I’m a complete newbie. The only “investing” I’ve ever done is use HYSAs. Obviously the yield there, while pretty good, isn’t as good as investing in say, the S&P 500. So I want to invest a chunk of my savings into that and just leave it there until I retire. I’m not really looking into daily/active trading or anything. The problem is I don’t know how fees work with brokers.
I saw this graph a while ago so I was thinking of Fidelty. It also helps that I already have an account there for my employer RSUs and my 401k. On the other hand, a colleague of mine suggested Schwab and said they don’t have any fees.
Can anyone suggest the best broker (minimal/no fees, easy-to-use, set-and-forget) that I should go with if I just want to invest in the S&P 500?
That’s kind of dollar cost averaging.
It’s also kind of attempting to time the market.
If you invest $100k in one lump sum in this year and it drops 50% but you then hold it for 30 years before selling I’m quite sure you’ll come out ahead. Of course the difference in what you’d make splitting that $100k investment over 12 months is minimal over that time frame but by investing it all you at least get dividends and lock in a price. The market goes up as well, wouldn’t you hate if your dollar cost average increased?
TL;DR You are far better off just investing a lump sum all at once and then regularly investing what you can.
You want to maximise the time that your money is in the market.
If you can’t stomach a 50% loss then you need to work out why that’s the case.