Dipping toe into shares.

I have opened a share trading account with my bank but now I have no idea what to do.

There seems to be a lot of doom and gloom, I am 90% retired so I have a bit of time to read up.

Seem that ETFs are best to start with as the fund manager does the heavy lifting. Does the old saying to "Buy, buy, buy when everyone says sell, sell, sell" still apply?

A family member has SWTZ (Switzer) shares and he is reasonably happy with them, any opinions or first hand experiences with similar funds? Remember that I'm a noob so not too many short hand notations please.

 

One thought is you may have taken action the wrong way round. Read first then open a brokerage account.

As we don't know what you actually want to do I'm not sure others will be in a position to offer suggestions. I certainly can't based on the very broad scope of your post - not that I necessarily would in any event.

 

Probably more a point for the younger people. Everyone wants to invest after a crash. But its very hard to pull the trigger when there is so much conflicting information.

The idea is to learn first, then execute. If you have a few basics and a few shares in mind, at least, you learn a lot faster when things are moving quickly.

 

Fancy funds and advertising attracts the punters, rarely do the promised results follow.

No idea what you want to achieve etc etc etc. A place to start thinking is half VAS (Vanguard Australian Shares) and half VGS (Vanguard Global Shares), then consider the pros (low fee, diversified, not going to lose your shirt) and cons of deviating from that.

Nothing like dipping a toe with a relatively small amount of $ to enhance the learning. Need to make sure it won't leave a bad taste or you might not come back for more.

 

Good point.

Still, I feel it's best to know what you wish to achieve before getting - or not getting - burnt.

 

Wish to achieve? Make money comes to mind.... I'm thinking of investing a few 10s of thousand $ and see if I can make more that the 1% I get from the term deposit. I'm not into buying and selling speculatively but rather threat the investment as a long term deposit that pays dividends every quarter or there about (remember I'm 90% retired). The above mentioned STWZ pays dividends every quarter https://www.switzerassetmanagement.com.au/funds/swtz/ but I believe there are other similar investments.

 

STWZ has a management fee of 0.89% for what essentially is a selection of stocks from within the ASX200. Over the long term it will perform worse than the index and it charges you ~ 10x as much VAS, IOZ, A200 etc. I am glad your family member is happy with it. Still it's a **** product and I wouldn't touch it. I haven't even given you my thoughts on Switzer!

 

I think it is a terrible investment. I suggest NDQ,(100 of the best companies in the world ran by the smartest people in the world) and perhaps some ASIA . If you have more than 150k, Maven managed is open for a small window but you need to be prompt, an alternative is Lakehouse Capital.

 

Thanks for your thoughts, it's always good to get a 2nd opinion or another point of view.

 

Just had a quick look at SWTZ




Listed in 2017

The Switzer Dividend Growth Fund - Switzer Daily

 

Here's a couple over the last 2 years

Investing is personal (@SatayKing IAAM rule) and each individual situation is different

Lots to read on this site and lots to consider re:
Timeframes, Goals, Risk Profile, Strategy, Structure, Current Financial Position etc..

In Poor Richard's Almanac, Ben Franklin said

 

Putting my money under the mattress! I was looking at the curve of the fund and didn't like the negative "growth" at the beginning but I thought it may have been something normal at starting up.

So the net return from the above is not much better than a term deposit with most banks and lower than the 1.9% offered by QUDOS bank (my other thread earlier).

I had a bad experience with my bank a few years ago where we had $70K in managed funds, after some 5 years we had less that when we started, the interest rate at that time was about 6% so I could have just kept the money in the bank and made a profit. The fund was advised by the bank's "financial adviser"

 

Yep and I consider once the full implications of that are understood you can get to a position about what others think of your approach or holdings or even what others may hold of finally being able to the move to the "I don't give a stuff" mode.

 

SK rule for personal investing plan:

IDGAS IAAM.

 

Don't be hasty. Sleep on it.

Which is followed by ZZZZ.

 

I think it is unusually sensible for investors who are new to the sharemarket to be interested in starting now.

Should they have got in when it was booming back in January?

 

The point is NOT to be new to the sharemarket, hence my comment is aimed at younger people. Start learning early, put small amounts in to develop mindset, and a shopping list for when corrections happen. Whats sensible is to start investing at 18 so you have a couple of these crisis opportunities over your lifetime.

 

Very valid point.

Nothing could be easier than my current strategy of having a couple of LIC's and an ETF and keep investing regularly.
But it took me 25 years of trying just about everything else to get there and to end up with the right mindset.