Age 19, looking to invest

[zimmer879]

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Ummm... when you say "open your eyes" are you talking about OP or me?

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OP, sorry for the confusion.

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Of course mutual funds trail the market. Mutual funds, in aggregage ARE the market, but with fees layered on and, generally, modest cash balances holding them back in up markets (which are more common) and helping them in down mkts (less common). THey also have transaction costs, which are negligible in indexes.

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Mutual funds are what most people are invested in, and the fact they can get away with subpar returns while pocketing enormous profits says a lot about the investment community. The same principle certainly applies to financial planners although it's impossible to back that up statistically.


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This is the sort of thing that a good advisor would elucidate.

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Or any decent website.

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Learning on your own is a good thing, no doubt about. YOu have to ask yourself honestly how much time you are willing to put in. It's been twenty years for me, many of which were 14-15 hours per day...and I am still learning.

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I agree with this but I guess it really depends on what returns you're shooting for. It doesn't take very long to learn enought to beat the market however.

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Maybe I should use Zim as my advisor, since he already appears to have it down pat!

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Well ok but then you can't badmouth me. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]