How can I find out the health of my investment brokerage (like Fidelity.com, E-Trade, etc)? Can brokerages even crash and lose my money like in a bank failure? Much public focus has been placed on having a bank fail and people not getting their money. I know that in the case of banks, the money is covered up to 100,000 of FDIC coverage and there are sites to look up the health of your bank like http://www.bauerfinancial.com which give banks star ratings based on their current financial stability. However, what if you have your money in stocks/mutual funds in a place like Fidelity.com or E-Trade?

Is cancelling my health insurance and investing the money instead a good bet, or a foolhardy risk? I'm young, in good health, and have no chronic health conditions. And compound interest means that I'd have hundreds of thousands of dollars more at the end of my life. I'm currently paying over $200 a month for an excellent health insurance plan that includes doctor's visits, prescriptions, and low to no deductible for most things. However, I'm living more or less hand-to-mouth. I'm 25 years old and work as a freelance writer, which makes it very difficult to invest any amount of money -- there is simply nothing else in my budget I can cut. If I cancelled the health insurance or downgraded to an emergency-room-only health insurance plan, and invested the money instead, I'd have a few thousand dollars in savings a few years earlier, which would give me a lot more financial stability and flexibility. (Hey, I can buy a car / move to a new city / travel now!) Or, heck, I could just keep saving that money -- the effect of starting a few years early would exponentially increase the longer I left that money invested.

Is there anyone (especially online) who's collected reasonably well-informed stock picks from, say, 2, 5, or 15 years ago and explained why the recommendations did or did not work out? Is there a better way to track that stuff down than hunting around for old articles on financial websites? It seems like making the effort to learn from mistakes in the past would help guard against over-optimistic, irrationally exuberant picks today.

About $100 000 has been transfered to me, and I don't know how to properly invest it. For various reasons, I am now in charge of about $100 000, cash. Problem: I am 21 years old and I know absolutely nothing about investing on this scale. Can anyone give me some advice on how to properly invest this much? I already have a discount brokerage and savings accounts holding about 30 grand of my own money, so I'm not completely helpless, but I've never had to even think about this many figures before. I'm terrified that I'm going to mismanage this situation into disaster. Okay, so details:

InvestingFilter: Is there anything inherently flawed about investing in index funds? I recently opened up a Roth IRA, and have invested in an S&P 500 Index Fund. I'll also be investing in a bond index soon. I've been reading articles online and books such as 'The Lazy Person's Guide To Investing' by Paul Farrell. These books make it seem that investing in anything but index funds sets you up for a loss long term. In my opinion, I'm a passive investor. I don't have the inclination to try and pick hot stocks. I'm fine getting a market average return. Farrell's book and some other sources such David Swenson make it seem that investing in anything but an index fund is lunacy. They harp on about load funds and how actively managed funds always underperform the market.

European who has USD in an American account - what should I do? I'm European, but lived in the US for a little while, where I had a very good paying job that allowed me to save money. I have a little over $10,000 in an American CD now. I came home to Europe and went back to school, thinking I could use that money to start up a business, make a downpayment on an apartment or something once I gradutae. I have been watching in horror as the dollar went down against the euro and now that money I was counting on is shrinking away. Are there any suggestions on what I should do with it? Should I just leave it and wait for the dollar to recover? Should I buy something in the US that is likely to appreciate in value? If I had a good income now, I would buy an American apartment or something with it, but I'm a student living from paycheque to paycheque.

Is it possible to estimate the standard deviation of an investment's return after "y" years, if you know the investment's mean annual return and standard deviation? In other words, I understand how to estimate the probability that next year's return might be n standard deviations above the mean, or between +n and -n standard devations around the mean. But what if you bought and held that investment for y years. Is there a way you could estimate the standard deviation of the investment's value then? E.g., let's say that i put $10,000 into an index fund. That fund has an average return of 8%, and a standard deviation of 16%, and I plan to hold it for 20 years. According to Excel's FV function, the portfolio's expected value will be $46,609.57 by then.

What's the safest possible thing that I can do with my money? Anyone who's seen me around the finance threads knows that I take bearishness to an extreme. Having witnessed the 2000 tech crash, I have no faith in the stock market or the US economy. I keep all of my money (USD) in a savings account. However, with the recent financial turmoil, I have a few questions : 1) Is it conceivable for the FDIC to fail? 2) If so, is there a place where I can put my money that will be safer than a savings account? 3) What's the safest, most risk-free way for me to save money and not get killed by inflation and the tanking US dollar?

I am considering selling off most of my assets to pay some of my debts, and want some outside advice on if I should. I'll try to be as brief as possible. Current income is about $28K per year; there is reason to believe that will improve shortly, but nothing promised. Assets: I have about $28K in a brokerage account; 8 of which is in retirement funds, 11 in a handful of investments, and about 9 in cash. I also have an external savings account with about $3K in it. Debts: With the same bank that holds all the assets except the 3K, I've got $19K in credit card debt and $53K in student loans. The CC debt is at a fixed 4.99% APR, the students loans are mostly at 7.5% with about $500 at 11.75%. I have been paying this off most aggressively. Payments for the CC are about $400/month, for the loans about $400 on the bulk and another $150 or so on the smaller one.

What are some great, informative sites/forums related specifically to trading/investing in/selling metals? Apparently metal is where it's at now that the dollar is dropping. I know little to nothing about finance and trading, etc. - but my boyfriend does and he's getting into metals trading/futures/whatever you call it. He needs to bone up a bit on his knowledge of the particular subject, but I'd also like to support him by learning about the stuff myself. This whole question is probably worded incorrectly, so you should realize that I personally am a complete novice. I'd like to be able to talk to him about his work.