Investing General Discussion

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Khane

Got something right about marriage
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How is it "free money" when it's buying on credit? If you leverage and lose are they trying to say you don't owe anyone anything? Is this the same thing as people mistakenly thinking credit cards are "free money"?
 

Captain Suave

Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
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How is it "free money" when it's buying on credit? If you leverage and lose are they trying to say you don't owe anyone anything? Is this the same thing as people mistakenly thinking credit cards are "free money"?

The article did use the words "what amounts to free money" once, but they were otherwise pretty careful to say "unlimited borrowed money" and the spirit of the piece is definitely realistic about how infinite leverage can easily lead you to lose your shirt.
 

Khane

Got something right about marriage
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The entire article is dubious because it's equating borrowing an unlimited amount of money to a cheat code and acting as if it equates to being your own central bank. It's preposterous. It's almost goading uneducated people into trying it out for themselves. They might as well tell people to just short everything.
 

Captain Suave

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Blog-level journalism and sloppy analogies for sure, but I read that piece as a bit of a chuckle at that guy's exploitation of the system with a while providing sufficient information that this is a bad idea to actually do.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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Yeah this wasnt an article saying "hey go do this cool strat". It was pointing out a flaw in Robinhood that allowed people to expand to nearly unlimited leverage. The guy they mention who did it and shorted Apple (oops) and went broke is gonna find out he owes a bit more than his initial 2k investment.
 

Gravel

Mr. Poopybutthole
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Yeah this wasnt an article saying "hey go do this cool strat". It was pointing out a flaw in Robinhood that allowed people to expand to nearly unlimited leverage. The guy they mention who did it and shorted Apple (oops) and went broke is gonna find out he owes a bit more than his initial 2k investment.
Yeah, I had seen that video a couple days ago. Dude was like $10k in the hole.

That doesn't just disappear. He took on more leverage than his ass could handle, bet wrong, and now owes money.

Could he have bet right and struck it rich? Maybe. But this isn't really much different than gambling.
 

TheRashyman

Golden Knight of the Realm
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I’ve never been much of an investor, but when I see something too good to be true I go all in. I’m not rich by any means so “all in” sometimes is just a few thousand, and currently that is the situation because like the housing talk previously mentioned I did the same and dropped so much money into a remodel of my house, and I want it all back now.

However there are 2 stocks I currently hold in after selling my $7 shares of TCHEY that turned into $42 shares. WKHS and PLUG, I think both are at the forefront or positioned well to make people tons of money over the next 2-3 years, both sit near or under $3 a share.
 

Blazin

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Both are total garbage barely solvent companies. What you’re doing is gambling with penny stocks.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

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If I were to do a study, I would be willing to bet a correlation exists between how close a stock price is to 0 and the amount it is manipulated to benefit a small number of actors.
 

TheRashyman

Golden Knight of the Realm
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PLUG has money behind it (Bezos and interest in making Amazon delivery trucks run on power cells), but it's true about WKHS, it's a gamble on the USPS contract. If they get it it's going to be money, if not well I guess I hope to get out even or a minor loss.
 

Blazin

Creative Title
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DIS is currently my largest stock holding and seriously breaking out the money hats today. Feels wrong they just helped me make enough to pay for my entire neighborhood to have the service for the next 10yrs and I'm not going to sign up :).

I've made over 50% this year on DIS which is just insane to me as it's only my largest holding because it's boring old Disney and I like the slow consistent EPS growth + Div, would never expect it to be top performer.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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DIS is currently my largest stock holding and seriously breaking out the money hats today. Feels wrong they just helped me make enough to pay for my entire neighborhood to have the service for the next 10yrs and I'm not going to sign up :).

I've made over 50% this year on DIS which is just insane to me as it's only my largest holding because it's boring old Disney and I like the slow consistent EPS growth + Div, would never expect it to be top performer.
Yeah DIS is no slouch. Charging $4.25 for a bottle of soda will do that for your bottom line.
 

AladainAF

Best Rabbit
<Gold Donor>
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AMD still tearing it up.

Still holding about 5,000 shares or so. This has been the most wild ride in the market in my life, and even if it crashed to 0, i'd still be ahead based on the batch I sold at $32 a share.

If you invested just 1 month ago, you'd have a 25% return.

1573842740353.png
 

Rathar

<Bronze Donator>
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Heyas! I know there's a ton of you with great (or bad, or shit, or medium or..) advice so I wanted to sift through your recommendations vis a vie..

We just sold a house today and cleared $160k here in Az. After paying off cards, car and investing in our 11 year old's college we're looking at $100kish.
If'n you were 50 what would be an excellent retirement investment, or really weird small chance high yield, or (your opinion here).
I don't want another S & P 500 index fund as we're doing that bigly and I believe that the Trumpcession will hit in 2020 just as it has hit for basically every republican president in their last year of office. Yes I'm stepping on minefields in that last statement but what would you do if you thought you were in this situation?
We -do not want more property-. I ran this house as a very successful AirBnB for a year+ and I don't want to clean toilets anymore.
Always worth asking and Y'all have some nicely cut jibs.
Thanks!
 

Sanrith Descartes

You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
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Heyas! I know there's a ton of you with great (or bad, or shit, or medium or..) advice so I wanted to sift through your recommendations vis a vie..

We just sold a house today and cleared $160k here in Az. After paying off cards, car and investing in our 11 year old's college we're looking at $100kish.
If'n you were 50 what would be an excellent retirement investment, or really weird small chance high yield, or (your opinion here).
I don't want another S & P 500 index fund as we're doing that bigly and I believe that the Trumpcession will hit in 2020 just as it has hit for basically every republican president in their last year of office. Yes I'm stepping on minefields in that last statement but what would you do if you thought you were in this situation?
We -do not want more property-. I ran this house as a very successful AirBnB for a year+ and I don't want to clean toilets anymore.
Always worth asking and Y'all have some nicely cut jibs.
Thanks!
My opinions - Indexing works. Picking stocks is gambling. Bond yields suck at the moment. "High yield" bonds arent high enough to justify the risk.

At 50+ and being near the end of an expansion cycle, ask yourself do you have the years to ride out the downturn in a new investment until the next expansion cycle circles back around before you want/need the cash.

Assuming against indexing, I would look for high quality value companies with strong balance sheets in out of favor sectors. Example - Macy's. Retail is about as out of favor as it gets right now. Its book value with its property portfolio is basically higher than its market cap. Cash flow is strong enough to pay dividend and debt with cash to spare. Its paying almost a 10% yield. That isnt a bad return to ride out the next downturn. Companies like that would be my targets.

Your mileage may vary and past performance is no guarantee of future returns.
 
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TheRashyman

Golden Knight of the Realm
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If you’re unsure or just not confident in much, just holding your cash is always an option too, especially if you have other investments going already. Mark Cuban once said sometimes the best investment is just holding onto your cash.
 
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sleevedraw

Revolver Ocelot
<Bronze Donator>
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Heyas! I know there's a ton of you with great (or bad, or shit, or medium or..) advice so I wanted to sift through your recommendations vis a vie..

We just sold a house today and cleared $160k here in Az. After paying off cards, car and investing in our 11 year old's college we're looking at $100kish.
If'n you were 50 what would be an excellent retirement investment, or really weird small chance high yield, or (your opinion here).
I don't want another S & P 500 index fund as we're doing that bigly and I believe that the Trumpcession will hit in 2020 just as it has hit for basically every republican president in their last year of office. Yes I'm stepping on minefields in that last statement but what would you do if you thought you were in this situation?
We -do not want more property-. I ran this house as a very successful AirBnB for a year+ and I don't want to clean toilets anymore.
Always worth asking and Y'all have some nicely cut jibs.
Thanks!

Rather than looking at a completely passive index, you could also look at low or minimum volatility ETFs like JMIN, USMV, SPLV, XMLV, EFAV. They focus on stocks whose price changes the least. Low volatility makes volatility the #1 focus, while minimum volatility considers volatility in combination with other factors. Lower volatility stocks will still lose during a recession, but they will lose far less than the broader market. They also tend to be older, more established, dividend-paying companies, so you'll also earn some income on the side.

Why no talk on gold as another option?

It's an option, sure, but gold doesn't necessarily do well during recessions, either. The only scenario where I personally think gold makes sense is a doomsday scenario where Civil War II starts; USD is still the de facto world currency and is going to be for the foreseeable future barring dissolution of the Union; even then, post-USA superstates might decide to jointly keep it around. Its closest competitors are the Euro (Europe is dying a slow demographic death and has a number of countries that are still one step removed from insolvency), the pound sterling (won't be stable until the UK decides what the fuck it's going to do vis a vis Brexit), the yen (lol, 223.8% debt-to-GDP ratio), and the RMB (China makes Japan look like a paragon of fiscal responsibility.)

Maybe it makes sense to keep 3-5% as a hedge, but if you want to make a market uncertainty bet, why not just buy Bitcoin or an inverse S&P ETF? Both are just as speculative.
 
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