Gracias @Nabwire.

Hi Bee,
I have been told that Suntra investments is good, I do not have a CDS yet so I dont really know for sure. @Bee why dont you just drop them, so many people have complained about D&B. I was wondering what does it take to get a brokerage license?? I see an opportunity to invest for people in the diaspora, I wonder how many people would take my advice?? Bee you wanna be my first client when I set up shop?? It would be interesting.

Hi Bee just read your response. See if you can transfer your shares to another brokerage firm, whatever you do DO NOT sell your shares right now. If there is no way to tranfer your shares, I would open another account with a different brokerage firm, and start buying shares through them. Forget about DB until the bulls come out, you should always put a price target on your stock picks. Say if you bought at 18 and the stock is now selling at 12, instead of cashing out your DB in frustration, leave the stocks there and wait for the price to go to preferably 30 and over before you cash out. This might take a year, 2 years, 5, I dont know. But it makes more sense to just forget those stocks for now, unless you bought bad stocks to begin with, then hapo you might have to cut your losses, coz the more the stocks sit in there with no hope of going up, your money is being eroded by inflation.By the way, can anyone tell me how to open a CDS from abroad?? ama I will have to be in Kenya to do that??
About being my client, I would not screw you over since my commission would be pegged on how well your portfolio grows, its in my best interest to grow your money. And thank you for the compliments, I am enthused and as my first client, I will offer you free portofolio management for one year. In the spirit of Wazua, I think it would be better if we discuss your investment options here so that I can be corrected if I am wrong and also so that 1 year later we can come back and look at my picks and see if they appreciated. To gauge what kind of investor you are, how much are you willing to invest. Depending on your initial capital I can direct you to stocks that are within your range.The first thing you want to do is open an individual stock investment account, but watch out for the many hidden fees that these companies charge. You want a company that charges a flat fee and lays out the fee structure plainly. Hope this helps.

Hi Bee, first off, please allow 24- 48 hours for a reply from me due to my busy schedule.
Then I would like to commend your brevity cum naivete. Woman ( i'm assuming you are female) yani you gave $10,000 to your broker without any supervision from you?? Kwani which tree is this that your money grows from? A word of advice, your broker is not on your side...surprise surprise. A broker looks out for himself, his sole purpose is to keep selling to you so that he gets his cut, if he doesnt sell he doesnt get paid. Thats why he reinvested your dividends even though Safaricom was at a higher price. Next time, ask them not to reinvest your dividends, instead you take the money and reinvest when you feel that the price is right. Kwani KCB does not have online banking?? Coz now you are scaring me, how can a bank take over a year to give you your statements?? To Wazuans, can you open a CDS with a multinational bank? Like Citi bank? If KCB does not have online banking I'm not risking it.
You definitely need a money manager, sorry to hear about someone withdrawing your money from KCB. Although you have a positive attitude in general, I think you neglect your money too much and money appreciates or depreciates according to how you treat it. If you care for it and protect it, it grows. If you ignore and neglect it, it moves to greener pastures. I want you to go find this book and read it, Who moved my cheese, it is a quick read. Even though I think you are Scurry in the book, unfortunately you find the cheese then you just let it rot, work on your money relationship. I commend you that even though you lost $5,000, you are not bitter about the stock market and are even willing to invest more, thats a winners attitude, you just need direction on how to invest your funds.
If you want to invest the extra $10,000 in Kenya, I would buy more KCB, it seems counter intuitive but you always want to buy at a low price. As a rule of thumb, you want to have between 3-5 stocks that you invest in. So taking your $10,000, say we invest it in 5 stocks, that gives you $2,000 for each stock. My 5 stock picks would be KCB, EABL, Bamburi, NMG & Jubilee. These are companies with durable competitive advantage, meaning they have been there for the last 10 years and will be there for the next 10. I havent looked at their EPS, P/Es or dividend yields, but since the NSE is undergoing a bear market, its a no brainer to load up on these. Ofcourse KCB will give you more shares from that $2,000 than EABL,in future you can decide to allocate more funds on a specific stock as you wish. Also please do not invest the whole $10,000 at once, do dollar cost averaging.
Now if you want to invest in the US, my picks currently are Bank of America, Pfizer, Interpublic group, Verizon and I am also looking at European stocks. Commerz Bank, Germany's second biggest bank and Credit Agricole, France come to mind. More later.
Can you give a summary of what etrade videos taught you? How much did you pay? How much per trade?

Bee,
also note that on the Kenyan side I like HFCK,Uchumi, Kenya Re and Equity though Equity is relatively young, I would watch it closely. Honestly if I were you, I would dump Safaricom, Kengen I am 50/50, but I dont see Saf going anywhere, just being eaten by inflation.
You said you had US stock picks in mind, which ones??

I totally understand CDE's argument against Kenyan mutual funds.

You will be lucky if they tell you who the fund manager is let alone explaining their investment philosophy.

The link below has an interesting take on mutual funds which ticks all the boxes in the Kenyan market

http://www.nytimes.com/2...recg&pagewanted=all

http://www.businessinsid...nsen-mutual-funds-2011-8

Hi Bee
so what has the Etrade tutorials taught you? I am very wary of this tutorials, it usually amounts to just invest with us and everything else will be smooth. How much did you pay for the video? So Etrade is free for the first 2 months, after that how much do they charge? What is minimal? Do they have an annual fee plus i'm sure they charge you X amount to trade shares. Anyways i'm just a stickler for unnecessary fees.
About your stock picks, Costco and Walmart are definately a good buy, for the rest I dont really know about them so I cant advice. I still insist that Bank of America is a good buy, yes they are being sued by AIG and they had alot of exposure in the real estate meltdown that gave them bad publicity, BUT they are the largest bank in the US, that alone makes me prefer them over a smaller bank like US Bank which by the way is selling three times higher than BoA.Its your call.
About Safaricom, yes I told you not to sell your shares, but I also said this only holds if you had good shares to begin with. In my opinion Safaricom is not a good stock pick, it no longer enjoys monopoly in the Kenyan market, plus most people I know do not like their services. Being that it is a price competitve company, when these people find a better option, they will leave Safaricom which will eventually lead to the stock price falling. Sirius for example was trading around $2 back in 2008, today in 2011 it is still trading around $2. In the meantime inflation has eaten up its stock holders capital, and plus the stock is not going anywhere, if anything it may go lower. That was my analogy, and is the reason I told you that I would cut my losses, sell Safaricom and buy for example KCB at its current lows. Kengen I would need to do more research, I said I was 50/50 on it, but Safaricom is a definite sell in my books.

I knew it, repeat after me, nothing is FREE!! Your friend paid $75??? I wonder what the "commission" is? I'm too lazy to call them and ask how much they charge per trade. And the tutorials they give you seems like basic knowledge that you can access for free from your local library. Anyways its your money. My brokerage firm charges $20 a year, but they have waived the first 2 years charges, so I basically dont pay them maintenance fees till 2013. Then they charge $7 a trade for the first 15 trades, therefater its $15 a trade/ year. Since I want to buy for the logterm, this is an ideal arrangement for me.
By the way since Walmart is selling at $82, Walmart sells higher during recessions, you may want to wait for some kind of calamity to hit the company, so that the price goes down kidogo before you buy.

try https://www.zecco.com

they dnt charge commision. Yes you heard me right.no commision on your stocks trade. They dnt. As long as you place >25 trades per month.
When depositing money you better use wire transfer as itis cheaper.

Oh by the way you need to maintain a $3,000 minimum with them.