Post: #176

Have bought a few new things recently.

-SHERF
-MEOH
-KN
- Switched a portion of my KORS shares into KORS CALL LEAPs strike price 65 (Jan 20,2017).

Going to shoot for a 200% portfolio return for next year. We shall see....

Post: #177

What is your logic for MEOH?
I like the drop in KN, which smartphone makers are they suppliers to? It will be interesting how their report is received.

Post: #178

@Buster-
MEOH- Large share buy-back announced (5-10% of mkt cap). Largest cost input is natural gas which will stay low for a while. They have repositioned two plants from Chile to Lousiana to take advantage of shale and GOM natural gas boom. Methanol is a growing market that is a proxy subsitute for LNG- easier to ship, easier to make, easier to blend.

KN- they are a legacy business that does 66% of hearing aids (cash flow, mature business) paired with a volatile business with rapidly increasing market(smartphones). They do business with ALL smartphone makers from Apple to Android to Huawei to HTC. I believe they are prime suppliers for speakers and microphones for all those companies. Its a spin-off from Dover corp, which is arguably one of the most disciplined and intelligent industrial congolomerates. Beyond that it is selling at a near 52 week low and way below comparable price range for other chip makers.

I usually hate these "fly by night" tech companies, but considering they have been in the hearing game for close to 50+ years and management is from dover. I bite the bullet and invested. Its heavily misunderstood and balance sheet is a mess. They also are switching out factories to take advantage of lower labor which makes the financials somewhat hard to follow. SGA should come down a lot. Revenue should go up. I think its an easy double or triple at today's prices.

Post: #179

Thanks DVY,
It looked good, perhaps KN won't get hit too badly with the expense of a new startup and infant mortality of the new line. I agree with your logic and I think I'll follow your lead on that one. We baby boomers weren't kind to our ears in the concert years.....

Post: #180

Guys, what do you think about this article?
http://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshor...uation.php

TL;DR: S&P 500 is getting expensive if you look at P/E10 ratio (current price/earnings over the past 10 years). This ratio is currently 26.8, in the 94th percentile based on historical data.

Post: #181

@Brodiaga- Here are my assumptions- we are at record low interest rates and record high dividend payments.

10 year T-bond is paying 1.8% (taxed at regular income rates so say 35% or 48% if CA). SP500 index pays around 2.2% dividend (taxed at 15%). This is still reasonable. Inflation is 2%. So equity is around 25P/E or 4%. 4%+ dividend is much higher than T-bond/inflation.

Compared to the 2000s when you stock market was at this level (4% yield, 1% dividend), but money-market accounts and treasuries were paying 5%. In the 2000s, we were upside down. Today's prices would have to be a P/E of 35-40 and 1% dividend to be equivalent. The 1929 bubble was based on margin loans which paid 6-12% (1-6% higher than T-bonds) and liquidity drying up because of no central reserve bank (lender of last resort)

Its PRICE and TERMS. The game has changed because cost of $ has gone down.

FURTHERMORE, another chart people point to is GDP/Wilshire5000. Lets posit this question. Apple sells 100 million iphones (hypothetical)- 50 million of which go to China. You essentially did business with a separate GDP group but booked profits on Wilshire 5000. This old relationship worked very well when most business was domestic but as US firms has increasingly multinational, USA GDP/Stock market has decoupled.


I foresee sideways or up for the next year.

Post: #182

.......

Post: #183

I bought $100 worth of EGHT just to test out RH, so far I'm up $22 woohoo! I bought a $100 worth of EGHT back when it was 95 cents, dammit I should have bought more...

Is there a way to transfer stocks you own into robinhood, or do you just have to sell it? I still have my original EGHT in sharebuilder.

Post: #184

As promised before Ill break down my portfolio. Its a lot more risky than most people would feel comfortable with, but I am young and can take the hit (unlikely but still). I sleep like a baby

KORS call options- 29%
WU- 15%
TUP- 8%
KORS- 7.5%
MRC - 7%
CLD- 6.5%
KN- 4%
MEOH- 4%
SHERF- 4%
CB- 4%
ZNGA call options- 3.5%
ARCP- 3.5%
PGR- 2%

P2P lending- 2.5% (yielding 14% annually)

Post: #185

I brought Criteo (CRTO) yesterday at $43.85

Criteo is a French performance-advertising company specialising in retargeting. It uses predictive software to deliver targeted advertising across display, mobile, and social media sites for thousands of advertisers worldwide.

This is an "aggressive growth" stock, so it is relatively high risk/high reward.

Post: #186

I know there's often a lot of questions asked about what type of stocks, etf's, funds to buy. Some people ask for help putting together a portfolio. I've been a member of wealthfront and betterment for a few moths. They list right on your profile what your investments are so technically you could do their same thing yourself and save the fee. For me personally I'd rather just pay the fee and have the whole thing on autopilot, tax harvesting, etc

Anyhow, just figured I'd share what they are investing my stuff in as well as percentages. If anyone is looking to put together a little mini portfolio of ETF's and wants some ideas here's what they're giving me.



Holdings

› US Total Stock Market: VTI
16.0%

› US Large-Cap Value: VTV
16.0%

› US Mid-Cap Value: VOE
5.1%

› US Small-Cap Value: VBR
4.5%

› Developed Markets: VEA
38.0%

› Emerging Markets: VWO
10.6%

› Municipal Bonds: MUB
5.4%

› US Corporate Bonds: LQD
0.5%

› International Bonds: BNDX
2.4%

› Emerging Markets Bonds: VWOB
1.6%

Post: #187

I've been going in and out of a gold mining stock, GG (Goldcorp Inc.) for a year or so. It toggles back and forth roughly between $18 and $20. I buy low and sell high then repeat.

Does anyone know of any other stocks like this?

GG also comes with a monthly dividend (3 percent yield) which is a nice safety net if I miss selling high (which I have). Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I've also done this with Seadrill and Haliburton, but those stocks got too risky to play back-and-forth with.

Post: #188

@Days of Broken Arrow- check out Buckle. Slow growing retailer (1-2% growth) selling at 15 P/E. Pays out 2-3% during the year and then anywhere between 3-7% as a special dividend. This makes it a very compelling tax arbitrage play (short term loss after dividend to harvest yearly special dividend).

It paid out last year around 7% total div of stock price. Price-Multiple jumps around but stays in the 11-14 range all year then pops up to the 15.5-16.5 range towards special dividend time.

Founder/Starter/Family owns a big chunk of the firm so thats why it has this unusual payout ratio.

Post: #189

Leverage is the name of the game when it comes to stocks/finance.

The second word is consistency. 10% a year annual will build pretty fast.

I've been trading stocks, derivatives, bonds, equities, fx you name it for quite some time now. What I've learned are a few fundamental things if you want to make money.

NEVER SELL LOW. If you're in a stock that you feel is a long term prospect and long term gainer, DO NOT sell. BUY more shares at a lower price and bring down your overall price per share holding.

Watch price action. Tops are tops and bottoms are bottoms. They can be broken, but use due diligence.

Never follow other peoples advice. You want to buy X shares of Y stock, and analyst A says sell Y stock, fuck him. Its your money, you need to invest it, not Jim Cramer.

Look at Monthly, Weekly, Daily charts. DO NOT GO INTRADAY. Losers are raped of their money intraday trading. Longer term charts have much more power behind them and will benefit you greatly. Also trading longer term charts will alleviate you of bullshit stress that comes with short term charts.

Always be looking for the next big product. Apple: 5$ per share 6/1/2005 now 127$ per share. Monster drinks 15$ per share 7/1/2009 now 128$ per share. Chipotle 50$ per shar 12/8/2008 now 632$ per share.


Take risk, but don't over do it.


BTW. Real Estate is a much better investment if you have under 200K or so.

Post: #190

Ebay is supposed to be spinning-off PayPal later this year. I'm bullish on PayPal and bearish on Ebay.

Post: #191

(05-10-2015 02:22 PM)tarquin Wrote:  Ebay is supposed to be spinning-off PayPal later this year. I'm bullish on PayPal and bearish on Ebay.

The revenue from their PayPal segment now exceeds that of eBay's core marketplaces business! But the core business is still a stable cash cow.

I own EBAY shares and will be buying more next week, because I think the spin-off will unlock significant value for shareholders - all EBAY shareholders will receive equivalent shares in Paypal in order to compensate for the loss of equity in the EBAY.

Post: #192

(05-10-2015 02:22 PM)tarquin Wrote:  Ebay is supposed to be spinning-off PayPal later this year. I'm bullish on PayPal and bearish on Ebay.

For anyone curious about this deal ebay and paypal will both be free to pursue other options, in the case of ebay they can start using skrilla, dwolla, payoneer, etc. Paypal can work with other auctions sites or amazon or whomever.

For one year however eBay cannot try to come out with a payment platform and paypal cannot come out with their own auction platform. I guess there's some type of partnership as well for the next 5 years.

I'll be curious to see if this revolutionizes either auctions or payments. Plenty of people gripe about both ebay and paypal however I think paypal is in a better position. I feel like if paypal goes to ubid or bonanza or whoever ebay will have some real competition. the only reason ebay has continued to have a monopoloy on the auction site thing is because of paypal in my opinion. As much as people gripe about paypal, mainly sellers, everyone has a paypal account and paypal is a trusted name.

As a somewhat unrelated side note, anyone in ecommerce will probably be interesting to see if ebay makes a move to bring back all these suspended sellers. I know in 2014 they made a move to bring back many sellers who owed fees and some who got booted due to bs dsr reasons. I'll be curious to see if ebay opens the books and does a mass unsuspending of accounts to make the bottom line look better, collect some past payments, be able to show more users, etc.

Post: #193

That would be great, Paypal killed my account when a buyer screwed me and they negged me account for the amount I wouldn't give back.

Was also the same time I decided fuck ebay and started going to craigslist, sales are a lot easier locally and I don't have to pay their bullshit fees.

Post: #194

(05-11-2015 04:24 PM)DJ-Matt Wrote:  That would be great, Paypal killed my account when a buyer screwed me and they negged me account for the amount I wouldn't give back.

Was also the same time I decided fuck ebay and started going to craigslist, sales are a lot easier locally and I don't have to pay their bullshit fees.

My experience is the opposite. Don't get me wrong I have plenty of gripes on Paypal and eBay and honestly if your not a high volume seller you totally get fucked on the DSR scores and will probably have account limited or shutdown at some point.

That said Craigslist you have people who say they will show and never show, everyone wants to lowball, etc. On eBay I can have items sell while I'm sleeping, I can ship at my convenience, etc. Craigslist I have to schedule time to meet, meet face to face, etc.

I'm hoping maybe eBay will get desperate and bring back banned members.

Post: #195

^I don't have any experience selling on Ebay and using Paypal as a seller, but can't you guys just regularly withdraw money from PayPal and limit your exposure that way? That's what the guys on the Tropical MBA podcast mentioned. They even said they could do it automatically.

Post: #196

(05-11-2015 09:00 AM)jamaicabound Wrote:  

(05-10-2015 02:22 PM)tarquin Wrote:  Ebay is supposed to be spinning-off PayPal later this year. I'm bullish on PayPal and bearish on Ebay.

For anyone curious about this deal ebay and paypal will both be free to pursue other options, in the case of ebay they can start using skrilla, dwolla, payoneer, etc. Paypal can work with other auctions sites or amazon or whomever.

For one year however eBay cannot try to come out with a payment platform and paypal cannot come out with their own auction platform. I guess there's some type of partnership as well for the next 5 years.

I'll be curious to see if this revolutionizes either auctions or payments. Plenty of people gripe about both ebay and paypal however I think paypal is in a better position. I feel like if paypal goes to ubid or bonanza or whoever ebay will have some real competition. the only reason ebay has continued to have a monopoloy on the auction site thing is because of paypal in my opinion. As much as people gripe about paypal, mainly sellers, everyone has a paypal account and paypal is a trusted name.

As a somewhat unrelated side note, anyone in ecommerce will probably be interesting to see if ebay makes a move to bring back all these suspended sellers. I know in 2014 they made a move to bring back many sellers who owed fees and some who got booted due to bs dsr reasons. I'll be curious to see if ebay opens the books and does a mass unsuspending of accounts to make the bottom line look better, collect some past payments, be able to show more users, etc.

Ebay has to use PayPal for 80% of transactions for the first 5 years. Source

Here is why I'm bullish PayPal and bearish Ebay.

1. Ebay is gradually becoming a marketplace used for advertising other marketplaces. With the opportunity cost of establishing a website lower than in the past, I've seen a number of sellers advertise on Ebay at a sell price +18% for fees. On their own website, the product is sold without the 18% added in. Essentially, these sellers do get a percentage of sales on Ebay, but they get an increasing number of buyers on their private site over time.

2. I believe that Alibaba and other sites will eventually move into Ebay's marketplace for person-to-person e-commerce. I will be the first to admit that this prediction is not a sure thing given Ebay's dominance in the market. However, Alibaba has made some moves in personal e-commerce with their website 11main.com and I can see them branching off. Amazon too.

3. Ebay has roughly reached the size that it will always be. I don't believe that there is much growth potential for the company.

4. PayPal has a credit arm and has already been working with individual companies to allow customers to buy things on credit. Have you purchased a computer from Lenovo recently? I did, and I used PayPal Credit (no interest for 6 months). As PayPal is allowed to expand, I believe that this process will continue. I wouldn't be surprised if you could eventually purchase a car using PayPal. Heck, maybe 10 years down the line they will start lending on Mortgages. Mortgage lending may be a relatively low risk, low reward investment. However, if you have piles of cash sitting around and a credit arm, then that money can be put to use.

5. As already stated, PayPal will be free to pursue Amazon and other commercial websites.

6. Market dominance and moat. PayPal is the big dog on the block. As a customer, I don't want to spend time setting up a dwolla account if I already have a PayPal account just to purchase $50 of goods. This is a moat which prevents other companies from getting too much marketshare. As a seller, wouldn't I rather make it easy for my customers by using the accepted market standard as opposed to another pay system?


Just my 2 cents.

Post: #197

(02-13-2015 12:08 AM)lavidaloca Wrote:  I'd be cautious with BOFI assuming this is the same company.

http://www.yelp.ca/biz/bank-of-internet-usa-san-diego-3

The reports there alone are enough to make my stomach turn as an investor.

A few negative Yelp reviews do not worry me the the least.

BOFI are performing extremely well and were recently named the "Best of the Biggest Public Thrifts by SNL Financial for the Third Year in a Row" :

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bofi-compl...00375.html

Post: #198

(05-08-2015 06:04 PM)captain_shane Wrote:  BTW. Real Estate is a much better investment if you have under 200K or so.

Do you mean real estate funds or buying actual properties?

Thanks.

Post: #199

Brought a position in Baidu (BIDU) today at $193. The "Google of China", it has a 40% revenue growth rate - much higher than Google at 13%.

Also looking at LinkedIn (LNKD), here at $194. LinkedIn is the most highly rated large company to work for with the most highly rated CEO of all public companies on Glassdoor. Anyone think that LinkedIn will not be a much bigger company in 5 years from now?

Post: #200

https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:LL

Lumber Liquidators has taken huge falls lately, is it likely to recover? If so that could be a bargain buy.