If I invested in a mutual fund and the price paid was 13.88 and the price now is 13.82 is that really bad?

I don't really understand what that means really and don't want details on here, but was just wondering...I am not educated much on this. also, do you know where i can get (in plain English without those investing terms) info on this

You probably shouldn't invest in anything until you do a little homework. But if you do have some bucks and want to put them in a muni, great. They are pretty safe for the small investor and over a period of time will usually grow you some more bucks. Muni's go up and down but over a long period can be a good deal for the small investor. Don't expect to be clipping coupons or making quick returns. If you put money in a retirement account you won't have to pay tax on your earnings until you take the money out. By that time your taxable income will be low or zip, so what you pay on the earnings will be less. But if you think you will need that money before, just dump it in the bank. You don't micro manage a muni fund. I don't even check mine. I just let my financial advisor/tax guy take care of things.
The drop of a couple of points isn't worth talking about. What does the fund do in 5 years? or 10 years?
So, yes, if you are planning on selling your stock, you lost money. But, no, if you are investing for the future, a drop of a couple of points is not a problem.
Get a tax guy or gal and stick with them. Not a chain or get rich quick deal, but a nice, small private group. And listen to what they tell you.

Well it is hard to answer your qestion when you don't want details. To do the best I can, no it is not bad. The best thing for you to do is to just ignore what it does on a day to day basis.

To make it simple, the price of mutual fund is always going to change every business day. So it drop 6 cents. Its not bad or good. Why? Because you didn't sell any of your shares. If you sold your shares, then you lost 6 cents per share.

So don't worry about daily market changes. Keep on investing.

What would you do when stock market gets a bad day or perform bad over a 3 month period? Would you pull out or stay in?

I hope you said stay in. But many people would of sold their investments and move it into a "safer" investment. When the market does well, they go back and invest. This is a horrible strategy to invest. Why? Let's say you own 100 shares of whatever company and the price per share was $20. So your portfolio value is $2000. One day the market does bad and the price per share falls to $10, so your portfolio value is now worth $1000. There are three different ways you can handle this situation:

1) You can sell your shares for $1000
2) You can stay put and wait for the market to rebound.
3) You can buy more shares.

For me, I would buy more shares. If I invest $100, I would get 10 more shares for a total of 110 shares. I know that the market will rebound some day since the history of the stock market has gone upwards in the long run. Lets say the price per share goes up to $25 next month. My portfolio will be worth $2750 (110 x $25). If you sold your investment when the stock market had a bad day and then come back into it, you will own 40 shares ($1000/$25). If you stay put, you will still own 100 shares since you didn't do anything. But for me, I will own 110 shares.

Anyway, my point is that its not the value of your portfolio that matters during the accumulation years, its the number of shares you own.

this is only a 0.5% drop

Do NOT " keep on investing"

As of last week market direction has changed.

It is going to be a downhill for a couple of months at least,
though on a long term we could be still going up.

This depends on the type of fund you are in. What is it's track record? Some funds, stocks... have certain times they go down due to time of year, their sector, ect. It also depends on the stocks past performance. Has it only risen a few pennies over time? If it has then yes, this isn't good. If it's traditionally risen by several cents to dollars then this isn't that crazy of a drop. The funds prospectus can tell you all of this info plus it's 3 mt, 6mt, 1yr, 5yr projections based on past performance. However, projections are really guesses.

It's not a horrible loss depending on how many shares you own. However, most mutual funds are built on the premise of buying & holding. Which basically means that you buy into it & sit on your shares for a duration of time.


I have funds that I have had for years. Some years they don't do so hot, but overall they have done pretty good over the long haul compared to other funds. I don't pay them much attention on a daily basis, I just keep an eye on them once a month to make sure they are on track. You buy a mutual fund because they spread the risk over several investments to lessen the fluctuation that individual stocks see.

You need to decide if you can handle sometimes seeing your shares go down. If you can't you might be better off investing in cd's or bonds which have less risk, but less payoff.

It depends...could be a harbinger of a downtrend, in which case your investment could spiral downward. Pay attention to what goes on around the world. For instance, the current stock hiccups was caused by China. They don't know exactly why but it made investors skittish and dumped their investments in response. Because your investment is diversified there is a little bit of cushion but if there is a run... the cushion won't not save you.

Common advise you'd hear is to ignore the downturn. Most time that could work. It didn't for me during the George Bush Sr years...I lost over 100k because I listened to such advise. I waited and waited and waited until half my investment disappeared. It's now 2007 and I have not recovered yet.

If you want to gamble in stocks, do your own research...on the average they'd be just as good if not better than those of the so called experts.

My advise is, if you don't have time to check on your investment ...invest in something safer like US Treasury bonds, or utilities, or your home. It's a buyer's market now...who knows you might get a steal...4 years down the line that steal could be worth millions...perhaps. In this life, nothing is guaranteed.