WHAT IS THE DEFINITION OF A HIGH-YIELDING STOCK OR FUND? GREATER THAN A 10% YTD?

I'M TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO PUT INTO MY IRA....

LOOKING AT:

SOUNDSHORE
GREENSPRING RETAIL
OAKMARK EQUITY AND INCOME
BRK.B
MATTHEWS CHINA
VANGUARD DIVIDEND GROWTH
VANGUARD INFLATION PROTECTED SECURITIES
VANGUARD CONVERTIBLE SECURITIES

I'M NEW TO ALL THIS. HELP ME!!!

Yield normally is defined as the dividends or interest earned by a stock, bond, mutual fund, or other investment.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/y/yield.asp
A high yield would be a relative term. Some types of companies are more apt to pay a dividend than others. For example, Berkshire Hathaway does not pay a dividend so that certainly would not be considered high yield. Another example would be REITs that tend to pay a higher dividend (though not qualified) than other stocks because of legal requirements.
Yield is generally experessed as a percentage of the current share price so if a stock price goes down and the divident (in dollars) stays the same the yield percentage will go up. That is why some of the companies that have been beaten down in share price are shown as having high yields.
You can go to a quote server and find out the yield for almost any stock or mutual fund by entering its ticker symbol.
For example, http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=VIPSX
As a point of reference the 30 stocks that make up the Down Jones Industrial average have an average yield of something in the range of 3 to 4%.

Bob

Down Jones Industrial

Interesting (and apt) typo. ;-)

First of all, do not post in all CAPS. It's considered rude and many people will ignore you if you do that.

You have some good choices here. BRK is Berkshire Hathaway, which is run by Warren Buffett. His company is sitting on a ton of cash, and should do well once he invests it.

Vanguard is very well thought of, and is known for their low costs.

So I'd go with 25% in BRK and the 3 Vanguards to start.

Meanwhile, research the other choices and see if they make sense to you, and how they are performing. You can always change your selections, and even move your IRA over to a brokerage and pick your own stocks.

Good Luck

BRK.A might be a buy at this point. It has come off the lows of March and seems to be still trending up. But its 10 year record is hardly inspiring - worse than a money market. If it gets up around its September 2008 high, you should re-evaluate and consider taking profit. Of course, if that happens, the situation will be rather different, so there is no telling what - that is why I say to re=evaluate.

Not to sound like a shill for Motley Fool products (I don't work there), but last month I was setting up my own IRA for the first time, and I used the 30-day free trial of the "Rule your Retirement" service and found it super helpful. If you unsubscribe before the 30 days is up by e-mailing customer service, it's truly free (I did this).

http://www.fool.com/shop/newsletters/13/

In their on-line resources, they have lists of recommended mutual funds for all the different categories of asset diversification. Plus, Motley Fool retirement experts read and respond to questions on the subscriber message boards.

My personal advice: I ended up buying a few different Vanguard funds for my IRA because of their low fees. High mutual fund fees can kill your investment performance over the long run. The downside of Vanguard is that almost all of their funds have $3000 minimums, which is big when you're just starting out. But a lot of their funds can now be bought as ETFs in a regular IRA brokerage account with no minimum investment. I also own BRK.B in my non-retirement account.

I'M NEW TO ALL THIS. HELP ME!!!

For starters, don't type in all caps.

JLC

Advice taken. I normally don't post in all caps and will remember not to do it again. Thanks for the help!