Is owning ADR share for a good idea for long term investor
Usually the ADR fee comes out of dividend payments and is modest. The ADR that I am most familiar with (Vodafone - VOD) pays dividends twice a year and deducts either $0.02 or $0.01 per share. IMO, the ADR fee is not really a material factor. ADRs do have some disadvantages though:
"If by saying you wish to invest ""for the long term 5-10 years"" I take it you mean to hold a stock for between 5-10 years. If this is the case, this is the fundamental flaw in your screening algorithm. No company stock price continues to go up without end for 5-10 years. The price of every company's stock goes down at some point. You have to decide on a company by company basis whether you want to ride out the downturn or sell and get out. This is a personal decision based on your own research. The list of screening criteria you list indicates you are looking for solid earnings companies. Try not to apply these rules rigidly because every company runs through a rough patch. At times past, GE (for example) met all of your criteria. However, in 2017, it would not and therefore would not meet your screening criteria. Would you sell GE if you owned it? Maybe, or maybe you would hold through the downturn. The same be said for MSFT in 2010 or AAPL pre-Jobs return. A rule you may want to add to your list: know the company business well; that is, don't invest in companies you have no understanding of their business model." No, CFD is not viable as a long term trading strategy.  You have a minimum margin to maintain, and you are given X days to top up your margin should you not meet the margin requirements. Failure to meet margin requirements will result in a forced sell where you are no longer able to hold onto the stock. A long term trading strategy is where you hold onto the stock through the bad times of the company and keep it long enough to see the good times. However, with CFD, you may be forced to sell before you see the good times. In addition, you incur additional lending charges (e.g. 4%-6%) for the ability to leverage. If you are in it for the long run and are not worried about intra day fluctuations and buying within + or - 1% you would be better off going for a market order as this will make sure you buy it on the day.  If you use limit orders you risk missing out on the order if prices gap and start rising in the morning. Another option is to employ stop buy trigger orders (if offered by your broker). So you would have to sum up and decide which type of order would suit your strategy the best. Are you looking to buy the security because you are looking for long term growth and gains, or are you after getting the best price possible to help your short term gains? Yes, the ADR will trade on a separate exchange from the underlying one, and can (and does) see fluctuations in price that do not match the (exchange corrected) fluctuations that occur in the original market. You are probably exposing yourself to additional risk that is related to: The owner of a long futures contract does not receive dividends, hence this is a disadvantage compared to owning the underlying stock. If the dividend is increased, and the future price would not change, there is an arbitrage possibility. For the sake of simplicity, assume that the stock suddenly starts paying a dividend, and that the risk free rate is zero (so interest does not play a role). One can expect that the future price is (rougly) equal to the stock price before the dividend announcment. If the future price would not change, an investor could buy the stock, and short a futures contract on the stock. At expiration he has to deliver the stock for the price set in the contract, which is under the assumptions here equal to the price he bought the stock for. But because he owned the stock, he receives the announced dividend. Hence he can make a risk-free profit consisting of the divivends. If interest do play a role, the argument is similar. Yes. Of course, you still need to take into the account the trade costs (fees paid to the broker), these are not going anywhere. Basically what it means is that you don't have to worry about long/short holding period within the IRA, they're all the same. It doesn't mean that long term trading is better or worse to have outside the scope of IRA, it just means that the concept doesn't exist inside. If you're talking about ADBE options, that is an American style option, which can be exercised at any time before expiration. You can exercise your options by calling your broker and instructing them to exercise. Your broker will charge you a nominal fee to do so. As an aside, you probably don't want to exercise the option right now. It still has a lot of time value left, which you'll lose if you exercise. Just sell the option if you don't think ADBE will keep going up. I have read in many personal finance books that stocks are a great investment for the long term, because on average they go up 5-7% every year. This has been true for the last 100 years for the S&P500 index, but is there reason to believe this trend will continue indefinitely into the future? It has also been wrong for 20+ year time periods during those last 100 years. It's an average, and you can live your whole career at a loss. There are many things to support the retention of the average, over the next 100 years. I think the quip is out of scope of your actual investment philosophy. But basically there are many ways to lower your cost basis, by reinvesting dividends, selling options, or contributing to your position at any price from a portion of your income, and by inflation, and by the growth of the world economy. With a low enough cost basis then a smaller percentage gain in the index gives you a magnified profit. if you bought gold in late '79, it would have taken 30 years to break even. Of all this time it was two brief periods the returns were great, but long term, not so much. Look at the ETF GLD if you wish to buy gold, and avoid most of the buy/sell spread issues.  Edit - I suggest looking at Compound Annual Growth Rate and decide whether long term gold actually makes sense for you as an investor. It's sold with the same enthusiasm as snake oil was in the 1800's, and the suggestion that it's a storehouse of value seems nonsensical to me. "First, you mentioned your brother-in-law has ""$100,000 in stock options (fully vested)"". Do you mean his exercise cost would be $100,000, i.e. what he'd need to pay to buy the shares? If so, then what might be the estimated value of the shares acquired? Options having vested doesn't necessarily mean they possess value, merely that they may be exercised. Or did you mean the estimated intrinsic value of those options (estimated value less exercise cost) is $100,000? Speaking from my own experience, I'd like to address just the first part of your question: Have you treated this as you would a serious investment in any other company? That is, have you or your brother-in-law reviewed the company's financial statements for the last few years? Other than hearing from people with a vested interest (quite literally!) to pump up the stock with talk around the office, how do you know the company is: BTW, as an option holder only, your brother-in-law's rights to financial information may be limited. Will the company share these details anyway? Or, if he exercised at least one option to become a bona-fide shareholder, I believe he'd have rights to request the financial statements – but company bylaws vary, and different jurisdictions say different things about what can be restricted. Beyond the financial statements, here are some more things to consider: The worst-case risk you'd need to accept is zero liquidity and complete loss: If there's no eventual buy-out or IPO, the shares may (effectively) be worthless. Even if there is a private market, willing buyers may quickly dry up if company fortunes decline. Contrast this to public stock markets, where there's usually an opportunity to witness deterioration, exit at a loss, and preserve some capital. Of course, with great risk may come great reward. Do your own due diligence and convince yourself through a rigorous analysis — not hopes & dreams — that the investment might be worth the risk." I have been careful here to cover both shares in companies and in ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). Some information such as around corporate actions and AGMs is only applicable for company shares and not ETFs. The shares that you own are registered to you through the broker that you bought them via but are verified by independent fund administrators and brokerage reconciliation processes. This means that there is independent verification that the broker has those shares and that they are ring fenced as being yours. The important point in this is that the broker cannot sell them for their own profit or otherwise use them for their own benefit, such as for collateral against margin etc..  1) Since the broker is keeping the shares for you they are still acting as an intermediary. In order to prove that you own the shares and have the right to sell them you need to transfer the registration to another broker in order to sell them through that broker. This typically, but not always, involves some kind of fee and the broker that you transfer to will need to be able to hold and deal in those shares. Not all brokers have access to all markets. 2) You can sell your shares through a different broker to the one you bought them through but you will need to transfer your ownership to the other broker and that broker will need to have access to that market. 3) You will normally, depending on your broker, get an email or other message on settlement which can be around two days after your purchase. You should also be able to see them in your online account UI before settlement. You usually don't get any messages from the issuing entity for the instrument until AGM time when you may get invited to the AGM if you hold enough stock. All other corporate actions should be handled for you by your broker. It is rare that settlement does not go through on well regulated markets, such as European, Hong Kong, Japanese, and US markets but this is more common on other markets. In particular I have seen quite a lot of trades reversed on the Istanbul market (XIST) recently. That is not to say that XIST is unsafe its just that I happen to have seen a few trades reversed recently. "RED FLAG. You should not be invested in 1 share. You should buy a diversified ETF which can have fees of 0.06% per year. This has SIGNIFICANTLY less volatility for the same statistical expectation. Left tail risk is MUCH lower (probability of gigantic losses) since losses will tend to cancel out gains in diversified portfolios. Moreover, your view that ""you believe these will continue"" is fallacious. Stocks of developed countries are efficient to the extent that retail investors cannot predict price evolution in the future. Countless academic studies show that individual investors forecast in the incorrect direction on average. I would be quite right to objectively classify you as a incorrect if you continued to hold the philosophy that owning 1 stock instead of the entire market is a superior stategy. ALL the evidence favours holding the market.  In addition, do not invest in active managers. Academic evidence demonstrates that they perform worse than holding a passive market-tracking portfolio after fees, and on average (and plz don't try to select managers that you think can outperform -- you can't do this, even the best in the field can't do this).  Direct answer: It depends on your investment horizon. If you do not need the money until you are 60 then you should invest in very aggressive assets with high expected return and high volatility. These assets SHOULD mainly be stocks (through ETFs or mutual funds) but could also include US-REIT or global-REIT ETFs, private equity and a handful of other asset classes (no gold, please.) ... or perhaps wealth management products which pool many retail investors' funds together and create a diversified portfolio (but I'm unconvinced that their fees are worth the added diversification). If you need the money in 2-3 years time then you should invest in safe assets -- fixed income and term deposits.  Why is investment horizon so important? If you are holding to 60 years old then it doesn't matter if we have a massive financial crisis in 5 years time, since the stock market will rebound (unless it's a nuclear bomb in New York or something) and by the time you are 60 you will be laughing all the way to the bank. Gains on risky assets overtake losses in the long run such that over a 20-30 year horizon they WILL do much better than a deposit account. As you approach 45-50, you should slowly reduce your allocation to risky assets and put it in safe haven assets such as fixed income and cash. This is because your investment horizon is now SHORTER so you need a less risky portfolio so you don't have to keep working until 65/70 if the market tanks just before retirement. VERY IMPORTANT. If you may need the savings to avoid defaulting on your home loan if you lose your job or something, then the above does not apply. Decisions in these context are more vague and ambiguous." If it helps you to think about it, long is equivalent to betting for the upside and short is equivalent to betting for the downside. If you are long on options, then you expect the value of such options to increase.  If you are long an option, then you own the option.  If you are short an option, then generally you sold the option.  Someone who is short a call (sometimes called the writer or occasionally the issuer) has sold a call option to someone who is now long a call. Buying a call option that will increase in value is itself a form of investment, just as it's investment to buy stock or other instruments hoping they will appreciate in value.  An option's value will rise or fall with the underlying, so being long an option is a way to be long in the underlying.  Someone can be long in a stock by buying the stock, or long in a call by buying call options in the stock.  The long call generally requires less initial investment than buying the underlying, and lets the option-holder avoid the asset downside during the option term.  The risk is that the asset may not appreciate to the point that the call option will pay off. In the conceptual sense, a share of stock is a particular right to the profits and assets of a corporation, both in form of dividends and in liquidation.  An option is a particular right to the the share of stock.  It's just a further way to formalize and subdivide the various property rights that exist in a corporation.  If you can buy a piece of paper with particular rights to corporate profits and assets, then you can buy another piece of paper with particular rights to the former piece of paper. "I primarily intend to add on to WBT's answer, which is good. It has been shown that ""momentum"" is a very real, tangible factor in stock returns. Stocks that have done well tend to keep doing well; stocks that are doing poorly tend to keep doing poorly. For a long-term value investor, of course fundamental valuation should be your first thing to look at - but as long as you're comfortable with the company's price as compared to its value, you should absolutely hang onto it if it's been going up. The old saying on Wall Street is ""Cut your losses, and let your winners ride."" As WBT said, there may be some tangible emotional benefit to marking your win while you're ahead and not risking that it tanks, but I'd say the odds are in your favor. If an undervalued company starts rising in stock price, maybe that means the market is starting to recognize it for the deal it is. Hang onto it and enjoy the fruits of your research." Depends on what you are, an investor or a speculator. An investor will look at an 'indefinite' investment period. A speculator will be after a fast buck. If you are an investor, buy your stock once as that will cost less commissions. After all, you'll sell your stock in 10, 15, 20 years.