Background: Investment Manager and Retirement Consultant

Just some general tips for investing your cash.

What you really want to do is maximize your return at your current age.

Use the old rule of 100, you take your age and subtract it from 100 that how much you should be in stocks and how much in bonds

When building a portfolio you want to maintain probably 80% in Blue chips and 20% in fliers and when investing in blue chip you make sure to invest in industry that doesn't correlate with each other. the 20% remaining in flier you can invest in more risky stocks that can be big hit or misses but through the performance and diversification in the other 80% you can make up for or supplement the 20% fliers.

For bonds i would invest in a simple bond fund in US treasuries or agencies. Look for one that only has a small management fee and jump in that.

Re-adjust your holding /add capital on a quarterly basis but when investing you want to take some profits at the top go into bonds then when stocks are depressed you buy back in.

Don't over trade your portfolio and let winners fly. They win for a reason and taking profits early will hurt you in the long run. Be worried when a stock starts ranging but don't get trigger happy. When you have a losing stock don't be afraid to sell it.

Rising Stocks do it for a reason and losing stocks do it for another. "Cheap" stocks are heralded but in the end they are cheap for a reason.

MOST IMPORTANT FACT: Investing is not a get rich scheme, most of the advice on this forum will point you in that direction either in highly leveraged currency/commodity/options/future trades. You hear only the blow out deals but you never hear about their big losses and when you are over leveraged your beta is through the roof and a small move will kill you.

Would you rather have a decent nest egg and enough money to retire at 55 or .... make a few huge bets and lose your nest egg? Capital preservation should always be your #1 goal and growth #2. Just remember with a modest return of 8% you will double your money

T= Ln(2)/(Ln(1+.08)= 9.006 years to double your money.

If you ignore continuing contributions and only start at 50,000

in 45 years you will have 1.6 million dollars at retirement and if you invested let say 10,000 a year on top of that it will grow exponentially.