#8 There's a lot of good resources out there, and there's a lot of not-so-good resources that want to sell you a particular fund/stock. If you are just looking for good return on investment for your personal finances, it's easiest to skip all the theoretical junk and do what works for most investors: put your money in a fund like the S&P 500. Or you could open an account with Vanguard (or a similar NO-FEE investment manager - more on that below) and stick the funds in a diverse portfolio. Vanguard doesn't let you dick around with individual stocks, and for good reason - there's no evidence to suggest that the average investor actually makes extra money by buying/selling individual stocks. On the contrary, people's biases tend to lose them money because they like to sell stocks that have made some money, and hold on to stocks that are in the red on paper "until they turn around" and make a profit. Obviously, stocks that have gone down from where you bought them are no more likely than stocks that have gone up to make you any more money - in fact, they may be more likely to continue to lose.

Don't choose mutual funds that charge fees. The evidence here is actually very clear: mutual fund and hedge fund managers, despite their intelligence, are no better than monkeys at picking stocks to outperform the market - at least, when you look at a long enough time period. If a fund charges high management fees, then you're taking your 50% chance to beat the market and reducing it by the amount of the fees!

#6 If you really want a serious answer, I don't see unusuals as being a viable long-term investment. I'd just cash out and put the money in stocks. But if you don't want the serious answer, then obviously you need to be thinking ahead about the next big trend in unusuals. Maybe it's swarming flies.

#7 All my books were finance textbooks. Why are you learning investment? Is it for a career, or just to manage personal finances?

Except you don't get paid back in Kickstarter. And yeah, if you plop your money in a fund like the S&P 500 and check back every month or two, you're good.

Edit: I should mention that the emerging market bond fund is very risky. In the long run, that kind of risk SHOULD pay off - but we're talking 3-5 years minimum. You have to be very patient with your money for that sort of investment.

Nope, all good ones.

The key to investing, especially if you don't know a lot about it, is to diversify. I used to hate people who told me that because it sounds like a cop-out, but it's not. By owning a whole lot of different stocks, you reduce the risk that any particular stock goes bust and takes all your money. Find an index fund that spreads the money you invest across, say, the entire Dow Jones index, and you don't have to worry at all about any individual stock going bad. You just get returns equal to whatever percent the Dow Jones gained or lost over the term.

Investing in your local currency (i.e. CDs or bank deposits) will never beat inflation. Banks don't want to pay you more than it costs them to borrow in interest, so the only reason to use CDs and low-interest bank accounts is when you need the money soon and don't want to incur penalties/fees from withdrawing your money from a stock account. Keep a couple of months' salary/wages in your bank account as a good liquidity buffer, and invest whatever you're comfortable with investing.

The "emerging market bond fund" I recommended is a fund that buys bonds from countries like Brazil, Greece, and India. Every government issues its own bonds to fund its operations, and emerging economies' governments tend to have higher interest rates and borrowing costs than the US. That means a bond from Brazil will pay a lot more over time than a bond from the US. There's more risk, too, so again, buying a fund that invests in a lot of different countries gets rid of some of that risk while preserving the gains.

I use Schwab myself, but I haven't heard anything bad about Scottrade.

Asking me about individual stocks won't get very useful results - I am not a Wall Street analyst and I do not have the time to really dig into corporate financials and do investigative work. That means I won't be able to tell you with any degree of accuracy which stocks are likely to give greater returns than a simple index fund.

Just thought I'd see if there's any interest in me explaining some of the basics of investing your money. I'm about to graduate from my MBA and have taken a number of advanced finance courses.

There is a very simple answer to how to invest your money. Put it in a diversified portfolio and only touch it once every 3-12 months to rebalance it. My investments are 50% US stock market (S&P 500, but you can use any equivalent index) and 50% emerging market bond funds (PCY Powershares ETF). I do it this way for two reasons: I believe in semi-strong market efficiency and I know that I do not possess the insider information necessary to make a "good" stock pick - i.e., one that will definitely beat the market. Pick funds and indexes that have zero commissions/fees.

Any questions about any of that jargon above, or questions about individual stocks, theories, rebalancing portfolios, etc, just let me know. And of course, if you have insider trading info, let's hear it. :notacop:

Nin2246 cancels Get Recommended Game From Thread: interrupted by Dwarf Fortress.

Seriously dwarf fortress is fantastic.

When does the hype train officially start for LAN on TFTV?

This is a fine THREAD. It's not the right FUNDRAISER. I was responding to Atmo's point.

Certainly, let's get the discussion rolling for Aussie and Euro teams! I just think begging for funds from this particular fundraiser for those other purposes is not the right thing to do.

Regardless of whether Broder deserves to go to i49 (and they undoubtedly do), this is the i49 "Send an American Team to Europe" fundraiser. If you start allowing scope creep for additional team funding, you muddy the waters to potential donors. What is my money actually going towards?

This particular fundraiser is not the place to put money for any other purpose, and if you've been donating to the "Send an American Team to Europe" fund with the expectation that it will/should also pay for a European team, you're very misinformed.

If people do want Broder to go to i49, then it's up to Broder or someone acting on their behalf to do the fundraising, whether that's through sponsors or another indiegogo campaign.

I have some recordings of my jazz combo from high school. I was on the alto sax.

Now I'm just trying to pick up the occasional song on piano by ear.

Please please make zalfy's announcer voice a thing.

what the dicks is up with ingestion servers

Holy shit it's like nobody has ever read Discworld books.

I hope we get some seriously high quality games with all 3 major scenes. Europe and Australia better bring that A game!

baleeted