Lets say I could spend $2000 a week on stocks or mutual funds. I have a Fidelity account.

What would you buy?  Or should I just find an investment guy?

Goals? When do you need the money? How long are you going to be putting in $2k/week?

You’ll probably get a lot of responses saying either a sp500 index fund or target date/lifecycle fund.

I'd like to retire in 15 years. 31 now but unlikely I would need to draw on the money at that time.

Yeah can never go wrong with the S&P 500 mutual fund. Heard some good things about stocks overseas as well. But yeah mutual funds are the safer bet. I would do some research. Or buy some stock in Apple or Coca-Cola or something that you know will continue to do well.

$2000 a week is over $100,000 a year.  Dayam.


FUSVX

VERY low expense ratio, no transaction fee at Fidelity.  Set it to reinvest dividends.

Takes a $10,000 minimum investment tho, so just wait 5 weeks in a cash account.

Spin the wheel and take yer chances.

If you are bringing home enough to invest over 100 grand a year and are coming here to ask for advice, I would strongly recommend a financial planner.

Decide on your -very specific- investing goals.  Talk to 3 fee financial planners letting them know before you show up you won't buy anything from them.  Take what each one has to say about the best way to reach your goals.  You could average what is said and likely do fine.  With the limited info we have this would clue you in if your goals are not realistic. With that amount of money it can change your ability to get where your going.   Example. I have been buying in and out of cbl have about 6k in it now and have made around 1500 after taxes.  It was a unique situation that fit me well but when the day come and I'm doing it with 60k I am skeptical I will behave the same way.  Maybe that's good maybe that's bad but I know it's going to change.

Why would this be better than say the Fidelity Contrafund which has a higher rate of return?

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Where was this income 10 years ago?

How are you currently invested?

Didn't have it 10 years ago.

Mostly cash and machine guns right now. Little bit of mutual funds.

If you don’t mind, what do you do?

Vanguard  ETF. Either S&P 500 or Total Stock Market.

Throw in the High Dividend Yield ETF and Long Term Bond Index ETF and you have a good balance.

50/35/15

If you just want to keep up with the market. There is more risky stuff if you want to spend the time to try and beat the market consistently.

Stocks are good too. If you have the time to keep up with them on a weekly basis.

Turnover inside the funds is also an issue which you'll need to take a look at as that will create taxes against your AGI. There are several tax advantaged funds with lower turnover but still pushing solid returns with low expenses.

The tax implications at the beginning will not be big but around year 7, things will pick up quick on capital gains, dividends etc.

You were going Fidelity but for reference we plow money into VTCLX and VTMSX type of funds. Fidelity probably has similars.


If you don't have the time, knowledge or temperament, yes an investment pro who is going to teach you while he plans for your future is worth it. Be wary of big fees though:


https://www.daveramsey.com/smartvestor

Establish a core/base of $100k or so in an S&P500 ETF.

Come back in a year and ask us again.

Seriously?

FUSVX is an S&P500 index fund.

Are you asking how to compare that to any of the thousands of other mutual funds out there?

Must be payday and OP is busy investing.

Guess I am not sure of the difference then. The Contrafund seems to have a higher rate of return.

Maybe I better get a professional  I did buy 10k of Contrafund today, next month I'll put 10k into FUSVX

How much do you pay in fees for contrafund?  How long has it been around?  How does it fluctuate when drastic market changes happen , in contrast to the S&P?

Yes, don't throw darts when picking funds.  If you know nothing - then conventional wisdom is to invest in a market index fund, with the lowest possible fees, both transaction and expense ratio.

Go read up and what ARJedi has written on the topic:  https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/-/133-565067/?page=1

certainly a good thread to read.

that said, FCNTX is an excellent fund with a long, long history with the same manager -- and a long history of staying ahead of the S&P500.  
i have to confess to some bias here because at this point i think i have had FCNTX in my portfolio for more than 20 years.  

https://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/FCNTX/quote.html

ar-jedi

don't do this.  

you are concurrently subjecting yourself to two unnecessary risks: performance chasing /and/ over-reliance on a single asset or asset class.

performance chasing will sooner or later get you in trouble.  let me give you an easy example.  go find the best performing fund from any year.  typically it will be a sector fund.  fast forward 5-10 years, and you will discover that fund got absolutely demolished.  and, it will not have been clear to you (or many other investors) why the demolition even happened.  this is why you don't "chase performance".  because of sector rotation, market dynamics, and a host of other factors, yesteryear's "best performers" eventually come back down to earth.  Mr Danoff over at Contrafund (FCNTX) has been beating the S&P500 lately because he has made a lot of money on small and midcap stocks -- companies that benefit to a great proportion when interest rates are very low and they can grow their business.  if/when interest rates rise substantially, it may be a different story with those small and midcaps.  but you have no way of predicting when and to what extent.  you may be old enough to recall the "dotcom bubble" -- folks who bought the highest performing funds from the prior year got their asses handed to them.  

over-allocation in a single asset class is also a risk: just holding domestic S&P500 stocks is a bet that large caps will always perform.  this has been the case for the past few years, true.  but again because of sector rotation and global finance, there will come a day/month/year/decade where the S&P500 underperforms compared to other asset classes and geographic areas.  

i can't write a complete post about asset allocation strategies for you -- my fingers would fall off.

for this reason you should spend $15 and purchase the definitive text on this topic.
https://www.amazon.com/Allocation-Second-Professional-Finance-Investment/dp/0071700781/

this is not a math book.  it is a guide for how to allocate your money in ways that provide the most benefit with the least risk.

it's very important for everyone to understand the philosophy behind asset allocation. in the end, forming some asset allocation rules to live by is one way of preventing yourself from under- or over-indulging on a given asset class AND simultaneously optimizing the risk-vs-return curve.

by way of two examples:

1) breadth of assets

a common question a mortgage holder ponders is, "should i reduce my mortgage term by paying additional principal each month, or should i take that same money and invest in equities (ie., the stock market)?"

paying down the mortgage may have a positive financial return (you are basically buying a long term bond at the mortgage note interest rate) and a positive long term intangible return (you are one step closer to the "peace of mind" of not having a mortgage) BUT by doing so you are -- step by step -- increasing your real estate asset allocation. taken to an extreme, you can end up owning your house earlier but having no other investment assets whatsoever. there are different ways of looking at this, but under an asset allocation model this is an over-concentration in a single asset class. and with over-concentration comes risk -- the risk that the asset class, through no fault of your own, under-performs. the overall economy collapses, the local mill closes, or the nearby semiconductor company goes out of business, or the groundwater in the area dries up, and you are stuck with a capital asset which you can not sell for even close to what you paid for it. this is the risk of over-concentration in a single asset class, whether it is real estate, precious metals, equities, credit instruments, Rolling Stones vinyl records, whatever. an asset allocation strategy can help keep you out of this predicament; it's something everyone has an inherent feel for, but Ferri's book is excellent on illustrating how to put it to work.

2) purchase and sale of investments

investments, whether we like it, are cyclical in nature. and very often, markets move in what would appear to be irrational ways. or as someone very famous once said, "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." perusing GD 10 years ago, you might have concluded that gold and silver should right now be at USD10,000 and USD100 per ounce, respectively. clearly that's not the case. why? things change, that's why.

an asset allocation strategy, assuming you stick to it, forces you to buy asset classes when prices are low and sell asset classes when prices are high. does it leave some profit on the table? yes, of course. but you can only know this through a rear-view mirror, since predicting market direction is well known to be impossible. does asset allocation reduce risk to zero? no, of course not. no asset allocation model is riskless -- even an "all cash" position is inherently taking risk. holding cash during an inflationary period will be detrimental to your finances, there is no way around that. but if you set your approach up that you will have X% equities, Y% metals, and Z% cash, and re-balance on say 6 month intervals, you will end up with a better long term financial picture than someone who is "yanking and banking" on the stick in an attempt to optimize against near term irrational market movements.

ar-jedi

ps
from
https://www.callan.com/periodic-table-investments/

see
https://www.callan.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Callan-PeriodicTbl_KeyInd_2017.pdf





------------------------------------------------------

example:

in 2007, after 4 or 5 consecutive years of Emerging Markets funds blowing away everything else, one might be tempted to find the "best performing" Emerging Markets fund and go all-in.  
how would that have worked out?

No load, no fee index funds.

open account with wealthfront

Vanguard VWIGX has been STOMPING IT this year.  It's pulling 37.38 percent YTD.

I added this fund to my portfolio in June.

Buy energy stocks now that they aren’t plummeting but are still on the rebound.

Oil and gas companies for the win 

@ar-jedi


Thanks for the informative post.  I went ahead and ordered the book.

Personally - there is zero percent chance I would put $100k/year in the same place.

I would also NEVER invest based strictly on rate of return. Things like holdings (diversifying by mutual fund doesn't do any good if they all own the same stuff), morningstar rating (it isn't perfect, but there is some data/methodology behind it), place on the style chart (large v. small, growth v. value), expense ratio, AND rate of return all matter.

My quick math says that if you have $100k/year to invest, if you can ONLY get 6% with compounding you will have about $4 Million. That was really quick math, and that number feels far too low. However, if you bump that to 10% return the number looks like $6.6M or so. The bottom line is that with that much money invested, you probably want to diversify beyond the market.

You are talking about an amount of money that most people have a hard time conceptualizing - it is worth some time to become a well versed investor.

-shooter

I agree about getting a good financial advisor.  If he knows what he is doing, he will find you what you are looking for and make you more money than your inexperience can.

Also, diversify.  Don't just invest in one place.  Put your money in at least 10 different funds.

I disagree with Sigman68.  I don't have a problem with fee based advisors that charge up front single fees, but anyone who wants a percentage is out.  I suggest reading this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Big-Investment-Lie-Financial-Advisor/dp/1576754073/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1509392399

Personally I like the following Fidelity funds:
FXAIX - S&P 500 mirror with .015% overhead
FSSSX - Russell 2000 mirror with .04% overhead
FSTPX - Russell MidCap mirror with .04% overhead

In the future I plan on going heavier in FSTPX as I think mid cap stocks are generally more stable than small cap while having more room for growth than large cap.

FXAIX is institutional - it will only be available if your 401k or the like makes that available.

For personal investing, the equivalent would be FUSVX ($10,000 minimum), slightly higher expense ratio.

Follow Warren Buffet’s plan for his wife. Put it in the Vanguard 500 S&P Index Fund.

I did the same.

I buy the Fidelity Monitor and Insight. It is great to see all the funds listed with performance and size with their advice. Its about 150 a year. That said, they are under new ownership and not as good as they used to be.