Online investment account? (1 Viewer)

Where are all you rich dudes putting your money?  Specifically, I've got a small account with a local broker that I lined up through family.  I'd like to move it out of there and into something that I can just manage myself online, set up monthly automatic contributions, buy a mix of index funds and other stuff.  What's the best one to open an account with?  Someone recommended a Schwab account?  Anything better?

TIA

I like fidelity but don't pretend to have any huge reason why. 

Best ones are Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab, in that order.

At least that's what you're going to hear from the forum. They know more than I do about them, so I'll let others jump in.

I prefer Vanguard because their index funds and ETFs generally have the lowest expense ratios and the stock trade fees are low enough if not the lowest. Fidelity is also very good.
 

Charles Schwab, TD Ameritrade and  E Trade have good research tools and low trade fees if you are looking for something not tied to a specific fund company.

Warrior said:

Best ones are Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab, in that order.

At least that's what you're going to hear from the forum. They know more than I do about them, so I'll let others jump in.

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Thanks.  You guys pay the 0.3% annual fee for their personal investment advisor?  Worth it?

Otis said:

Thanks.  You guys pay the 0.3% annual fee for their personal investment advisor?  Worth it?

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I've been told that your best bet is to find a financial/investment advisor that you can pay a couple grand as a one-time fee to lay out a plan for you. The ones that charge annually end up being a bit too much of a drain on your returns. That's the route I would advise, but this is just third-party information that makes sense to me...your situation may differ from mine.

One more note before I head out...Vanguard must be set up over the phone/internet. With Fidelity you can sit down with an agent and take care of everything in person. That's why I'm probably going with Fidelity, despite the fees being a liiiiiiiitle bit higher.

Good luck.

Otis said:

Thanks.  You guys pay the 0.3% annual fee for their personal investment advisor?  Worth it?

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I don't but a friend does. My understanding is that the advisor basically just helped her rebalance her portfolio to make sure she was properly diversified, and follows up to make sure the allocations don't get out of whack once a quarter. If you feel comfortable doing that yourself I wouldn't think it would be worth it. 

I use Scottrade with no gripes so far. 

Our advisors (HighTower) use Schwab. I let them handle it but I track it and like the website. I use TD for my own money to play around with.

If I had under 100K to work with, I'd open an account with TD Ameritrade.  Their commission free ETF list is fantastic.

Schwab would be 2nd place on that list...    both are winners in my book.

If you have over 100K the package that BoA offers offers through Merrill Edge + their credit card are tough to beat

I use Schwab and love it. I use it for my Roth IRA investing and checking account. I use them because I found myself in Schwab ETF's anyways and it's dumb to pay fees to buy their ETF's when you can avoid that opening an account with them. I think in my Roth IRA my weighted average of expense ratios to get a 20% bond/80% equity split across a handful of their ETF's is like 0.06% which is bottom barrel low. It's preference at this point though, I go with Schwab for the linked free checking and ATM reimbursements and brokerage access if I need it. If checking is no consideration, I'd go with Vanguard.

I like Fidelity. Their website is very easy to navigate, which was a big selling point for me.

Seems like for under 100k and just investing (not checking or other stuff), Vanguard is the way to go, based on responses here and some other forums. 

You talking stocks or funds and ETFs? If it is the latter, then yes, Vanguard.

Otis said:

Seems like for under 100k and just investing (not checking or other stuff), Vanguard is the way to go, based on responses here and some other forums. 

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I wouldn't overlook the user friendliness of Fidelity and their site. You could have a little of both.

[icon] said:

I like fidelity but don't pretend to have any huge reason why. 

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I like Fidelty bc their 2045 plan has outperformed my advisor. 

avoiding injuries said:

I like Fidelty bc their 2045 plan has outperformed my advisor. 

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I was in the Schwab 2050 401k fund- I rebalanced it myself and am destroying the gains I would've seen had I not rebalanced. It takes time and research, but if you do it yourself, well worth it in the long run... Just my opinion.

I'm too lazy and time crunched to do much research myself. And I'm a bad gambler. My best bet is a mix of funds. 

That said, I'm only 40, so I feel like I don't need to be hyper conservative. I figure I'll get a mix of funds with projected retirement from 2040-2060 and see what happens. 

I'll say this much:

If you're looking at a minimum of 10 year returns, history is not on your side to initiate positions right now.

When P/E are at insanely high levels like they are now, history says your 10 year return will be much lower compared to other periods. Not an opinion, that is a historical fact. This is data compiled by Yale economist guru Robert Shiller. Here is an article that explains it: http://jbmarwood.com/historical-pe-ratios/

Article is from 14 months ago, DJIA was 18,120 then, currently it is 18,576, so an annualized gain of just over 2% (not factoring dividends).

fantasycurse42 said:

I'll say this much:

If you're looking at a minimum of 10 year returns, history is not on your side to initiate positions right now.

When P/E are at insanely high levels like they are now, history says your 10 year return will be much lower compared to other periods. Not an opinion, that is a historical fact. This is data compiled by Yale economist guru Robert Shiller. Here is an article that explains it: http://jbmarwood.com/historical-pe-ratios/

Article is from 14 months ago, DJIA was 18,120 then, currently it is 18,576, so an annualized gain of just over 2% (not factoring dividends).

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What would be your suggestion for longish term savings, not 401k but "extra"?

Otis said:

What would be your suggestion for longish term savings, not 401k but "extra"?

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Vacation home in the Hamptons. 

I hired a guy because you and I seem to be similar with our time restraints. Plus, I don't specialize in finance. That hasn't been working as well as I'd like. 

For long term investments, I'd sideline myself TBH - prob not the most popular advice, but I'm just looking at hard data, that data says the market is expensive and your returns will be lower investing today than other periods of time. 

Election is coming, of course we're pushing all-time highs... Not usually a conspiracy theorist, but imagine the market was sliding right now - guess who has a much easier path to the White House? 

I think you'll have a better opportunity to initiate positions in 1-2 years when P/E hopefully finds itself closer to a normal range.

You could also just dollar cost average. Instead of dropping all initial funds at once, split it up into x amount of dollars, and make the same purchase every month. School of thought here is simple, as long as you're investing in the right companies, you'll be buying more shares when it dips, and less as it rises (which you want). If you invested $500 a month in Apple starting in 2001, your investment of $90k over the last 15 years would be worth $2.5M today. Of course you say to yourself, "I could've done this, Apple, of course..." But this was right at iPod version 1.0, years before the iPhone, hindsight is always 20/20.

Although I am going to start dabbling with this strategy when the market gets a little cheaper. I'm setting aside some disposable income I'd just waste anyways and picking 3 companies to invest $333 each every month. Amazon is absolutely one of the companies I'll be in (need them to split for them to participate anyways), the other two are TBD.

Use Fidelity. No complaints and I like their site. I would give the edge to Vanguard to someone wanting to establish something new. Just not that much of a difference for me to switch really.

You might want to increase your spuds if you're gonna work till 2060...