Shut up and buy something

We are finally putting in a purchase order for  three sector-specific ETFs: VNQ (real estate), VHT (a healthcare), VAW (materials).

There are different types of settings for purchasing a stock through a broker such as Scottrade:

Market order--sets the purchase or sell price at the price that the stock is currently trading at. If the market is currently closed, the transaction will go through when it is open again.

Limit order--sets the purchase or sell price at a specific amount. The transaction will only go through when the market value hits the specified amount. If a stock is set to $50, and you set your limit order to $55, then you buy it at $55. Conversely, if you set a limit order to buy at $49, you won't purchase the stock until it hits $49. Usually you can set a duration for the limit. If your limit expires before it reaches the specified price, you simply don't buy the stock.

There are even fancier options, but we won't get into them here.

For next week, we plan to take a look at something to shore up our tech weighting. It might be international, but right now we're just deciding on some options. We're going to compare VGT, a Vanguard tech ETF, with some worldwide tech or possibly some Asian tech funds.

Profit!