"LawsFinance" <lawsfinance[at]nospam.com> writes:

- quote -

You need a better broker, then.

Fidelity and Schwab (and I'm sure lots of other brokers) reinvest
ETF dividends (and dividends of "normal" companies, too) for free.

--
Rich Carreiro rlcarr[at]animato.arlington.ma.us

LawsFinance wrote:
- quote -

If you hold the ETFs with a brokerage firm that provides no-cost
dividend reinvestment, you won't have that problem. I haven't kept up
with all the brokers specifically but it's not an uncommon thing to
offer even with the discount brokers - for example I believe TD
Waterhouse still does it.

-Tad

LawsFinance wrote:
- quote -


Mutual funds are not costless. The costs are just rolled back into the
fund and reduce performance. This isn't a *bad* thing necessarily
(costs have to be paid somehow) but you do need to be aware of it.

As for the little bit of cash that accumulates, you add to next year's
purchases. Scottrade doesn't offer any good places to park cash. :-(

I opened an IRA for my daughter last year, knowing that I could only
make tiny future contributions to it because she has very little earned
income. I bought TAVFX, even tho I had to pay a $17 commission. It has
one of the all-time great fund managers (Marty Whitman) and the
management fees are low -- that's why there's a commission.

In my account, the fund that I have that I like the best is OFALX.
There's no commission to buy or sell this fund, but the management fees
are kind of high. It has done very well, although it doesn't look like
it on a chart because it's had some pretty big distributions. (An IRA
is the most tax efficient place for funds with a high turnover.) That
fund is managed by Bob Olstein.

They might be boring, but you can't go too wrong with an index fund.
Boring is good sometimes.

Bob

I have thought about ETF's. My issue with them is that they tend to pay
non-reinvestible dividends. So there will be some odd amounts of cash
building up in the IRA. It won't really be enough to do anything with,
though. Plus there is always the fact that there is commission to
buy/sell ETF's whereas mutual funds are costless. I cannot say for
certain whether she will want to keep her IRA invested in the same fund
forever and the commissions could add up in the event of ETF-switching.
But then again, the managment fees in a mutual fund might be high enough
to make up for some of these factors. Thoughts?

http://lawsoffinance.blogspot.com

In article
<78dd92e3449eae630a03ead1a2b74787[at]localhost.talkaboutinvestments.com> ,
"LawsFinance" <lawsfinance[at]nospam.com> wrote:

- quote -

I'd suggest considering ETFs such as Vipers. They can be
traded at any time just like stocks, they have no front or
back end loads, they are very low expense, tax efficient,
and can be bought in any amount. ETFs can be found that
track any of the major indexes. The S&P, Winsdor, and
Russell are good indexes to track.

-john-

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

There will be just over $1500 in a Scottrade Roth IRA account soon and I
need some ideas about which fund to put it in. Keeping in line with the
moderators' requests for short posts, I will just refer anyone who wants
more details on the situation here:

http://lawsoffinance.blogspot.com

Thanks in advance for any advice.