I asked something like this on page 3 but didn't get a response so I figured I'd try again quick. Has anyone used Ally for CDs? I've been looking for a place to park a little cash that I don't have earmarked for my brokerage investments. Their rates are really good compared to most other banks out there and I was just wondering if anyone had any experience with them (I know they used to be GMAC).

They've got 6months for 1.04%, 12months for 1.29%, 2 years with 1.5% (but the ability to raise the rate once during the 2 year term if the rates do go in fact go up).

[Edited on February 14, 2011 at 5:22 PM. Reason : .]

2/14/2011 5:19:02 PM

Just join a local credit union and have easier access to it. Current money market rate at the NCSECU is 1.25%.

2/14/2011 7:51:54 PM

Is the NCSECU rate of 1.25% a regular rate? I'll def have to look into that...It is listed as August 2010 so I wasn't sure it was up to date.

I had looked into some local credit unions, although the few places I had looked at around here so far didn't have better CD rates and many didn't even offer money market accounts for some reason. The ones that did have money markets had rates of <1.0% which is what I am trying to get away from with some of this money.

Outside of our 6 months of living expenses in the main checking/savings account the rest of our cash is already in a MM out of charlotte that is down to 0.7% APY regular rate. I have found MM accounts that offer more than 1% but it is usually just some 3 month promotional rate and I don't feel like bouncing around from bank to bank just to keep up with that. I would rather keep the MM we have (which is, imo, a competitive rate for a non-promotional rate).

This is why i had been looking at CDs to at least be earning > 1% on the cash we don't need quick access to but that we aren't investing in my brokerage account.

[Edited on February 14, 2011 at 8:40 PM. Reason : ]

2/14/2011 8:30:55 PM

Yes, it's a regular rate.

2/14/2011 11:33:57 PM

I don't know how much you have socked away, but the difference in .7% and 1.29% doesn't get me worked into a lather and I'm not sure why it should anyone else.

On 10k in the bank its the difference in almost one extra nice meal a year. Is it really worth to research all these different options and go through the trouble of having yet another account to concern yourself with?

If you already have a brokerage account, just put it in SHY or IEI

[Edited on February 15, 2011 at 6:29 AM. Reason : .]

2/15/2011 6:28:09 AM

^^ Thanks.

^ It's more than 10k but I still do understand what you're saying. I do have a brokerage account with etrade for mutual funds. I honestly know jack about Treasury Bond ETFs but I can take the time to read up on the Barclays ones you suggested to consider that.

2/15/2011 9:39:11 AM

^ i get my CDs at a credit union i was grandfathered into. not much help to you.

Berkshire did a bunch of selling yesterday. are we at a near term top? i hope so. need to correct before we can take off again

2/15/2011 3:38:10 PM

I've been wanting a mild correction for a few weeks now. It would put me in a pretty good position.

I heard about the Berkshire selling yesterday, but all of the commentary I saw said that it was too minor to be a sign of anything big. When I say "minor" I mean minor to Berkshire. Obviously they could buy and sell all of our familes several times over with that loot.

2/15/2011 3:43:42 PM

I've been debating picking up some POT today after their drop yesterday. I'm reluctant to put too many chips on this bull commodity market just because everyone seems to be betting on it right now. Maybe I'll just try to profit from it in the short term with a few long positions.

2/16/2011 2:06:05 PM

Keep an eye on the 10 and 30 yr yields. If they start dropping back down then I'd say we are going to get our correction. But as it is now, the 30 has broken out of its long term channel going back to the 80s and if it doesn't get back in it soon, then we are off to the races inflation wise and you want get a chance to get back in the commodity boat.

Can you see what I'm talking about, the channel

http://tinyurl.com/6emgjbx

or do I need to put it in stock charts and put the lines on it for you?

2/16/2011 6:55:59 PM

I'm up to speed on all of that, I just wondering if there's going to be some short term pull back from so many people jumping into that asset class at once.

2/16/2011 7:07:47 PM

Quote :

"I currently have a bunch of the Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 fund VFIFX made up of 1 Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund 63.7% 2 Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund 26.2% 3 Vanguard Total Bond Market II Index Fund Investor Shares† 10.1% I was thinking about selling it all off and manually resetting the allocation to 2/3 Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund 1/3 Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund Thoughts?"

I have a Vanguard IRA right now that I just started in December when I switched jobs. I set it up to have all of my money in the Balanced Index core fund group. I am thinking about going 50/50 or 60/40 Total Stock Market Index/Balanced Index to diversify things a little bit. But, so far this year I have over a $200 investment return, which is just straight up the amount of money the account made itself without any contributions. Should I just keep everything where it is in the Balanced Index Fund? I just feel strange keeping all of my money in one fund, especially a fund thats not very "risky"

2/16/2011 8:22:54 PM

only 59% stocks is a little too conservative for me in an IRA at this point if I was just doing one fund. I currently have my IRA in the Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 Fund VFIFX as well.

2/16/2011 8:31:10 PM

Yeah, way too conservative for your age.

2/16/2011 11:59:46 PM

Yes! Please put it all in stocks right now. 5-10 years from now you may have the gains your dividends gave you.

2/17/2011 6:07:16 AM

RST down 15%

2/18/2011 2:57:09 PM

AAPL shit on my face today. still made money money but lost about 60% of my profits :-\ have a rebuy order in for 335

2/18/2011 6:24:53 PM

Quote :

"I closed my GLD vertical at .37 today, so 119% after commission. It's too bad I'm so risk averse."

I knew when I was closing it that I'd probably be able to catch the rest of that profit as the vertical expired completely worthless today.

FIVE O, where did you disappear to? I hope you aren't still holding those SPX and IWM puts you had as of 2/9. As best I can tell, you were already looking at a 50% loss on the SPX as of 2/9 and are looking at a 75% loss if you're still holding.

^^ Why would you set an open rebuy order? If the market starts to correct or if Steve Jobs dies your order is getting executed as the stock tumbles.

[Edited on February 18, 2011 at 8:48 PM. Reason : .]

2/18/2011 8:46:06 PM

apple is going to be the highest cap stock eventually. im still believing that q2 earnings will push the stock to the 385 range

2/19/2011 1:33:09 AM

So buy it now? What is significant about 335? Looks to be a lot more lateral support in the 325 range. That would be consistent with an overall healthy market correction. And you'd be able to set a stop loss a bit lower in the event something really crazy happens. If you think it's going to 385 then it doesn't make that much of a difference either way, you're just shorting yourself some additional profit.

2/19/2011 7:51:42 AM

http://i966.photobucket.com/albums/ae143/sentenal01/Informational pictures/6b3926a7.jpg

[Edited on February 20, 2011 at 10:30 PM. Reason : ]

2/20/2011 10:28:36 PM

^ that chart is ironically hilarious. It is sad that it is right on with what investors tend to do; even those whom think they are affluent investors.

2/21/2011 2:11:04 PM

^x5

Held those SPX/IWM puts too long. Almost back to even on the year now.

2/21/2011 3:04:49 PM

Look, don't take this the wrong way, but I think you need to study up on options a little bit more and understand how they can sting. They are more than just leverage.

1) In particular, buying them (at present they have IV, implied volatility) when they are expensive relative to history (called HV, historical volatility) and then having to sell them later when IV goes down has a multiplier effect on your losses (there are strategies, especially around earnings announcements, where you can play this aspect of the options price with almost no regard to the stock itself).

2) For gods sake, stop rolling the dice and swinging for the fence. Buy verticals and define your max gain and loss. Sure, you'll time some trades perfect and be pissed off that you cap your max gain as well, but would you rather have ground out an up 20-30% so far into the year versus being back to breakeven?

3) Learn some technical analysis to pick entry points. Doing what you did, assuming that...surely the market is due for a correction, it's gotta happen soon, everyone thinks it will, I'm gonna go ahead and get some puts is really nothing more than gambling. I did just this on a couple of stocks in '09 and managed to puke up a 50% loss. Previous to that I timed an entry into FAS at the dead bottom in March and turned 40% in two weeks. And then I thought I was a damn guru. You likely bought the March puts thinking well, this should give the market a chance to turn and I'll be holding them ready. But you apparently don't realize how theta (time decay) works.

4) NEVER SHORT A DULL MARKET.

5) Bull markets always correct timing mistakes. Many a trade has gotten his ass handed to him trying be a bear hero and knock it out of the park timing a correction. Many another trader has also been a little sluggish on a bull market, hopped in just in time for a little pullback, but held on and saw the bull correct the timing mistake (I did it a couple times last year...micro panicked but ultimately saw the Gold bull fix the mistimed entry). I have the hardest time convincing myself to live this point. I've made one trade all year, sitting on the sidelines myself waiting for the correction when I could have just been making money off the time decay. Hell, I could have fully loaded up on options, kept the delta close to neutral and been up a good 15% this year myself by just climging the wall of worry with everyone else letting the time decay do its thing.

2/21/2011 6:19:11 PM

In all honesty, what sort of percents are you guys up for last year and YTD? I see a lot of wins reported here and imagine many losses go unmentioned.

2/22/2011 10:00:14 AM

nasdaq within 30 pts. of its 2007 all-time high

wtf...this countries gonna get burned

2/22/2011 10:45:56 AM

^that fact alone isn't really that scary. There is a lot more to consider than that.

2/22/2011 10:51:57 AM

Time to short NFLX?

2/22/2011 11:06:45 AM

when they come close to matching the selection that neflix has it might be a viable option. I am sure they will continue to improve it of course, but their selection is pretty poor atm and I am sure they will suffer from most of the same problems that netflix has as far as being limited on what (and when) movie studios let them stream. So right now it's $1.50 per month cheaper + 2 day shipping on Amazon purchases vs a much bigger selection. The shipping is nice but even with someone that buys a lot of stuff from there it isn't enough to grab me yet.

When they eventually get to a competitive selection it would be something to consider for sure if the price stays the same.

2/22/2011 11:17:35 AM

Quote :

"In all honesty, what sort of percents are you guys up for last year and YTD? I see a lot of wins reported here and imagine many losses go unmentioned."

I'm down a little on AEO, RIMM, WCG, and GOOG
I'm even on VZ, TEVA,
I'm up a fuckton on IBM and AAPL

I buy and hold though so almost all gains and losses are unrealized.
I wish mint could tell me the % I'm up via all my accounts but can't seem to figure that out.
My largest account is my 401K which was up about 16.7% last year and 6.5% ytd.

2/22/2011 11:41:40 AM

amazon also has very few embedded clients

2/22/2011 11:53:27 AM

Quote :

"Time to short NFLX?"

nope.

at least not for a while.

NFLX is still WAY ahead on device penetration (PS3, XBOX, Wii, iPhone/iPad, droid and just about every TV and bluray player out there right now).

Also, the selection mostly overlaps with Netflix, but has even less variety. Also, the interface sucks. I'm sure it'll improve over time, but for now, it's not a serious competitor to netflix, unless you happen to currently already have amazon prime, but no netflix account yet.

In my case, I have both, but I'll continue to stick with netflix and keep an eye on amazon.

2/22/2011 11:58:20 AM

if things stay this way it might be a good day for me to move over the last couple thousand I hadn't put in my etrade account yet

2/22/2011 12:48:32 PM

hmmm. My company Fluor (FLR) is down over 5% today. We were at 52 week highs but at the same time I expected our stock to do well this year so it wasn't a huge surprise where I thought it was super-overvalued or anything. Tempted to pick some up.

2/22/2011 2:13:49 PM

Whoops. Just noticed that BP brought the dividend back.

2/22/2011 4:23:40 PM

I wish Netflix & Hulu would do a merger. Both would prosper from the deal versus years of competing for subscriptions and it would take the cable companies down a notch or ten.

[Edited on February 22, 2011 at 4:39 PM. Reason : s]

2/22/2011 4:38:25 PM

http://www.google.com/finance?q=OTC:CBIS

2/22/2011 10:37:40 PM

put on a trailing stop on some long held BIDU

2/23/2011 10:03:09 AM

back into AGQ & DGP as of yesterday

trailing stop on most of my C

today's hard to gauge -- i bet there's a lot of short covering on profit taking, whether Qadafi will be assassinated over the weekend or some other crazy shit happeningn, and the consumer sentiment #

seems like there should be more selling next week - we'll see

2/25/2011 11:13:50 AM

Like woah!

3/1/2011 4:34:57 PM

Good thing I'm so heavy on RST.

Oh wait, that's a bad thing.

3/1/2011 4:35:59 PM

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/feb/28/financial-terrorism-suspected-in-08-economic-crash/

3/2/2011 4:45:10 PM

I really wish I would have followed my own advice in here and picked up Fluor as it was dropping last week. I almost bought in and it is already up 11% since then. Oh well.

3/3/2011 3:02:02 PM

^ i think you'll get your chance to buy it again.

got some long held CREE, TSL, and HEV that's about to get stopped out..

but its ok cause i got dat $170 AGQ

3/4/2011 3:01:33 PM

I, too, plan on dumping CREE

3/4/2011 8:09:38 PM

so can anyone summarize the state of the stock market now after the huge crash a couple of years back?

Thanks

3/4/2011 8:13:06 PM

Quote :

"only 59% stocks is a little too conservative for me in an IRA at this point if I was just doing one fund. I currently have my IRA in the Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 Fund VFIFX as well."

I called yesterday and switched my funds from the balanced index fund to the target retirement 2045 fund. Vanguard's website is a little hard to manage when trying to buy/sell from one fund to another, so I called and had their customer service person take care of the switch in less than 5 minutes.

Now I am going to be stuck with a tough decision about transferring my funds from the vanguard IRA to my company 401k policy once I qualify in June. Has anyone in here been able to get their company to do their normal 401k contribution match for a personal IRA? Sounds kinda strange, and most companies probably wouldnt go through the trouble, but it might be beneficial since I like the way my Vanguard account is set up and would probably prefer it over my company 401k. I could always have two accounts, a personal IRA and a company 401k, but the wife and I are saving up to buy a house and there isnt much money available to put into my IRA every month.

3/6/2011 8:58:47 AM

Even if your employer lets you roll an IRA into the 401k, they're not going to match. That's unheard of AFAIK.

If it's a roth IRA, it's probably a bad idea. roth IRA contribs are after-tax, and your 401k is pre-tax. If you roll your IRA into the 401k, it seems like you're signing up for double taxation but IANAFA.

3/6/2011 9:10:07 AM

I dont have a Roth, its just a traditional IRA. I'm either going to roll my money from my IRA into my 401k and close the IRA, or keep both open so I can take advantage of the employer contribution match. The money that is in my current IRA is what I rolled over from my old company 401k (I just changed employers). Since I dont qualify for my new company's 401k account until June, I had to roll my money over to somewhere as kind of a "holding tank".

3/6/2011 9:26:37 AM

Good call switching it to the 2045 fund. I'd just keep it with Vanguard.

3/6/2011 11:18:39 AM