Question for all. I mentioned the Stock Basket thing that e-trade has. $125 a year, and no other fee's. You can take their "baskets of stocks" and customize it or create your own basket from scratch. You can have as many stocks in a basket or as few as you want. You asign %'s for each stock in each basket. Been playing around with it....my thinking is really that I am tired of doing so much homework, and investigating individual stocks, as well as relying on a smaller number of stocks to gain or lose with. I figured the stock basket way would be a great way to get very diversified into ALOT of stocks. My problam is, I've created 4 baskets so far...pretty diverse...everything from every sector for the most part. Looking at my 4 baskets, I have like 70 stocks combined, in the 4 baskets. I am wondering if I am better off being that diversed or make smaller baskets. It takes $10k to open an stock basket account, and I just did the minimum to start, which means I will only be putting $2500 each into the 4 baskets I designed, with most baskets haveing at least 25 - 30 or so stocks, which obviously means I wont be buying that many shares of KKD or WMT or HD or DUK or DELL and etc, etc.....obviously, with that many stocks, divided by the $10k I am starting the account with, I wont be getting many shares of any one stock ( although I weighted some stocks heavier then others, with some baskets having stocks in other baskets as well ), but I will be getting ALOT of stocks. I just can't figure if I am better doing it like this, and have a very wide array of stocks, from every sector, but have fewer shares of each stock, or am I better off making smaller, more concentrated baskets that will have fewer stocks, but more shares of those stocks. The way I have it set up now, I will at least be geting a few shares of quite a few household names that should do well long term if the world doesnt go to hell in a handbasket, but then again, with so many stocks, the one's that don't perform well, will negate the ones that do do well, and I dont want to sit and tread water. On the flip side, with so many stocks, I would hope I have some protection to the downside...anyway, any opinions would be helpful.
Here are my baskets
1) AAII, BEAS, BRCD, DUK, EMC, JCOM, JNPR, NTAP, NXTL, SEBL, VRTS.
2)ABT, AMGN, AMZN, AOL, CSCO, DELL, EBAY, FNM, GE, IBM, INTC, JNJ, LLY, MRK, MSFT, ORCL, PFE, VZ, YHOO.
3)BBBY, COST, DIS, DUK, F, GM, GPS, HD, HDI, KSS, LOW, MCD, TGT, TRB, VIA.B, WMT.
4)BUD, CVS, DUK, G, GE, GIS, HD, HDI, K, KKD, KMB, KO, MO, PEP, PG, SBUX, SLE, SYY, WMT
All opinions appreciated. Any dogs in the list? Should I lose some? Add some I dont have? Pare it down to less stocks, and higher %'s?? Thanks, in advance... |
