Just curious... anybody dabble in the stock market?
 

A couple of guys in the office have been schooling me for the past few months. I sold a couple of guns and started a TDAmeritrade account with $2k back in March. I'm up to $3100 after about 30 trades which has them all pissed off because I'm flipping penny stocks for $50-$100 a pop (more or less) and am up over 50% on the year in under 6 months. I've got a fairly simple system of analyzing price/volume/news with some zen. my buddies guys give no shits about going up or down thousands of dollars in a day, but are happy with a steady positive growth. I'm about ready to switch over to TastyTrade to lower my overhead with brokerage fees... first world problems.

Everything I read said:
"Don't flip pennies".
"Don't daytrade".
"Don't trade on margin".
"Don't ever listen to anything on Stocktwits or Investorshub or TheLion".
"Don't take tips from your buddies".

Anyways... I'm currently a little down RXII and CLSN but waaaaay long and they'll pop eventually. I'm also even on DXTR (as of 10:46pm Thursday 29th) that hopefully pops tomorrow. Just looking to clear $100 and then I'll sell. I'm constantly reminded of the phrase "You'll never go broke taking your profits". I think I've got the discipline to sell when up "enough", but find myself statistically not selling when I should. It sounds like bragging, but I've made some really smart buys and just didn't sell in time to make big percentage gains and then up settling for smaller gains or even selling when I saw it going red and just walking away. I've learned a ton in a few short months... just enough to be dangerous.

This shit is all play money to me, so nobody is gonna starve if it all goes to tits... but would be nice to buy those guns back some day. Anyways, just curious if maybe we need a daytrading thread in the BS forum.

I also play around with a few thousand in a TDAmeritrade account.

I mostly play around with Steel/Materials companies that I know, but I also dabble in biomedical companies here and there. The biomedical stock trading market is probably best described as "legalized gambling". Lots of volatility with the smaller firms. Lots of +30% days followed by -50% drops over the following week(s).

Overall for the year I think I'm up around 29%...but I am holding long on one medical billings company that I'm currently down quite a bit on.

I'm not smart enough to trade options or shorts...and not brave enough to play with the penny stocks.


Here is my most recent win:

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...01c72d7c8e.png


I bought at ~$1.20. Sold 1/2 at $1.43, and the rest at $1.95. It went to $3.25 the next day. I seem to miss these huge gains pretty regularly, and am happy to get out with 10-20% gains in a couple days. This one really hurt though...could have made 250% if I just would have waited 24 hours.

The few times I've held long hoping for that 50% jump I've gotten burned by the "renormalization" after a stock jumps up a lot.


Overall, I have no idea what I'm doing and will likely be parting ways with the funds in this account sooner than later...

As long as they are funds you have zero issues with completely loosing it is not a bad game to play. Just remember that their are tons of people who spend 90+ hours a week doing this and they generally don't beat the market long term. There are also now just as many data scientists, statisticians, and math people working constantly on automated algorithms to do this type of work. So to think you will do "great" or make "millions" is probably never going to happen, but if you just enjoy the process and are doing it for fun, enjoy it.

I was heavily into the securities market from 2000-2008. Recorded some rather impressive gains during that time, playing the "Dogs of the Dow" game.

Then, I made some very poor decisions in late 2008, and locked in losses of nearly $100k. I'd have made all that money back, and then doubled it, if I hadn't been panicky. But I didn't do that, and it still stings 10 years later. I expect that I will probably still regret Jan 2009 when I'm on my deathbed.


Since then, I've never been long more than about $150k. And truth be told, I've barely kept up with the major indices in that time.

There appears to be a large element of luck to this game. Either that, or I am highly ignorant to some significant truths.

I used to do it way back when, 25 or so years ago. Took a lot of time and effort to make any real money. I got so that I was so adverse to losing that I wouldn't take any risks, and therefore stopped making any real coin. Then it became a lot less fun, and I just sort of let it go.

^ my experience exactly.

I still have about $100k distributed across a few mutual funds, but aside from a pair of 401Ks, that's the extent of my involvement over the past decade.

Out DXTR for $165 gain.

I did a few years ago when I had the time to actually be "in" the market. I found when I wasn't doing it every day I made stupid choices. Since I got really busy with my business I just put everything back into my brokerage accounts.

I'm pretty much all about capital preservation and dividends at this point in my life and so tend to be in specific stocks vs indexes.

i've bought a few stocks and mutual funds over the years... i bought apple at a while ago.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...151ec9c4f8.png


I think my strategy from now on will be hoard cash until the stock market crashes (again) then buy market index funds when the time is reasonable. you'd be up near 200%-300% if you played that game right from 2008 till now. It's hard to invest when most things are at their all-time highs.

You can always bet against the market with shorts and puts. I've been paper-trading with some guys at work as a competition. I'm not doing well at all, probably because I'm mostly playing options while everyone else is in long positions. It's still fun though. We had 2 guys put the majority of their portfolio into $RAD hoping for the merger with Walgreens, and that just got killed. Dropped 30% in one day.

true- but I don't understand that stuff well enough to be comfortable with it. I am playing with some weird russian leveraged bear stock (RUSS) but i've been burned pretty bad. haha

I keep the majority of my money in large companies and safer stuff that I at least somewhat understand. Too scared/busy/ignorant to play with options.

The majority of my liquid cash is in stocks and crypto currency (I am not recommending investing in crypto. Its crazy.)

One of the most important things to consider when investing in the stock market is that if you outperform the market, it was a fluke. The best thing you can do is create a market portfolio, and let it ride.
This "market portfolio" is basically a handful of stocks that are as diversified as possible. If you want to get technical you can look at their prices over the past few years and use software to calculate their statistical correlation, but its not that necessary. All you have to do is weigh your portoflio across different industries and also across different geographical regions/countries. The last part is the most challenging because as Americans, we are more likely to buy stock from companies we are familiar with. But if you take the time and buy stocks from several different countries, weighted by their GDP, you will be much closer to the market portfolio than most people would be.

I only check my stocks one a week and almost never make any trades. I will occasionally play with a couple grand doing something speculative, but its usually not worth it.
If you want to day trade, put a few grand it bitcoin and have fun trying to grow it by taking advantage of the $200+ swings every few days.

All the guys at work do are options... lots of options, all kinds or options, crazy shit I never heard of... Iron Condor's and Triple Lindy's and shiz like that.

I'm certain that once I have money actually "invested", no reason not to have your money working a little extra for you. Selling calls and collecting dividends seems like a no-brainer if you own something fairly stable. My buddy has a shit-ton of Ford and sells monthly's on all of it.

My first long term "investment" will be when some huge "too big to fail" company comes along and bottoms out... think of Ford actually circa November 2008... who wouldn't have wanted a few thousand shares for $1.

I've been in about a year and a half now, made 60% in the first 6 months, then was on the wrong side of the market leading into the presidential election; flipped on election day and came out on the wrong side of the money again for the ensuing month and a half. Overall, lost 50% of what I had in in about 2.5 months which left me with about 80% of of where I started. Been grinding it out, watch it daily but mostly swing trade. I'm now back up to 140% of my initial investment and growing, it's my get-rich-quick scheme. I trade mostly in leveraged and inverse leveraged ETFs.

https://trade.collective2.com/ can be a good starting point; find a system that you like(, pay some money,) and follow it if you're not super smart about the market. In time you'll get smart about the market, but C2 is like a good quality set of training wheels.

My get-rich-slow plan is my TSP ("Government IRA" for those who aren't in-the-know like Sam is). I've been maxing it out for awhile now, and it should have me set up pretty nicely to retire at age 60.

What I really want is for there to be a person who looks at my whole portfolio, asks me what my investment objectives are, and then just tells me "sell X, buy, and I'll call you whenever you need to make an adjustment." And then to have them be right more often than they're wrong.

Such things exist, but the typical minimum buy-in is $500k, and I'm still a bit short of having that much net valuatoin available. (And I wouldn't really feel comfortable sinking 100% of my liquid assets into a market account. I like to always keep at least $100k in FDIC-guaranteed accounts as a buffer.)



EDIT: What I'd really like is to hand over about $300k to a manager, along with a power of attorney form which basically says "I turn over control of this money to [person X], who agrees to manage it with my best interests in mine, and I agree that these funds, and their proceeds, shall not be relinquished back to me until [some date in the future], except in the event of [very specific set of circumstances], because I can be a panicky idiot sometimes and this is my way of protecting myself against shit like 2008."


EDIT II: I have verified that I can buy USPIX and UXPIX through my existing Vanguard account, because quite frankly, the current valuation of the major indices has me a little concerned. I learned my lessons from '01 and '08. When the market freaks out, join the herd immediately*.

Actually, Joe, what you want is to find a true Financial Planner who does goal based investing with discretion over the managed assets. What we do at our firm is an ensemble financial planning approach (not just financial lingo). We do cohesive planning including taxes (we actually do tax projections and prepare/file your individual return), investment management, risk planning, estate planning recommendations, etc. It is all done in house with the client's objectives at the fore front. All of this is done with a single asset-based fee that is direct billed to the account. One fee and full transparency.

Great. How do I find one with a minimum buy-in that I can afford? I haven't got $500k in liquid cash available.

I don't have the interest and don't want to spend the time needed to "play" in the stock market so I'm just buying it all (via VTI) and letting it ride.

@Joe Perez, you can do a "managed account" with numerous firms for as little as $10K. The "fee" usually goes down as the account value rises. Once you reach that magic $500K number the fee pretty much becomes "zero" or close to it and trades are zero because they're the ones dictating the trade not you.

I use a managed account differently than I do my normal brokerage account and differently than I do my IRA account.

They all perform differently.

If you talk to Morgan Stanley ask about "Select UMA" accounts.

I don't want to start an argument, but the bolded area is somewhat misleading. There are several layers of fees baked into MSSB's offerings. Depending on your service selection and asset level you may receive a discounted asset-based rate, but you are still charged a wrap-fee to cover the provided services in addition to the investment expenses.