Investing

its called evernote clip or any number of fucking things out there...

Ok. The majority of those funds are A share funds which have sales charges of 4-6%. If you're looking to avoid them, there's 3 funds in there that are institutional funds that don't have sales charges. Morningstar rates all three of these as 4 stars out of 4. They're all quality funds with no fee to get in. They do have higher operating expenses as they're all actively managed funds.

The American Funds Growth Fund of America is actually a really good fund. I have some money in that fund. It's very large company heavy and goes after companies that are still growing. Their number one holding is Amazon.com. Number 2 is Gilead which is a growing biotech and number 3 is Google.

The Hartford Dividend and Growth fund focuses on financial, utilities, healthcare and other large companies that pay dividends. This one should be a little less volatile than the American Fund.

The Oppenheimer Senior Floating Rate is basically as close as you're going to get to cash. Low risk, low return, low volatility.

If you'd like to invest in these funds, I'd look at your appetite for drops in the market. If you're looking long term and don't care about the ups and downs, I'd focus more on the first two funds and put a little in the third. If you're not, put the most money into the Oppenheimer fund. That being said if you really don't want to deal with it, just stick with what you have and deal with the costs. Even with them, if you're getting a match, you're going to come out ahead in the end.

Hope that helps!

Deathwing_sl said:

Turns out I was wrong after asking a coworker. Had to elect out of the stupid models.

Spoiler

American Funds Growth Fund of America R3http://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=399874858
Oppenheimer Developing Markets Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=683974109
BlackRock Natural Resources Trust Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=09252H108
Invesco Growth and Income Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=00142J362
BlackRock Balanced Capital Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=09251C100
BlackRock Capital Appreciation Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=09251R107
BlackRock Mid Cap Val Opp Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=09255V104
Invesco Mid Cap Core Equity Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=00141M812
BlackRock Global Small Cap Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=09252A103
BlackRock Global Allocation Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=09251T103
Virtus Real Estate Securities Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=92828R586
John Hancock Small Cap Equity Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=409905700
Prudential Financial Services Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=74441P106
Hartford Dividend and Growth R4http://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=416649283
Lord Abbett Core Fixed Income Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=543916878
BlackRock Low Duration Bond Port Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=091928267
BlackRock Health Sciences Opp Port Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=091937573
Loomis Sayles Invmt Grade Bond Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=543487144
Delaware Small Cap Value Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=246097109
AllianceBernstein Small Cap Gr Port Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=01877E107
MFS International Growth Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=55273E103
Dreyfus Opportunistic Midcap Val Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=26200C304
Franklin Rising Dividends Fund Ahttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=353825102
Oppenheimer Senior Floating Rate Yhttp://pe.newriver.com/summary.asp?c...ndid=68381K408

Sorry for the horrible formitting. url="" wasn't working. Looking at just the OE% of these funds, I'm not terribly excited about any of them.

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Your work apparently hates you having money. Those funds have ridiculous fees. I'd go talk to whomever setup that plan and ask them to get some index funds in there. Without loads because class A in a 401k is ridiculous. Within that I'd be looking at the two R funds and call it a day.

Deathwing_sl said:

The guy there had me switch to class A funds from class C because he said they were better long term.

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More likely because he got a sales commission for moving you there. Actively managed funds with sales charges tend to screw you pretty badly.

If you can freely pick your investments in the Ameriprise account, move it all into Vanguard index funds.

prescient63_sl said:

Your work apparently hates you having money. Those funds have ridiculous fees. I'd go talk to whomever setup that plan and ask them to get some index funds in there. Without loads because class A in a 401k is ridiculous. Within that I'd be looking at the two R funds and call it a day.

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From what I hear, most company 401(k) plans are like this... some screw you so badly that you're better off forgoing the company match and investing it in an individual portfolio. That's how fucked up the fees are -- they lost money after-fees even since the crash, which I had no idea was possible.

It's really not surprising actually, given that the HR people I've met have absolutely no clue about how any of this works. So they go with the glossy prospects, like the least informed individual investors and in the process screw over the other employees.

Perhaps and maybe it's because I've worked mainly in financial services and consulting firms my whole life, but I've never come across these sorts of plans. My prior plan was a mix of actively managed and index funds with no loads through JP Morgan, and my current plan is through Vanguard. I wonder if it's a small company versus big company thing.

prescient63_sl said:

I wonder if it's a small company versus big company thing.

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I would suspect that's certainly part of it. But financial services and consulting firms are also especially adept with financial products (one would hope) and so are bound to do better than other places.

Consider, for example, how few businesses offer Roth 401(k)s. I wonder if many people in HR even know these things exist... yet, they'd be perfect products for a wide range of employees.

PBS has a pretty good documentary on it, though they don't even mention Roth 401(k)s from what I recall:http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...rement-gamble/

Deathwing_sl said:

Thank you both for the advice. I'm honestly an idiot when it comes to investing, so don't assume anything with me. My reasoning for class A shares was that, yes, you takes a hit when buying the shares, but if you keep them for a while, you make more money versus class C because the operating expenses are lower. Is that not the case?

I wouldn't be surprised if the guy got a sales commission. The guy hasn't called me for a "quarterly" meeting for quite a while now. I'll look into a Vanguard index fund at Ameriprise, or roll it over to my current workplace into those R funds.

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If you look at the returns after sales charge, yes A shares are cheaper than C shares on actively managed funds. However, the breakpoint of where they're better is out about at 8-10 years.

Soriak_sl said:

I would suspect that's certainly part of it. But financial services and consulting firms are also especially adept with financial products (one would hope) and so are bound to do better than other places.

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One would hope but you might be surprised. More on the bank end than the consulting end. These places tend to succeed despite themselves. I'll caveat that with the iBankers and Traders are really bright folks who know what they are doing inside and out, but the same can't be said for the rest of most banks. However, that's probably a function of how much folks in their respective positions get paid. Better pay correlates pretty well with better performance in these cases.

Deathwing_sl said:

Maybe I'm missing something, but should that not be at least the amount of time you hold these shares if you're young? Or is it assumed that since people move around from job to job often, that class A shares are bad?

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The average investor doesn't have the patience to ride things out. They panic and sell when the market has an adjustment.

Just fire and forget and check in 30 years you will be happy because whatever it was you already wrote off.