Category: Investing

If you have decided to invest in a precise stock market index, you first have to choose the stock market index. And once you have chosen an index to invest in, you will have to decide through which index fund you are going to invest in this index. For this, you can choose either a mutual fund or an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). For popular indexes, there will be a large choice of index funds replicating the performance of this index.

Even if you only choose popular funds for a precise index, it will still be difficult to choose. As you will see in this article, there are many things you can take into account when you compare two index funds. The most important remains the price as most people know. But there are other points you can use to compare two index funds. And some of these points are definitely not obvious.

In this post, we are going to see all the things you can look at when you need to choose an index fund, whether it is a mutual fund or an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF).

Continue reading “How to choose an index fund such as an ETF”

If you are convinced that index investing is the way to go, you need to choose the indexes you want to invest in. You can create a portfolio that contains several indexes in which you are going to invest.

We have already talked about index investing and the way indexes were replicated. But we have not looked into details how to compare stock market indexes. There are a lot of stock market indexes. In fact, there are now more indexes than stocks. So index picking may become as difficult as stock picking. There are some very special stock market indexes. In this post, we are only going to focus on broad market indexes.

I am not going to go into details into exactly the portfolio you can choose. The post is really about choosing between different indexes. For instance, what is the difference between small indexes and large indexes? Or should you choose a market-cap weighted index or an equal-weighted index? If you already know you want to invest in U.S. equities, how do you choose between all the U.S. indexes?

This post should help you choose between indexes to invest into. There are many different indexes, even for the same country.

Continue reading “How to choose a stock market index to invest into”

(This post was first published on StojFinance. Thanks a lot to Jasper for the opportunity of guest posting.)

We have already discussing index investing in details. There are many stock market indexes. Sometimes, it is very difficult to pick a stock market index to invest in. But we have not covered any index in particular. You have probably already heard of the S&P500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) indexes. But have you heard of the Russell 3000 index? It is not as widely known as other indices. But it is a very interesting index that covers a larger part of the United States stock market than more popular indexes.

The Russell 3000 Index is managed by the FTSE group that also manages many other popular indexes. It contains the 3000 largest U.S. companies in the stock market.

In this post, we are going to see exactly what is the Russell 3000 Index. We are also going to see a few related indexes from the same group, such as the Russell 2000 Index. Finally, I am going to compare the S&P 500 index with the Russell 3000 Index. They are both popular indexes and people often misunderstand the difference between both.

Continue reading “What is the Russell 3000 Index?”

Recently, I have opened a new broker account at Interactive Brokers. Since DEGIRO does not let me trade in U.S. funds anymore, I decided to stop working with them and change broker. I still like the DEGIRO broker. But I would only recommend it if you only want to invest in European funds. Currently, Interactive Brokers lets me trade in these funds. Moreover, I may also save on some fees by using the Tiered pricing of Interactive Brokers.

However, that means that I currently have two broker accounts. I plan to only finance the Interactive Brokers account. For me, there is no current advantage in having several broker accounts. Therefore, at some point, I will have to transfer my existing portfolio from one broker to the other.

In this post, we are going to see the two main ways to change broker and transfer your positions from one broker to another. And I am going to discuss how to choose between the two.

If you have ever changed broker account, I would really like to hear about your experience!

Continue reading “How to change broker and transfer your portfolio”