BB1
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RE: 2017 Stock Market thread
(02-27-2019 02:25 PM)Running Turtles Wrote: I actually sold my TTD holdings at triple the purchase price (~$160). I realized that I didn't know enough about the business and industry to find a better selling point, so I took the win as it was. Regretting that now, of course.
Selling a great, founder led company like The Trade Desk, after it has doubled or tripled is why most investors fail to beat the market. Successful investors add to their winners if the company is crushing it.
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| 02-27-2019 06:58 PM |
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H1N1
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RE: 2017 Stock Market thread
Running Turtles, I wouldn't regret selling out for triple the purchase price. Under any circumstances that is a very reasonable result, especially if you used reasonable capital, and you tend to cut your losses in good time on other stocks you buy. Everyone regrets selling out while the stock is still rising, right up until the point it crashes. I'm not saying that TTD is going to crash, it's not a stock I've followed and I'm not able to offer any kind of informed opinion on it as an individual pick. What I would say to anyone betting on the market is that if they can put 30k across 3 investments, lose 1k on each of two, and make an additional 20k over the course of a year or so, then that should be regarded as a successful result, a result you'd have taken at the start, and a nice chunk of capital to make the next 3 investments on (or however many you can manage/tolerate. It's a long game. The aim is always to sell out before the crash. Sometimes you'll be way too soon, but in my view those times will be drastically outweighed by the times you took a good profit in line with your expectations, and kept your loses to a minimum.
If, as you say, you didn't really understand what you were doing, and lucked into a 3x initial investment return, then that is fortuitous beyond belief, and there is no cause for regret. Especially if you aren't in a position to make ongoing assessments of the stock you're invested in. That's no reflection on BB1's advice here, which was undoubtedly correct in this case.
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| 03-13-2019 06:07 PM |
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Running Turtles
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RE: 2017 Stock Market thread
(03-13-2019 06:07 PM)H1N1 Wrote: Running Turtles, I wouldn't regret selling out for triple the purchase price. Under any circumstances that is a very reasonable result, especially if you used reasonable capital, and you tend to cut your losses in good time on other stocks you buy. Everyone regrets selling out while the stock is still rising, right up until the point it crashes. I'm not saying that TTD is going to crash, it's not a stock I've followed and I'm not able to offer any kind of informed opinion on it as an individual pick. What I would say to anyone betting on the market is that if they can put 30k across 3 investments, lose 1k on each of two, and make an additional 20k over the course of a year or so, then that should be regarded as a successful result, a result you'd have taken at the start, and a nice chunk of capital to make the next 3 investments on (or however many you can manage/tolerate. It's a long game. The aim is always to sell out before the crash. Sometimes you'll be way too soon, but in my view those times will be drastically outweighed by the times you took a good profit in line with your expectations, and kept your loses to a minimum.
If, as you say, you didn't really understand what you were doing, and lucked into a 3x initial investment return, then that is fortuitous beyond belief, and there is no cause for regret. Especially if you aren't in a position to make ongoing assessments of the stock you're invested in. That's no reflection on BB1's advice here, which was undoubtedly correct in this case.
I definitely lucked out and all due to BB1's advice. It's not an industry I follow at all normally. You are absolutely correct in that a 3x return is not something to be disappointed about, it was just "bad" timing since I sold less than a week before it would have been a ~4x return.
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| 03-17-2019 02:07 PM |
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Lampwick
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RE: 2017 Stock Market thread
(03-20-2019 05:32 PM)jbkunt2 Wrote: With Lyft and Uber... I can't help but think there is a risk that the company that truly cracks self-driving cars could muscle in one day and kill them on price.
That's possible. I think the biggest risk to both companies is that self-driving cars never arrive (or arrive decades in the future). Right now, the prevailing attitude is "of course there will be self-driving cars, they're right around the corner". I'm extremely skeptical of that. Even Google is struggling with the problem.
Lyft and Uber's ridiculous valuations ($20B and $100B, respectively) are priced with the assumption that self-driving technology will save them from their absurd cash burn. I will happily bet against that. At this point, it's a bunch of dumb Saudi money that's trying to cash out.
If you can get into the IPO, it's usually gravy, especially for hyped ones like this. If you can't get into the IPO, then it's much riskier, and I would avoid buying on the open market.
The first headline is always something like, "X company gains 40% on first day of IPO". The investment banks engineer the IPO to pop on the first day so that retail investors are drawn in. With overhyped IPOs like this, you want to be the one selling at the 40% gain, rather than the person buying it.
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| 03-20-2019 08:02 PM |
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croquet
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RE: 2017 Stock Market thread
(03-21-2019 11:16 AM)godzilla Wrote: ^First, you cant lose potential returns... If you're a long term investor. It makes sense to hold MDB. Theyre are a leader and have a great product. However, if you're buying Mongo as an investment and not a trade at today's date. You're easily paying for a very expensive stock at over 20x sales with no profits.
Yes you can. Opportunity cost is a real cost.
I get what you are saying, but it's a different point that what you are making in your original post ^.
Also to address the overvaluation point you are saying, well there was this ecommerce company who didn't make a profit and traded at a retarded sales multiple as well. You might have heard of it, it's called Amazon.
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| 03-21-2019 01:08 PM |
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Lampwick
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RE: 2017 Stock Market thread
(03-21-2019 11:40 AM)jbkunt2 Wrote: Lyft and Uber's main competive advantage stopping other well-resourced players stepping in is... There fleet of drivers.
Sort of. Their competitive advantages are their logistics, their capability for handling regulations in many different jurisdictions, and their brand names. The drivers are a commodity, and they will quickly switch to whichever platform pays slightly higher. Overall I agree though, their competitive advantages are really weak, with relatively low barriers to entry. There is virtually no network effect with these businesses, even though their valuations have network effect priced in.
Quote:When that fleet of drivers is replacing by driverless cars (Waymo/Google the current leader here)... I don't see what prevents Google from launching there own app for their own cars and seizing market share fast. Likely by undercutting prices.
Google generally sucks at anything that can't be highly automated. There are a lot of messy issues when dealing with so many different jurisdictions and customers. Google likely doesn't want to deal with this, which is why they have invested in Lyft and are looking to partner instead. Google can commoditize the rideshare networks and just license the technology.
I agree with your overall point though. If driverless cars never arrive, Uber/Lyft are fucked. If driverless cars do arrive, it will likely be from the efforts of another company, and they could also be fucked.
Quote:Wouldn't touch those IPOs with a barge pole.
I'm just trying to get in for a quick pop. Which is the spirit of this forum after all.
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| 03-22-2019 10:37 PM |
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Lampwick
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RE: 2017 Stock Market thread
I highly recommend using M1 Finance for building stock portfolios. You create a portfolio of "pies" on their system, add stocks to each pie, and set percentage weights for each stock. You can then buy/sell dollar amounts from the pie, and M1 will automatically trade the individual stocks to match the weights you set. You can also manually rebalance the pie. You can set up a regularly scheduled transfer from your bank to dollar cost average into your portfolio as well.
Best of all, trades are free. Trades are done automatically during a predetermined trading window. This is not a brokerage with a bunch of trading features, it's only for building portfolios and rebalancing.
Their optional features to secure your account are better than their competitors.
Managing a diversified portfolio of stocks can be time consuming and expensive. Also, ETF selection is quite limited in some cases. For example, I wasn't able to find a Cloud SaaS ETF that I liked. So I used M1 to build my own:
Adobe (ADBE)
Alibaba (BABA)
Alteryx (AYX)
Amazon (AMZN)
Atlassian (TEAM)
Coupa (COUP)
Docusign (DOCU)
Elastic (ESTC)
LiveRamp (RAMP)
LogMeIn (LOGM)
Microsoft (MSFT)
New Relic (NEWR)
Okta (OKTA)
Palo Alto Networks (PANW)
PayPal (PYPL)
Salesforce (CRM)
Smartsheet (SMAR)
Splunk (SPLK)
The Trade Desk (TTD)
Twilio (TWLO)
VMWare (VMW)
Workday (WDAY)
ZScaler (ZS)
Zuora (ZUO)
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| 03-23-2019 12:13 PM |
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