Confused about google portfolio chart
You bought 1 share of Google at $67.05 while it has a current trading price of $1204.11. Now, if you bought a widget for under $70 and it currently sells for over $1200 that is quite the increase, no? Be careful of what prices you enter into a portfolio tool as some people may be able to use options to have a strike price different than the current trading price by a sizable difference. Take the gain of $1122.06 on an initial cost of $82.05 for seeing where the 1367% is coming. User error on the portfolio will lead to misleading statistics I think as you meant to put in something else, right?
"NYT republished a nifty infographic that shows how the S&P 500 performs over various time horizons. If you study it for a bit, you'll see that 10 percent is not likely over time that you'll earn 10 percent annually after inflation. Most people quoting the higher number are working with numbers before inflation.  The above linked chart is misleading in the following sense: it groups into five categories, who's boundaries are demarcated by percentages of interest. But we'd rather see them clustered by those percentages. For example, 6.9 percent falls into the neutral category (better than investing in fixed interest securities, but still below market average), but 7.1 falls into the ""above average"" category. The effect is that we will treat the neutral color that dominates the long term trend as being somewhere in the middle of 3-7, when I suspect that's not the case. Some day I'll probably make my own version and see how that plays out.  So that all said, if you look at the 30 year diagonal, you can see there's still quite a bit of variation in returns. Unfortunately I can't turn this into a single number for you, but grab a spreadsheet and some market data if you want one." If you use Google Finance, you will get incorrect results because Google Finance does not show the dividend history. Since your requirement is that dividends are re-invested, you should use Yahoo Finance instead, downloading the historical 'adjusted' price. "Wow, this analysis really surprised me. Very complete and useful, but i think my teacher request was easier. He just said: ""Try to build a diversified portfolio. Then try to add a commodity (like silver or gold) and understand how the risk vary introducing an asset like this."" So, i'm basically making a stocks portfolio and i'm calculating its expected return and risk. (for example 40%FB, 10%JNJ, 20%GS, 10%F and 20%MCD) then i'm adding GLD (so now i have something like 20%FB, 10%JNJ, 10%GS, 10%F and 20%MCD 30%GLD) and i'm actually making an excel spreadsheet where i calculate all the: -Expected returns -St Deviation -Covariance  At the end i compare the returns and the risks on the 2 different portfolios." It looks like GOOG did not have a pre-market trade until 7:14 am ET, so Google Finance was still reporting the last trade it had, which was in the after-hours session yesterday. FB, on the other hand, was trading like crazy after-hours yesterday and pre-market today as it had an earnings report yesterday. "Can you give me a rundown of what I'm seeing?  Is this basically a super zoomed in tracker of a current stock or something?  Where a stock fluctuates a few cents up/down on the day, and you just trade before it goes down, then trade as it goes up or what?  EDIT: Is this really live?  Can you say, ""Yes this is live narwalls""" I looked at this a little more closely but the answer Victor provided is essentially correct.  The key to look at in the google finance graph is the red labled SMA(###d) would indicate the period units are d=days.  If you change the time axis of the graph it will shift to SMA(###m) for period in minutes or SMA(###w) for period in weeks.  Hope this clears things up! A log scaler on income would help visualize the data a little better. The physician is just so out of line with the other wages that it makes every other job seem to pay roughly the same. Or a break in the scale to look at outliers.   Or the data could be perfect and the zoom feature isn't working on mobile.   TLDR: According to this chart I should be a physician. Google Finance gives you this information. You are right: if the combined value of all outstanding GOOG shares was $495B, and the combined value of all GOOGL shares was $495B, then yes, Alphabet would have a market cap of at least $990B (where I say at least only because I myself don't know that there aren't other issues that should be in the count as well). The respective values of the total outstanding GOOG and GOOGL shares are significantly less than that at present though. Using numbers I just grabbed for those tickers from Google Finance (of course), they currently stand thus: "You're right, the asset allocation is one fundamental thing you want to get right in your portfolio.  I agree 110%.  If you really want to understand asset allocation, I suggest any and all of the following three books, all by the same author, William J. Bernstein. They are excellent – and yes I've read each.  From a theory perspective, and being about asset allocation specifically, the Intelligent Asset Allocator is a good choice.  Whereas, the next two books are more accessible and more complete, covering topics including investor psychology, history, financial products you can use to implement a strategy, etc.  Got the time? Read them all. I finished reading his latest book, The Investor's Manifesto, two weeks ago.  Here are some choice quotes from Chapter 3, ""The Nature of the Portfolio"", that address some of the points you've asked about.  All emphasis below is mine. Page 74: The good news is [the asset allocation   process] is not really that hard:  The   investor only makes two important   decisions: Page 76: Rather, younger investors should own a   higher portion of stocks because they   have the ability to apply their   regular savings to the markets at   depressed prices.  More precisely,   young investors possess more ""human capital"" than financial capital;   that is, their total future earnings   dwarf their savings and investments.    From a financial perspective, human   capital looks like a bond whose   coupons escalate with inflation.      Page 78: The most important asset allocation   decision is the overall stock/bind   mix; start with age = bond allocation   rule of thumb. [i.e. because the younger you are, you already have bond-like income from anticipated employment earnings; the older you get, the less bond-like income you have in your future, so buy more bonds in your portfolio.] He also mentions adjusting that with respect to one's risk tolerance.  If you can't take the ups-and-downs of the market, adjust the stock portion down (up to 20% less); if you can stomach the risk without a problem, adjust the stock portion up (up to 20% more). Page 86: [in reference to a specific example where two assets that zig and zag are   purchased in a 50/50 split and adjusted back to targets]     This process, called ""rebalancing,""   provides the investor with an   automatic buy-low/sell-high bias that over the long run usually –   but not always – improves returns. Page 87: The essence of portfolio construction   is the combination of asset classes   that move in different directions at   least some of the time. Finally, this gem on pages 88 and 89: Is there a way of scientifically picking the very best future   allocation, which offers the maximum   return for the minimum risk?  No, but   people still try.   [...   continues with description of   Markowitz's ""mean-variance analysis""   technique...]   It took   investment professionals quite a while   to realize that limitation of   mean-variance analysis, and other   ""black box"" techniques for allocating   assets. I could go on quoting relevant pieces ... he even goes into much detail on constructing an asset allocation suitable for a large portfolio containing a variety of different stock asset classes, but I suggest you read the book :-)" A few days ago they launched Fannie Mae Guaranteed Multifamily Structures (link) but who knows?  It's a penny stock now. Google Finance is pretty good at marking news right on the chart for a particular stock.  That's how I tracked that piece of news down.  Can't say that it precipitated a lot of people buying the stock, but Google Finance isn't a bad place to start looking. I was thinking that the value of the stock is the value of the stock...the actual number of shares really doesn't matter, but I'm not sure. You're correct.  Share price is meaningless.   Google is $700 per share, Apple is $100 per share, that doesn't say anything about either company and/or whether or not one is a better investment over the other. You should not evaluate an investment decision on price of a share.  Look at the books decide if the company is worth owning, then decide if it's worth owning at it's current price. "ycharts.com has ""Weighted Average PE Ratio"" and a bunch of other metrics that are meant to correspond to well known stock metrics.  Other websites will have similar ratios." @bstpierre gave you an example of a portfolio similar to IFA's 70 portfolio. Please, look other variants of example portfolios there and investigate which would suit to you.  Although the example portfolios are not ETF-based, required by the op, you can rather easily check corresponding components with this tool here. Before deciding your portfolio, fire up a spreadsheet (samples here) and do calculations and do not underestimate things below: Bogleheads have already answered this type of questions so why not look there? Less reinventing the wheel: google retirement portfolios site:bogleheads.org. I am not making any recommendations like other replies because financial recommendations devalue. I hope I steered you to the right track, use less time to pick individual funds or stocks and use more time to do your research. "The heart of the question is: why can't Bill just pay whatever he owes based on his income in that quarter? If Q2 is gang busters, he'll increase his tax payment. Then if Q3 is surprisingly slow, he'll pay less than he paid in Q2. I think what's most interesting about this question is that the other answers are geared towards how a taxpayer is supposed to estimate taxes. But that's not my objective -- nor is it Bill's objective. My [his] real objective is:  In other words, the answer to this question either needs to deal with not overpaying, or it needs to deal with mitigating the underpayment penalty. AFAICT, there are 2 solutions: Solution 1 Figure your estimated taxes based on last year's tax. You won't owe a penalty if your withholding + estimated tax payments in each quarter are 25% or more of your previous year's tax liability. Here's the section that I am basing this on: http://www.irs.gov/publications/p505/ch04.html Minimum required each period.   You will owe a penalty for any 2011 payment period for which your estimated tax payment plus your withholding for the period and overpayments for previous periods was less than the smaller of: 22.5% of your 2011 tax, or 25% of your 2010 tax. (Your 2010 tax return must cover a 12-month period.) Solution 2 Use the ""Annualized Income Installment Method"". This is not a method for calculating estimated taxes, per se. It's actually a method for reducing or eliminating your underpayment penalty. It's also intended to assist tax payers with unpredictable incomes. If you did not receive your income evenly throughout the year (for example, your income from a shop you operated at a marina was much larger in the summer than it was during the rest of the year), you may be able to lower or eliminate your penalty by figuring your underpayment using the annualized income installment method. Emphasis added. In order to take advantage of this, you'll need to send in a Schedule AI at the end of the year along with a Form 2210. The downside to this is that you're basically racking up underpayment penalties throughout the year, then at the end of the year you're asking the IRS to rescind your penalty. The other risk is that you still pay estimated taxes on your Q2 - Q4 earnings in Q1, you just pay much less than 25%. So if you have a windfall later in the year, I think you could get burned on your Q1 underpayment."