To little info....you need to have earned income to make contributions to an IRA, so a retired person not having that could not make 'new' contributions to an IRA.
They could however open an IRA and roll money to it...ie, transfer money from a previous IRA or 401k to one opened up somewhere else. Is the Royal Dutch Shell stock currently in a IRA account?
I highly doubt anyone at Fidelity would say they can outperform anything. Recorded lines and guaranteeing performance doesn't go well. There are no guarantees, with funds, stocks or money markets. Royal Dutch could very easily slash their dividend and have their stock price cut in half. (see BP, GE, etc). It happens. They could also continue with business as usual and do fine....anyone that tries to tell you they know fore sure, is full of BS.
Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Buy low sell high.
If your mother has all her eggs in 1 basket (Royal Dutch), and is 75 yrs old, I would say that Fidelity is right. (assuming she cannot afford to loose her investment in Royal that is.)
Thanks for all the replies , as always greatly appreciated.
Just for info...a person over 70.5 yrs of age cannot open a standard IRA. A ROTH IRA yes but not a standard IRA.
Anyway what the deal was....some idiot from Fidelity Investments called my mother telling her to sell all her stock in Royal Dutch Shell and let them put it in an IRA so she could make more money. Well once i got off the phone with them today asking how the hell a fund that returned 2% last year and .19% the yr before that could out perform a stock fund that pays dividends 4 times a year and last years return rate was 15% ???? They had no answer and were promptly showed the door............
