Stock traders on TGO

[No_0ne]

5 hours ago, DaveTN said:

But to hear you guys tell it my 23% return in a year from Edward Jones was terrible.

As long as you're happy with them as your financial advisor, that's all that matters.  I pulled my father's estate money out of Edward Jones due to an inattentive manager who failed to follow through on some account changes we had already agreed on, not necessarily because of poor returns (the money has done a lot better since I moved it out but in riskier investments than what my father had it in).

[gregintenn]

23 hours ago, DaveTN said:

 

But to hear you guys tell it my 23% return in a year from Edward Jones was terrible. So I may consider having a local invest some of that money that is just sitting. Hence… how do you choose someone?

 

That isn't what I meant. 23% beats several of my picks. I just posted the index fund as an example. None of us will get these returns reliably. This has been an exceptional year.

[btq96r]

Good time to refresh this thread for folks to do an azimuth check with the market in a bit of a malaise.  Anyone looking for a port in the storm?  If you loved you some Netflix, probably don't as much after yesterday.

I'm still holding onto my mutual funds for the long term plan, and am down somewhere between 13-15% YTD, with a loss for a 12 month period.  The stock hits I'm brushing off as air coming out of the balloon, and it ain't done yet with debt not cheap for fueling growth.  Gotta happen so we can take better steps forward.  It's my bond fund I keep cussing at the losses for.  I use that to hold money for a down payment on a house (fading dream thanks to rate hikes) and my next car fund.  I'm losing real value, and inflation is junk punching. 

And my poor friends who have (had) decent money in an ARK fund...oof.   Feel for you guys, this fall from grace is rough.  It's amazing to me that people are still letting Cathie Wood manage capital after things she's said lately.

Looking more and more like it's hangover time, and not party time anymore. 

Edited April 21, 2022 by btq96r

[gregintenn]

We’ve had several years of back to back record growth in the stock market. It would be foolish to expect that to continue forever. I’m still buying. If you don’t stay in, inflation will eat you alive. It’s a sale right now!

I’ll leave the bonds to somebody else.

[btq96r]

13 hours ago, gregintenn said:

We’ve had several years of back to back record growth in the stock market. It would be foolish to expect that to continue forever. I’m still buying. If you don’t stay in, inflation will eat you alive. It’s a sale right now!

I’ll leave the bonds to somebody else.

Not just long term growth by itself...this was fueled by the Fed sprinkling the market with PCP in the form of all their programs.  Savings became punitive, and capital jumped at any asset with a growth story to tell.  Now we're going to see how skewed from reality some of that was.

This is like coming home from a good night at a steakhouse.  Yes, you ate well, and it was tasty, but there's only so much your body can handle.  The excess needs to be expelled or converted to waste and processed.  A healthy limit is retained, and you move on for the next meal.  Proper markets resemble nature like that.

But there's no long term answer other than to buy and hold like you mention.  Good times and bad will come, just have to stick to it.

[Magiccarpetrides]

Trailing stops are important and often so overlooked by most investors.  Of course when that stop does inevitably hit you need to have a plan.  That being said so far this year has been pretty darn bad for my personal picks.  I have been almost exclusively using SwingTrader by IBD that past 2 months...right now they are beating the market not by a lot but not losing money...which is better than I can say for me...as of RHRN they are up 2.48% while the S&P 500 is down -7.82%

[gregintenn]

Basically, I’ve traded pieces of government printed green paper for tiny pieces of many time proven American companies. I know which one I expect to hold it’s value better long term. Everybody has to make that decision for themselves, however.

[gregintenn]

After today. “Let’s Go Brandon!” is about all I can muster.

[MrDigitaL]

I have the gift of buying hi and selling low. I wish i could do that for a living

[Garufa]

1 hour ago, MrDigitaL said:

I have the gift of buying hi and selling low. I wish i could do that for a living

Just become a “financial advisor”.  Pretty sure the requirements aren’t that much.  

[Jeb48]

I loosened up my allocations over the last few years since I have plenty of cash flow that should not change to keep us in food, heat and ammo. When I first retired 17 years ago I settled into a 50:50 asset allocation and that has done me well through several dips. After our cash flow increased because of SS at 70 and required withdrawals from 401K I let equities drift up with my new rules, sell off some equities when they go above 60% and start buying when it drops below 50%.  I'm not a market timer but I went above 60% very close to the peak and sold off enough equity to get to about 58%. It is always a good feeling when you manage to sell at the peak, I have managed to do that a few times, I have also bought at the peak a few times. I'm very much a buy and hold investor and do it all on my own no advisor taking a cut. I believe in mutual funds and haven't own individual stocks for over 20 years.

My advise is have a plan, stick to it, and don't panic.

[No_0ne]

23 minutes ago, Jeb48 said:

My advise is have a plan, stick to it, and don't panic.

[QuackerSmacker]

3 hours ago, MrDigitaL said:

I have the gift of buying hi and selling low. I wish i could do that for a living

You CAN do that for a living, if you're reliable at it.  Let me know what you're doing, I'll do the opposite X4, I'll send you back your original investment + 20%, and you win, but I win more.   THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

 

 

 

 

(Obviously serious disclaimers apply here.  This post is for entertainment value only!)

Edited April 23, 2022 by QuackerSmacker

[btq96r]

9 hours ago, gregintenn said:

After today. “Let’s Go Brandon!” is about all I can muster.

This has been about 10 years in the making.  I just finished a book about the Federal Reserve that explains a lot of their moves in understandable English, laying out how the entire economy was transformed by the zero interest rate policy and quantative easing programs that became standard procedure when they were developed as emergency measures.

Highly recommend it for anyone who finds these matters relevant or fascinating.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Lords-of-Easy-Money/Christopher-Leonard/9781982166632

Edited April 23, 2022 by btq96r

[gregintenn]

4 hours ago, MrDigitaL said:

I have the gift of buying hi and selling low. I wish i could do that for a living

If you can do it reliably, there’s great money in it. Research “short selling”.

[gregintenn]

I’m not dipping my toe in that pool, but I’ve found the rise of the “meme stocks” to be a quite fascinating story.

[Erik88]

I'm just thankful I'm not trying to buy a house right now. The 30 year fixed rate is now 6.75%.

I plugged that into my mortgage calculator and if I had that interest rate my monthly mortgage payment would be over $750 higher. Things are about to get interesting. 

[QuackerSmacker]

It is true that for the vast majority of investors the best chance for long term success is the classic buy and hold. 

That is, and always has been, an absolute winner over very long term time frames. 

The reason why the vast majority can't trade short term is because they trade on greed, excitement, fear, and panic.

Emotions have no room in intelligent investing, which is as cool and calm as a shooter in a 1000 yard competition.  

Been trading for 45 years.  Lost a lot, but won more.  You cannot go into a trade thinking -- "Oh my god I hope this goes up!" or "Come on, don't let this sucker dip down now!"   There is NO ROOM FOR EMOTION.  

If you can lose the emotional element, and can just be analytical and objective, you're on a good start.  If you are experienced enough to have emotions of ice, and good analytical skills, game on! 

If you can't do these things, (and you probably can't and shouldn't,) then go buy a mutual fund or index ETF and hang on.  And when the SHTF, back up the truck and load up like crazy.   But that's probably when you'll sell.......oh yikes

 

[btq96r]

21 minutes ago, Erik88 said:

I'm just thankful I'm not trying to buy a house right now. The 30 year fixed rate is now 6.75%.

Yeah that's my situation.  Between my fears of buying due to a weird job situation, not really knowing what I wanted when I started and adversion to feeling like I'll be settling...it's fast forwarded me to a place where I had to live with a rent hike while missing the boat on a good house at a cheap mortgage. 

Kicking myself in near perpetuity.

[monkeylizard]

It doesn't seem that long ago to me that 6.75% was a deal. Our first house was at 6.75% in 2001. That was a 1/4 point below the market rate of 7% because my wife is a teacher and the bank had a "special rate" for teachers. That was after seeing them come down from the 8s not long before that.  The 2-3% rates we've seen for the past decade or so are the anomaly.

[bubbadavis]

2 minutes ago, monkeylizard said:

It doesn't seem that long ago to me that 6.75% was a deal. Our first house was at 6.75% in 2001. That was a 1/4 point below the market rate of 7% because my wife is a teacher and the bank had a "special rate" for teachers. That was after seeing them come down from the 8s not long before that.  The 2-3% rates we've seen for the past decade or so are the anomaly.

Sounds very familiar. I bought my first house in 2001 and had a 7.25% rate. We bought late last year and are at 2.375% but with a 15 year mortgage and had a much larger down payment %. 

[hipower]

12 hours ago, Erik88 said:

I'm just thankful I'm not trying to buy a house right now. The 30 year fixed rate is now 6.75%.

I plugged that into my mortgage calculator and if I had that interest rate my monthly mortgage payment would be over $750 higher. Things are about to get interesting. 

Yes, Interesting is a good choice of words here. We've been watching the market pricing in our area lately. Looks great until we factor in the cost of moving and buying someplace else. Payments would be just short of astronomical for us now. But property taxes in Metro Nashville are almost as bad. So watching the situation.

Living on social security and our retirement funds doesn't really allow for much hope of a location change. Although a family member who is a realtor has been watching for a place for us. She has ran across a couple of nice, surprisingly low priced homes recently. They are out there. Just have to be willing to search and be patient. And be ready to move FAST if it appears.

She found us one in our desired location. It sold before we could even get a call in on it.

[No_0ne]

15 hours ago, Erik88 said:

I'm just thankful I'm not trying to buy a house right now. The 30 year fixed rate is now 6.75%.

I plugged that into my mortgage calculator and if I had that interest rate my monthly mortgage payment would be over $750 higher. Things are about to get interesting. 

 

3 hours ago, monkeylizard said:

It doesn't seem that long ago to me that 6.75% was a deal. Our first house was at 6.75% in 2001. That was a 1/4 point below the market rate of 7% because my wife is a teacher and the bank had a "special rate" for teachers. That was after seeing them come down from the 8s not long before that.  The 2-3% rates we've seen for the past decade or so are the anomaly.

On the other hand, estimates are that when I-Bonds reset the next time on May 1, they'll be paying out over 9% for the next 6 month interval.  It's been a long time since anyone with money could get any sort of return on bonds, Treasuries, CDs and the like ...

[Jeb48]

We bought our second house towards the end of Jimmy Carters time in the White House. I don't remember the exact rate but 13% sticks in my mind. I think we refinanced 3 times over the years till we got it down to around 6%. We always continued paying the same monthly payment as when it was 13% and we were paid off in around 12 years. 

[btq96r]

If our economy is good at one thing, it's optimizing the price point to exactly what someone can afford to pay.  Not necessarily what they want to pay, but what they can handle for the most part.  Some level of credit always comes into play, often enough over leveraging folks who don't think critically.  The housing market is a great example of this.

With the interest rates going up, you'll stop seeing the insane trajectory of home values rising.  Supply and demand issues will keep them from dropping locally I think.  But there's only so much someone can actually afford, and the market is very efficient at sniffing that value out.  It's why the low interest rates have fueled the housing boom as much as California refugees.

In the end, the amount of money from someone's pocket in monthly payment won't change much, but the sale prices will stabilize, and the banks will make more money from interest.  Just a tilting of what comes from which side of the formula.  Financial institutions will always win in the great coin flip.  Heads, they get steady cash flow from interest payments at a good rate.  Tails, they ride the wave of asset inflation (rising stocks and home prices) by being the broker of capital during the spending sprees.  We're just swinging the pendulum at the moment because things got too out of whack one way, so we needs try the other way for a bit until we find a happy point.  Then before long someone or a great many someones will muck it up again.