Robo Investment Services

[Gary611]

As a retiree, I am living off my IRA which is from my company; this was taken instead of their traditional pension. Without getting into many details, the thought of changing investment firms is on my mind. Recently I've heard about so called robot trading firms that use ETF's and their computer models automatically trade, with favorable results.
One firm is called Betterment.com. Anyone out there have any thoughts on these kind of firms?

[Louetta]

As a retiree, I am living off my IRA which is from my company; this was taken instead of their traditional pension. Without getting into many details, the thought of changing investment firms is on my mind. Recently I've heard about so called robot trading firms that use ETF's and their computer models automatically trade, with favorable results.
One firm is called Betterment.com. Anyone out there have any thoughts on these kind of firms?

One negative thing I've heard is that some of their models say when prices get down below certain levels we'll sell which creates more downside and produces some of the volatility we saw first of the year. Essentially they sell at the worst time.

I look at guys like Bill Ackman, now he's not a robo guy, but I look at him and the trouble he's got his investors in and of course they can't get their money out because that's the way those funds work and I say you're better off doing it yourself. Rant over.

[Phoenix7]

One negative thing I've heard is that some of their models say when prices get down below certain levels we'll sell which creates more downside and produces some of the volatility we saw first of the year. Essentially they sell at the worst time.

I look at guys like Bill Ackman, now he's not a robo guy, but I look at him and the trouble he's got his investors in and of course they can't get their money out because that's the way those funds work and I say you're better off doing it yourself. Rant over.

I agree with Louetta ......NEVER let anyone else control your money! I was once involved with a "Futures" Trading automated program . looked great on paper ......as soon as I got in Bang It Started to lose money!

[Gary611]

Thanks for your thoughts, since 2006, I've been using a firm, ACM and they have me in approx 30 different securities which, as of last year, avged. a net gain of about 5%. They charge me a 1.5% fee.
since the last few months of 2015, it has nosedived a bit, have not seen much upside yet this year, so I am just window shopping.