Good Financial Reads: Investing 101

3 min read
November 17, 2017

 investing 101

Following along with the blogs of financial advisors is a great way to access valuable, educational information about finance — and it doesn’t cost you a thing! Our financial planners love to share their knowledge and help everyone regardless of age or assets.
If you like what you read or are interested in the advisors below, be sure to click on their name to learn about them and their niches, or their firm name to visit the company website!

Catch up on some of the latest posts with this week's roundup:

Invest With Dollar Cost Averaging

by Daniel Andrews, Well-Rounded Success

Let’s talk about the investment strategy called Dollar Cost Averaging!

To remind clients to keep saving for their future selves, we try to make the investing process fun. Instead of solely announcing numbers at clients with multiple pages of legal paperwork, we remind clients to focus on what they can control with their investment accounts. To see how we do this, check out this sneak peek below of a Quarterly Email which we send to clients.

[Read the Full Article]

 

Investing in Individual Stocks is Cheap and Easy. And Dangerous.

by Meg Bartelt, Flow Financial Planning, LLC

Low-cost stock-trading platforms have been around for years. E*Trade, Schwab, TDAmeritrade. Recently, new apps have popped up that make trading individual stocks even easier, even cheaper (down to “free”), and, I imagine, even funner.  Robinhood is a popular one.

The Appeal of Modern Trading Apps

These apps have made investing as prosaic as ordering a pair of shoes from Zappos. From what I’ve observed, these trading apps have a few basic appeals:

[Read the Full Article]

 

Strategy Vs. Tactics When it Comes to Investing

by John Cooney, Green and Gold Financial Planning

When people find out that I am a financial advisor, the first question I am usually asked is “What should I invest in?” or something close to that.  My answer is almost always the same, “What is it you are investing for?”  If your advisor is telling you what to invest in, before you have talked about what you are investing for, I highly recommend you find another advisor.  When I think about investing, I often think back to my military education days and learning about the three levels of war; Strategic, Operational, and Tactical.   Understanding how each of these levels work and how they relate to and drive each other can be directly applied to planning for your retirement or any other investment goal that you have. 

[Read the Full Article]

 

Ignore the Headlines - Follow an Investment Strategy

by Michael Palazzolo, Fintentional LLC

A recent front-page headline from the October 6, 2017 Wall Street Journal (WSJ) made me think about investment related headlines from the last year.   The headlines represent a sample similar to what you might see spanning decades of investing.    The headlines continue to demonstrate that it is difficult to predict what will happen with markets in the short term, but everyone sure has their opinion.

Headlines can invoke fear or greed which may cause irrational action (following the latest hot trend) or inaction (staying in cash).  I recall a conversation I had with someone around Christmas 2016.  The individual moved all of their 401(k) investments into cash just before the 2016 November election.  I am not sure what they have done since, but this is a good example of what can happen.

[Read the Full Article]