First of all, LB is killing my portfolio! It finished down 7.7% today on heavy volume. This has been the third straight day of decline and I'm wondering if a big holder is taking some profit off the table by selling some shares. The average volume is about 138K, but a few days in the recent past stand out. On July 27th the shares decreased 8.37% on volume of 283K, on July 29th the shares decreased 6.55% on volume of 335K, and today the price decreased 7.7% on volume of 398K.
I still think this stock has good fundamentals and I'm sitting on +60% gains, so I'm not too worried, but when my portfolio drops from the 17% range to just over 12%. I'm definitely keeping my eye on this one though.
I noticed that in my ING account I have almost $6300 in there. I'm going to keep at least $2600 in there as my emergency fund, but the rest should be transferred out. I'll have a little over $3600 to invest and I'm most likely going to try to max out my Roth contribution with most of this money (or all). Before I transfer the money, I want to know exactly what I will be investing in (so I can at least earn some interest while I research). With this year's contribution I think I'm going to lean towards ETF's. I contemplated just picking one stock since I'm going to hold on till retirement (I was looking at Bank of America or Citigroup- BofA has been getting hit hard lately). As of right now I'm looking towards an all ETF year (but I'm still keeping my eye on JSDA, I'm waiting for the downtrend to settle down a bit and then I can add these shares to one of my accounts).
Here's some basic info on ETF's for those who need some background info.
I will be looking at this list in the coming days/weeks to figure out which ones I want to buy.
Just to highlight a few ETF's (highest year-to-date returns): the Austria Index has returned 32.5% for the year! Of course there are a good number of energy ETF's high up on the list.
Mexico, Belgium, and Sweden all have returns greater than 10%.
What ETF's should I invest in?
Right now, I have no idea. I want to start the Roth with a broad base of diversified ETF's, so I'm going to try to include some foreign ones, sector-specific ones, as well as asset class ETF's (I'll probably lean more towards the Small Value ones).
My plan is to start this weekend, as well as try to finish my CFA reading.
