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.

OK.

Document is here: Form ADV Wrap Fee Program Brochure
Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC

DISCLAIMER: I'm not employed in the financial market nor sell any MSSB product or service. I am a MSSB customer and have been for quite a while.

Interpretation is everything. After you hit a threshold, they remove a minimum - it doesn't state they stop charging fees for their services. Ask your advisor/representative for an annual fee report sans internal investment expenses (trust me, you'll be surprised by their answer).

Look, I get that they're your competitor and one of many out there. I also get that fee disclosures are hard to read and interpret. I know how much I pay them in annual fees and am satisfied in what that number is as it relates to my total funds I have with them.

Fair enough?

:bigtu:

$DXTR recovered nicely from the dip on sketchy news and I'm back to even. And, $RXII came up huge today... been holding a small bag there for 2 months. All good with my play money.

Nope, I just put money in the Vanguard fund and call it good. Also in 3.5 more years all my sign-on bonus RSUs will vest, at current prices for Oracle (and hopefully it will continue to rise) it should be another 1/2 years salary.

And I should have my divorce paid off next year which will mean I get to double my contribution to my 401k. So that puts me up north 15% contribution with match.

As many of you have said, it takes a lot research, patience, and luck to beat the market. I have no desire to spend my free time doing that.

I'm still about $110k long in my discretionary account. While I admit that I have a poor track record of predicting trends, my gut feeling is that this situation we're in right now is going to last a while, and will get worse before it gets better.

Wrestling with whether to stay in, or to step aside for a while and get ready to maybe pull the trigger on something like RYVTX.

Had an actual "financial advisor" from USAA go over all of our stuff and we look pretty good long term. I don't know if I'd ever done the math before, but when I retire in 2020 as an O-4 with 20yrs, I'll start making $48k a year just for being able to draw a breath every morning. Obviously I'm getting another job in 2020, but it's nice to know that I can "equal" my current salary with a mid-step GS-11 position.

We referenced some other calculators, and discovered that if I live to be 84yrs old, my military retirement pay tops $9million dollars... and I'm just an O-4... bump that up to O-5 with 24yrs, and the number is $12.6milion. I'm actually tempted to talk to BUPERS about an interservice transfer to the Air Force with a guaranteed promotion, since they're taking all comers right now.

Then we delved into social security... $2500mo at 67yrs. Then we talked about the wife. Then we talked about our 401k's and my Thrift Savings. The numbers kept adding up nicely.

Then we started talking about what we might stand to inherit, and I kinda blanked. My parents, and both my wifes' sets of parents are well off and doing everything correct (except for living in California and Canada). So I made a WAG about what we might stand to inherit and the advisor started laughing... he suggested I might be a little low and that we should call them and have an adult conversation about it. We all had actually talked in the past about the fact that they were doing everything right, but never really discussed numbers.

So we've spent some time with the parents and basically come to the conclusion that I should probably stop working right now and enjoy life, because our combined inheritance is gonna far outpace what we've managed to do with our lives by an order of magnitude. It's a nice option to have.

In the meantime, I'm not gonna worry that I'm $1500 in the red on a bio-med penny stock... just sit on that bad-boy until she spikes and then go buy some new guns.

Moral of the story... your parents might be as nervous as you are about talking about what happens when they die... suck it up and call them.

Wish it were so...

Dad will die penniless and in massive debt (probably very soon, judging by what my sister tells me of his health) having made a number of extremely poor financial and lifestyle decisions after the divorce, the second divorce, and retiring from an otherwise successful career as a physician. I'll probably inherit some random trinkets left over from the Communist Revolution.

Mom is re-married to a nice guy who hasn't done well in his career as a real estate broker. She's about a year away from retirement, and has done very well in her career, but has spent nearly everything on costs related to healthcare for my sister. I'm I'm lucky, I'll inherit a nice 3 bedroom house in a small town in central Florida in 15-20 years, assuming they don't decide to re-mortgage it towards the end. To put things in perspective, I bought her a new Camry last year, because the car she was driving scared me. And it takes a lot for a car to scare me.

I run a spreadsheet at the end of every month, with all of the accounts and liabilities on it. Started it back in 2000, and have maintained it religiously ever since. Still haven't broken the half-million dollar mark (so very close, and yet not quite there, which is a thorn in my side.) But that's it. Aside from whatever is hypothetically left in the social-security system in 2045, I have accepted that I'm on my own. I envy those of my age who were able to buy homes (and stay in them) 10-15 years ago.

I'm 5 years out from O-4 reserve retirement which starts at age 59 for me, or 9 years out from O-5 active duty retirement. It's exciting to hear someone else throw out those active duty retirement numbers as if they could come true.

Maxing out my ROTH TSP every year right now, which is very quickly adding up - though I should probably transition my contributions to traditional TSP pretty soon, because our nearly identical incomes are raping us in the tax bracket equation right now.

I'm sitting in bonds right now on the discretionary side - tariff signing day was a good day.

I work with this company that does something interesting - they invest into mostly commercial stage bio/medical companies with $20-300m value (public and private). They will invest in return for their IP and the firm has a staff of own financial folks and scientists who go over books and medical/bio research data to understand and confirm it before cash is released. If the company goes belly up, in most cases they are able to recover the investment by selling IP. So far they have been outpacing market, but also requires something like $500K to get in. They are managing $3b at the moment and growing.... With all of about 25 people in the company. Difficult people to work with - everyone is A type.

As a first gen immigrant I'll be working till i die most likely, no retirement for me. My parents are working full time jobs as well and I may end up supporting them when they can't work, as social security won't be enough to cover the expenses probably.

I'm trying to figure out where to take whatever little savings I've got - mutual funds for safety or set a small part aside and try stock trading to see if I can make a go of it before putting more in.

Anyone uses Robinhood? Any opinion on them vs TDAmeritrade, Etrade and others?

I've got some buddies with accounts with several sites... they all say that TastyWorks is the easy answer unless you specifically need a trading feature that another site offers that makes the fees worth it. As soon as I close a couple positions I've got open in TDA, I'm moving my account to TW to cut my fees down by about 60%.

I've just accepted that the way I choose to live will likely have me in the grave long before I'd ever retire. Thankfully I work for the 2nd largest Software/IT company in the world, so if I don't wake up tomorrow, my girlfriend and the animals will be taken care of. Just my life insurance will pay off the house, pay for the rest of her degree, and make sure she doesn't have to fret too much.

Getting divorced and laid off twice and having to move a few times a few years basically ruined my savings/401k accounts.

That's the point - Robinhood is free.

If I had perfect information . . .

I'd invest in lottery tickets.

I think the Sports Almanac fro BTTF2 would be more fun.

It has it's place, but I'm still on the fence for a number of reasons, not the least of which is lack of browser support.

I'm afraid of the tariffs causing price increases and an economic slowdown just like it has every other time it's been implemented. Couple that with the interest rate hike designed to slow down the economy and it seems a little too likely that the overall Market will drop significantly soon. In anticipation of this I have moved much of my 401K money to bonds.

Between 2008 and 2016 the federal government offered extremely low interest loans (0.25%) to large corporations to allow them to buy back their own stock. The CEOs and CFOs were all too happy to do it because their bonuses are often tied directly to stock values. This drove the market up significantly and drove other interest rates down. The falling interest rates caused some u.s. bonds that were running around 3.7% to fall down into the 1% range. Those bonds are often bought by big foreign investors (think Middle East) as a safe place to park money. Once these rates dropped so much it made more sense for them to just invest in our stock market which was, of course, going up. This big money going into the overall stock market continued to drive the market numbers upward. Take a good look at the 10-year charts for the total US market or the large cap indexes and you can see how this has artificially bolstered the numbers. I don't know much but I do believe some of what I've read and a few of the people I have heard speak on the subject. Simply put, I'm expecting a correction of significant proportions.

But there are other opinions out there, too.

Be very careful trying to time the market by changing your asset allocation. Maybe you're right. Maybe Trump backs down off the tariffs because they are very unpopular. While interest rates are rising they are still historically very low. More often than not people are bad at timing the market. Especially people who do not do it for a living. You could miss out on 20% more gains before the next correction and then see both stocks and bonds go down like they did in 2008. The average, inflation adjusted, return of the S&P 500 over it's lifetime has been 6.7% (10% before inflation) but most individual investors perform worse than this because they panic sell or try to time the market. Asset allocations are based on a risk tolerance and are designed to weather corrections. Pick one and stick to it. If your retirement time horizon is greater than 10 years I would suggest against a bond heavy allocation.

Over the long run a portfolio of 100% market weighted equities shows the highest average return but also experiences the most amount of volatility which drives a lot of people to panic sell. Introducing just 10% bonds into the portfolio dramatically reduces volatility during corrections while sacrificing minimal amounts (1%) of total average return. Once you are within 5 years of your draw down target date then you should probably consider shifting asset allocations to something like 80/20 or 60/40 depending on your portfolio size, risk tolerance, expenses, and expected length of retirement. If you are in the accumulation phase with a fair amount of timeline left before you intend to draw down we can get into more advanced modern portfolio theory and start dabbling in allocations of 90/10 with 10% leverage on the stock side in an effort to increase average returns while also minimizing volatility using minimal leverage against a small bond allocation to protect against compounded losses and eventual margin calls during a correction.

I can't help but think that this seems like a "buy" signal:

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...108478bb4d.png

I've got about $100k sitting in cash in a broker account right now. Seriously tempted.

This is a view of a cynical middle-aged man, but I have a problem with tech stocks of companies that don't produce anything and just peddle your personal info to third parties so that they can peddle garbage to you. They said $120B of value was wiped out, to which i say who gives a shit about a company that doesn't produce anything? This is not General Atomics, Caterpillar, Intel, Apple, Microsoft...What's worse - Facebook has NOTHING to follow up with onto success of its social media platform (unlike Google, Amazon, Netflix and a few others). They do have an awful lot of cash and people willing to give them money.

Part of the reason it dropped so hard was in the meeting they said the coming quarters was going to see revenue drop off even more quickly.

Unless you think you can make money on a put option, I don't think I'd take any of that gamble.

Only way I'd invest in FB right now is for extremely short term single digit % gains. I smell some serious resistance at 180.



btw, do any of you ever use trading view to overwhelm yourself with data and shower in your own ignorance of how to use it?

https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=NASDAQ:FB

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...d8c2091010.png

Licensed broker here in the industry. I'll throw in my $.02 here. There isn't inherently anything wrong with Robinhood for a beginner trader. Robinhood did a killer job of negotiating things with various market makers to make their $$$ on the order flow they feed, which is why they can offer free commissions. Most brokers are moving to similar models. What I've seen though in my experience with them is that the order fills tend to not be the greatest with working with conditional orders (limits, stops, bracketed orders, etc). My hunch is that their order execution logic is probably hunting around their pool of market makers to send the order to the maker most beneficial to the firm from a order flow payment perspective instead of going direct to the exchange's book to be filled. For most traders, this doesn't really matter much, but it can be an issue for individuals who trade larger lot sizes or trade more actively.

Otherwise, the common thing i hear when them is awful client support, which tends to be the norm for the deep discount brokerage houses out there. Depending on the trader, it can make sense to actually pay commissions to get a certain level of support on things. I know i've been in positions where i needed to call a brokers trade desk to close out when my platform shits the bed or some other act of god. Just something to consider as well.

Just a few thoughts. Going back to the n00b cave now.

Disclaimer because rules n' stuff - This post is not intended to make a recommendation.Trading is risky.

Most of us are going to have a hard time predicting trends. 99% of people out there who claim they can time the market are full of it. It's almost impossible to do because once you've done all your technical/fundamental analysis, you're still going to get a large swath of traders who trade purely on emotion without any strategy, often contradictory to what the technicals would lend one to do.

Disclaimer because rules n' stuff - This post is not intended to make a recommendation.Trading is risky.

Fuck it.

I'm back in at $100k long. Just bought 592 of IVW at 168.7814.

Tired of sitting on the sidelines.

And TDAmeritrade PWNS Vanguard when it comes to execution time on ETFs. 5 seconds vs. 24 hours.

Out of curiosity, was this your own experience with Vanguard? Most executions on the order are going to hit in milliseconds. The actual fill however can take time, but 24 hours is insane unless the trader is trading using limit orders (order will only FILL if the price if at X> if buying or >X is selling) or if they're using certain other conditional orders/time duration (I.E a FOK Fill or Kill orders come to mind). On something like an ETF that reasonably liquid, you'd usually see order execution and then the fill within a second or two if going in at market.

Disclaimer because rules n' stuff - This post is not intended to make a recommendation.Trading is risky.

24 hours? Something is wrong there. If you placed a market order and the volume is there - the execution should be almost immediate.

The execution is almost immediate (most brokers have a latency in the 50ms range or so). The full however depends on the order type being used. I'd wager that he probably used some limit or bracketed order that had a target entry that simply wasn't hit or perhaps had an FOK or IOC duration set. I've been guilty of this myself without realizing until calling up the broker. Happens to the best of us from time to time.

Disclaimer because rules n' stuff - This post is not intended to make a recommendation.Trading is risky.

Personal experience, been a while since I traded with them.

My recollection is that Vanguard-brand funds executed immediately, but third-party ETFs took forever. I kind of secretly suspected that this was something which they did deliberately. No limits, these were straight market orders.

Bump. VIX has been up over 20 the last few days and my retirement account has taken some hits. How's everyone out there looking?

Well, I seem to be good at picking the top of a market, that's for sure. Problem is that I seem to do the wrong thing.

After '08, I told myself that the next time the market started panicking, I'd follow the herd rather than stubbornly riding the bear. I'm having a difficult time convincing myself that that is truly the best idea right now.

pretty sure I actually lost money this year, as opposed to making 3-10% in the past 10 years

My non-401k exposure is just straight S&P 500 index.

What gives me pause is that right now, I'd only be out 12.2% if I decided to exit.

In '07, at this point, I was thinking "Nah, the fundamentals haven't changed, it'd be stupid to take a loss." And then, of course, the market as a whole proceeded to lose an additional 40% or so. By the time I finally decided to get out (which turned out to be a dumb idea, hence my present hesitation), I'd have been better off buying a new Porsche 911 from the dealership, driving it exactly once, and then setting it on fire.

What's even scarier is that I've been eyeballing double-inverse ETFs...

I never follow the 500. The small caps have more room to grow in their respective markets and a small cap index is a broader spread than 500 or any other large cap arrangement.

Exactly. That's why having a fund with 1400-ish different small cap companies in wildly diverse fields is a good, safe spread and it outperforms the S&P500.

Take a look at this diversity: https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual...folio-holdings

And the performance is nice, too.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5dadd636c8.jpg

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...5496d280e9.jpg

I'm puzzled by the second chart- it shows the opposite of the first one.