Starting a mutual fund

[Jeffmet3]

can you explain the credit card 0% thing?

What investment accounts can you fund with a credit card?

[Badger]

Hey Shoe- good luck investing.

As I said before I felt bad having nothing constructive to offer, but this thread just seemed ridiculous. Usually I try not to be an a-hole, so sorry if it seemed personal. You seem very enthusiastic in your endeavors and I hope you do well.

[Shoe]

[ QUOTE ]
Hey Shoe- good luck investing.

As I said before I felt bad having nothing constructive to offer, but this thread just seemed ridiculous. Usually I try not to be an a-hole, so sorry if it seemed personal. You seem very enthusiastic in your endeavors and I hope you do well.

[/ QUOTE ]

I understand, if i was browsing the forum i'd probably find this thread ridiculous as well. No offense taken, thanks for the well wishes and wish you the best of luck in your endeavors as well.

[Shoe]

[ QUOTE ]
can you explain the credit card 0% thing?

What investment accounts can you fund with a credit card?

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't actually fund the investment account with your credit card, but you do 0% balance transfers that have a 0% APR for 12-15 months. There is usually a fee of 3% of the amount you transfer (my fees were capped at $75 for the cards I have done so far, and ended up being about 1% of the amount borrowed).

There are 2 ways to get the money in your bank account, which you then transfer to your investment account.

1. Some cards allow you to use convenience checks to write out however you want. Write the check out to yourself and deposit in your checking account, then transfer to investment account (or I supposed you could write the check right out to your investment account as well). Check the terms & conditions on the card to make sure this is allowed before doing it though, for most convenience checks this is ok. This only takes a few days for the check to clear after you write it.

2. If you can't use a convenience check, you need to do a balance transfer to a card you currently have a $0 balance on, and then request a credit refund check for your overpayment. If you transfer to a citi card, they have a feature to let you request a refund check online without having to call customer support. This takes about a month to get your funds. About a 1-2 weeks for the balance to transfer, and about 2 weeks to receive your refund check.

mymoneyblog has a good guide and a list of credit cards with good balance transfer rates that you can use to get started (i am not affiliated with this site). The cards listed on his site with no balance transfer fees actually charged me 3% up to a $75 maximum though so make sure you double check the terms if you apply for a card.

I'm working on writing my own guide and website about this as well, but at the current rate, my site won't be done for several years. In the last month I have managed to register a domain name but that is the extent of my progress.

[Jeffmet3]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
can you explain the credit card 0% thing?

What investment accounts can you fund with a credit card?

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't actually fund the investment account with your credit card, but you do 0% balance transfers that have a 0% APR for 12-15 months. There is usually a fee of 3% of the amount you transfer (my fees were capped at $75 for the cards I have done so far, and ended up being about 1% of the amount borrowed).

There are 2 ways to get the money in your bank account, which you then transfer to your investment account.

1. Some cards allow you to use convenience checks to write out however you want. Write the check out to yourself and deposit in your checking account, then transfer to investment account (or I supposed you could write the check right out to your investment account as well). Check the terms & conditions on the card to make sure this is allowed before doing it though, for most convenience checks this is ok. This only takes a few days for the check to clear after you write it.

2. If you can't use a convenience check, you need to do a balance transfer to a card you currently have a $0 balance on, and then request a credit refund check for your overpayment. If you transfer to a citi card, they have a feature to let you request a refund check online without having to call customer support. This takes about a month to get your funds. About a 1-2 weeks for the balance to transfer, and about 2 weeks to receive your refund check.

mymoneyblog has a good guide and a list of credit cards with good balance transfer rates that you can use to get started (i am not affiliated with this site). The cards listed on his site with no balance transfer fees actually charged me 3% up to a $75 maximum though so make sure you double check the terms if you apply for a card.

I'm working on writing my own guide and website about this as well, but at the current rate, my site won't be done for several years. In the last month I have managed to register a domain name but that is the extent of my progress.

[/ QUOTE ]

sorry to kinda hijack, but if its 0% for a year, can't you just put it in a CD, and get a free 5% on as much credit as you can get?

[Shoe]

[ QUOTE ]
sorry to kinda hijack, but if its 0% for a year, can't you just put it in a CD, and get a free 5% on as much credit as you can get?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes you can, you can keep it in an online account such as Emigrant Direct (FDIC insured) and earn 5.05% risk-free. You can get 9-12 month cd's around 5.4% elsewhere. Countrywide also has a good program.

I'm just taking on more risk with my funds (for a hopefully greater return) by investing in the stock market instead of a savings account.

Edit to add: The only risk involved with that method is making sure you make your minimum monthy payments to the credit card on-time each month, and that you don't foolishly waste the money at the mall or something. Otherwise you could get stuck paying the high interest rate if you miss just one payment.

[pig4bill]

Shoe, you've made 10 trades in your entire life? I make more trades than that in a week. What in the world makes you think you are qualified to run a mutual fund? You have to make at least 20 trades just to get the fund started.

[Shoe]

[ QUOTE ]
Shoe, you've made 10 trades in your entire life? I make more trades than that in a week. What in the world makes you think you are qualified to run a mutual fund? You have to make at least 20 trades just to get the fund started.

[/ QUOTE ]

I no longer want to start a mutual fund, I now want to do a newsletter, and perhaps a private fund sometime down the road if I can build up a good track record, based on the advice of others in this thread. I thought if they were cheap and easy to start (which I now know they aren't), I could have a publicly verified record of my performance.

And my lack of trades isn't from lack of desire, it's from lack of funds to invest with. I'm working on changing that. Thanks for the question, as you point out, i'm definitely not ready to start a mutual fund.

[kimchi]

[ QUOTE ]
For most of the time from '02 - '06, I was not actively managing the portfolio at all, just providing the little bit of history I do have. As you can see, while most of the trades made money, the dollar amount actually earned was not very much.

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Thing is, as per my original post in this thread, a monkey would have made money during the last 5 years in the stockmarket.

Have you beaten any reasonable benchmark risk-adjusted?

[Shoe]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
For most of the time from '02 - '06, I was not actively managing the portfolio at all, just providing the little bit of history I do have. As you can see, while most of the trades made money, the dollar amount actually earned was not very much.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thing is, as per my original post in this thread, a monkey would have made money during the last 5 years in the stockmarket.

Have you beaten any reasonable benchmark risk-adjusted?

[/ QUOTE ]

Good question. Unfortunately, I don't know the answer. In fact, I don't even know my overall return as a percentage. I'll work on figuring that out, but other than comparing to the S&P 500, i'm not sure how to find a risk-adjusted benchmark.