vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Using Fundamental and Technical Analysis together is actually a good idea for longer term trading of up to 6 months or longer. The whole idea behind trading with Technical Analysis is to increase the probabilities of a trade going in the desired direction by using uncorrelated indicators that produce the same signal to buy or sell at the same time. For example, you might use a Moving Average (MA) as a buy signal when the price falls for a few days, hits the MA and then reverses and starts moving back up. If however, you also include a Stochastic Oscillator (SO) to indicate when the stock is oversold (under 20%), and if the price rebounds from the MA average at the same time as the Stochastic is crossing over in the oversold position, then this may be a higher probability trade. If you also only trade stocks that are Fundamentally healthy (as fundamentally good stocks are more likely to go up than fundamentally bad stocks) then this might increase the probabilities again. Then if you only buy when the market as a whole is moving up, then this will increase your chances again. A few weeks ago at a seminar, the presenter totalled the men in the room to be 76 and the women in the room to be 8. He then asked what will most likely be the next person to walk in the room - a man or a woman? The statistics are on the side of a wan walking in next. This is what we try to do with Technical Analysis, increase our chances when we take a trade. Of course a woman could be the next person to walk in the room, just like any trade can go against you, and this is why we use money management and risk management and take a small loss when a trade does go against you. Lets look at an example where you could incorporate FA with TA to increase your chances of profits: Above is a candlestick chart of Select Harvest (SHV), the green line above the price is the perceived value, the pink line is the 40 day MA, the blue line is the EPS, and the white lines is the Stochastic Oscillator (above 80% being overbought and below 20% is oversold). From Feb 2015 to start of Aug 2015 the stock was uptrending, since then the price reversed and started to downtrend.
"This is basically the short-term/long-term savings question in another form: savings that you hope are long-term but which may turn short-term very suddenly. You can never completely eliminate the risk of being forced to draw on long term savings during a period when the market is doing Something Unpleasant that would force you to take a loss (or right before it does Something Pleasant that you'd like to be fully invested during). You can only pick the degree of risk that you're willing to accept, balancing that hazard of forced sales against the lower-but-more-certain returns you'd get from a money market or equivalent. I'm considered a moderately aggressive investor -- which doesn't mean I'm pushing the boundaries on what I'm buying (not by a long shot!), but which does mean I'm willing to keep more of my money in the market and I'm more likely to hold or buy into a dip than to sell off to try to minimize losses. That level of risk-tolerance also means I'm willing to maintain a ready-cash pool which is sufficient to handle expected emergencies (order of $10K), and not become overly paranoid about lost opportunity value if it turns out that I need to pull a few thou out of the investments. I've got decent health insurance, which helps reduce that risk. I'm also not particularly paranoid about the money. On my current track, I should be able to maintain my current lifestyle ""forever"" without ever touching the principal, as long as inflation and returns remain vaguely reasonable. Having to hit the account for a larger emergency at an Inconvenient Time wouldn't be likely to hurt me too much -- delaying retirement for a year or two, perhaps. It's just money. Emergencies are one of the things it's for. I try not to be stupid about it, but I also try not to stress about it more than I must."
"In the case of a specific fund, I'd be tempted to get get an annual report that would disclose distribution data going back up to 5 years.  The ""View prospectus and reports"" would be the link on the site to note and use that to get to the PDF of the report to get the data that was filed with the SEC as that is likely what matters more here.  Don't forget that mutual fund distributions can be a mix of dividends, bond interest, short-term and long-term capital gains and thus aren't quite as simple as stock dividends to consider here."
My parents keep saying that ""Look at 2008 and think about what such a thing would do to your plan"", and I just see that it will be a setback, but ultimately irrelevant, unless it happens when I need the money. And even then I'm wondering whether I'll really need ALL of my money in one go. Doesn't the index fund go back up eventually? Does a crash even matter if you plan on holding stocks for 10 or more years? Crashes always matter, because as you say, there's always the possibility that the crash will occur at a time you need the money. In general, it is historically true that the market recovers after crashes, so yes, if you have the financial and psychological fortitude to not pull your money out during the crash, and to ride it out, your net worth will probably go back up after a rough interlude. No one can predict the future, so it's possible for some unprecedented crisis to cause an unprecedented crash. However, the interconnectedness of stock markets and financial systems around the world is now so great that, were such a no-return crash to occur, it would probably be accompanied by the total collapse of the whole economic system. In other words, if the stock market dies suddenly once and for all, the entire way of life of ""developed countries"" will probably die with it. As long as you live in such a society, you can't really avoid ""gambling"" that it will continue to exist, so gambling on there not being a cataclysmic market crash isn't much more of a gamble. Does what I'm planning have similarities with some financial concept or product (to allow me to research better by looking at the risks of that concept/product)? Maybe like a mortgage investment plan without the bank eating your money in between? I'm not sure what you mean by ""what you're planning"". The main financial products relevant to what you're describing are index funds (which you already mentioned) and index ETFs (which are basically similar with regard to the questions you're asking here).
Wow, very amused by some of the answers. I will comment on those later. To directly answer your question, here is a link to a brochure that explains the three basic typs and is written in straightforward language. link text That is step one. Step 2 is a question, cheapest when, initially or for long term? Without a doubt term initially is the cheapest. However every 10 years or 20 years it increases in price. As the name term implies it is temporary. Coverage will end at some point, 75, or 80 depending upon plan design chosen. It is possible that if you choose Term you can outlive your coverage and all you have are a bunch of cancelled cheques. Young people with a mortgage, children and other debts should buy a lot of term as the mortgage will be paid off, the kids will no longer be dependent. These needs are temporary. However some needs are permanent. What about leaving a Legacy at Death to a Charity? Insurance is a good solution and can provide a tax deduction too. Term isn't a good fit. Or a business owner wishing to transfer his/her business at death to their children. Taxes will be due and permanent insurance such as Whole Life and Universal Life can be arranged to provide cash to pay tax whenever this happens.  Let me ask you who received 10% in the last ten years on their equity portfolio. Almost zero people did. However a Whole Plan would have generated a guaranteed return of 3.0% plus a non-guaranteed return via dividends that the combined internal rate of return  on a combined basis would be about 5.6% AFTER TAXES. Life a bond portfolio yield. (Internal rate of return is dependent on age at buying, years of investing. All insurance comany software can show you the internal rate of return.) IRR is essesntially: what is the return after tax that you must get to equal the equity or death benefit from a permanent insurance plan. Someone mentioned by Term and Invest the difference. That is what universal life is, Term and Invest the difference except the difference is growing tax sheltered.Outside investments with comparable risk are taxable! There is no easy answer for what type is right, often a combination is. The key question you should ask is How Much Is Enough? Then consider types based upon your needs and budget. Here is a link where you can calculate how much you need. I hope this helps a bit.
I'm assuming you mean 4-6% annually over 10-15 years.  If you mean 4%-6% total return over 10 years then this question is easy just find your local country's 10Y bond and that should likely cover it (though barely if you are German). So 4%-6% annually is not a big stretch but it does require some risk and at least a bit of work.  A fire-and-forget good mix would include (using index mutual funds or etfs) Some internet research and a one-time meeting with a financial adviser who is paid by you (not paid on commission) should help you set the right balance of these index funds and be a good check on what I'm advising. If you are willing to do a tiny bit more work it's well worth starting with a heavier weight on the riskier stocks and ex-European funds (more currency risk) and then every 2-3 years slowly move into safer stocks and Euro-based funds.  With that tiny amount of extra work there you can make it much more likely that you will end within your 4-6% range while taking significantly less risk overall.
If news breaks tomorrow that the CEO of Home Depot has been embezzling (or if Trump decides to go on the Twitter warpath for some reason), your investment could disappear. Another common way to think about it is: if you had $9000 today to buy stocks with, would you buy $8500 worth of HD and $500 worth of JNJ? If not, it probably doesn't make sense to hold them just because you happen to have them. The only potential exception to my advice above would be tax considerations. You didn't mention what your basis in the stock is. Looking at historical prices, it looks like if all the stock was 20 years old you'd have a gain of about $8000, and if all of it was 10 years old you'd have a gain of about $6000. If your tax situation is such that selling all the stock at once would push you into a higher tax bracket, it might make sense to sell only enough to fit into your current bracket, and sell the rest next year. However, I think this situation is unlikely because: A) since the stock has been held for a long time, most of the gains will be at the lower long-term rate; B) if you have solid income, you can probably afford the tax; and C) if you don't have solid income, your long-term capital gains rate will likely be zero."
That number may be based on a long term historical view of the stock market.  If you look at some long term charts for the DOW  or the S&P500, you'll see that overall the upward trend is pretty good.  However there are some pretty huge flat spots in those charts, and if the majority of your investements have been made during one of those periods, you may not have seen a lot of growth. If you look at periods between 10-17 years or so, you can find places where it would have really sucked to be you (look at the S&P chart and imagine 66 to 83.. OUCH!) and places where things were stellar.   If you expand to about say 30 years or so, then it's hard to find a period without at least some good growth in there somewhere.  If you panicked during a downturn and sold on the low, things of course get much worse.  How your own portfolio has done will depend a lot on how the funds you chose have done, how much you put into equity vs fixed income, and if the fixed income was in actual bonds, or a bond fund..   Bond funds are subject to a lot more fluxuation as interest rates rise or fall than something like a t-bill or i-bond that you own outright and plan to hold to maturity.
I understand you're trying to ask a narrow question, but you're basically asking whether you should time the market.  You can find tons of books saying you shouldn't try it, and tons more confirming that you can.  Both will have data and anecdotes to back them up.  So I'll give you my own opinion. Market timing, especially in a macro sense, is a zero-sum game.  Your first thought should be: I'm smarter than the average person; the average person is an idiot.  However, remember that a whole lot of the money in the market is not controlled by idiots.  You really need to ask yourself if you can compete with people who get paid to spend 12 hours a day trying to beat the market. Stick with a mid-range strategy for now.  Your convictions aren't and shouldn't be strong enough at the moment to do otherwise.  But, if you can't resist, I say go ahead and do what you feel.  Regardless of what you do, your returns over the next 3 years won't be life changing.  In the meantime, learn as much as you can about investing, and keep a journal of your investment activity to keep yourself honest.
No, CFD is not viable as a long term trading strategy.  You have a minimum margin to maintain, and you are given X days to top up your margin should you not meet the margin requirements. Failure to meet margin requirements will result in a forced sell where you are no longer able to hold onto the stock. A long term trading strategy is where you hold onto the stock through the bad times of the company and keep it long enough to see the good times. However, with CFD, you may be forced to sell before you see the good times. In addition, you incur additional lending charges (e.g. 4%-6%) for the ability to leverage.
1. It doesn't have an almost perfect negative correlation - its value decays very fast because of time.  In fact, something like 80% of options expire worthless.  They typically have a lifespan of 30-90 days and unless you're using them as a way to earn excess return, you'll likely just throw away your premium.  2. You're also making some assumptions about correlation and risk/reward.  You won't become wealthy by distributing risk, all you can hope for is less volatility - maybe that's what you're looking for - but you can also expect your return to be less than the market over almost any period of time.  3. Options aren't really for diversifying.  Furthermore, why diversify?  It's a myth that it adds any value.  There's around a 90% correlation for all asset classes since around 2000, so you're being sold some blue sky if someone tells you otherwise.  4. Look up prices of put options.  1-2% of your portfolio might buy you a handful of options, but again, there's a high probability you'll lose that 1-2% entirely every 30-90 days.
A person who always saves and appropriately invests 20% of their income can expect to have a secure retirement. If you start early enough, you don't need anything close to 20%. Now, there are many good reasons to save for things other than just retirement, of course. You say that you can save 80% of your income, and you expect most people could save at least 50% without problems. That's just unrealistic for most people. Taxes, rent (or mortgage payments), utilities, food, and other such mandatory expenses take far more than 50% of your income. Most people simply don't have the ability to save (or invest) 50% of their income. Or even 25% of their income.
Start as early as possible and you will want to kiss your younger self when you get to retirement age. I know you (and everyone else at that age) thinks that they don't make enough to start saving and leans towards waiting until you get established in your career and start making better money. Don't put it off. Save some money out of each paycheck even if it is only $50.  Trust me, as little as you make now, you probably have more disposable income than you will when you make twice as much. Your lifestyle always seems to keep up with your income and you will likely ALWAYS feel like you don't have money left over to save. The longer you wait, the more you are going to have to stuff away to make up for that lost time you could have been compounding your returns as shown in this table (assuming 9.4 percent average gain annually, which has been the average return on the stock market from 1926-2010).  I also suggest reading this article when explains it in more detail: Who Wants to be a millionaire?
It's important to have both long term goals and milestones along the way. In an article I wrote about saving 15% of one's income, I offered the following table:  This table shows savings starting at age 20 (young, I know, so shift 2 years out) and ending at 60 with 18-1/2 year's of income saved due to investment returns. The 18-1/2 results in 74% of one's income replaced at retirement if we follow the 4% rule. One can adjust this number, assuming Social Security will replace 30%, and that spending will go down in retirement, you might need to save less than this shows. What's important is that as a starting point, it shows 2X income saved by age 30. Perhaps 1X is more reasonable. You are at just over .5X and proposing to spend nearly half of that on a single purchase.  Financial independence means to somehow create an income you can live on without the need to work. There are many ways to do it, but it usually starts with a high saving rate. Your numbers suggest a good income now, but maybe this is only recently, else you'd have over $200K in the bank.  I suggest you read all you can about investments and the types of retirement accounts, including 401(k) (if you have that available to you), IRA, and Roth IRA. The details you offer don't allow me to get much more specific than this.
Answering this question is a great way to gauge how you're doing towards saving for retirement now. But of course what matters more than this snapshot in time is how much you contribute down the line.  It may be wise to try to estimate how much you will want saved by the time you retire. Then try to calculate how much you would need to save in order to hit that mark.
Do you have an emergency fund in place, or is this $40,000 all of the cash that you have available to you? One rule of thumb is that you have 3 to 6 months of expenses set aside in a safe, easily accessible account ready to go if something comes up. Are you saving for retirement? If you don't already have retirement savings in place and are adding to it regularly, some of this cash would be a great start to a Roth IRA or something like that, invested in a stock mutual fund. If you are already debt free except for this mortgage, you might want to do some of each: Keep $10,000 in a savings account for an emergency fund (if you don't already have an emergency fund), put $5,000 in a Roth IRA (if you aren't already contributing a satisfactory amount to a retirement account), and apply the rest toward your mortgage.
Saving for retirement is important. So is living within one's means. Also--wear your sunscreen every day, rain or shine, never stop going to the gym, stay the same weight you were in high school, and eat your vegetables if you want to pass for 30 when you are 50.
"It's a spin on the phrase ""making your money work for you"". before sending your money off to do the heavy lifting, you'll want to   have an emergency savings account of about six months of living   expenses stored in cash. Basically, he is saying before you start to invest make sure you have sufficient emergency savings."
However, none of these rules will help that much if your goal is, as you say at the end of your question, to ""know if I need to save more than what I actually am saving currently"". Saving 10% of your income won't magically ensure that you're saving ""enough"". To assess whether you personally are saving ""enough"", you need to actually start running some numbers on how much money you personally will need in retirement. This will depend on any number of factors, including where you live, what sources of retirement income you might have besides savings (e.g., pensions), etc. In short, to know if you're saving enough, you can't listen to the generic stuff that ""everyone says""; you need to consider your own situation in a deliberate, focused way."
"I don't know about the technicalities of retirement accounts, but I would advise you to please please please do not use retirement money to buy a home. The reason for not ever wanting to spend your retirement is.. when can you make it up?  When you retire, you are by definition no longer earning money, so all your expenses can only come from the money you have saved.  If you are willing to borrow from your retirement, it is not hard to imagine you are willing are willing to get a new car, or a new barbecue, or a new fishing boat before you repay yourself. So the question to ask yourself is, ""can I deal with renting for a few years knowing that I can retire comfortably, or am I willing to risk retirement to have a house now."" Part of the will power it takes to pay yourself first is not taking from your own savings.  You cannot count on anybody but yourself to take care of you when you are old. It is just opinion, but risking a comfortable retirement for a home now is not a risk anybody should take."
How's your savings and emergency fund? Everyone should have an emergency fund that will last them 6 months, and the goal should be two years' worth.  This should be in an easily accessible account, such as a savings or money market account at your bank (you could consider CDs, but unless you're laddering them there will be penalties to get at the money). Once you've got 6 months' worth saved, the next thing to focus on is a tax advantaged retirement account.  Only when you've maxed out your contributions (and the tax benefits) should you consider other investments.  After all, those tax benefits are free money from Uncle Sam :)
It'll take around 20 months to pay the loan off using this contribution money without considering your existing payments, in total you're probably looking at closer to 15 months. You'll give up something in the neighborhood of $3,500 in match funds over the repayment time. But again, you're 22, you'll resume your contributions at 24; still WAY ahead of most people from a retirement savings standpoint. I don't think my first retirement dollar was contributed until I was about 29. Sure, retirement savings is important, but if you've already started at age 22 you're probably going to end up way ahead of most either way. When you're 60 you're probably not going to bemoan giving up a few grand of employer match in your 20s. That's what I would do. Edit: I actually like stannius's suggestion in the comments below. IF there's enough vested in your plan that is also available for withdrawal that you could just scoop $6,500 out of your 401(k) net of the 10% penalty and federal and state taxes (which would be on the full amount) to pay the debt, I'd consider that instead of stopping the prospective contributions. That way you could continue your contributions and receive the match contributions on a prospective basis. I doubt this is a legitimate option because it's very common for employers to restrict or forbid withdrawal of employee and/or employer contributions made during your employment, but it would be worth looking in to.
Saving for retirement and actually retiring are 2 different things. It is always a good idea to keep some money away that you can't easily use. This allows you to create a large amount that acts as buffer for rainy day. Most countries have a special account to save for retirements, apart from giving tax benefits and effect of compounding, there are also laws that protect it from getting attached in case of default. For example if you at some point in time default on an obligation, the funds in normal savings account can be attached by court of law. However in certain countries funds in retirement account cannot be attached by court of law for your obligations. Thus always leaving you with funds.