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Best way to enter Stock Market ?

December 30th, 2009 at 04:51 am

So will be debt-free by next April - all going well !

Have started playing around with my debt-free budget. Next April I'm going to have two new sources of income:

1. The money that used to be my debt repayments.
2. The money that I'll have saved on rent as I'll be sharing as opposed to living alone.

I'm thinking about splitting this new income roughly equally among 3 areas:

Opportunity/Emergency Fund, Retirement and the Stock Market.

As regards the Stock Market, I don't know an awful lot about it so don't want to get into stock-picking etc...

There's an Irish company that offers low-cost index-linked funds - some that interest me include European, US, Clean Technology and Chinese Index-linked Funds. The only fees are an Annual Management Charge of 1 or 1.5% depending on the Fund.

I saw Warren Buffett on Youtube recommending Index-linked funds to the average guy on the street.

Great - who better to listen to ? :-)

THEN.. I heard Suze Orman saying ETFs are a better way to go than Index-linked Funds. I think ETFs may be cheaper.

THEN.. I'm interested to a lesser extent in Funds that invest directly in areas that sound good to me like Water, Renewable Energy etc etc.. But I realise there's a risk in investing based on morals as opposed to how good or bad the underlying companies are commercially..

That's why I'm leaning towards Index-linked Funds or ETFs...

Just can't decide which - any suggestions ? :-)

Thanks

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

2 Responses to “Best way to enter Stock Market ?”

  1. baselle Says:
    December 30th, 2009 at 06:17 am 1262153856
    1262153856

    Hmmm. 1 to 1.5% is actually a tad high for a passive index fund, so if the choice was that or an ETF, I'd pick the ETF. By comparison, I have a total stock index fund in Vanguard that was 0.18%, last I checked. (not sure if Vanguard is available to a non-US investor). I haven't really explored the ETF world much, only that an ETF can be traded like a stock can.

    In addition to fees, you'll want to explore which will generate a lower tax bill. I've heard that ETFs were comparable to an index fund.

    The one downfall to ETFs is that since they can be traded like a stock that you would be tempted to trade them like a stock. Lots of active trading eats into your profits. Smile

  2. Apprentice Bliss Hunter Says:
    December 30th, 2009 at 02:01 pm 1262181688
    1262181688

    Yeah maybe you're right baselle.. maybe 1 % is too much for a passive index-tracker - and this company prides itself on having the lowest fees around !

    I don't really know how to buy ETFs on a monthly basis. I really am a novice. I just want to buy into a good sector on a monthly basis and really forget about it for 10 or more years.

    Maybe I should just fork out the 250 euro that an independent financial advisor would cost... and he/she could advise which sectors to buy into, where the cheapest ETFs are and how to physically going about buying them.

    I guess it could be worth it in the long-run (buying into the right ETFs from day one). I don't want to be an active trader. I just want to get started investing so that compound interest can begin to work its magic.

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