• LAVA Moderator: Mysterier

the market: stocks, bonds, options, whatever

green day!

sold KNDI @ $12.67 USD -- 3 dollars short of covering commission. probably stupid, but KNDI is volatile. i've was hundreds up (for a flash) and then hundreds down. almost cheered in my office when i saw my trade had executed. i think i can reestablish a better entry point. up 9% from previous close when i sold. up 8.43% at close today. it either continues to rocket or plummets tomorrow and monday. i like KNDI. as a possibly profitable investment, and as a company. if it plummets, i will begin looking for a new entry point. long-term, there is money. unfortunately a funeral starts at 9:30am EST tomorrow -- inconsiderate.

bought PG @ $77.12 USD (with commission, which i always include) -- i am not thrilled with this price. yesterday i missed my entry point by 10 cents. that entry point was like a $1.50 cheaper than what i got today. not a huge difference, but more than enough to piss me off. doesn't matter, i'll make money on it still. just a little less. and with a stock like PG, i am not (that) afraid to develop my holding on a dip.

looking for an entry point for PG. it's currently ex div, which is dandy by me. i put in an order at $78.4, and barely missed it. maybe for the best. as i write this, last ah trade was $78.4 -- tradeking only facilitates ah trades until 5pm est. maybe it will dip a little further tomorrow.
can't be too pissed.


i dislike the people on investing forums. or any message board other than bluelight. it would take like 5 people for this thread to work and could develop from there. SO mods, i swear i will give this thread up if it doesn't catch soon.
 
I've had a lot of shares of Johnson & Johnson and Energizer for years, sometimes I don't even look how they are doing sometimes for months. Also received 500 shares of Roundy's Inc. for a Xmas gift and I've been watching that one lately. It's a food distributor and a high end grocery store (Mariano's) which is starting to get a foot hold in the chicago market. With Dominick's (major grocery chain) closing up shop in chicago these past couple months Mariano's is taking over quite a few of their locations and has long term plans for 40-50 new stores here. Hasn't been doing great but I'll see what happens.
 
Is it better(safer?) to invest in multi-national conglomerates than domestic stocks? I'd like to start working on my portfolio once I have a reasonable amount of cash-flow, but I've never taken a finance class before.
 
hopefully xmas of 2012, not '13. fun gift, either year.

i'm pretty sure a domestic stock can be a multi-national conglomerate. for example, PG -- i live in the US, making it a domestic stock for me. PG is certainly a multi-national conglomerate. are you thinking of something like VGK, which is an ETF that holds stocks that were incorporated in a variety of nations? but because it's an ETF, you can buy and trade the package like a stock.

foreign markets are going to affect just about any holding you have. directly or indirectly. companies will provide a breakdown of which nations they directly receive revenue from from along with other investor info. just about any company that is not exporting product would be kinda scary, but greater risk means greater possible reward -- KNDI does not export from china. it's just a matter of how geographically diverse a stock's revenue is. yes, a holding with international revenue is likely to be less responsive to one nation's economy. in that sense, there can be reduced risk.

or that's what i know. very little.
 
^ I'm a market noob, I couldn't comprehend much of what you just said :(
I jut know its important to make your money work for you, instead of the other way around.

In my hometown there are a lot of microbrews with stock options, maybe that would be a good stepping stone?
 
I'm going to pretend buy twitter stock in this thread and see where that leads me after an almost 25% drop in price today (50.03)

500 shares, show me the money!
 
re-reading it, i can understand why. ETFs are like mutual funds but traded on a stock exchange. so their price is based on trades. but they hold a variety of stocks. an ETF like vanguard FTSE europe ETF -- NASDAQ ticker VGK -- holds shares of stocks that are domestic to different countries. i guess. if domestic just means where the company was incorporated.

stock options are different than stock shares. kinda sounds like you might be talking about just directly investing or maybe an employee benefit. and most people would say you should not start with small-company stocks. i personally am moving toward larger, steadier or less volatile, dividend paying stocks with the idea it will keep me safer as i learn. these are huge companies, like P&G, johnson & johnson, pfizer, etc. those are just examples of "blue chip" stocks traded on an american exchange.

you should start off with the basics of how trading shares on a stock exchange works. theres all kinds of stuff like dividends, shorting, call & put options, stops, limits, stop limit orders, bids, asks, after hours, etc. a lot of it you may decide you just want to stay away from as you learn. i won't be shorting stocks or trading options tomorrow. like miscbrahh suggested, investopedia is a good resource. will give you a start of what you need to look at and how, concerning financials as well as investor-specific measurements like EPS and volume.

edit:
holy smokes, twitter was crushed today. on an up day. didn't realize. oh, and it opened that low!
 
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The thing is, most people who invest for themselves are not "day traders". The concept of investment that is taught is really just analyzing a broad range of stocks, looking for the better performers in the industry vs. the weaker performers, and then riding the market as a whole over a longer period. Stocks that are driven by speculation should be approached with a good deal of caution considering the very real possibility of their value collapsing. You work hard for your money-- The last thing you want to do is lose it.

Stocks are rated in their level of risk relative to the market and relative to bonds or T-bills. T-bills are considered to have very low risk because the US Government, when push comes to shove, will pay its bills. Stocks are more risky but provide a higher potential return, which can be thought of as a reward for bearing the risk. The trick is to minimize that risk while attaining a return greater than less risky investments such as T-bills (and hopefully on par with or beating the indexes). The bottom line to all of this though is that you are trying to steadily grow your money, not expose it all to a high level of risk.

Since you were asking about entry strategies, I'd say that I'd personally consider investing right now if I had a better job and more savings, but would watch carefully over the next few weeks to see how this market "correction" goes. There is a lot of unease in the market right now and considering that I'm looking to ride the market as a whole (and potentially beat it by choosing its best performers), the last thing I want to do is hop onto is a month like the January we just had. I'd sit out the next week or two just due to the recent volatility to see if anything big happens and then probably move in with stocks of companies I am familiar with (the more I know about these companies, the better). I'd come up with what I feel is a good price for each stock and wait until I got that price (or acceptably close to it) and then begin buying as it dips below this point (where I feel the stock is undervalued based on its price history).
 
i was a big fan of that movie when it came out. wanted to re-watch, but not on instant. dvd queue is long.

thefuck is presidents' day?
 
I haven't read one post in this whole threat that outlines the efficient market hypothesis. Selecting individual stocks to trade on your own is asinine, and it will almost certainly cause you to underperform the broader market. Personally, I'm a BS in accounting in May of 2014, but I started trading stocks when I was 15 out of a guardian's account, so I have some experience with the stock market. What they teach you in accounting is that you prepare the financial statements that investors and creditors ultimately rely on in making resource allocation decisions. This is bullshit. Let me tell you how it is. Back in the 90s, stock prices actually reflected a company's financial statements to a significant degree. Nowadays, it's a foolish idea to invest in the stock market, in my personal opinion. Here's why. Adjusted for inflation, stocks return something like 6-9% per annum. Some people dispute these figures, but that's another story. Anyway, it hurts me to see unsophisticated aspiring investors talk about the stock in individual companies. Trust me, you will get burned up bad if you select your own stocks to invest in. For starters, you're not going to have an adequate number of companies in your portfolio to mitigate some risks. Did you know you should have a minimum of 30 companies in your portfolio (ballpark). Let me reiterate, the efficient market hypothesis says that all info. publicly available is priced in a stock. In other words, doing research wouldn't net you any benefit...

I'd rather not get into the nuances of it. Suffice it that there are large institutional investors and analysts whose job it is to dissect publicly traded companies. You will absolutely, positively, fail to yield more useful decisions on which to base your data. People think stock investing is easy. If you don't have a degree in finance and/or accounting and actual experience trading stocks at some level, you're setting yourself up to lose money. Trading stocks frequently generally means you'll never be able to hold a stock through long enough to qualify for long term capital gains tax treatment. Not to mention, trading fees will eat a chunk out of your principal.

Guys, the stock market is rigged by hedge funds and large institutional investors! The stock market is plagued by mysterious happenstances like flash crashes. Cutting back to the first point, do yourself a favor and look up SAC Capital. Learn about the stock market. How does it work? What are market makers? What are exchanges? What are stockbrokers? What is the effect of high frequency electronic trading?

Sorry, I'm faded. Or I'd go into great detail about why it doesn't make sense for you and me (individual investors) to be in the stock market. And you'll say bullshit: I saw xyz stock at a price and now it's at b price. If I had bought at a and sold at b I could have made such and such... Or, a more pertinent example, you'd note the performance of the broad market indices during the year 2013. To which I could give you plenty of reasons why neither of those examples matter. This will have to suffice for now.
 
this thread is not just about the trading individual stocks on exchanges. are you saying that you think index and/or mutual funds might be a better investment for those who do not make a career of trading?
 
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sold KNDI @ $12.67 USD -- 3 dollars short of covering commission. probably stupid, but KNDI is volatile. i've was hundreds up (for a flash) and then hundreds down. almost cheered in my office when i saw my trade had executed. i think i can reestablish a better entry point. up 9% from previous close when i sold. up 8.43% at close today. it either continues to rocket or plummets tomorrow and monday. i like KNDI. as a possibly profitable investment, and as a company. if it plummets, i will begin looking for a new entry point. long-term, there is money. unfortunately a funeral starts at 9:30am EST tomorrow -- inconsiderate.
i can't watch a ticker all day because i am at my real job from (market) open to close. i missed my good-to-cancel reentry by like 15 cents. holy smokes. high of $17.47 today. apparently scared money doesn't make money. i'm learning a few lessons. gonna be slick as fuck at this by year's end.

though really i haven't learned. because i was saying this same thing at mid $13 and then mid $14. instead of getting back in. because i am so afraid this is a spike. yeah, there's new support. but i see the ground at $14.3 now, not $16.5. this all might be just that it caught mainstream attention. i do not deny it is a cult stock. i was tipped when it was so good. it's becoming a little popular, a little grounded for a cult stock. though i think a good deal of the price is projection, i think that projection is accurate. can't wait until i hear how much i could of made in the buyout.

CNDO is my baby right now. already cute as a button, she's gonna grow up so big and strong.
 
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^they and i bought too soon. but i doubled down last week when oil was upper $30s, and i'm quite pleased with that purchase so far ($45.65 - $48.42 today). i'm surprised with the movement given the expectation of lifting the sanction on iran. maybe the effects of that are not expected to be felt for some time.

it's a crazy time in the market. record losses and gains beating everything since 2008. obviously no one knows where the bottom is and when it's turning around, but i think it's a good time to start buying. picked up some $DIS and $DNKN yesterday. everyone be sure to go see the new Star Wars.


I'm going to pretend buy twitter stock in this thread and see where that leads me after an almost 25% drop in price today (50.03)

500 shares, show me the money!
didn't work out for you. currently $28.21 and has been pretty consistently down from $50. you did have two opportunities to get out around even, and one of those was at the one year mark.
 
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it's a crazy time in the market. record losses and gains beating everything since 2008. obviously no one knows where the bottom is and when it's turning around

that's just the usual analyst FUD, look at the multi-year charts and you'll see that a recent flash crash was just a correction to the long-term average.

i've been following commodities a while and the price action routinely defies technical and even fundamental analysis. i think most of the money tied up in commodity derivatives is purely for hedging, anything else would be completely batshit.
 
A sweet correction in CHF/JPY signalled a low-risk buy, if there's a repeat of January's spike then I shall be a happy mutt. FX rules, stawks droolz :p

NSFW:

3iKtH3W.jpg

 
Fed stayed the rate hike, now we wait and see just how bad this dumbass move hurts confidence in USD
 
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