If you aren't an investor, or you have lost the stomach for it so to speak, then you have no business being in the stock market. If you consider yourself a saver, then you have no need for the likes of the Morgan Stanleys of the world.
I'm No Financial Wizard, Nor Do I Understand Much About How The stock market works, but we have some money invested with Morgan Stanley and we have been making money of late.
Well, let's be clear here...you have AN ACCOUNT at Morgan Stanley. Unless you have purchased some sort of Morgan Stanley securities, such as their own corporate bonds, their stock or the stock of Bank of America or have one or more of the Mutual Funds Morgan Stanley offers, you aren't really "invested with Morgan Stanley". The question that needs to be asked is what exactly is in that portfolio and whether or not it is suitable for you.
However, it seems that some fees will be going up after the 1st of the year and I don't even want to give any of them an extra dime.
This doesn't surprise me at all. The fact is, the large brick and mortar brokerage houses can not compete with the likes of the E-Trade's and Charles Schwab's of the world these days. They simply can not make any money at $9.95 a trade. You have a small account. You probably don't generate very much in commissions for the branch. Therefore, they are going to charge you more to service your account. If your account generated enough in commissions, they wouldn't be raising your fees. You can move the account to another broker, be it an online one, another brick and mortar or your credit union, but MS is going to charge you a fee to transfer the assets out also and that may be as much as $100. You may find that the new broker or perhaps your CU will cover that charge, however.
We have a small IRA with our credit union which makes very little money, but I'm getting afraid of this economy and what may happen to the market.
Do you have a 401(k) at work? If not, and if you haven't contributed anything to the IRA this year, you could take up to $5000 of the money in the Morgan Stanley account and put it in the IRA, $6000 if you are older than 50 years of age and most if not all of that would be deductible from your income taxes. As far as that IRA "which makes very little money", again, how is it invested? Are the investments appropriate for you?
How much stability does anyone think there is in keeping our money with Morgan Stanley?
At this point, probably plenty. They have BofA behind them now and they are, for better or worse, "too big to fail". But that is really beside the point. Your account is covered under
SIPC Insurance which means that if MS goes tits up, your
money is protected and your investments, be they Mutual Funds, Stocks or whatever, will not disappear into the ether. You aren't insured against market losses, but your investments are safe should the broker go out of business.
Would it be better to move the money to the credit union and wait out the uncertainty of the economy just to keep the money safe?
The problem people tend to run into with this psychology is that by the time you begin to feel confident enough in the economy again, most of the big money has been made. Remember, "Buy Low, Sell High". Having said that, you do need to be able to sleep at night, so if you aren't comfortable being invested at all, as I said above, you have no need for a brokerage account.
As I said, we are making money right now, more than what we can with the credit union, but I sometimes feel it's a crap shoot.
Do you feel that the American economy will never recover? Do you personally think that, for example, an utter crash and collapse of the economy is possible or even imminent? Then you have no business investing in the stock market. If instead you DO have confidence that things will get better, that the companies you are invested in will make money in the future and you have time on your side to ride out the humps and the bumps........
From day to day I just keep waiting for the bottom to fall out because the economy doesn't look like it's going to get any better for quite some time.
Of course, if you read the daily "Stock Market Watch" thread in the LBN forum, there are plenty of people who agree with you. Here's a tip....the bottom ALREADY FELL OUT a year ago last March and it has been a bumpy but steady climb out of the bottom ever since. When the DOW fell to the 6500 level, damned few people on this board and practically NO ONE on the SMW thread suggested it was an over sold condition. It was. The DOW is right about where it probably should be. Will it go higher? Yeah, over time. Will it go down again? Yup. Probably. Will it crash to 6500 and below again? Perhaps, because anything is possible but it is not likely.
When you ask questions such as these on a message board, you are going to get plenty of advice that may or may not be of any use to you. However, it is extremely difficult for someone truly qualified to give you investing advice or even "What should I do?" advice over the internet because there are so many questions to ask that are pertinent.
For example:
How old are you?
How many years until you think you might retire?
Does this account and the IRA represent ALL of your investable cash, or do you have a 401(k) as well (for instance)?
How do you feel about risk in general?
Have you ever taken a
Risk Tolerance Questionnaire?
You need to sit down and figure out whether or not being an investor is something you can stomach. If it isn't, then you shouldn't be one.
Plain and simple.
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