I've never had much money laying around but a month ago, I inhertited $200,000 from an aunt that has passed away. I'm not sure what to do with it...perhaps I'm looking for a push or something. Will I buy gold or silver or put it into something else like the stock market? I'm at my wits end worrying about the future. If anyone can shed some light on what I should do I would be much appreciative. Is there a way to make my money work for me? As in invest in something where I'll see a return?
Thanks in advance.
malachi:
i spent like 20 minutes writing why facebook is a good stock/incredibly volatile right now, but still i think the best buy on the market (obviously my opinion and best for me and meeting my expections). the forum ate it and i dont want to waste that time typing it again (bed time). Do you want to know my logic in picking stocks/that stock? or are you asking as a potential investor in it.
and i also agree with natural gas. Im looking at that too. incredibly cheap price for it with huge potential. The man to watch for natural gas is boone pickens, the swift boat for veterans financial backer, this guy doesnt lose and he pushing as hard as he can to raise natural gas prices. i dont know how much money he has in natural gas but it has to be in the 10s of billions. half of congress is in his pocket and there WILL be news in the next handful of years giving natural gas a monopoly in at least one market. A congressman talks about how wonderful natural gas is on a daily basis in congress. One big push (which will be hard even for boone) is to require all car manufacturers to produce natural gas engines and not gasoline. Hes talking about (i think i heard him say it on 60 minutes) how he can put a natural gas hook up in every home garage in america so you dont even have to go to a gas station ever again! boone is such a sweet person and never looks after his own interests. its about the people. haha.
he has already lobbied 10s of millions and he will get his monopoly so ride that ass to the bank.
Meh i think facebook is just a fad. I use it now, but its getting boring and whatnot.
Wouldnt hurt to put a little in it tho.
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
In Conquer the Crash, Bob Prechter stated that Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the US would be the safest countries to live in when SHTF. I have to agree with that assessment. Those countries, including the US, has a long history of stability without the strife and violence so many other countries experience, are geographically isolated from unstable regimes, and are prosperous. Personally, I don't like the US. I dislike the idea of my taxes supporting the military empire. And I don't like the Nationalism and the "we know what's best for the world" attitude among the people.
If you are thinking about leaving the US, better start planning NOW. It's only going to get tougher in the future. The US, along with many other countries are clamping down on immigration and emigration. As the economic crisis deepens, citizens fear for their jobs and grow more suspicious of foreigners. Governments respond by restricting newcomers.
I like the prospect of New Zealand. They are a prosperous country with a strong currency. They are a country of only 4.5 million. And geographically, it is near perfect, as they are far away from dangerous and unstable countries.
I can offer three advices.
First: inform yourself. Learn about the pros and cons of various investments. Bonds vs equities, commodities vs housing etc. That way you'll be able to see exactly what you are dealing with and what better suits you.
Second: diversify your investments. Resist the temptation of putting all your eggs in one basket even if returns seem good. Resist the temptation to buy too much gold or 10 years equities even if outlook is good. Set aside an "emergency fund" you won't be able to use unless you really need it: banks, insurance companies etc all offer "emergency fund" alternatives. Just be sure to shop around, a lot.
Third: consider the advice given by experienced people like Marc Faber http://new.gloomboomdoom.com/portalgbd/homegbd.cfm . Subscriptions are expensive but you can get free samples to judge for yourself if they are worth the price and/or give you the information you need. I want to stress I am not affiliated in any way with Marc Faber, just a satisfied customer.
ya i agree the fundamentals arent there, but lets be honest NOTHING is there. I've been using facebook since they opened it up to my SEC school. This whole time facebook hasnt tried to make a dollar off of me. They only make about a dollar off every user. Bidu makes 2.50 and google makes over 7$ per user. If they can make $1 per user without even trying its not going to be that hard to improve that number by a lot. When google went public they didnt have the fundamentals either. It was a search engine and nothing else. I wanted to buy it, but i thought the price was almost double what it should of been. I still think it was, but they kept beating expections so the price never went down to a lvl i was comfortable with. wish it did though haha.
The main thing is look at the future of technology. Apple, google, microsoft, and every industry from cars, air travel, shopping, virtually everything is moving towards connectivity. they are trying to make every product you buy to have some kind of ability to connect. All of it is an aspect of social media where Facebook is king.
Yes it worries me that there is nothing there yet in terms of a revenue monster like it will need. What doesnt worry me though is that social media requires customers and facebook has the customers and the loyality. The market for connectivity has just scratched the surface and is going to be the largest industries in the world.
Every company needs to do business with facebook if they really want their products to succeed. a great example is google glass. If you dont know what it is look it up its a very cool product coming out soon to a couple of years. The base to google glass's success though is dependant on google+. Well hate to tell google this, but google+ is worthless. Its worthless because no one uses it. So everything they show off in their advertisements will require all your friends to be using google+ or else its worthless. I mean look at myspace. myspace isnt that bad there were a lot of aspects that i loved a whole lot more than facebook, but they dont have any customers BECAUSE they dont have any customers. Social media is best as a monopoly because connectivity is better the more people you can connect to. So i think a huge part of facebook's future is just being a pimp for their billion customers (will be billions in a few years.)
not to mention different directions the company chooses to go. They literally have dozens of easy options that turn it into an industry leader by just offering the product. I think they should have a search engine. I dont think it will kill google anymore than google+ killing facebook. I think they could take a HUGE dent out of google though. 10-15% of the market at least by just offering the a web search.
they can open up an amazon/best buy online type store and become the industry leader. They will be able to advertise their products for free. i mean i dont think books is their future, but ebooks can be when you include the connectivity to facebook itself. I think a best buy type store where they sell cool and hip connectivity products. Get with the producers of those products to install some type of facebook connectivity. Refrigerators are even connected now adays.
I dont think a facebook phone is going to do what the iphone did for apple, but it will bring in profits. The important thing is it will continue to build dependancy with its customers. When you take in consideration a facebook phone, tab, computer, gps, cars, refrigerators, scanning barcodes at grocery stores for customer reviews and more importantly FRIENDS reviews, a search engine, their own facebook 'glass' (if google doesnt partner with them), a facebook OS for computers and mobile, and anything else that can/will connect. All products want to say it connects to facebook without facebook having to do anything. Most of those products they dont have to build themselves, let someone else do it all facebook has to do it create a software to give it a cool connectivity to facebook.
Yes its fadish right now, but they are just NOW saying they are ready to start making some money. They made an insane amount of money with the ipo and they will use it.
I agree with everything you say, and it is for sure a risk that i can afford to lose everything. I wouldnt be making a large bet like this if i was in my 60s. 2 things though that differ slightly:
returns and customer loyalty
returns: I agree there wont be much for short run (a year maybe 2) returns in terms of dividends, but i think with just how much excitement this stock generates it has a lot of stock price returns. I think in a year ive got a price target of around 40 to 45. Once people start seeing facebook actually putting out things that can bring in money it will go back to ipo price. I mean hopefully they come out with something! anything! haha. In a year i will have a better understanding of their vision and earning potential and i will either dump of keep it for a while. I think most investors see what i do, the next google, apple, or microsoft. but they also one to maximize there money so they are waiting until they see something. I think there is a chance it goes down as low as $15 before the end of the year because of investor impatience (its going to depend on their PR) and i will probably double down if it does drop that much.
just one example of something that will over double their revenue and if they came out and said they were doing this stock would go up to 30-40 bucks: start charging businesses that have facebook pages. if they charge personal accounts everyone would leave, but these tens of millions of 'subscriber pages' should be charged. They have millions of stupid ones like 'i bet i can get a million friends before you' type crap that will be weeded out which is better for them, but there are over 10 million real businesses posting messages on multiple times a day basis. advertising for FREE to their 1 million fans, or 10/20 million fans. Thats crap. if they charge businesses $20 a month which EVERY real business can afford that will generate over 2.5 billion in revenue. I think they will probably do something like that, with different levels. Like large businesses like General Motors would buy million dollar contracts for their advertising. Then the struggling musician would have a $10 a month page.
customer loyalty: I agree that no one really cares about using facebook over say twitter, google+, or the unlimited competition that will come out. They do however care about actually talking to the people they want to talk to. Its the people that care the least about facebook, but have facebook accounts that is going to keep the facebook loyalty. Those people get on for about 5 minutes a day to check messages and send a couple messages then get off. When myspace and facebook were competing i couldnt for the life of me get a couple of my best friends to switch to myspace (at the time a lot of my friends from high school were at other colleges that could get facebook accounts and i couldnt yet). 'dude i just dont care that much. i get on for about 5 minutes a day to check my messages, see what people are doing, and log off. everyone i know here has facebook, youd be the only one i know on myspace. just shoot me a text message if you need anything.' haha. While you agree the monopoly/market domination agrument, but i dont think you are realizing it has to be everyone (vast majority at least) or none. Also most people myself including dont have much tolerance for 2 social media accounts. Though twitter and linkedin have found a niche in the market. linkedin doesnt bother me because they have a completely different target that i dont think facebook is very worried about, but facebook could create some kind of dual-accounts one person and one personal business account that would wipe out linked in. Twitter though worries me and i cant explain its current success. Though it seems like it has more of a personal/live type feel to it.
And of course ive got my track record to back it up. Even though im not very active investor (facebook is the only thing i bought this year) i do pay close attention to prices daily and constantly watching news for future products. I havent bought a single stock since the crash and i had sold everything before the crash. (no i didnt predict the crash, no i didnt know anything about the austrian business cycle, but the market definately didnt feel right.)
My stock purchasing history in order of when i bought them:
1st stock Exxon - bought for around 35 in 2002 sold at the end of 2007 near its all time high in the low 90s
03 - Apple - bought it for around $8 and sold it in 07 for 170.
04 bought UA close to the ipo release for around $12 sold it in '07 for around 31/32$
05 jack in the box for 36 and sold a year later for 65.
06 - Chipotle bought it when the ipo release. I had my first chipotle burrito and went straight to see if they pubicly traded and their ipo was coming out the next month. bought it for around 42$ sold it in about 2 years later in the mid $130s.
06 - bidu - i dont remember what i bought and sold it for but the sold it about 2 year later and the stock had trippled
then of course my first stock advise ever. It was also my first experience of business and how the market worked/that there was even a market to begin with! my best friend had a computer and a number of computer games. this is the mid 80s you know back in the when you had to type c://thenthis/really/longline/justtoopenupacomputergamebutyounevercouldrememberthiscodesoyoucouldneverplaythegame. Well one day i went over to play and his dad had just bought WINDOWS where you can just click to open up a program. HAHAH AMAZING! So when i got home i asked my dad what he does for a living. i asked him why he didnt work for company 'windows' he explained. I told him to sell his company and buy microsoft. He of course said he couldnt do that, but he explained what stocks were and he could buy shares in it and he would be a part owner. So i told him to buy as much as he could. I had even told him i would live in a small house so he could sell our house to invest as much as he can. He laughed at me and told me that it was a 'really good idea, but not enough people could afford a computer let alone windows for the company to be successful'.
I think most people on here are discussing what they would do with the money. Here is my advice, just don't overextend this windfall. Use common sense when spending your money. While some advice on the forum is sensible, ultimately we don't know much about your situation besides you getting money.
Schools are labour camps.
grant.w.underwood: And of course ive got my track record to back it up. Even though im not very active investor (facebook is the only thing i bought this year) i do pay close attention to prices daily and constantly watching news for future products. I havent bought a single stock since the crash and i had sold everything before the crash. (no i didnt predict the crash, no i didnt know anything about the austrian business cycle, but the market definately didnt feel right.) My stock purchasing history in order of when i bought them:
That's very impressive. Is everything you picked all winners, or do you also have a list of picks that went sour?
By the way, do you use fundamental analysis, and also read up on Benjamin Graham and such?
grant.w.underwood: Well one day i went over to play and his dad had just bought WINDOWS where you can just click to open up a program. HAHAH AMAZING! So when i got home i asked my dad what he does for a living. i asked him why he didnt work for company 'windows' he explained. I told him to sell his company and buy microsoft. He of course said he couldnt do that, but he explained what stocks were and he could buy shares in it and he would be a part owner. So i told him to buy as much as he could. I had even told him i would live in a small house so he could sell our house to invest as much as he can. He laughed at me and told me that it was a 'really good idea, but not enough people could afford a computer let alone windows for the company to be successful'.
Well one day i went over to play and his dad had just bought WINDOWS where you can just click to open up a program. HAHAH AMAZING! So when i got home i asked my dad what he does for a living. i asked him why he didnt work for company 'windows' he explained. I told him to sell his company and buy microsoft. He of course said he couldnt do that, but he explained what stocks were and he could buy shares in it and he would be a part owner. So i told him to buy as much as he could. I had even told him i would live in a small house so he could sell our house to invest as much as he can. He laughed at me and told me that it was a 'really good idea, but not enough people could afford a computer let alone windows for the company to be successful'.
Nice.
If you do not read anymore of my post IGNORE the person that said to buy Facebook stock. Remember what happened Myspace, AOL, and AskJeeves? Yep.
If I were you, I would hedge the money against inflation by converting it to bullion, then I would buy land. Do you have any land?
Don't buy stocks. And especially don't buy US stocks. And especially don't buy US tech stocks. And especially, especially do NOT buy facebook. What a trollish suggestion.
Clayton -
ya i guess your right its speculation.
think blue - thats all the stocks i have ever bought. I might be forgetting one, but i dont think so. I have been given stocks from family as gifts because they know i enjoy the market, but those are always spur of the moment investsments and its NOT MY MONEY hah. they are all just like 100$ worth of stocks too.
i got advanced auto parts from my grandparents. they had called me in nov and asked me what stock i wanted for christmas and i had been looking at autoparts. it actually did pretty well. went up like 30%. My uncle works at jp morgan so he has given me jpm stock a few times, but i dont really count those. I only count my $$$. I've been given like 10 different stocks in this fashion.
ill look at fundamentals really just for current price evaluation, and it is a major part of when i buy just not really if i buy. Like i dont like 20$ for facebook, i think a 14$ valuation is closer to a fair price i just dont want to risk seeing if it ever goes that low. I think it is more likely that it goes to 26 before it goes to 14.
And no i dont read up on anyones opinion. Ive done it before (never acted on it), and have done some 'mock' buys just to see what happens. Its never good. I think other peoples opinions just cloud my judgement and create a personal biased opinion. Though, if its financial NEWS i pay close attention.
Its more about my personal experience with the products that determine if i buy. Like if yall experienced what i did when i first used windows or had an ipod with the experiences of pervious mp3 players i had you would have the same opinions. Or what i feel when i ate my first chipotle burrito YUM! But i wouldnt of bought chipotle if i didnt think they were decently managed.
I think its more about my discipline in not buying than buying though because there is hundreds of stocks i really wanted. Out of the hundred to two that i wanted in the past decade maybe 10-15 did as well or better then the ones i bought. While the vast majority acted more typical to the market with plenty of losses. I used to live in vegas for like a year and played poker for a living. I didnt make a SINGLE bet on any game table game besides poker, but everyday i wanted to. I only put $5 in a slot machine while i was waiting on someone to have lunch with. My favorite is sports betting and i only made 2 bets in the year i was there. Even though i thought i had an edge on a game or two a day.
haha ok. we will see. id still buy US stocks over any other markets! youd be crazy not to. There are a number of foreign stocks that are just as good maybe better, but our market is king (end of sentence)