Post: #26

(12-24-2014 11:37 PM)Peregrine Wrote:  

(12-24-2014 07:44 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

(12-23-2014 01:13 AM)Peregrine Wrote:  I'm somewhat curious as to which parts you disagree with.

Pretty much all the doom and gloom shit. The got the MSBs right but apart from there it's no different than a financial Gawker with keyboard jockeys.

In other news, those chevron stocks were a good bet. Along with XOM, BP, and Shell. From 81 to 93 in 8 days!

You think it's going to be smooth sailing from now 'til eternity? I'm not saying the world's fucked, buy gold and guns and find a bunker. I'm a young guy so I'm sure I'll live to see some great times backed by a fundamentally strong economy (not necessarily in America). But some serious shit is due to go down in the near future (within five years, 10 max). Those who aren't prepared will be in for a lot of pain.

Suit yourself. We'll see who's right one way or another. Hopefully I'm wrong (even though I personally gain in more ways than one if things go sour).

You're going to say the same thing in 10 years. People have said the same thing for decades.

Sure, we might experience what happen in 08-09 one more time in our lifetimes, but not some Mad Max shit.

Post: #27

I still think oil and gas will have a huge drop. I've stayed out so far.

This has happened before (about 25 years ago). Oil operators went bankrupt, oil dropped to $18/barrel (inflation adjusted to about $40/barrel). Oil majors swooped in and cleaned up shop.

I've bought into ARCP and will continue to hold. I believe FBI and DOJ made a settlement with management regarding the fraud settlement (key condition was to forfeit severance and options and leave company). This has also happened before with Salomon brothers in their Treasury bond scandal.

Post: #28

(12-25-2014 08:04 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

(12-24-2014 11:37 PM)Peregrine Wrote:  

(12-24-2014 07:44 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

(12-23-2014 01:13 AM)Peregrine Wrote:  I'm somewhat curious as to which parts you disagree with.

Pretty much all the doom and gloom shit. The got the MSBs right but apart from there it's no different than a financial Gawker with keyboard jockeys.

In other news, those chevron stocks were a good bet. Along with XOM, BP, and Shell. From 81 to 93 in 8 days!

You think it's going to be smooth sailing from now 'til eternity? I'm not saying the world's fucked, buy gold and guns and find a bunker. I'm a young guy so I'm sure I'll live to see some great times backed by a fundamentally strong economy (not necessarily in America). But some serious shit is due to go down in the near future (within five years, 10 max). Those who aren't prepared will be in for a lot of pain.

Suit yourself. We'll see who's right one way or another. Hopefully I'm wrong (even though I personally gain in more ways than one if things go sour).

You're going to say the same thing in 10 years. People have said the same thing for decades.

Sure, we might experience what happen in 08-09 one more time in our lifetimes, but not some Mad Max shit.

I never said there was going to be any Mad Max shit. Read again: "I'm not saying the world's fucked, buy gold and guns and find a bunker."

I've got money riding on my views. People say you don't even own any stocks.

Yes, people have said the same thing for decades. And they were right in 87, 01, and 08/09 and that's just in recent memory.

Quote:I still think oil and gas will have a huge drop. I've stayed out so far.

Good call. It's not a clean play, up or down.

Post: #29

Can anyone recommend a way to practice investing without losing real money?

Would penny stocks be a good start ? Where would one go to try and learn of such a thing?

Post: #30

(12-26-2014 04:52 PM)jayyrod1 Wrote:  Can anyone recommend a way to practice investing without losing real money?

Would penny stocks be a good start ? Where would one go to try and learn of such a thing?

Don't invest in penny stocks. They are extremely risky and trade completely detached from the actual fundamentals of the underlying company. For every penny stock that goes up 10,000% over 5 years and becomes a real company, there's 1,000 penny stocks that get delisted and nobody ever hears a word about them ever again. Take a look at the 6 month chart of CYNK. Plenty of investors lost all of their money in a few days. That failure was well publicized/loud because of the sheer absurdity and magnitude of it, but there are many penny stock pump-and-dumps like that occurring every week. Just don't do it.

If you want to "practice", go to MarketWatch.com, they have virtual stock trading games where you can create your own portfolio with stocks of your choice and see how your picks do. You'll be able to learn concepts such as diversification by doing that. However, to a certain extent, I'd say that "investing without losing real money" is almost like playing poker without money - the decision making just isn't the same when you don't have anything real at stake.

The most helpful investment advice I've ever gotten from experienced investors is to read a lot about the field that you want to invest in. If you're interested in oil, know everything there is to know about the oil industry. If you're interested in health care, you better know how these companies actually run. If you aren't aware of the fundamentals of a business, you can be wiped clean without even knowing what happened to you. Easiest way to start off is to go to the SEC website and read the most recent 10K form of a company that you like (it's pretty long, but focus on the first third of it). You'll learn a lot more than by just buying $500 in Exxon stock and hoping that it goes up.

Post: #31

Chinese, ECB and BOJ will keep global QE gravy train chugging along nicely. Main beneficiary USA...UUP & SPx

Post: #32

Interested in people's thoughts on 3x-ETF's for trading. Direxion Shares and Ultra ProShares are the big names, they are ETF's that use leverage up front to amplify daily returns or losses.

Post: #33

(12-27-2014 07:19 PM)KeepMovingForward Wrote:  Interested in people's thoughts on 3x-ETF's for trading. Direxion Shares and Ultra ProShares are the big names, they are ETF's that use leverage up front to amplify daily returns or losses.

Most of my returns in 2014 came from Direxion. I would've done better that 14% if I had not played speculator. I went with SPXL, DRN, GASL. As you can imagine, I got socked on GASL.

SPXL will definitely be part of the strategy for 2015. The thing with 3X Leverage is that you can win big and also lose massively. That's where your stops and trailing stops come into play.

Shifting over to Penny Stocks, what does everyone think of Tim Sykes?

His website (http://www.timothysykes.com/learn-how-to...in-7-days/) is super gimmicky however the kid did make a few million. He was also on that show Wall Street Warriors. Wondering if anyone has any thoughts.

Post: #34

One thing to watch out for in leveraged ETFs is contango. https://personal.vanguard.com/us/content...ontent.jsp

I still use them though, because I'm a degenerate gambler.

Post: #35

If any of you guys have margin accounts and have some cash to burn i suggest the widowmaker spread.

Buy the March NG contract and sell the April NG contract. It is priced for a very mild winter. If there is the slightest bit of freezing this spread will blow out. It has gotten to the point right now that the risk reward is optimal.

Disclaimer: Obviously with the nickname the widowmaker you understand that this spread could blow up your entire account if you dont understand how futures move.

Full disclosure i put this spread on 2 days ago at 0.066 and it is now trading at 0.050.

I am already sitting on $2000 in loses. As you can see from the chart it has had some wild moves already

Post: #36

   

Post: #37

Or the spread i play all the time that is less volatile and yields great profit is the Platinum/Gold spread

Buy 2 April PL contract and sell 1 GC April contract.

I like to buy the spread under $20.00. As of tonight it is hovering around that mark right now.

I have 10 of these going right now and my cost is around $10.00, so i am sitting on some pretty good profit. once it starts moving up past $30 i will unwind my position every $5 increments

Post: #38

   

Post: #39

For 2015, I'm interested to try the stock market. But I don't know shit except basic things. Any reading that would be good for a beginner ?

Post: #40

I have a hunch that there will be a major correction sometime this year. S&P 500 is getting more and more expensive, something has to give.

Post: #41

(12-25-2014 07:19 PM)BostonBMW Wrote:  I signed up for Robinhood -- can't wait to get that access.

I'm definitely jumping in the market again in 2015. I made about 14.35% (gross) return in 2014.

Will be watching this thread closely.

How do you guys calculate annualized return? I mean, it's not as simple as dividing your gains by capital invested, as you usually start with some X amount of money, end the year with Y, but in the meantime you likely were sending additional money to your investment account (which was only earning money through part of the year, so the annualized return will be different), perhaps doing some withdrawals etc.
It gets very tricky to track it all and get the accurate annual return rate.
Another factor is, you cash out only part of your investments by end of the year, so much of your gains are "on paper" only...

Fidelity does pretty nice job calculating time-weighted annualized return for 401(k) account, but does not provide this number for individual investments (where you invest in stock/etf/mf etc. on your own) and that's what the most interesting to me.

Post: #42

I use wikinvest. You input your brokerage account and it tracks it w/fees, dividends, gains, etc

Post: #43

Most people would probably best to just buy index funds (i.e. vanguard). Canadians who are nearer to retirement age may want to look into Canadian Controlled Corporation Dividend Taxation which can be very favourable if it's your main source of income.

Post: #44

Twitter and Blackberry could be good acquisition targets for 2015. I really like strategic companies with depressed prices up to the point that it looks like the company would go bankrupt.

If Twitter drops below a $15 billion valuation they are going to be a target by Google or Microsoft. I will buy a lot at that price. Blackberry is a buy around the $5 billion range. John Chen has a good track record with what he did with Sybase, very good fit for CEO unlike some other various tech companies out there.

2015 will be a wild card for everything else. The capital flight from China, Europe, and South America is helping keep the dollar strong and push up the high end of the real estate market. Miami back and above pre-crash levels is just scary to me. If those capital movements slow down or reverse we could see a 20-50% correction within the next 24 months no matter what move the Fed makes.

For long term investors high quality oil companies will probably do fine over the next 10 years. If you want to bet hard against the dollar being strong by 2025, oil is going to be one of the first things that starts moving up.

I am also keeping an eye on Russian companies but that is a very big wildcard which has 100% downside risk. Something like Yandex getting super cheap may be worth the risk.

Post: #45

(01-03-2015 01:46 PM)babelfish669 Wrote:  Twitter and Blackberry could be good acquisition targets for 2015. I really like strategic companies with depressed prices up to the point that it looks like the company would go bankrupt.

If Twitter drops below a $15 billion valuation they are going to be a target by Google or Microsoft. I will buy a lot at that price. Blackberry is a buy around the $5 billion range. John Chen has a good track record with what he did with Sybase, very good fit for CEO unlike some other various tech companies out there.

2015 will be a wild card for everything else. The capital flight from China, Europe, and South America is helping keep the dollar strong and push up the high end of the real estate market. Miami back and above pre-crash levels is just scary to me. If those capital movements slow down or reverse we could see a 20-50% correction within the next 24 months no matter what move the Fed makes.

For long term investors high quality oil companies will probably do fine over the next 10 years. If you want to bet hard against the dollar being strong by 2025, oil is going to be one of the first things that starts moving up.

I am also keeping an eye on Russian companies but that is a very big wildcard which has 100% downside risk. Something like Yandex getting super cheap may be worth the risk.

100% agree regarding TWTR.
Percentage wise I see it outperforming FB & LNKD.
I see Twitters 2015 looking like Facebooks 2013 run.

They are likely to turn themselves around by improving user base growth and driving up monetization rate.

High Probability a large tech company will take a stake in them additionally.

I'm targetting $55 this year ....with a chance it could make a run above $60 if the market co-operates.

Post: #46

(12-27-2014 07:19 PM)KeepMovingForward Wrote:  Interested in people's thoughts on 3x-ETF's for trading. Direxion Shares and Ultra ProShares are the big names, they are ETF's that use leverage up front to amplify daily returns or losses.

From what I've read they don't track the indices very well because of how they structure everything, and then they have a big expense ratio as well. I think you're better off using options or margin accounts to leverage but obviously this is more work.

I try to limit my market timing and trading to only a small part of my portfolio and keep a more passive balanced approach to the rest. I have been shorting the Yen for a while with the leveraged etf and I'm still holding that position.

Overall I think if you are going to be a bit more active or time the market this year, it's probably worth considering going more international. Price to earnings ratios seem to be much more attractive in the rest of the world than the US. Maybe time to rebalance or up your international/emerging market allocation.

I invest for the long term though so that could be good advice but still may not manifest this year.

Post: #47

@babelfish- whats your thoughts on BP with their Russia exposure?

I am still long WU and ARCP (distressed REIT play backed by largest triple-net commercial lease operator) for 2015.

Post: #48

Just signed up, I'll get access after the first 408,843 do!

Post: #49

god dammit, I want to bet on student loans! I hope the day comes soon.

Post: #50

I'm really young and looking to start investing in stocks. Right now I'm thinking 40-50% into Vanguard S&P, 30% into blue-chip companies, and 20% into companies that I have a good hunch about. I only have about $1000 to invest, should I be more risky? I don't have much to lose.

What is the best discount broker for me to use? Right now Tradeking seems like the best option.