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Originally Posted by cdacda13
Still deciding. Banks look alittle risky but with a big enough pay off down the road cause they are so low and they can't suck this bad forever.
You have any ideas?
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Right now is tough, and I've been thinking about it for a week now. The thing is, in past economic down turns, the sector that was performing badly was avoided and investments made in other areas, like when the tech sector went south in the late 90s, you could go over to investments and real estate. No matter what, you always had the financial infrastructure to back up other sectors. Now, it's the infrastructure itself thats failing. It's hard to say what area will be prosperous when the financial backing for everything is going under. Maybe larger military contractors like Lockheed and Northrop? It all depends what big projects are on the horizon. Oil? Depends on how many jobs are lost in this and the steep drop in demand. I'm sure a lot of people will now be going after the low risk investments like bonds and such, but too much invested in bonds will lower the yield.
The first question is how are you going to buy stocks? Do you have an investor? Do you have an account with anyone? To decide that, you need to figure out how you plan on managing your account. Are you going to buy long term investment stocks with mild risk, or buy and sell high risk stocks very quickly? You can make a killing buying and selling stocks all day if you have the means to do it. A good example is that if you had $2800 to invest in AIG the day Lehman fell, and you bought 1000 shares of AIG stocks when they bottomed out around 2.80/share, then flipped them later that day when the word was that the gov would help them, you would have made an investment of $2800, and a return of $10500. Thats an almost $8000 profit in just a few hours, and only having to either click your mouse a few times, or be on the phone with your investor for a few minutes. Not too shabby. The only thing is a lot of places require a significant initial investment on your part. When I opened my ETrade account back in like 2000, they wanted I think $10k just to open the account. There's an initial up front cost to get into trading, but if you know whats going on and have a good head for planning, you can make a killing. Dont be too optimistic though, you can also lose everything. Balancing your portfolio with various risk level investments is the best way to make money in the long term.