I suspect a few of us are amateur investors. We once had a thread in the Atari CC that netted me a few good ideas (and one really bad one). But why not have a thread to discuss this stuff among those who are interested?

As you may have noticed, S&P lowered its outlook for US debt. This somewhat refreshing bout of honesty sent stocks downward. Knowing full well there's a chance they will go down further, I decided to populate my new IRA with a few picks.

Because I'm building an IRA, I'm focusing my choices on stocks that pay decent dividends, are in industries unlikely to go away and are generally market-leaders in their field. Overall this is not a particularly intensive strategy, but it's meant to be a long-term thing. So today I bought:

Exxon
Kraft
JPMorgan
WalMart

I am a bit skeptical on WalMart, because it's not totally clear to me that they can sustain international growth.

Anyone here make any semi-recent moves?