- Introduction to Investment, Credit and Personal Finance for Us Regular Joes
I did a quick search for Amboy and found a bank that beats even 4.75% APY. Presidential bank offers a 4.87% APY account that requires a minimum of $5000 to open, however there are no fees if your account balance falls below 5000. However this rate is only offered if your account balance is below 35000$.
I had never heard of Amboy Direct (or their parent Amboy) until I saw an ad today in Google. They offer a no fees, no minimums, savings account that offers 4.75% APY. Interestingly, I couldn’t easily find this from the bank’s main page, which offers another esavings account which is only 4.10%!! I have no idea why the bank would have these two separate offerings, but anyway, here is a link to the 4.75% APY account page.
The India Fund Inc. announced its rights offering on Friday. Shareholders as of 3rd of July receive 1 right per share. For every three rights you can buy one share of IFN at 95% of NAV on Aug 4. As of Friday (16th Jun), the premium on IFN was 32%. Assuming this premium stays high until Aug 4, you have a significant return for using the rights offer to buy more India Fund.
India Fund is up almost 5% despite another drop in the Indian Indices, with the BSE ending below 9000. This generally indicates a positive start tomorrow for Indian indices.
INTC and AMD, both of which I mentioned yesterday are up over 3% after analyst upgrades.
Panera Bread, unfortunately is down to 61$, but well can’t have it all go up in a day, can I?
Intel Stock has been in the doldrums for a while. I figured 19$ was a bottom and acquired some INTC making it my third largest holding. Now it is sitting just over 17$, however I am hanging on to it. Average Analyst expectation according to Yahoo Finance is $23.81. My expectation is higher. With a Forward P/E of 13-14 (depending what site you look at), the stock looks like a good buy. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) has a forward P/E of 12-13 (trailing P/E over 30) so it is expected to show explosive growth. AMD touched a 52 week high of 42.70 and is now down to 25. I would say AMD is a good buy too. Analyst Price Target: 38.74.
Target corp, one of my long term Large Cap holdings, has an average analyst price target of 62.50 according to Yahoo (it has been that much for a while now and TGT did touch $60 once). Recently Lazard Capital Markets upgraded its own target for Target to $63! Currently TGT is just under $50, a little above 52 week lows. Personally I have little hope of it reaching $63 in a year ($60 maybe), but then you never know.
Today the Indian market (^BSESN) jumped 514 points (5.5%). A similar gain is not noticed in the India Fund Inc. (IFN), probably because it did not fall yesterday along with the Indian markets. Does mean we will see continued improvements? Well, who knows. We saw several worse down days than today is an up day. I’d wait for a few more gains before jumping in. The volatiliy, though not uncommon with India Fund and the Indian markethas been larger than usual in the last couple of months. I’m still hanging on to IFN.
It seems I only cover IFN here, so here goes coverage for my second largest investment after IFN – Panera Bread (PNRA). Today Panera reported same store sales below the estimates from the two (yes only two) that cover the stock. This sent the stock tanking down 2% (was down as much as 4%) to January levels.
I have been using PNRA to buy low sell high as the stock vacillates from the 60s to the 70s, so I’m just hanging on to it waiting for it to reach 75 again to sell. However I do intend to buy back the stock and I will keep holding PNRA as a long term investment.
The Indian stock market has taken more beatings over the last two days, sending IFN down along with it. The Indian index closed below 10000 again today and all gains since Jan 27 have been erased in just over a week.
Despite today’s 200 point drop, IFN has not similarly dropped possibly due to strangth in US markets and the fact that it is already at early January levels. Morningstar still shows a premium of over 30% for IFN! Is it time to get in? I’d wait for several consecutive days upwards before buying. However I do feel that the current levels for the Indian indices are reasonable.
This is tricky question, and even trickier to answer. There are so many different answers to this question that the best answer is ‘depends on your situation’. I will try to cover as much ground as possible with focus on the long term investor who is not into active trading. If you want free advice to start with on your individual situation, I would suggest posting a message to one or both of the following newsgroups:
misc.invest.mutual funds (mimf)
misc.invest.financial-plan (mifp)
mifp is moderated and you generally get more decent reponses. mimf is not moderated, responses are faster but expect to hear arguments from the regulars that are way off-topic and sometimes nasty comments.
Back to an overview of how to pick funds. The first step is knowing where to find information. The most common place would be Morningstar.
Next is knowing what not to invest in:
Now you are set to pick your funds. In this post I will discuss picking funds at a particular fund company. If you have not selected a Fund Company yet, here are a few: Vanguard, Fidelity, T Rowe Price. You can also invest in Funds from a broker, often without any transaction fees. This may be a better option if the fund(s) you want are available.
All of the fund companies I mentioned have extremely informative websites, that will provide you with model portfolios based on your investment timeline and risk tolerance. I suggest you go to each website and obtain their recommended portfolios. See which you feel the most comfortable with and go that way.
