what is best to invest in a retirement account if I am 60 years old ...

To Start Investing
It takes a long time to learn the stock market and for someone that wants to start investing in the market needs to decide what risk level he wants to take. CDs backed up by the government has about 3-4% annual return for the long term with a low risk. Bonds or Bonds Funds has about 5-7% annual return for the long term with a medium risk. Stocks or Stock Mutual Funds has about 8-10% annual return for the long term with a high risk and are more volatile than Bonds. Usually the more risk you take, the more return you will have, but not always. To see the Risk vs Return go to:
http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n620/Chief-1/RiskvsReturn.jpg
The stock market is basally made up of stocks and bonds. Investment managers pick a group of stocks to make a mutual fund or a group of bonds to make a bond fund. They even put a mixture of stocks and bonds together and call it Growth & Income Fund.

1- Mutual Funds: I like mutual funds because they have a group of stocks, could be around 100+, invested in different sectors, and manage by a professional. Managers have lots of schooling for investing in stocks, around 8 years. So I think managers can pick stocks better than me. There are lots of different kinds of mutual funds that does not charge any fees to buy it?s shares and they are called Noload Funds. There are also some funds called Load Funds that charge 5% of your investment. But what I don?t like is the fact that most funds has trading restricting and you may not be able to trade more than 4 times a year. That?s because it makes it hard for the fund to make a good return if there is to much trading in the fund, causing the fund manager to make more buys and sells. Mutual funds are meant for long term investors.
2- Stocks: Stocks is more volatile than funds unless you spread you money in about ten different sectors and know witch sector will do best. And stock trading restricting is only a few days and that?s something that I like. If you own stocks, you need to keep up with all the company?s business so you don?t get stuck with a bad stock.
3- ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds): ETFs are like a mutual fund but trades like a stock and that is my main reason why I like ETFs. There are some ETFs that represents Index?s. An Index is like S&P or DOW. Index?s operate just like a mutual fund with a group of stocks in deferent sectors, manage by professionals. You can?t buy Index?s because they are not for sell. A company owns them. But you can buy a mutual funds or an ETF that has the same stocks as the Index they represent. There are a lots of different kinds of ETFs for someone to choose from. Some have 1x leverage, some have 2x leverage, and some has 3x leverage. There are some that represent almost every kind of sector.

You can find several good brokers that charge $8.00 and under, per stock trade and no fee on Noload Funds. Most broker websites have good research tools. Some popular broker websites are Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, E-trade, Scottrade and others. I think you need a min. of $500 (some sites $2,000) to open a broker account.

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