bahurd

iTrader: (8)

OK.

Document is here: Form ADV Wrap Fee Program Brochure
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC

DISCLAIMER: I'm not employed in the financial market nor sell any MSSB product or service. I am a MSSB customer and have been for quite a while.

mreakus

Interpretation is everything. After you hit a threshold, they remove a minimum - it doesn't state they stop charging fees for their services. Ask your advisor/representative for an annual fee report sans internal investment expenses (trust me, you'll be surprised by their answer).

bahurd

iTrader: (8)

Look, I get that they're your competitor and one of many out there. I also get that fee disclosures are hard to read and interpret. I know how much I pay them in annual fees and am satisfied in what that number is as it relates to my total funds I have with them.

Fair enough?

mreakus

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

$DXTR recovered nicely from the dip on sketchy news and I'm back to even. And, $RXII came up huge today... been holding a small bag there for 2 months. All good with my play money.

z31maniac

Nope, I just put money in the Vanguard fund and call it good. Also in 3.5 more years all my sign-on bonus RSUs will vest, at current prices for Oracle (and hopefully it will continue to rise) it should be another 1/2 years salary.

And I should have my divorce paid off next year which will mean I get to double my contribution to my 401k. So that puts me up north 15% contribution with match.

As many of you have said, it takes a lot research, patience, and luck to beat the market. I have no desire to spend my free time doing that.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I'm still about $110k long in my discretionary account. While I admit that I have a poor track record of predicting trends, my gut feeling is that this situation we're in right now is going to last a while, and will get worse before it gets better.

Wrestling with whether to stay in, or to step aside for a while and get ready to maybe pull the trigger on something like RYVTX.

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

Had an actual "financial advisor" from USAA go over all of our stuff and we look pretty good long term. I don't know if I'd ever done the math before, but when I retire in 2020 as an O-4 with 20yrs, I'll start making $48k a year just for being able to draw a breath every morning. Obviously I'm getting another job in 2020, but it's nice to know that I can "equal" my current salary with a mid-step GS-11 position.

We referenced some other calculators, and discovered that if I live to be 84yrs old, my military retirement pay tops $9million dollars... and I'm just an O-4... bump that up to O-5 with 24yrs, and the number is $12.6milion. I'm actually tempted to talk to BUPERS about an interservice transfer to the Air Force with a guaranteed promotion, since they're taking all comers right now.

Then we delved into social security... $2500mo at 67yrs. Then we talked about the wife. Then we talked about our 401k's and my Thrift Savings. The numbers kept adding up nicely.

Then we started talking about what we might stand to inherit, and I kinda blanked. My parents, and both my wifes' sets of parents are well off and doing everything correct (except for living in California and Canada). So I made a WAG about what we might stand to inherit and the advisor started laughing... he suggested I might be a little low and that we should call them and have an adult conversation about it. We all had actually talked in the past about the fact that they were doing everything right, but never really discussed numbers.

So we've spent some time with the parents and basically come to the conclusion that I should probably stop working right now and enjoy life, because our combined inheritance is gonna far outpace what we've managed to do with our lives by an order of magnitude. It's a nice option to have.

In the meantime, I'm not gonna worry that I'm $1500 in the red on a bio-med penny stock... just sit on that bad-boy until she spikes and then go buy some new guns.

Moral of the story... your parents might be as nervous as you are about talking about what happens when they die... suck it up and call them.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Wish it were so...

Dad will die penniless and in massive debt (probably very soon, judging by what my sister tells me of his health) having made a number of extremely poor financial and lifestyle decisions after the divorce, the second divorce, and retiring from an otherwise successful career as a physician. I'll probably inherit some random trinkets left over from the Communist Revolution.

Mom is re-married to a nice guy who hasn't done well in his career as a real estate broker. She's about a year away from retirement, and has done very well in her career, but has spent nearly everything on costs related to healthcare for my sister. I'm I'm lucky, I'll inherit a nice 3 bedroom house in a small town in central Florida in 15-20 years, assuming they don't decide to re-mortgage it towards the end. To put things in perspective, I bought her a new Camry last year, because the car she was driving scared me. And it takes a lot for a car to scare me.

I run a spreadsheet at the end of every month, with all of the accounts and liabilities on it. Started it back in 2000, and have maintained it religiously ever since. Still haven't broken the half-million dollar mark (so very close, and yet not quite there, which is a thorn in my side.) But that's it. Aside from whatever is hypothetically left in the social-security system in 2045, I have accepted that I'm on my own. I envy those of my age who were able to buy homes (and stay in them) 10-15 years ago.

fooger03

iTrader: (2)

I'm 5 years out from O-4 reserve retirement which starts at age 59 for me, or 9 years out from O-5 active duty retirement. It's exciting to hear someone else throw out those active duty retirement numbers as if they could come true.

Maxing out my ROTH TSP every year right now, which is very quickly adding up - though I should probably transition my contributions to traditional TSP pretty soon, because our nearly identical incomes are raping us in the tax bracket equation right now.

I'm sitting in bonds right now on the discretionary side - tariff signing day was a good day.

2slow

I work with this company that does something interesting - they invest into mostly commercial stage bio/medical companies with $20-300m value (public and private). They will invest in return for their IP and the firm has a staff of own financial folks and scientists who go over books and medical/bio research data to understand and confirm it before cash is released. If the company goes belly up, in most cases they are able to recover the investment by selling IP. So far they have been outpacing market, but also requires something like $500K to get in. They are managing $3b at the moment and growing.... With all of about 25 people in the company. Difficult people to work with - everyone is A type.

As a first gen immigrant I'll be working till i die most likely, no retirement for me. My parents are working full time jobs as well and I may end up supporting them when they can't work, as social security won't be enough to cover the expenses probably.

I'm trying to figure out where to take whatever little savings I've got - mutual funds for safety or set a small part aside and try stock trading to see if I can make a go of it before putting more in.

Anyone uses Robinhood? Any opinion on them vs TDAmeritrade, Etrade and others?

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

I've got some buddies with accounts with several sites... they all say that TastyWorks is the easy answer unless you specifically need a trading feature that another site offers that makes the fees worth it. As soon as I close a couple positions I've got open in TDA, I'm moving my account to TW to cut my fees down by about 60%.

z31maniac

I've just accepted that the way I choose to live will likely have me in the grave long before I'd ever retire. Thankfully I work for the 2nd largest Software/IT company in the world, so if I don't wake up tomorrow, my girlfriend and the animals will be taken care of. Just my life insurance will pay off the house, pay for the rest of her degree, and make sure she doesn't have to fret too much.

Getting divorced and laid off twice and having to move a few times a few years basically ruined my savings/401k accounts.

2slow

That's the point - Robinhood is free.

hornetball

iTrader: (4)

If I had perfect information . . .

I'd invest in lottery tickets.

z31maniac

I think the Sports Almanac fro BTTF2 would be more fun.

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

It has it's place, but I'm still on the fence for a number of reasons, not the least of which is lack of browser support.

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

I'm afraid of the tariffs causing price increases and an economic slowdown just like it has every other time it's been implemented. Couple that with the interest rate hike designed to slow down the economy and it seems a little too likely that the overall Market will drop significantly soon. In anticipation of this I have moved much of my 401K money to bonds.

Between 2008 and 2016 the federal government offered extremely low interest loans (0.25%) to large corporations to allow them to buy back their own stock. The CEOs and CFOs were all too happy to do it because their bonuses are often tied directly to stock values. This drove the market up significantly and drove other interest rates down. The falling interest rates caused some u.s. bonds that were running around 3.7% to fall down into the 1% range. Those bonds are often bought by big foreign investors (think Middle East) as a safe place to park money. Once these rates dropped so much it made more sense for them to just invest in our stock market which was, of course, going up. This big money going into the overall stock market continued to drive the market numbers upward. Take a good look at the 10-year charts for the total US market or the large cap indexes and you can see how this has artificially bolstered the numbers. I don't know much but I do believe some of what I've read and a few of the people I have heard speak on the subject. Simply put, I'm expecting a correction of significant proportions.

But there are other opinions out there, too.

Ryan_G

iTrader: (8)

Be very careful trying to time the market by changing your asset allocation. Maybe you're right. Maybe Trump backs down off the tariffs because they are very unpopular. While interest rates are rising they are still historically very low. More often than not people are bad at timing the market. Especially people who do not do it for a living. You could miss out on 20% more gains before the next correction and then see both stocks and bonds go down like they did in 2008. The average, inflation adjusted, return of the S&P 500 over it's lifetime has been 6.7% (10% before inflation) but most individual investors perform worse than this because they panic sell or try to time the market. Asset allocations are based on a risk tolerance and are designed to weather corrections. Pick one and stick to it. If your retirement time horizon is greater than 10 years I would suggest against a bond heavy allocation.

Over the long run a portfolio of 100% market weighted equities shows the highest average return but also experiences the most amount of volatility which drives a lot of people to panic sell. Introducing just 10% bonds into the portfolio dramatically reduces volatility during corrections while sacrificing minimal amounts (1%) of total average return. Once you are within 5 years of your draw down target date then you should probably consider shifting asset allocations to something like 80/20 or 60/40 depending on your portfolio size, risk tolerance, expenses, and expected length of retirement. If you are in the accumulation phase with a fair amount of timeline left before you intend to draw down we can get into more advanced modern portfolio theory and start dabbling in allocations of 90/10 with 10% leverage on the stock side in an effort to increase average returns while also minimizing volatility using minimal leverage against a small bond allocation to protect against compounded losses and eventual margin calls during a correction.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

I can't help but think that this seems like a "buy" signal:



I've got about $100k sitting in cash in a broker account right now. Seriously tempted.