I totally understand CDE's argument against Kenyan mutual funds.

You will be lucky if they tell you who the fund manager is let alone explaining their investment philosophy.

The link below has an interesting take on mutual funds which ticks all the boxes in the Kenyan market

http://www.nytimes.com/2...recg&pagewanted=all

http://www.businessinsid...nsen-mutual-funds-2011-8

Hi Bee
so what has the Etrade tutorials taught you? I am very wary of this tutorials, it usually amounts to just invest with us and everything else will be smooth. How much did you pay for the video? So Etrade is free for the first 2 months, after that how much do they charge? What is minimal? Do they have an annual fee plus i'm sure they charge you X amount to trade shares. Anyways i'm just a stickler for unnecessary fees.
About your stock picks, Costco and Walmart are definately a good buy, for the rest I dont really know about them so I cant advice. I still insist that Bank of America is a good buy, yes they are being sued by AIG and they had alot of exposure in the real estate meltdown that gave them bad publicity, BUT they are the largest bank in the US, that alone makes me prefer them over a smaller bank like US Bank which by the way is selling three times higher than BoA.Its your call.
About Safaricom, yes I told you not to sell your shares, but I also said this only holds if you had good shares to begin with. In my opinion Safaricom is not a good stock pick, it no longer enjoys monopoly in the Kenyan market, plus most people I know do not like their services. Being that it is a price competitve company, when these people find a better option, they will leave Safaricom which will eventually lead to the stock price falling. Sirius for example was trading around $2 back in 2008, today in 2011 it is still trading around $2. In the meantime inflation has eaten up its stock holders capital, and plus the stock is not going anywhere, if anything it may go lower. That was my analogy, and is the reason I told you that I would cut my losses, sell Safaricom and buy for example KCB at its current lows. Kengen I would need to do more research, I said I was 50/50 on it, but Safaricom is a definite sell in my books.

I knew it, repeat after me, nothing is FREE!! Your friend paid $75??? I wonder what the "commission" is? I'm too lazy to call them and ask how much they charge per trade. And the tutorials they give you seems like basic knowledge that you can access for free from your local library. Anyways its your money. My brokerage firm charges $20 a year, but they have waived the first 2 years charges, so I basically dont pay them maintenance fees till 2013. Then they charge $7 a trade for the first 15 trades, therefater its $15 a trade/ year. Since I want to buy for the logterm, this is an ideal arrangement for me.
By the way since Walmart is selling at $82, Walmart sells higher during recessions, you may want to wait for some kind of calamity to hit the company, so that the price goes down kidogo before you buy.

try https://www.zecco.com

they dnt charge commision. Yes you heard me right.no commision on your stocks trade. They dnt. As long as you place >25 trades per month.
When depositing money you better use wire transfer as itis cheaper.

Oh by the way you need to maintain a $3,000 minimum with them.