Recommendation for good info on mutual funds

[smurfette in nyc]

I would like to start investing whatever I can afford into my retirement before it gets any later, but the problem is I don't have a lot of knowledge about this area. I have heard good things about "mutual funds" and wanted to know if anyone here could share a recommendation for a good book, website, etc. that goes into detail explaining this subject. Thanks in advance!

[LeslieR]

Hi Smurfette,

I find Suze Ormond's advice very straightforward and easy to understand. If you buy one of her books, you'll get a code for her website where you can answer some questions and receive a personalized "plan" complete with definitions of terms and recommendations of certain funds. I received Young, Fabulous, and Broke as a gift. I liked it so well that I went to check out the one she wrote for women, but found it to be very similar so passed on it.

Good luck and kudos for you for taking this important step!!

[Bigwoodystyl]

Suze Orman is OK and I can’t find anything she says that’s specifically incorrect. My qualm with her work is that following her advice isn’t going to make you wealthy, it will only make you “less broke.” If you’re in debt with no disposable income and truly are what she calls “YF&B” (Young, Fabulous and Broke), then it could be a good place to start. I don’t like the book at all because I advocate far more aggressive measures right from the get-go.

IMHO, a better starting point would be, The Only Investment Guide You’ll Ever Need, written by Andrew Tobias. He also has a web site and a daily blog at http://www.andrewtobias.com.

Once having read that, since he covers about everything, you can decide what you want to know more about.

A few other investment books slightly more advanced, but I would still recommend to a beginner:

Winning the Loser’s Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful Investing by Charles D Ellis

One Up on Wall Street: How to Use what you already know to make money in the market, by Peter Lynch.

This covers what is commonly called “local knowledge investing”. IOW, invest in what you know, and it’s a pretty good read

Classics: An Investor’s Anthology Edited by Charles Ellis

A compilation of the greatest investment advice given over the years, put together in one book.

A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel.

This covers Random Walk Theory and how it applies to the markets, leading into the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH)… http://www.investorhome.com/emh.htm.

(RW Theory is upper level mathematics, and is a stochastic process that explains a variable’s current position by taking its position in a previous time set and a random variable, a vector which determines the magnitude of its next step and its direction)…. It’s largely been accepted that the stock market is a random walk and that because the market is efficient and digests all information before one can act that it is near impossible (without inside information) to be able to properly “time the market”. Malkiel explains this very well, but the book is somewhat dry because of all the math.

As for general market advice, Warren Buffet writes a 1-2 page letter every year called his letter to shareholders. It’s remarkable looking backward how accurate he has been in years previous. (Of course, past performance is not indicative of future results.) You can find these letters at http://www.berkshirehathaway.com.

I’ll conclude with a final piece of info. If you’re going to be making a buy relatively soon, and you're looking for a mutual fund, I would urge you to consider buying KBW Bank (Ticker: KBE). It’s an ETF that owns each of the largest 24 banks in the US. The price has never been lower. Have we seen the bottom? Maybe we have, and maybe we haven’t, obviously I don’t know. What I do know (I think) is that investment banks in America are going to trade substantially higher 10 years from now than they are right now. Why not buy all of the banks at once and not have to worry about one possibly going insolvent.

Of course, as always, what do I know?

Do your own due diligence!

[2ndTimeAround]

I would like to start investing whatever I can afford into my retirement before it gets any later, but the problem is I don't have a lot of knowledge about this area. I have heard good things about "mutual funds" and wanted to know if anyone here could share a recommendation for a good book, website, etc. that goes into detail explaining this subject. Thanks in advance!

See your in New York as well - as for mutual funds, I use Bank of America Investments. I like that I can log into my BoA online and can monitor my money. On their web site, they have a listing of muture funds you can select. Many off the funds, they do not charge you to buy.

There are A shares, which you paid the broker up front when you buy. There are B Shares when you sell your funds. Then there are "No Load" fund, which you paid a small fee once a year.

Currently have two "No Load" mutual funds that are mid grow funds.

Invested with Guinness Atkinson Alternative Energy GAAEX - which is alternate fuel stocks. It took a dip in February, and has been going uphill since then.

There is another fund looking to invest in, Fidelity Select Natural Resources FNARX, this is a larger mutual fund. Looking at the history, this fund looks like it is going to continued to grow.

Check out link http://finance.google.ca/finance?q=FNARX

Not a big investor, I'm investing for the future, by looking at the history.

Good Luck.....

[Magdalen77]

I would like to start investing whatever I can afford into my retirement before it gets any later, but the problem is I don't have a lot of knowledge about this area. I have heard good things about "mutual funds" and wanted to know if anyone here could share a recommendation for a good book, website, etc. that goes into detail explaining this subject. Thanks in advance!

I agree with Big Woody as far as some of the books he's talked about. Especially, the Andrew Tobias book, I read it first about 15-20 years ago and I just bought his updated edition. Still, lots of sensible advice. Also, if you don't have a lot of $$ and want to start with mutual funds T. Rowe Price lets you start with automatic investing for as little as $50-100 a pop (for most of their funds, it's $50 per month, week, pay period, whatever).

I've also liked the Ben Stein and Phil DeMuth books ("Yes, You Can Get a Financial", "Yes, You Can Super Charge Your Portfolio", "Yes, You Can Still Retire Comfortably"). Another good source of investment information is the Motley Fool website, fool.com. It's run by two brothers and they're all about teaching small investors about investing in stocks, mutual funds, ETFs, etc. They've written a few books on investing as well.

[smurfette in nyc]

Thank you all for the great responses--I sure have a whole lotta reading to do now!