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??