Stock investors.

[pool_shark]

I've gotten into investing in the stock market outside of my retirement accounts.

I'm hoping to find others who are actively involved so we can have a place to discuss ideas, strategies, stocks, indicators, etc.

 

[pool_shark]

The markets are down today. How did your stocks do?

Everything in my IRA is down, and all but WWE is down in my brokerage account.

 

[pool_shark]

Pre market movers.

Stock Market Today

 

[pool_shark]

Friday 7/20/2018

 

[X1tymez]

Good to see trader here. I'm more focus on Forex than stock.

 

[pool_shark]

Good to see you here as well. I had given up on the thread since no one responded.

 

[pool_shark]

I had two reasons for starting this thread.
1. Because I am actively into stock trading.
2. Because stats say that in an emergency, most Americans can't scrape together $400.

I read here all the time about people buying every new phone that gets released. Even now there is a thread about people who have the S9/9+ switching to the Note 9.

I was really hoping that some of those people were into stock trading, mutual funds, investing some kind. Even your 401K or IRA is trading so that qualifies for this discussion.
I think it's a better use of your money vs buying yet another new $1000 phone.

I'm not trying to put anyone down, I just find the stats about the average emergency fund and retirement savings scary, and I wanted to get discussion started here, where people spend lots of money on "toys", and most seem to use the payment plans.

I sort of want the Note 9 myself, but I know that right now, that isn't the best use of my money.

 

[X1tymez]

Are you still active here? Hope you did well with stock in 2018.

 

[pool_shark]

Are you still active here? Hope you did well with stock in 2018.

I haven't been active here because unfortunately there wasn't much interest.
I hope more people take an interest in making their money make money.

My 401K took a big hit at the end of the year but is slowing rebounding and my IRA is almost back to normal.

My brokerage account is doing fairly well, WWE is approaching $90/share again. My tech stocks are up and down but I'm holding steady.

How are you doing in forex?

 

[pool_shark]

Markets are going to be really tricky in 2019. Lots of global shifts in play.

Agreed, fear as well.
Every day there are articles of stock market doom.

 

[racedog]

I just found this thread. We are active investors with a large portfolio. We have been active in the market for quite a few years. We consider a 20 percent growth per year to be a minimally decent rate but we have investments that are divided into growth investments with no care about dividends or interest, while others are longer term and in place for their dividends and/or interest (for income).

Over the years we have done quite well but there have been some 'less succesful' years.

 

[pool_shark]

I just found this thread. We are active investors with a large portfolio. We have been active in the market for quite a few years. We consider a 20 percent growth per year to be a minimally decent rate but we have investments that are divided into growth investments with no care about dividends or interest, while others are longer term and in place for their dividends and/or interest (for income).

Over the years we have done quite well but there have been some 'less succesful' years.

Nice.
Ever do scalping, swing, or day trading?

 

[racedog]

We have done some in the past including derivatives such as options but we found that we are best at more standard types of trading including using short and long term capital gains and losses as tax considerations in figuring net gain and/or loss.

Day trades, options etc can be highly profitable because gains can and will be magnified, but the obverse is also true, losses can and will be highly magnified. We have done them in the past but those trades require being glued to the markets during trading hours and I really wanted a life that isn't controlled by trading, I wanted trading to provide us with a nice life and not to control our life.

Nice.
Ever do scalping, swing, or day trading?

 

[pool_shark]

I don't do options. I don't know enough about it and I don't have enough expendable cash to try it.
I did scalping for a bit, even scalping for dividends, trading just enough to not be considered day trading since I don't want to have $25K in my brokerage account.

 

[racedog]

Options will require that you fill out forms that are required by the feds to try to be sure that your are knowledgeable enough to handle trades in them. As stated above they can be quite profitable or they can deplete your cash quickly.

They also require constant monitoring which I don't like doing.

We've also participated in a couple of IPO's in the past. They can be good money makers but a brokerage will only allow you into an IPO if you are a large investor and, again, you will have to fill out more forms guaranteeing that you have enough legal 'distance' so that you cannot be considered an inside trader etc.

I'm at the point now that I like more passive investments that don't need me watching the markets all day long.

 

[pool_shark]

My father-in-law knows less than I do about stock trading and he bought options of Goodyear. I tried to persuade him not to, he didn't listen, he lost.
Right now I'm watching HEAR and tmus, added some money to my account, just in case.

 

[racedog]

How did your father get into options? Options are crazy dangerous, especially for the novice investor.
I don't know anything about HEAR but we are familiar with tmus. My wife and I took a strong look at TMobile starting about a year ago. Disclaimer: anything below is my opinion and while my average is very good I am not always right.

Novice investors tend to take positions that they feel are 'logical' but investing at times requires a deep dive where the novice doesn't know where to look and may be counter intuitive.

TMobile is a company that is growing at a good rate for.the last three or four years but is not in a position to really threaten the big two providers, but they can, and have pushed the market for awhile. But in order to become a real force they need to grow a few tens of millions of users and this provides them with the economy of volume which they don't have now.

The obvious source of those users is Sprint who is in dire straits no matter how you look at it. So, tmo has offered to buy (merge) with Sprint. The obvious upside is millions of users to put tmo almost on a par with ATT and Verizon.

But here's the problem. Sprint comes with a massive amount of baggage, including no cash and billions of dollars in debt, all of which TMobile will have to assume. This is a 100 percent stock based buyout with Sprint stockholders getting 1 share of TMO stock for 10 shares of Sprint. Tmo is currently about 73 dollars to Sprints 6 dollars and change which means that Sprint stockholders will get about 19 percent gain (At today's price) just for having TMO buy them out. TMobile shareholders will see their stock heavily diluted because all those millions of shares will have to be issued to exchange for Sprint stock.

There's a lot more involved but this post is already very long. What it comes down to is that we decided against buying into tmus.

One example of our best buys was Dominoes Pizza. We bought it about three or four years ago at 52 dollars a share and right now it is sitting at 279 dollars. By the way, we don't buy Dominoes Pizza because we hate it. When it comes to investing there is no fanboism involved. One of our larger investments a few years ago was Apple and we don't own Apple products, it was purely a business decision, we got in rode the stock for a couple of years, then shorted and got out with a healthy profit.

My father-in-law knows less than I do about stock trading and he bought options of Goodyear. I tried to persuade him not to, he didn't listen, he lost.
Right now I'm watching HEAR and tmus, added some money to my account, just in case.

 

[pool_shark]

How did your father get into options? Options are crazy dangerous, especially for the novice investor.
I don't know anything about HEAR but we are familiar with tmus. My wife and I took a strong look at TMobile starting about a year ago. Disclaimer: anything below is my opinion and while my average is very good I am not always right.

Novice investors tend to take positions that they feel are 'logical' but investing at times requires a deep dive where the novice doesn't know where to look and may be counter intuitive.

TMobile is a company that is growing at a good rate for.the last three or four years but is not in a position to really threaten the big two providers, but they can, and have pushed the market for awhile. But in order to become a real force they need to grow a few tens of millions of users and this provides them with the economy of volume which they don't have now.

The obvious source of those users is Sprint who is in dire straits no matter how you look at it. So, tmo has offered to buy (merge) with Sprint. The obvious upside is millions of users to put tmo almost on a par with ATT and Verizon.

But here's the problem. Sprint comes with a massive amount of baggage, including no cash and billions of dollars in debt, all of which TMobile will have to assume. This is a 100 percent stock based buyout with Sprint stockholders getting 1 share of TMO stock for 10 shares of Sprint. Tmo is currently about 73 dollars to Sprints 6 dollars and change which means that Sprint stockholders will get about 19 percent gain (At today's price) just for having TMO buy them out. TMobile shareholders will see their stock heavily diluted because all those millions of shares will have to be issued to exchange for Sprint stock.

There's a lot more involved but this post is already very long. What it comes down to is that we decided against buying into tmus.

One example of our best buys was Dominoes Pizza. We bought it about three or four years ago at 52 dollars a share and right now it is sitting at 279 dollars. By the way, we don't buy Dominoes Pizza because we hate it. When it comes to investing there is no fanboism involved. One of our larger investments a few years ago was Apple and we don't own Apple products, it was purely a business decision, we got in rode the stock for a couple of years, then shorted and got out with a healthy profit.

He's my father-in-law. Basically, he's a gambler, he bets on horses, plays poker, etc.

He looks at an inexpensive stock and figures it's a good buy. He was stuck on goodyear for years, talked about it all the time saying how it's a good stock. I told him it has been hovering at about $32 - $36 for the entire time. I told him that it doesn't move, it isn't a good stock.
He bought options of it and lost.

I finally put SMA lines on his chart and explained about the crossover and I showed him how to read the analysts opinions. He still looks at a $17 stock and wants to dump $10K into it without knowing anything about it. I have to talk him out of it each time.

I do better at ETFs than individual stocks. I bought tesla a couple of years ago and it immediately went down, WWE is the only one I have that's still going up more than down. I am going to stick with skyy and hack for a while as they are tech security stocks and I figure they have to eventually pick up.

I looked at apple and google years ago, they were both around $600, all of a sudden apple was at $100, I know they did a split.

I know what you mean about buying out a company and taking on the baggage, but that's a regular occurence and still works out. There was a trading company that was bought, I think it was tdameritrade bought scottrade or something, and I watched it for a while and the price dropped. I figured them getting brick and mortar stores would have been a good thing.
Eventually it did go up though.

 

[pool_shark]

I'm keeping an eye on Yeti now as well.

 

[racedog]

Took a look at Yeti, looks like a decent proposition buts that's just cursory glance, not a buy consideration hard look. I see that it took a good jump on a decent earnings report. That's good but it makes jumping in more difficult. At this point you could just be putting in money to line someone else's pockets. If you've got good reason to believe that it's going to keep heading in that direction then it might be a good deal.

I think good upward trending investments are going to be getting more difficult to find and I think I'm going to be lowering invested money and moving more into cash over the next year.