Post: #151

(03-09-2015 02:56 PM)Sourcecode Wrote:  First come first serve
I have an extra invite for the Robinhood app

Can you do GTC stoploss orders on Robinhood?

Post: #152

(03-10-2015 10:24 AM)DJ-Matt Wrote:  I predict the watch will be a turd, the time to buy apple stock might be 6 months after it comes out. Not every Apple product is a win, the graph above points out AppleTV.

I think the watch is a precursor to implantable computers and smaller inear devices that will automatically be linked to the mobile platform, eliminating the phone completely.

I'm old fashioned and won't get one but I think its a move in the future direction.

After mobile watches we'll have mobile rings and then finally implantable mobile devices.

Post: #153

Can someone help me. Came across an interesting article. Wouldn't mind inventing some cash in these companies assuming they have stock

https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/undergoing-...79583.html

Anyway to find out who makes the stuff and ticker symbol?

Post: #154

(03-11-2015 09:17 PM)chyamor Wrote:  Can someone help me. Came across an interesting article. Wouldn't mind inventing some cash in these companies assuming they have stock

https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/undergoing-...79583.html

Anyway to find out who makes the stuff and ticker symbol?

Its pretty easy to find using Google.

For example DigniCaps are made by a Swedish company called Dignitana. They are listed on the Stockholm NASDAQ :

http://www.dignicap.com/about-us/

http://www.nasdaqomxnordic.com/aktier/mi...=Dignitana

Post: #155

I was able to find that one, but cant buy here in the US. Was hoping the other ones might be US based or at least something I can buy with my td ameritrade

Post: #156

That the only company? Pretty impressive if they have patents all locked up.

Post: #157

I hate to be the fun killer, but it needs to be said.

Unless you're willing to put significant effort into trading, that is make it a full time or at least serious part time job just park your money in low cost index funds and forget about it. Over the long term you'll outperform most of the population, most of the "professional" money managers, and certainly most of the dudes here who think they know how to trade.

Seriously almost everyone who thinks they can get into trading ends up either losing money or severely under performing the S&P 500 because of trading costs, losing trades, bad tax planning, and high fund expenses. You better have a really good reason to think you're smarter than everyone else (Hint: you probably aren't).

Post: #158

(03-11-2015 10:38 PM)forever_beta Wrote:  I hate to be the fun killer, but it needs to be said.

Unless you're willing to put significant effort into trading, that is make it a full time or at least serious part time job just park your money in low cost index funds and forget about it. Over the long term you'll outperform most of the population, most of the "professional" money managers, and certainly most of the dudes here who think they know how to trade.

Yup, definitely a fun killer.

Trading is fun. That's why we do it.

It's like game: the chase is more fun than the kill.

Post: #159

If you are going to buy index funds, why not just buy shares of Berkshire Hathaway or Fairfax Financial Holdings. They've outperformed the index by a large margin over a 30 year period.

The only reason I'm hesitant to buy Berkshire Hathaway (Type B) shares is because they are trading at 1.4x book value and Buffett is at the age where you never know what will happen to him.

One of the reasons people may choose not to buy index funds right now is simply because they want to have defensive stocks in their portfolios.

Most of the people who are performing way below market returns are the people who are frequently trading. Plus, one of the things enjoyable in life is buying stocks. Buying Vanguard is a little vanilla after a while. Perhaps people would be best suited to have a 50/50 split. I have about 15-20% in Vanguard index funds, then the vast majority is in Blue Chip Canadian Stocks with a couple America buy forever type stocks (Mastercard and Apple) in my case. Index funds are good but one of the important things for me is to keep my dividend rate at above 3%. This is because dividends are taxed lightly in Canada especially if you have no income other than dividends.

If you can reach the point where your dividend income is enough to live off of abroad, you can basically be giving yourself a nice raise each year when the blue chips raise their dividends. I could do this buying dividend index funds as well but the Canadian market is way overweighted in Financials and Energy. Anyone who bought a Canadian Dividend Fund before oil crashed would have got slaughtered. (Atleast temporarily) By buying individual stocks I can keep my weightings a bit more reasonable.

Imagine being 40 with 2 million in dividend stocks yielding 3%. As an example, assume they raise dividends 6% / year on average. If you don't touch the principle you'll have 120k income at 52. At 64, 240k. At 76, 480k, if you make it to 88, 960k. I'm sure inflation will devour a lot of that but it's easy to see the value of dividends in the long run.

I agree though buying shares in companies where you can't understand what it is they do is likely a recipe for disaster. Buying index funds also makes sense for people with relatively low capital as they'd be unable to diversify enough otherwise.

Post: #160

(03-11-2015 11:14 PM)monster Wrote:  Trading is fun. That's why we do it.

The only purpose of trading / investing should be maximizing net wealth at a given time horizon. If you can achieve that and still have fun doing it, perhaps a career in wall street is where you should be. You'll make a lot more money on management fees with infinitely less risk (losing your current job vs losing most/all of your net wealth) managing other peoples money.

There are much better ways to have fun with your money. I'd rather spend my time and money on travel, education, hobbies, and fucking girls than sitting in front of the computer jerking off in the markets thinking I'm clever but actually earning pitiful returns on my capital for the amount of time spent.

If most professionals doing this as their full time career can't beat the market than how can a few hobbyists who read a couple of articles on the internet and trade a few hours a week hope to? I'm not arguing that markets are efficient (I believe EMH, along with the majority of academic finance is crap), just that most people are not going to be successful traders.

Its the moms and pops, the individual traders that feed liquidity and losses into the market for the hedge fund machine to extract on the other end.

If you read enough finance literature everything I'm saying is repeated over and over again ad nauseum. Go ask Warren Buffet for investing advice and he'll tell you the same thing, put your money in the S&P 500 and go do something else.

Post: #161

Warren buffet is the biggest hypocrite in finance. A guy who became a billionaire due to trading telling others not to trade? Someone who says corporations should be taxed more but who's own company is one of the least taxed in the country? hahaha

Its cool though: if you don't have what it takes and have no tolerance for risk then don't trade. We're not all built alike though brother.

Most importantly, institutional trading should not - under any circumstances - be compared to individual trading. Individuals have the luxury of exiting even very large positions (~1,000 shares) easily without moving the market. If we hit a stop then boom we're traded out. Insitutions cannot due this, which is one reason why they don't beat the market. With proper stops in place you can be wrong most of the time and as long as you're right just 5-10% of the time and let your winners run you'll still come out ahead (credit: William O'neill)

I've found that those who always so "don't trade, buy an index fund" are usually those who have never traded to begin with, or only those who've managed to lose. #winning

Post: #162

(03-12-2015 08:03 AM)monster Wrote:  Warren buffet is the biggest hypocrite in finance. A guy who became a billionaire due to trading telling others not to trade hahaha

He's not being a hypocrite. Warren Buffet does this as main career. He's not logging into ETrade after getting home from his day job. Also Berkshire buys, sells, and manages whole companies. That's quite a bit different than just trading shares. Buffet has connections to make deals that you and I will never have access to.

Buffet puts his money where is mouth is:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-...2014-03-13

Quote:Its cool though: if you don't have what it takes and have no tolerance for risk then don't trade. We're not all built alike though brother.

I have a very high tolerance for risk that I understand. My time horizon is retirement (30+ years) so I'm 100% in stock index funds. I don't waste time on bonds which only serve as a drag on performance.

Quote:Why are you so averse to trading? It's usually those who have not seen decent gains, not had time to figure out teasing, those who made our decisions and lost their shirt, or those with no money who talk the "just go the index fund" route.

I'd say its quite different. Many famous traders often end up taking huge losses at first until they figure out what they're doing and then start making money. Also don't forget about survivorship bias. We only hear the story of the 100 winners, not the 10000 losers. Finally, in many cases we're never quite sure whether a particular trader's success has been due to skill or luck.

If I'm going to commit the necessary time and energy (a lot) to trading stocks then I need to beat the market index in order to justify the effort. Indexing can you a very nice return for doing nothing at all. That's a pretty good deal if you ask me. I don't trade my own money because if I want to spend that time building wealth it would be better spent growing my business (which happens to be related to finance) and increasing my income.

Post: #163

I believe RobinHood is now open to all, the iOS update I got this morning seems to hint at it. Either way if you want an invite I still have all of mine.

Post: #164

(03-12-2015 08:33 AM)forever_beta Wrote:  blah blah blah

Well this is the trading thread. If you're anti-trading then GTFO

Post: #165

You do realize you can buy shares of Berkshire Hathaway (B series) for $144.10.

Post: #166

Got in on some LL, 100 shares. Lotto play back to $60-$70

Post: #167

I never got the whole indexing fad for the S&P500. Its actually pretty stupid. Why pick 500 of random stocks that some committee chose. If you want to indexing properly, you index the Russel 1000 or the Wilshire 5000. Thats a TRUE market aggregate.

There are some companies in the SP500 that are selling at crazy high valuations or are hyper-cyclical that I would NEVER put in my portfolio. i.e American Tower Corp or Encana or Adobe.

For those who want a leg up, read this guide. Its from 2013, but the fundamantal businesss doesn't change much from year to year. Plus you can find what you like/understand and keep a shopping list.

http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Poors-500...0071803270

@chaymor- thats a huge gamble bro. There is a fundamental business and brand impairment at play here. Good luck.

Post: #168

Last week, I pulled the trigger on Michael Kors

1) Near 52 week low
2) 16 P/E (6% yield), growing revenue at 50% yoy, operating margin of 30%. If you strip out cash, its closer to 7% yield.
3) Bestsellers across the board from Macys to Nordstroms
4) Brand expansion into Asia and S. America
5) ZERO DEBT AND 1B in CASH!!!!

I think its a pure luxury opportunity play that people are writing off. I believe its a 3-4 bagger. Proceed at your own risk

Post: #169

Looks like European stock is doing amazingly well this year. I invested in STXX ETF which is supposed to mimic STOXX 600 index (Europe's equivalent of S&P 500 more or less), but unfortunately the returns are very different from the actual STOXX 600.
Just compare 1 year charts:
STXX ETF: https://screener.fidelity.com/ftgw/etf/g...mbols=STXX
STOXX 600 index: http://www.stoxx.com/indices/index_infor...ymbol=SXXP

I always thought the purpose of index ETFs is to pick exactly same stock as the index and thus mimic it almost 100%, but that does not seem to be the case here.
I was looking at other European ETFs on fidelity and cannot find anything what would have returns similar to the actual STOXX 600...

Do you guys know why that may be the case and do you know of any ETF which exactly follows STOXX 600?

Post: #170

(03-16-2015 01:31 PM)kufu Wrote:  Looks like European stock is doing amazingly well this year. I invested in STXX ETF which is supposed to mimic STOXX 600 index (Europe's equivalent of S&P 500 more or less), but unfortunately the returns are very different from the actual STOXX 600.
Just compare 1 year charts:
STXX ETF: https://screener.fidelity.com/ftgw/etf/g...mbols=STXX
STOXX 600 index: http://www.stoxx.com/indices/index_infor...ymbol=SXXP

I always thought the purpose of index ETFs is to pick exactly same stock as the index and thus mimic it almost 100%, but that does not seem to be the case here.
I was looking at other European ETFs on fidelity and cannot find anything what would have returns similar to the actual STOXX 600...

Do you guys know why that may be the case and do you know of any ETF which exactly follows STOXX 600?

The reason for the difference in returns is because the STXX ETF is not currency hedged, priced in US dollars, and the Euro has fallen so much in the past year.

If you think the Euro will continue to fall, a good way to "buy Europe" is with one of the currency hedged ETFs - I like DBGR or HEDJ.

Post: #171

I'm about to do a complete 100% restructure of my investment portfolio. Right now its a mix of medium risk-high reward with a blend of equity-bond (low risk/medium reward). I am about to aggresively position it w/only distressed equities and equities growing rapidly.

Right now my portfolio is -20% to +100%. About to rebalance to make it more like -40% to +300%. I am in my mid 20s with very decent monthly cashflow, so I don't recommend this for people who live off their nest egg.

I get a kick out of posting, because its a good record of my thought process when I look back through the time and see how my mentality and thought process have progressed. I'll throw it up when I have my final allocations finalized. Not a believer of only posting good and skipping the bad.

Post: #172

That makes sense DVY, I recently moved 100% into equities as well and am a similar age.

Post: #173

Its not just the "you are young, stick it in 100% equity. " Its a combo of debt being at historic lows (def. debt bubble) w/ historic high of SP500 (have you seen what most stocks are trading at in SP500?. Read the SP500 book I posted above) with occasional stocks that are trading at 10-20% owner earnings yield (add back paper-depreciation/amortization and deferred tax costs and account for treasury share-buybacks equity) and some trading at historic low book-to-value prices. Its a total mindf-ck.

I want to do a hybrid strategy of Walter Schlosss (deep value, 50 cent dollars, medium turnover) and Joel Greenblatt (special situations and event driven arbitrage w/higher turnover).

This article really crystallized my thought process and made me a do a re-eval on my investing thoughts...
http://basehitinvesting.com/portfolio-tu...-concept/.

John Huber also in other articles delineates how Buffett has changed over the years and how his philosophy is actually optimal for large investors but sub-par for small investors

Post: #174

Any suggestions on how to play MGM leading up to May 2nd fight? Wouldnt be surprised to see a pop to 23-24 based on fight hype end of the month.

Post: #175

(03-11-2015 11:14 PM)lavidaloca Wrote:  Most of the people who are performing way below market returns are the people who are frequently trading. Plus, one of the things enjoyable in life is buying stocks. Buying Vanguard is a little vanilla after a while. Perhaps people would be best suited to have a 50/50 split. I have about 15-20% in Vanguard index funds, then the vast majority is in Blue Chip Canadian Stocks with a couple America buy forever type stocks (Mastercard and Apple) in my case. Index funds are good but one of the important things for me is to keep my dividend rate at above 3%. This is because dividends are taxed lightly in Canada especially if you have no income other than dividends.

Do you know a good stock screener for Canadian stocks? I can buy them in my brokerage, but their non-US stock/ETF screeners suck. I've been looking into the Canadian economy because one mistake I think some investors make is assuming all countries are similar and we each have our strengths and weaknesses.

I stumbled across one Canadian company and purchased it (at the price, dividend yield of 8.3%), but the CAD went off a cliff against the USD (down 10% since purchase), while the stock is only down 4% since purchase (meaning, it's up 6% considering the currency move). But I like the yield of 8.3% and there seems to be strong trading support at .15 above the price I bought it for, so I'll see if that continues to hold.

All this being written, I agree with Mish that I think Canada will enter a recession, which should open to the door to strong buying opportunities. Recessions are like seeing everything at the store 50% off - great buying times.