Almost a year ago this time I was asking the same question of people here. I ended up deciding to just play in the stock market for about a year before I concentrate on getting a retirement fund nailed down. So take my advice with a grain of salt. I've both made and lost money this year...probably more lost than anything though. Some of that has to do with me getting into the market at probably the wrong (or right?) time. And some of it has to do with my rookie mistakes (ie. bad stocks I chose).
Mutual funds, index funds and ETF's are great if you don't have the time or desire to watch your own portfolio. A lot of people give flack to Jim Cramer of CNBC...but one thing he has said is that if you do have the willingness to do your own research you can outperform any mutual, index or ETF year after year. A lot of the funds do have good individual stocks to invest in...but they also have a lot of bad stocks. So why not just get rid of the bad stocks and keep the good ones for your portfolio? He also says that mutual fund managers only make money off of the fees people pay them to manage the funds...so they only need to do well enough to attract more fees. I did a little research last week messing with some individual big name stocks that were in a Vanguard ETF. I found that during the past 5 and 10 years if I had just invested my money in those 5-6 stocks I would have outperformed the ETF alone by about 8% a year.
Now that being said...a few stocks that I'm going to keep my eyes on are PEP (Pepsi), PG (Proctor and Gamble), MCD (McDonalds), CVS (CVS...lol), V (Visa) and WMT (Wal-Mart). I'm also keeping watch for either a tech stock, stem cell research stock or an alternative energy stock (ie. wind energy).
I also have a speculative stock, APPY (Aspenbio Pharma). They are currently in works trying to get the worlds first appendicitis testing machine approved by the FDA. It works by screening your blood and will dramatically cut costs in doctors offices and hospitals. Not to mention preventing false diagnosis. I've been trading them too for the past few months and it's fun to watch me make $200-300 in a day. BTW, they are in a clear uptrend right now and will probably be getting back to 15 soon (provided the FDA doesn't come out saying "sorry, you're not approved"). Might even hit 20+ once they are approved.
Another really cheap spec play I have money in is UVSE. They're an oil/gas company who lately has started generating income. They had a price target about a year ago of $4 and have since sunk extremely low. Why they have dropped so low....recession, market manipulation, naked shorting, dilution...I'm not sure. But I have about 41,000 shares in them so if in a few years they pull out of the rut and people start seeing they actually are making money...I could make a bunch of money too
An ETF I was just playing with this past week is SKF. It's an inverse ETF, which can be quite risky, but if you find a good entry point and think the financial sector still has a rocky road ahead of themselves...you can do quite well. If you think the opposite, UYG might be a good bullish ETF
Like BRI said, don't risk any money that you're not willing to lose.
