What is the best place to do your own equity and fixed-income investing. would it be e-trade or something like that?

only if you are looking and working with it daily a couple of times

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what if i want to just put together a portfolio of stocks. what would be good for that?

if you do not follow up on such a portfolio than you should look at the mutual funds, there are ways without big fees etc, I do not like them because there is so much bad stuff around but do your homework

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I’m afraid that investing is a little outside of our area of expertise. I would suggest that you go to your local bank and speak to someone there. It’s rare that a bank doesn’t have someone that can give you advice in that area. One thing for sure is that you should investigate any company that you are considering.

A low maintenance portfolio must be made of high cash per share companies. If you don't want to be forever watching the market, you need a series of highly stable stocks. You need to average out your annual gain expectations and weigh it against your annual income expectations to determine what a realistic portfolio would consist of.

Depends on the value of assets you are investing