So apparently, my credit card got hacked or something. I was charged with an online purchase from the Apple Store today. USD642.43 worth of stuff.
If this wasn't so scary, I'd be laughing at the irony. I don't own anything Apple. The only time I ever made a purchase in the Apple store was to get a pair of batteries for a friend. So blatantly obvious it was a fraudulent charge. I called the credit card company and informed them about it and they said they would cancel the charge, replace the card and investigate. So I'll check in with them next week to see what happened.
Apparently, this isn't new though. I had a friend whose debit card was used to make fraudulent Apple store charges (totalling ~USD300) as well. So please beware (this warning goes out to the 2 people who actually visit sometime).
Anyways, in other news, the funds finally transferred to my account so i managed to turn a 13 dollar profit today. Haha. I was reading up more in depth about stocks and decided that as a green horn, I should concentrate my efforts into ETFs. Since I used Fidelity, they have a selection of commission free ETF's that I started with. As a general rule, ETF's give you a wide basket of stocks/funds at a relatively cheap price. The drawback is the management cost of the fund but at 0.5% or lower, I find that acceptable for the rookie investor. I also tried to look out for equities that give out dividend. The importance of dividends will discussed in another post, but I'll say for now that an attractive dividend rate is one of my deciding factors when I choose these ETFs. The 3 I started out with are as follows:
1. ISHARES DOW JONES SELECT DIVIDEND INDEX FUND (DVY)
I choose this ETF as it was quite a way's off the historic high in 2007 and was trending up. Although past performance does not indicate future results (as the very common caveat goes), in general, I believe that the US market is on an upswing. It might be fragile, but it's still a positive outlook nevertheless. Exports are growing as the USD falls, the unemployment rates seems to have stabilized and even fallen slightly and most importantly, business are starting to hire and spend again. This means that any stock that mirrors the market should, in general, trend upwards as well. Looking at the historic highs (75) and it's current price (52), I believe that the ETF can return to such levels of glory again. Also, they provide a dividend rate of 0.88% which is fairly good amongst it's peers offered by Fidelity.
2. ISHARES DOW JONES EPAC SELECT DIVIDEND FUND (IDV)
I choose this ETF as it invests in the developed world outside of the US. I thought a little global exposure would help balance out the portfolio. The dividend rate lower than DVY at 0.65% but again the current price is ~75% of the historic 5 year high in 2007. Who knows if it will go up that high again but I think the little bit of diversity it gives me is good.
3. ISHARES RUSSELL 3000 INDEX FUND (IWV)
This is the simplest type of fund. It just copies the entire Russell 3000 composition so there's very little active management involved. Hence it is also the cheapest at 0.21% management fees. I think the Russell 30000 should be a good indicator of the market as it's much broader than the Dow Jones but still has a lot of 'heavy hitters'. The dividend rate isn't great at 0.36% but I think as the economy grows, so should the fund.
A final note here, I think I started with ETF's as they are not complicated, but in general, I think I will be moving to investing in individual stocks and cutting out the management fees. But as of now, with my green horns, I don't have the time to do adequate research on all the stuff I want to get.
With that note, I shall go to bed. I'm trying to wake up early to workout. We'll see how it goes...
If this wasn't so scary, I'd be laughing at the irony. I don't own anything Apple. The only time I ever made a purchase in the Apple store was to get a pair of batteries for a friend. So blatantly obvious it was a fraudulent charge. I called the credit card company and informed them about it and they said they would cancel the charge, replace the card and investigate. So I'll check in with them next week to see what happened.
Apparently, this isn't new though. I had a friend whose debit card was used to make fraudulent Apple store charges (totalling ~USD300) as well. So please beware (this warning goes out to the 2 people who actually visit sometime).
Anyways, in other news, the funds finally transferred to my account so i managed to turn a 13 dollar profit today. Haha. I was reading up more in depth about stocks and decided that as a green horn, I should concentrate my efforts into ETFs. Since I used Fidelity, they have a selection of commission free ETF's that I started with. As a general rule, ETF's give you a wide basket of stocks/funds at a relatively cheap price. The drawback is the management cost of the fund but at 0.5% or lower, I find that acceptable for the rookie investor. I also tried to look out for equities that give out dividend. The importance of dividends will discussed in another post, but I'll say for now that an attractive dividend rate is one of my deciding factors when I choose these ETFs. The 3 I started out with are as follows:
1. ISHARES DOW JONES SELECT DIVIDEND INDEX FUND (DVY)
I choose this ETF as it was quite a way's off the historic high in 2007 and was trending up. Although past performance does not indicate future results (as the very common caveat goes), in general, I believe that the US market is on an upswing. It might be fragile, but it's still a positive outlook nevertheless. Exports are growing as the USD falls, the unemployment rates seems to have stabilized and even fallen slightly and most importantly, business are starting to hire and spend again. This means that any stock that mirrors the market should, in general, trend upwards as well. Looking at the historic highs (75) and it's current price (52), I believe that the ETF can return to such levels of glory again. Also, they provide a dividend rate of 0.88% which is fairly good amongst it's peers offered by Fidelity.
2. ISHARES DOW JONES EPAC SELECT DIVIDEND FUND (IDV)
I choose this ETF as it invests in the developed world outside of the US. I thought a little global exposure would help balance out the portfolio. The dividend rate lower than DVY at 0.65% but again the current price is ~75% of the historic 5 year high in 2007. Who knows if it will go up that high again but I think the little bit of diversity it gives me is good.
3. ISHARES RUSSELL 3000 INDEX FUND (IWV)
This is the simplest type of fund. It just copies the entire Russell 3000 composition so there's very little active management involved. Hence it is also the cheapest at 0.21% management fees. I think the Russell 30000 should be a good indicator of the market as it's much broader than the Dow Jones but still has a lot of 'heavy hitters'. The dividend rate isn't great at 0.36% but I think as the economy grows, so should the fund.
A final note here, I think I started with ETF's as they are not complicated, but in general, I think I will be moving to investing in individual stocks and cutting out the management fees. But as of now, with my green horns, I don't have the time to do adequate research on all the stuff I want to get.
With that note, I shall go to bed. I'm trying to wake up early to workout. We'll see how it goes...
1 comment:
How is P90X treating you? Or have you given up already? =P
My CC got hacked twice already. So maybe I should've warned you first lol. The second time was interesting though. Cuz I had ceased using this particular CC for over a year so I have no idea how they got it. Good thing the bank was monitoring and gave me an automated call immediately after it was used.
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