaller companies. When I talked to a financial advisor in the UK a few years ago, he used Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) as the example to warn me about the risks of keeping a big proportion of my investments in my employer. Here is a chart of their share price: Link
Yes, that's a 96% drop from the starting date.

Luckily, I followed the advice of that advisor, even though it took a few years before I fully sold up. At one point earlier this year, my employer's share price was less than a third of what it was at its peak in 2014.

How do you avoid risks like these? You diversify, by having your money invested in multiple asset types, and hundreds of different companies. Not in a single, highly risky and volatile cryptocurrency, and the shares of your employer.