patrick.net

I'm more impresses with NetFlix's drop.

I tragically got back into the stock market in May. I figured Dow stocks would be pretty safe and pay dividends, so I bought AA among others.

Ouch.

I really don't know what the problem is with Alcoa lately, but I sure regret buying it.

Netflix has serious issues as any company can stream online.

Amazon pulled a fast one with the Fire because if people subscribe to the prime it is $79 a year..and they get a month of free service to start. Netflix doesn't have a device (yes there are some that work with it)

Add in Boxee, Hulu..heck even RedBox and competition is higher than what they thought. If the post office makes saturday delivery a goner will people tolerate going one less day without getting a dvd ?

I tragically got back into the stock market in May. I figured Dow stocks would be pretty safe and pay dividends

I did the same thing, only about a month ago. So my stuff is worth what I paid for it, and I've gotten dividends as well.

What did you pay? Nice rally today.

Getting in and out of the stock market is a losing method to investing. Allocate how far into the future you NEED that money and buy a mutual fund with it. Few owners of mutual funds get the returns that the fund made, since they get in and out at usually the wrong times.
Owning individual stocks is usually more fun than boring mutual funds, but the risk is of course much higher. The market for stocks is an auction, so you must guess that in a future auction people will like that stock much more than they liked it when you bought it.
Plain vanilla funds do OK over time, for example Fidelity Contrafund. I own cheaper ones at Vanguard mostly myself.
A very conservative Vanguard fund is Dividend Growth for example.

My Vanguard 500 fund did nothing over a 6 year period, so I sold it. My other mutual funds did nothing over the last three year period, another break even, again sold them. In fact, some of my funds were going down as markets were going up, I was lucky to sell and break even on them, and they pay dividends?, they know how to take those back, it's funny, almost the way they pull it off. I had one fund that was worth like $500, 7 years later, they had taken $400 of it in fees, I had to get rid of that before I started going in the hole on it. I'm staying in PM's and cash going forward, I'm not giving wall street or corporations another dime, garage sales and gardening is my future.

Alcoa, just had a billion dollar day as far as stock growth, it's been rated as a buy for awhile now.

everything says

I had one fund that was worth like $500, 7 years later, they had taken $400 of it in fees

What did you own that had such high fees?

The best way to use mutual funds is to buy things that can minimize fees. Most every study suggests the difference between most actively managed funds and passive funds is that the former have a higher fee, and the latter have a higher return, and the delta between the returns is usually the amount of the fee.

Believe it or not, a 403B, run by some big name fund hawker, can't remember who it was, so many of them to pick from now.

everything says

Believe it or not, a 403B, run by some big name fund hawker, can't remember who it was, so many of them to pick from now.

Yes, some of them are quite awful. Merrill's was one of the worst I've ever seen. I think you were better in a taxable account than investing through that 401(k). My assumption is that the employer was getting a massive kickback by saddling the employees with such a terrible 401(k) plan, which would violate its fiduciary duties under ERISA.

I found an old statement, it was Metlife, and my figures were a bit off. It went from about $500 in 99 to $364 in 2010 and they ended up giving me a check for $215. You would just think that $500 in funds could do better than that over ten years. The fees on the Alger small cap were 9.84 in the year 2004 and the other fund Fid contra fund were 14.98, for that year as well.

Lesson: $500 in two different mutual funds will eat itself alive eventually going to zero through fees that they charge.

everything says

My Vanguard 500 fund did nothing over a 6 year period, so I sold it. My other mutual funds did nothing over the last three year period, another break even, again sold them. In fact, some of my funds were going down as markets were going up, I was lucky to sell and break even on them, and they pay dividends?,

You forgot to mention all the capital gains distributions that you had to pay while you owned it.

everything says

The fees on the Alger small cap were 9.84 in the year 2004

That's also timing though. If you had bought Alger small caps in 2002 and sold in 2010, you would have made money. It's up 6.16% per year over 10 years. That's despite a 1.40% fee.

zzyzzx says

You forgot to mention all the capital gains distributions that you had to pay while you owned it.

403(b) = no payment.