Roger,

Congratulations on getting a start at age 21 on a ROTH IRA. As you
probably know your earnings on this investment will not be subject to
federal tax now or later when you withdrawl them in retirement.

There are many good no-load (no sales commission) funds out there.
However, beware of the fact that this year's winners will probably not
be next year's winners. You can spend a lot of time and opportunity
chasing last years winners and not be a winner yourself.

If you just want to do as well as the market indexes than an index fund
is for you. It is hard to find a company that does indexing better than
Vanguard. Their expense ratios are some of the lowest in the industry.

There is a stratagy that has consistently outperformed the market 8 out
of the 10 past years. It requires discipline and monthly attention from
you. The monthly attention is less then 1 hour per month. This is a
strategy that I know about and use. There are others.

As always when you invest in a mutual fund that invests your money in
stocks and/or bonds, there are risks. One of those risk is market risk.
Your investment may decrease in value. However, over the long term
historically stocks are the winners. You are 21. Your IRA is a long
term investment.

If you are not one to tolerate the risks then you should look to a
money market funds or a bank CD. The risk with these types of
investments is that they may not keep up with inflation.

Well, there is much to cover on the topic. But these are some things to
consider. There are many more.

Dave

<BreadWithSpam[at]fractious.net> wrote in message
news:yobek1wohaw.fsf[at]panix3.panix.com...

- quote -

That argument often is made in the abstract, but in practice it may not work
out very well.
The real question is: How likely is it that a newcomer, not knowing where to
go or what to buy, will actually receive useful advice from someone he or
she more or less stumbles onto at random? My guess is the probability is
quite low. For that 5.5% of the investment, many people could get a better
chance of honest to goodness unbiased advice by paying the money to a
fee-only financial planner (or maybe better still buying a few good
financial books at the local bookstore and spending some time reading).

"jIM" <noreplysoccer[at]hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140540996.421398.261620[at]g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
- quote -

Have you changed your opinion of this fund? Earlier you commented that
since having learned that the manager was going to be changed, you would
sell this fund if it underperformed.

http://groups.google.com/group/misc....9e414dd22355f5
(Previous comments)

http://news.morningstar.com/doc/news/0,,143573,00.html
(Morningstar article saying that manager will change around the end of June,
and that the new manager has never had primary responsibility for managing a
fund.)

BTW, my remarks in the same thread were that I would be inclined to give
TRPrice a chance, rating this fund a "hold" - neither selling immediately,
nor recommending it as a new acquisition.

http://groups.google.com/group/misc....7396688b2f8f78
(My previous comments on the matter.)

--
Mark Freeland
nNeEwTs[at]sonic.net

send the money to T Rowe Price Capital Appreciation instead (PRWCX).
No load, just got you a 5.5% return better than the fund listed.

If PRWCX is not what you want, check out other TRP funds, Fidelity or
Vanguard.

"John A. Weeks III" <john[at]johnweeks.com> writes:
- quote -

As ever, that depends on what you get for that 5.5%. We've had
this discussion many times and the bottom line is that for most
active and interested and self-educated investors, yes, the
load is usually wasted money.

For others, however, it isn't necessarily wasted. If that 5.5%
is buying the investor useful advice (and, hopefully, some oversight -
ie. review his mix of investments) then it's not a waste but, in
fact, valuable.

Advice and assistance isn't free. One pays one way or another -
either through one's own time and effort, or by paying an advisor
(and there are more than one way to pay advisors, too - loads
versus fee-only, etc).

As far as our OP goes, I'd recommend that before he starts
dumping money into a load fund (which still wouldn't be the
worst thing in the world for him to do), he should maybe just
put that money into a decent high-yield savings account (ie. ING
or one of the others) and spend a little more time reading.

The time spent reading, say, Personal Finance for Dummies by
Eric Tyson - a couple of hours, really - it's quick reading -
would have a huge return.

--
Plain Bread alone for e-mail, thanks. The rest gets trashed.
No HTML in E-Mail! -- http://www.expita.com/nomime.html
Are you posting responses that are easy for others to follow?
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting

In article <1140505652.066848.239180[at]f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> ,
RogerTommy[at]gmail.com wrote:

- quote -

The best advice I can give is that you are not going to get
wealthy quickly by giving some sales droid 5.5% right off the
top on every dollar you save. You might as well flush that
money for all the good it will do.

You want funds that have two characteristics--no up front load
charge, and low ongoing expenses. There are lots of them out
there, but few people are advertising them because they don't
get to skim off the top like Hartford does. You also want a
fund that has a good 5, 10, and hopefully 20 year track record
(if it has been around that long). As an example, look at
Vanguard. They have a lot of funds that meet those requirements.
You might especially want to check out index funds. For some
odd reason, the dumbest idea in the stock market (buying a
little of everything as an index fund) beats everything that
the best and brightest can come up with (ie, actively managed
funds).

-john-

--
================================================== ====================
John A. Weeks III 952-432-2708 john[at]johnweeks.com
Newave Communications http://www.johnweeks.com
================================================== ====================

I'm only 21 and I'm going to open an ROTH IRA. I was recommended to
invest into The Hartford Capital Appreciation Fund ITHAX by a sales
person at my bank. So I know he intends to make 5.5% off me. I don't
know much about mutual funds or stocks. Any advice for a young guy
looking for long term gains? Any recommendations? Where can I look?
What should I do?