"cporro" <cporro[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1168411965.138612.44620[at]p59g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
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Maybe instead of buying this index fund from within your brokerage (etrade)
account... buy it directly from the fund family itself. That should
eliminate the "fee" which I believe in your case is not so much a fund fee
as it is an E-Trade Mutual fund commission.


Just my 2 cents,
Shhhh

Many funds will allow you to sign an "intent to purchase." I don't
recall the particular semantics right now, the agreement may go under
different terms.

Basicly, you will let the fund know how much you intend to purchase in
total and they can combine the amounts as one to waive the individual
transaction fees. This can also be done accross several series of the
same fund family. Not all fund families allow accumulation so you will
want to contact the particular fund for more information.

That's it...it's called "rights of accumulation."

Call the fund you are looking at and ask about Rights of Accumulation.

Chris


BeachBum wrote:
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"cporro" <cporro[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1168411965.138612.44620[at]p59g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
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BeachBum

cporro wrote:
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There are plenty of index funds around. Why not pick one that don't
charge you the fee. For example I have an account with Schwab. There
are a number of no fee index MF's I can purchase through Schwab.

cporro,

Just a warning... You open a can of worms around here by mentioning
DCA.

The other posters are correct that DCA may lead to lower returns.
However, the world is not made up of only returns! Your original
concerns are valid. IF you mistime the market you can do substantial
damage to your portfolio early on.

DCA is a risk/return trade-off, not a return maximizing strategy.
People tend to forget that. If you would sleep better knowing that you
have taken on less risk then by all means use DCA.

However, if your investment period is long enough to ride out any early
downturns you may still be better off using lump sum. Even if there is
an immediate drop, don't sweat it. You'll be around long enough to
recover.

There are numerous places, such as Fidelity and Vanguard, that don't
charge for adding money. You can open a Money Market account with the
$20k and move into the index funds at say $6k lumps over several
months. I would distribute the money among large cap, mid cap and
small cap index funds.

Frank


cporro wrote:
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On Wed, 10 Jan 2007 07:15:14 -0600, cporro <cporro[at]gmail.com> wrote:
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Find a better fund that does not charge you as much? That sounds like
the thing to do. Otherwise, the idea to time the market in this manner
is not very productive, as thiis is highly difficult to do successfully.

i

cporro wrote:
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Dollar averaging only works when the instruments is down and then up.
Otherwise you will be the loser.

Personally I also feel 2.5% transaction cost is a bit too much for an
index fund (much more than the fund expense, I guess). If you really
up to this route, I would like increase the monthly amount.

cporro wrote:
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Dollar cost averaging of a lump sum is an inferior strategy, as I
explained in a recent thread "dollar cost average effect", which you
can find (along with dissenting replies) using Google.

here is my problem. i have around 20k that most likely will get put in
some index fund. i could try to figure out (aka guess) when stocks are
undervalued and jump in with all 20k then. but i'd rather set up an
automatic purchase of say 1k/month for 20 months. unfortunately the
fund i want has a fee of $25 fee each time i buy it. well, at least
through etrade it does. that's 2.5% on a 1k monthly purchase.

any ideas?