The Stock Market

Also had a mutual fund for a while - I'd call every night to get the latest updates (and this was only a few years ago). Again, though, itchiness & money troubles "forced" me to cash that in, which turned out to be very smart, since the dotcom fallout was just around the bend.

I also have a 401K plan - I shudder to think how much money I've lost on THAT.

Please note that my family has a history of stock mismanagement - my dad shares of Compaq at $7 (RIGHT BEFORE they got their schwerve on). Sold at $14 - smart move, sez he. Then watches as it rockets up to $86ish; it might've split a few times, too. Either way, he lost tens of thousands of dollars. D'oh.

I've been trading in small oil E&P companies this afternoon (that SO makes me sound less tiny and irrlevant than I am).

But, see, my glass is half-empty & leaking.

I don't pay any close attention to any of this, though. I've never made a "transaction" or whatever. My father was an economist, and sees himself as some sort of expert manager, so I can't sell everything and buy an xBox and whatever other crap I could get if liquidated the investments. And I barely have any money after hitting the boozer and paying rent, so there's no surplus to invest.

Of course most of my friends who were wealthy on paper during the internet stock bubble are now nearly as broke as me, or worse yet are in debt to some great extent having bought a place to live on expectation of future earnings. It's enough to make me want to hide money in my mattress.

(Obviously I only write about this shit every day and wouldn't claim to UNDERSTAND it and would never even think about putting my money where my mouth is but hey...)

I don't actually own shares of Glaxo, that was a joke.

Most of Google's revenue comes from small text ads that Google sells on its own site, as well as the Web pages of other companies. Advertisers bid for the right to have ads appear each time a user searches for certain keywords or those words appear on the Web site of a Google partner. Across the search industry, advertisers agree to pay an average of roughly 40 cents each time a user clicks on an ad. Rates for some much sought-after terms can go much higher: Google caps them at $50. It says it has more than 150,000 advertisers to such services, ranging from Ford Motor Co. to online retailer drugstore.com Inc.

The advertising is lucrative. Google began selling the ads in 2000, adapting a practice commercialized by Overture Services Inc., now part of Yahoo Inc. Google quickly grabbed a commanding position in search ad sales because of the popularity of its search engine. As a result, the company has been profitable since 2001, company executives say.

Advertisers spent $2.5 billion on ads targeting key search words in 2003, nearly triple the $927 million of ads sold the year before, estimates eMarketer Inc., a New York research firm. Analysts and Web moguls are optimistic about the future of these online ads, because they're focused on users interested in a subject, and so are considered much more effective than banner ads, which are strips of ads appearing alongside the content of Web pages not tied to a specific search.

But many of these same analysts have been wrong before. In the late 1990s, they predicted exponential growth in online advertising, centered on those very banner ads. Instead, amid a broad downturn in ad spending, advertisers turned against banners because of declining consumer response. Online advertising plunged to $6 billion in 2002, from $8.2 billion in 2000, according to eMarketer

http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/bizfinance/columns/bottomline/n_10178//index.html

(basically, what broheems said)

(Disclaimer: All I know about the Motley Fool is that I tried to get a job there last year.)

I really like Ken Kurson's book. I think it was the first book I read on the subject. Although it's, what, a good 6 years old now. I don't know if it's been revised or anything. But it's a good intro to a lot of financial type stuff (also has lots of info on home-buying and so forth), written in a style definitely geared towards young people without being patronizing.

And of course, the Peter Lynch books are widely regarded as investing classics, though I've never read them.

Brilliant.

jesus christ, the era of 24-hour news and twitchily updated newspaper 'front pages' online has really found its level with this crash. a couple of hours ago the guardian main story was "FTSE rebounds after blah blah blah". i went to the opticians, came back, and now its "FTSE dips in red". what is the fucking point of this minute-by-minute analysis, especially for a non-specialist paper.

Surely there's more point in minute-by-minute analysis for things that are acutely time-sensitive like this? As opposed to, say, 'factory blows up in Stoke, police still don't know anything'.

Not that the Guardian website would exactly be the first point of call for anyone seeking up to date financial information but still...

So tits up or not?

well now it says:

"Markets brace for more turmoil
Last updated 11 minutes ago
Investors and pensions holders should prepare for further stock market volatility, traders warn."

i think the 'volatility'-ness of it is the clue that the headline should be 'volatile market is volatile' until it can be called.

Making a song and dance about everything and anything is what the meeja's all about these days

word on the street is there's a RECESSION on the horizon (this sib-prime thing being the straw breaking the camel's back) and d!ck all we can do about it...

sub-prime

i'd like it very much if prime-rib caused recessions ...

also, urgent & key -- DON'T PAY ANY MIND TO 24/7 FINANCIAL JOURNALISM. it's even more useless than 24/7 political journalism or even celebrity journalism!

word on the street is there's a RECESSION on the horizon (this sib-prime thing being the straw breaking the camel's back) and d!ck all we can do about it...

-- CarsmileSteve, Friday, August 17, 2007 12:33 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

indeed. who could have seen it coming?

There's always a recession somewhere...usually when you are trying to find a good new job or ask for a pay rise.

I like how the government has said absolutely dick all so far.

Not much they can do about it... or say about it

yeah, brown needs to put on some wellies, get over to threadneedle street, and burn some of mopes responsible.

ooh! ooh!

Markets surge after US cuts key interest rate
Last updated four minutes ago
Federal Reserve steps in to calm world stock market jitters.

pfft, they already effectively did that by releasing all of those reserves over the past week.

it won't save anything, IMHO.

We're doomed to fuck.

but pete the guardian says 'markets surge' four minutes ago! what could possibly go wrong?

and they're OFFFFFFFFF -- nasdaq opened up over 2%, s&p and the dow over 1%.

this shit is kinda like watching crackheads smoking it up.

Seems to me that the Fed is rly nervous

tripping over its words, knocking things over. buck up, fed!

i'm actually kinda pissed off about this -- if they make the deposit to my 401(k) today (as they should), then i'm buying HIGH ;_;

what's funny is that one day the dow does well, the papers all go "economy is great! ignore the naysayers!", then the next day it plunges 300 points and it's "1987 all over again??!?!??" then the next day it surges, etc. etc. etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder

what's funny is that one day the dow does well, the papers all go "economy is great! ignore the naysayers!", then the next day it plunges 300 points and it's "1987 all over again??!?!??" then the next day it surges, etc. etc. etc.

100% of what the financial presses say is designed to sell papers. Maybe 20% of this overlaps with what's actually useful and/or accurate.

And that's not even to mention the way the non-financial press covers the economy.

http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/crack-15.jpg

I only have 401ks and IRAs. I'm not going to see that money for 40 years.

fed reserve and european central bank = the cash money brothers.

i cant see how this, when it plays out, is merely a recession

In Praise of a Virtual Crash

The interesting element in the tragicomedy on the stock exchanges in recent months is the uncertainty as to whether a catastrophe has occurred. Has there been a 'real' catastrophe? Will there be one? The answer is: the catastrophe is a virtual one, and there will be no real catastrophe because we live under the sign of virtual catastrophe. This is connected with a state of affairs which was shown up strikingly here: the discrepancy between the fictional economy and the real economy. It is this discrepancy which protects us from a real catastrophe of the productive economies. Is this a good or a bad thing? It is exactly the same as the discrepancy between orbital wars and land wars. Land wars go on everywhere, but nuclear war has not broken out. If the two were not disconnected, the nuclear confrontation would have erupted long since. We are dominated by bombs and virtual catastrophes which do not explode: the international stock market crash (this has not really eventuated and it will not), nuclear war, the third-world debt, and even the demographic time-bomb. One could, of course, argue that all these things will inevitably blow up in our faces one day, just as there has long been a prediction that, within the next fifty years, an earthquake will surely see California slide into the Pacific. But the facts are clear: we are in the situation where the catastrophe does not eventuate; in a situation of virtual catastrophe -- eternally virtual catastrophe.

This is how things are for us; it is the only reality objectively facing us: a wild, orbital round-dance of capital which, when it breaks down, produces no substantial disequilibrium in real economies (unlike the 1929 Crash, when the fictional and the real economies were by no means as disconnected, and, as a result, the catastrophe within the one had an impact on the other), either because real economies are themselves so speculative that they absorb more easily today what they could not absorb in 1929, or because the sphere of virtual capital has become so autonomous, so orbitalized, that it can in some cases proliferate -- or even devour itself -- without leaving any trace. It does, however, leave at least one catastrophic trace: the crash that has occurred has not been so much in the economy as in economic theory, which is now at a total loss before this explosion of its object. For everything has become a problem of communication. In the orbital sphere of capital, there is wonderfully good communication (the perverse computers and the 'golden boys,' who are themselves computing machines). This is the reason why it is in a permanently catastrophic state: the communications are too good. On the other hand, between the two spheres (of the virtual and the real), there is no longer any communication. Fortunately or otherwise. For it is this break between the two, this loss of a referent on the part of the virtual economy, which enables it to produce prodigious effects, but it is also this which protects the real economy from the catastrophes which may occur in the other sphere.

...There was, admittedly, a crisis in 1929, and an explosion at Hiroshima, and hence there was a moment when these two worlds explosively contaminated each other, a moment when the economic slump and nuclear warfare were real, but we should not be misled by this as to what was to follow. Capital has not lurched from one crisis to another, each worse than the last (as Marx argued it would), nor have we lurched from one war to another. The event took place once and that is all. What came after was something quite different: it was the hyper-realization of big finance capital, the hyper-realization of overkill capacity, both orbitalized above our heads and of course quite beyond our grasp, and a course which is, fortunately, also beyond the grasp of reality itself. Hyper-realized war and hyper-realized money circulate in an inaccessible space, but in doing so they leave the world just as it is. In the end, the economies continue to produce, whereas the tiniest logical consequence of the fluctuations in the fictional economy would long ago have sufficed to wipe them out (let us not forget that in the daily figures for international trade, only 100 billion dollars goes on commercial transactions, while capital movements stand at 900 billion).

...When the debt becomes too burdensome we expel it into a virtual space, where it appears as a catastrophe frozen in orbit. The debt becomes a satellite of the earth, just as war has become a satellite of the earth, just as the billions of dollars of speculative capital have become a satellite-heap, revolving endlessly around the planet. And it is, no doubt, better that it should be that way. While they are revolving -- and even if they should explode in space (as the billions 'lost' in the 1987 crash did) -- the world is not changed by them, and this is the best we can hope for. The 'rational' hope of reconciling the fictional and real economies is entirely utopian: these billions of dollars exist only virtually; they cannot be transposed into the real economy. And a good thing too, for if they could by some miracle be re-injected into the production economies, that would spell real catastrophe. ...

-- Jean Baudrillard
March 2, 1988

wow he kind of recycled that "INVISIBLE CRASH/WAR" thing, no? baudrillard has the bullshitting skills that could have earned him serious bank in the city.

i cant see how this, when it plays out, is merely a recession

It's almost like you're looking forward to it ;)

The Sun comments box on all this is very entertaining right now.

Sell hell on Black Thursday
Why should people lose money because these spotty little stockbrokers have wet their nappies? These people are grossly overpaid parasites who have never done a day's work in their lives, so how on earth can they judge the performance of businesses where people really work?

baudrillard has the bullshitting skills that could have earned him serious bank in the city.

he woulda been great on the stand too. "your honor my next witness will demonstrate conclusively that the money my clients lost did not even exist."

recession????

woohoo i put loads of money in savings accounts and stuff

does that mean i'll be able to afford to buy a house soon?

is that how it works?

i'm fascinated by this whole stocks/shares thing, esp the spate of articles in sunday papers about the horrors of it all. but i dont really understand what it is, or how it works - can someone recommend an idiots guide to the whole thing?

and also a good book by say some 80s wall street guy who lived highs/lows, made millions, lost it all, etc

What's your most successful investment?

I've had my share of quick doubles and triples as a penny stock trader, but nothing that approaches a stock that I put my friend in, it was QBID, this was late '03, I got him in at .0001 and in 2 days it began moving up and was at .035 in a week. He invested a whopping $150 which would have been worth over $50,000 except he sold it the day after he bought it, for breakeven. I think in the entire index of pennies and pinksheet stocks there's only been like 2 that have exceeded that performance since.

haha, if the dude didn't sell at the right time, that's not "performance" at all!

I mean that's a little like saying "My most successful investment ever was that time I thought about buying IBM before it got huge"

can someone recommend an idiots guide to the whole thing?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61W6GM8VD7L._AA240_.jpg

oh noodle you are a one.

anyone got better suggestions?

James Cramer, Confessions of a Street Addict

a good book by say some 80s wall street guy who lived highs/lows, made millions, lost it all, etc

Victor Niederhoffer, Education of a Speculator actually fits that description more accurately (made/lost billions) but Cramer's book is a much snappier read.

yeah but jim cramer is a bastard

OTM freakshow

there are several good or at least interesting recommendations on barry ritholtz's site. I really am a slobbering bigpicture fanboy at this point. he should sell t-shirts.

Dailyspeculations.com for models + charts + spec musings galore.

To specs, "value trading" is a huge diss.

I'm a macro guy though. I put my money in mutual funds by sector and use spider/index funds as my "hedges." I don't have the time or the inclination to be a serious trader, especially with all the nasty stories I keep reading from my macro sources etc. what's the old stat, private traders only do 85% as well as the indices?

I "hedge" Spiders, Diamonds, and the Qs against foreign funds (Blackstone India closed-end ETF, Matthews India and U.S Global European emerging markets) and speculate on a bunch of single stocks that have been straight line tanking since January.

Yes, perhaps only 10% of private funds outperform. You're better off on the pass line at a crap table than using an FA, IMHO.

what's the old stat, private traders only do 85% as well as the indices?

I'd be surprised if it was even that high

bloodbath

Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

from www.dailyspeculations.com

Path of Least Resistance, from Victor N1ederhoffer
March 11, 2008 | 4 Comments
The moves this Friday, Monday and Tuesday remind me of a good baseball swing, or for that matter what any good athlete does vis a vis economy of motion. Recapitulating exactly the Friday, Monday and Tuesday of the big French bank frontrunning move

Rodger B4stien replies:
The bigger question is whether this batter does what I too often did, which is once I found my stroke, I swung harder, many times losing my rhythm in the process.

Stefan Jov4novich adds:
Chili Davis says he has the same problem. Each time he walked up to the plate, he would mutter to himself "70%, 70%." That was how hard he should swing to allow his stroke to do its work. That didn't keep him from over-swinging or from displaying his enormous strength when frustrated, but he says it helped. Once upon a time at Candlestick I saw Davis, while walking back to the dugout after striking out, raise one knee up to waist level and break his bat into two pieces. He didn't break stride.

I love N1ederhoffer.

So I have a question about stock "valuation":

In a large, publicly held company with widely dispersed shareholders, we pretty much accept that shares don't represent any kind of "control" for most holders, and also that they don't represent any kind of substantial right to profit-sharing (since dividends are generally either small or 0). So isn't most stock investment, whether short-term or "buy and hold" effectively speculation, and if so, doesn't the "value" of a share of stock derive purely from the future expectation of a higher value? And if so, what the fuck does it all mean?

Or does the fact that a stock share carries a kind of hypothetical control right (if someone were to buy up enough of them) give it a kind of stored/potential value that has some tangible connection to the actual value of the company as a going concern?

by value you mean dollars and cents or why someone would want to own it?
i think i know (or learned it before) but not sure if i understand the question

I mean dollars and cents but as a reflection of why someone would want to own it. I mean the only reason anyone pays $51 for a share of WhizCo is because they think they can sell it for more later, and this is true whether you plan to hold for 10 minutes or 20 years. So what does the price actually reflect other than a bet on a higher price, and if so isn't it just bets all the way down?

(the only reason unless someone is trying to buy a genuine ownership stake in a company)

i mean, it's basically just a claim to the company's future profits, right? those may or may not be paid out as dividends, but if they're not they are at least in theory being reinvested back into the company because it has such excellent, high-return uses for them.

it is just a bet or a way to have wealth that isn't cash unless you really want to have a controlling share. that's it, isn't it? you give them money to do stuff with the business and in exchange you get the chance that your share will eventually be worth more than what you paid for it (as opposed to buying an ownership stake in equipment or inventory or products, which could be arranged in another type of organization that's not a corporation). but different types of stockholders might see different value in the same thing. like a hedge fund for example would see more "value" in acquiring additional shares so it can manage the company. if you just want to sit on it, another share would be less valuable to you. right?

how latency arbitrage picks $3 billion from your pockets

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/investing/rigged-market-latency-arbitrage-3-billion/19503388/

The practitioners of latency arbitrage make money in two ways: They locate their computers as close as they possibly can to the electronic exchanges that execute their trades, and they pay exchanges to give them actual stock price information before that raw data gets consolidated and sent to most other market players.

a latency as low as 100ms allows traders who have paid more for their closer spot to the exchange server can then generate revenue through automated short-sells predicting the other automated trades

$3 billion

Taking no risk at all, except for the $1.8 billion they pay to the exchanges each year to locate their servers right next to the exchange computers, these latency arbitrageurs make between one and three cents on each trade by getting that tiny jump on you. And despite the volatility in the broader markets during that time, the latency arbitrageurs have been steadily profitable for the last four years.

Maybe it's just me but these stock visualizations are pretty cool (requires java and flash)

FinViz Financial Visualizations
StockMapper.com Heat Maps (click on a market)

I kind of wish there was a stock mapper for uncommon stocks. Maybe there is?

I'm about to start a minimal amount of day trading. I know that June is a terrible time to start. Once my electronic funds transfer goes through on monday I will start trading with real money for the very first time.

Anyone have real tips or suggestions?

I kind of wish I had a way of keeping up on stock press releases. I can easily find stock news with google but I just want all the good press for individual stocks right when they come out. Most websites will post news on just a few stocks that are getting tons of press.

long position on silver

i would wait a few weeks (or months) before trading stocks though, until the greece situation is sorted out

"Sell in May then go away" has supportive history but I have to try to use my 100 commission free trades I get for a month after my initial funds transfer. Anyways, the thing about day trading is that you get a better outlook than with long trading because intraday trading is more predictable - especially when there is good press.

So starting monday I will change my username to account for the measly $700 initial investment and then I will periodically change my user name so that people will see how well I am doing :)

intraday trading is more predictable

fuck no, just look at today's dow chart

i guess it's probably easier to predict the next 4 weeks than the next 4 hours

What kinds of stock do you want to trade? Have you studied/practiced daytrading? And by daytrading do you mean holding for minutes/maybe hours?

I actively trade penny stocks. You can do something with $700 with a little luck in pennies. I don't see how daytrading would really be feasible, esp once the commissions kick in.

yeah, but if you're on your toes you'll know that the dow is starting to tank. and if you're really good you can forsee that it will tank..... it's about being up on the news

My broker is only $3 commission once the fees kick in. I've done virtual trading. I am not going to be trading any specific kinds of stock

yeah 700$ for stocks isn't much, especially for intraday trading. options have a much higher volatility

* For stocks priced under $1.00, the online commission is $3 plus 1/2% of the principal value.
(I won't be trading penny stocks)

yeah, but if you're on your toes you'll know that the dow is starting to tank. and if you're really good you can forsee that it will tank..... it's about being up on the news

yeah but how do you explain that the dow has risen again after the release of the unemployment numbers?

yeah captain lorax its not quite as easy as you think.... looking at the news can be p unhelpful

just an example btw, but i would say that following the news isn't enough to predict the trend

xp what he said

don't listen to the trolls, Lorax. invest everything you have. pawn your possessions if necessary. you can do it. we're all counting on you.

lorax ive seen just as many times that bad news comes out + the dow shakes it off + goes up as vice versa

xpost lol

What's your most successful investment?

Well, this was a close call: In 2003 my friend Brian gave me $150 to invest for him, he told me to put it on a 'lotto' style pick. I bought 1,400,000 shares of QBID @ .0001 which was trading with liquidity at .035 the next week. Problem is, Brian decided he wanted to cash out the day after I bought the stock. So he got back his $150 - 2 commissions and forsook a profit of over $40,000 in a week, on a $140 investment. To this day the best run I've ever seen.

intraday trading is more predictable

fuck no, just look at today's dow chart

― groovemaaan,

Well, long trading has its advantages. I mean silver, gold, oil are always good.

If you want to make lots of money in 6 months to 1 year, then I highly suggest that you buy HDY right now.

Yesterday I predicted that Sprint stock would do well today. I was definitely right on that one; if I had my initial funds go through already I would have spent half of them on Sprint.

The stock market isn't 100% chance. If I was rich I would be able to make a decent yearly salary just by having my foot in the market. Our stock market isn't crashing anymore. Obama is one of the biggest corporatist presidents our country has ever seen. And it's no secret that lobbyists run our congress. Corporations get the biggest tax breaks of them all.

there was a point around 2001 when a bunch of the telecom stocks were in the dumper - trading at less than $1. I talked about buying shares of all of them, assuming that some would die off and the rest would rise. wish I'd done it, global crossing was trading at .50 cents at the time and now it's trading at $34.

Yesterday I predicted that Sprint stock would do well today. I was definitely right on that one;

it has risen 2% so you would've made a 14$ profit, congratulations

hey, please don't make fun of my initial investment. i have basically been unemployed for 3 years. i only have $750 to my name

then you shouldn't put it in the stock market

we'll see my prettys

the stock market is kind of like gambling tho, why not just go down to the casino?

http://cbreviewelite.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Extreme-Day-Trading-300x181.jpg

I have an advantage on the stock market because of who I am

a short-sighted fool who makes regrettable decisions?

captainlorax if thats all you have make sure to use stop losses

The stock market isn't 100% chance. If I was rich I would be able to make a decent yearly salary just by having my foot in the market. Our stock market isn't crashing anymore. Obama is one of the biggest corporatist presidents our country has ever seen. And it's no secret that lobbyists run our congress. Corporations get the biggest tax breaks of them all.

how do you think any of this benefits someone w/ $750?

it doesn't. stop harshing my buzz.

if I do good on my own... maybe I can get some people willing to let me invest their money

have you considered applying for a job instead

Lorax were you the one who shorted the airline stocks on sep 10

I apply to jobs everyday (if I'm not depressed or irritable). Unemployment has been the leading cause of my depression over the past few years

xp no I wasn't. but the group that shorted the airline stocks are among an outlier that is incredibly significant

stock market tip: loiter by a stock exchange looking poor and if you are lucky, two rich old dudes with elevate you to wealth in an elaborate wager

stock market tip: don't spend your last few hundred dollars on the stock market

are stock options the same as put options?

"If you want to make lots of money in 6 months to 1 year, then I highly suggest that you buy HDY right now."

care to make this... interesting?

are you just trolling us at this point?

options are calls (long) and puts (short)

xpp, sure Philip. Buy HDY. And if your profits don't increase over 10% then you win. Otherwise I win

his profits

I think I once saw a stat on day-trading that 90% of them lose money, 8% break even, 2% make money.

10% over one year is pretty good if risk is small, but why not shoot for moon?
e.g.
if HDY doubles within one year, winner pays ILX's server costs for that year, otherwise loser does.

lorax, as much as i want you to go into day trading with your last $700 for my own amusement, please dont

it's already down to $700???? damn

Buy two shares of AAPL.

my parents pay for my food and lodging in iirc

lorax you should read this book

http://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/0393315290

I have an advantage on the stock market because of who I am

― Muttley vs. Mumbly (CaptainLorax), Thursday, June 2, 2011 3:22 PM (31 minutes ago) Bookmark

<3

I believe in you Lorax but for Christ's sake save that $.

this money doesn't mean that much to me you guys

then try intrade or sports betting

this money doesn't mean that much to me you guys

― Muttley vs. Mumbly (CaptainLorax), Thursday, June 2, 2011 2:55 PM (36 seconds ago)

cool, I'll give you $400 for it

I placed a bet for a friend once whether Nacho Libre would have a better opening than Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift, and it was pretty fun, and I'm willing to some extent to repeat this for an ILX stock bet throwdown, if y'all are interested -- there's a way to do it that no one ought to risk any money, and if I do it right, I'll come out marginally ahead in most cases.

the stock market is less risky than sports betting (imo)
and just looking at intrade and uhh this is interesting but way too weird for me to join

...

you might live w/ your parents right now but one day you won't (hopefully...) and then you will want to buy food and have to pay rent and when that day comes $750 will be very useful

That day won't come until I have a job. and when I have a job I'll have a salary

plus, I'm not gonna lose money in the stock market

you should use the money to take a class

invest... in yourself!

lorax, what do you hope your life looks like in ten years time

i think the really a+ securities traders have a clear sense of what they intend to be doing when they have made $x, $y

In ten years I'll probably have a wife and a job. If I have time/funds I'll try to make a graphic novel, children's book series or a screenplay.

may i ask, what is your educational/professional background? of course, everyone starts somewhere and financial institutions hire from many backgrounds

nonetheless, while an individual's success is hard to predict, areas of expertise are indicative of the way different traders behave

In ten years I'll probably have a wife and a job. If I have time/funds I'll try to make a graphic novel, children's book series or a screenplay.

I know this is probably all a joke, but in case it's not, I wouldn't feel right not responding to this. If you really have any interest at all in doing those things FFS do them now while you don't have a wife and a job and you're living rent free! Don't waste your time playing around with day trading.

I have a B.Sc. in Statistics from a top rated university

day trading isn't necessarily more detrimental to those things than say, an xbox!
(but an xbox probably would be pretty detrimental to those things.)

I currently do not have the drive for those creative endeavors that I mentioned... there is many reasons for this but I will hopefully get my drive back once a job adds some structure to my life

If you really have any interest at all in doing those things FFS do them now while you don't have a wife and a job and you're living rent free!

This is a very good point!! Creative work takes a lot of time.

When my dad was day trading we woke up every day hearing him yell "SHIT!" at the computer. Probably would not have started the day out like that if he was making a graphic novel.

ha xp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Laying_on_of_hands.jpg

xp
or if he had sold all his stock at the end of the previous day

I'm about to start a minimal amount of day trading. I know that June is a terrible time to start.

amazing

I imagine Chris Ware yells 'SHIT!' at his computer all the time, but instead of dropped orders, it's messed up page bleeds and color separations.

That day won't come until I have a job. and when I have a job I'll have a salary

plus, I'm not gonna lose money in the stock market
--Muttley vs. Mumbly (CaptainLorax)

dude I'm your age, I have a job, I have to pay rent and you know what I would really like right now that I don't have? $750. when I'm at my poorest I kick myself for all the times I've wasted money in the past.

I thought Chris Ware drew by hand!!

~~illusions shattered~~

but I will hopefully get my drive back once a job adds some structure to my life

You won't. If you don't have the discipline to do the work, then you're not going to do the work. Having added responsibilities is not going to somehow make it easier, it's going to make it harder, and put more excuses in the way of doing what you want to do.

Cap - I cannot more strongly emphasize the inadvisable folly of your "wait til I got wife and kids to begin the creative endeavor because I just dont have the drive right now in my free-spirited, unemployed 20s." I consider it good fortune if I can coordinate my drive with my free time long enough to get the lawn mowed or the laundry folded. take that $750 and invest it in some medicinally-enhanced efficiency, then get cracking on those children's books, young man! god help you if you wait until somebody wants you to actually do something.

xp
speculations. commitment to "people don't change" philosophy noted

It's not "people don't change." More like why not change now, and bring about the change yourself, rather than waiting for some future date when you hope an external force will make the change for you?

I think Ware has to scan them in at some point, which is where the cursing commences.
http://canvaspaint.org/fc689.png

daytrading, unlike most jobs, ends early in the day, leaving plenty of time for crosshatching.

I am guessing Mr. Moore takes a magickal approach to the market.

You won't. If you don't have the discipline to do the work, then you're not going to do the work. Having added responsibilities is not going to somehow make it easier, it's going to make it harder, and put more excuses in the way of doing what you want to do.

Ugh t-bomb. Please could you go back and tell that to 23y/o me?

(I still don't even have kids but I get home from work so tired I just sit on the sofa and drink myself comatose every evening, possibly with a half-hour burst of such exciting activity as washing up in the middle)

ha at day-trading Moore

I need all of your hope

― 486.52 (CaptainLorax), Tuesday, December 28, 2010 9:12 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark

All I know is that I have little drive. it's a huge personality defect. But routine and self-satisfaction really improves my drive. And the best way for me to get in a routine is to be forced into a routine. and the best way to improve my mental state is to improve my life by getting a job. Whether or not I'll have enough drive to propose a creative work hour everyday is indeterminable. I tried brainstorming creative ideas recently but had no success. I really need to come up with an idea that I'm passionate about

I know myself best. Unfortunately, my mental state/emotional being is a huge factor in what I do every single day. I'm a very emotional person as evidence by the number of medications I take (I'm also a Cancer sign). I'm the kind of guy that avoids making plans with my friends ahead of time because I never know how I'll feel the next day

so CHANGE is definitely in my vocabulary. unfortunately DRIVE is not - though there is tricks, like I mentioned, to help improve my drive

water signs make great day traders ime

lol caek

cap what happened to the movie you were writing

I haven't came up with an idea that I'm passionate about for the movie.

off to the ball game. later yall

any success yet?

I'm up $100 but I've hit snags. Like today, the market continued to drop so I couldn't get above even.

But I imagine that making money is a lot easier when the US markets are on the incline. However, June, July and August will continue to suck and I'll be struggling to go above even each day that I decide to participate. I probably won't even bother making trades on days where I can just look and see the DOW tanking.

I'm just hoping that there isn't a 2nd recession because I enjoy actively trading

http://movieclips.com/mr5Md-wall-street-movie-man-looks-in-the-abyss/

the good thing is that you can make money no matter what: if the dow is falling you only trade short positions etc

the bad thing is that you can lose money no matter what

I'm not sure if my online broker has a good deal on options. It says $5.00 plus 50¢ per contract. I don't know if there is any other hidden fees if I give my account the options upgrade.

I have 91 free trades left for stocks. It would be awesome if I could double my initial investment by the time I go through all the trades. They are only available to me until 7/9/2011.

I've recently got a violation because I traded with "unsettled funds". I think I know where to look now to find out if any of my funds are unsettled.

outside of your get rich quick scheme there are some other good reasons to hope there isn't a second recession

how did you do today, lorax?

A month ago I got frozen into one stock because it dipped and I don't want to sell. I've been wishing I could be a day trader, or swing trader even, but my funds are too low for me to do that. I can't even afford to open a margin account.

So yeah, I'm long on a stock that's much lower than what I paid for it. So now I'm waiting 'til sometime between St/ Leger's day and November). I'm still expecting the price I paid to double although it's looking like it might halve itself first.

I have to utmost confidence in my stock, even in this economic time of uncertainty.

*typos

what happens to stocks on st leger's day?

“sell in May and go away, come back on St Leger day”
and in my case there will also be a shareholder's meeting bringing in good news

sounds like an excellent plan

wait a second, that's what you said last night when my plan was not excellent at all!

i know i'm on a downward spiral because i've started mixing drinks without measuring anything and my gameplan for the night is to make a really sweet playlist and drink a lot of water later so i can go to work

― future events are now current events (Z S), Thursday, August 4, 2011 11:14 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you sound like you have it all figured out

― caek, Thursday, August 4, 2011 11:21 PM

proof is in the pudding

yes but this time it's different because the plan allows for changes on st leger's day. your plan seemed good, but was not a "sure thing".

^caek droppin science.

(he's a scientist, see)

still playing the long game capt?

whoo! let's buy all the way down!

stock market more like crock market am i not incorrect

man this is some craziness

slide whistle

You just gotta buy in when it's low like I did - on Friday ;(

S&P down 6.66% makes you think

stop all this going up and down.

+400 one day, -400 the next, has anyone ever seen it like this? lorax i would like yr input

which way is it gonna go now.

at this rate we'll be back at the mar 09 lows in no time

gas was crazy cheap back then. that's for sure.

Was curious about checking something in connection to that:

1) price of crude oil -- http://www.nyse.tv/crude-oil-price-history.htm
2) price of gas -- http://gasbuddy.com/gb_retail_price_chart.aspx

Oil went down to just over $80 a barrel yesterday; the price of gas (U.S.) according to the graph above was somewhere around $4.70. (I have to go by the chart--here in Ontario, we're running around $1.20-$1.25/litre.) The last time oil was near the $80 level was Sept./Oct. 2007. Price of gas then? Somewhere around $4.00 a gallon. Would be interested to hear Exxon and the rest explain that.

they got kids they gots to put through school.

Oil executives now have 18% more kids.

I don't get things like crazy dip after Fed announcement on interest rates, followed by crazy rise a couple hours later. This seems unmoored from any sense.

What Would Captain Lorax Do?

Terrible start, rebounding for the last couple of hours--obviously excitement over Jeb Hensarling's inclusion in the Super Congress.

I don't get things like crazy dip after Fed announcement on interest rates, followed by crazy rise a couple hours later. This seems unmoored from any sense.

Came across this in a piece about Groupon's IPO filing (why I was reading it, I haven't a clue): "Groupon's initial IPO filing highlighted a nonstandard metric called 'adjusted consolidated segment operating income.'" Really, does that sound like a world unmoored from reality?

wow, down 540

guys we just have to ride it out till St Leger's Day

last crash had the same dynamic w/ up down, down day, up day, down day for an extended period of time. I remember the pattern was oddly regular.

its just goldman sachs et al fucking with the market volatility to make $$$$ before it plummets to the ground and goes 'splat'

i was such a putz not to have gone into banking

otm

"pump and dump" sounds really disgusting when you think about it.

so..... lorax....

So are IPOs basically the new way of saying "My company is about to turn to shit and I'm cashing out while I can"? -- they can't keep this shit up much longer.

Who said, "no one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public"?

Has anybody here ever been in a company that went thru the whole IPO-show? I'm curious about the stock hijinx that happen internally leading up to the big day

IPOs these days basically consist of the underwriter/issuer of the IPO overvaluing the shit out of the company, using the window before the stock is available to the general public to enrich themselves and their friends, then when the public gets their hands on it its at peak value and will plummet shortly thereafter..

then again the public could do better than investing in shit companies like zynga, groupon, etc.

Someone mentioned to me that Trulia was about to IPO -- a relatively small one I think, like <$100 million. My first thought was basically "well, I guess that site has run its course."

Groupon was a flat out joke. Zynga I don't really know enough about. Facebook -- there's actual value there, it's just way, way less than the IPO price, and unfortunately the IPO disaster is probably hurting the brand/goodwill and may even be discouraging advertisers, which could create a feedback loop. I guess we'll see if Zuckerberg can pull out of it.

zynga basically is attached to facebook's hip and their business model involves ripping off other people's games to turn them into freemium click fest pieces of crap.

really wish I had the balls to short them..

puts on zynga look pretty cheap, although I know next to nothing about options investing

linkedin is pretty legit

hard out there

Federal Reserve putting marginally less champagne on the table == desperate times on Wall Street.

suck it up bnw

HI DERE

Time to mortgage house, cars, even family members and put it all in AAPL. P/E ratio is 12.23 for the world's most successful company!

Done.

http://oi61.tinypic.com/2yor9mh.jpg

Shit! Two of my family members escaped so now I have to pay the money back.

AAPL: people forget this stock crashed 40% at 2013

iPad market is shrinking, Watch may be a disappointment so far, and Chinese slowdown is dampening market share growth expectations in China, plus I have a feeling the iPhone 6 launch captured a bigger than normal amount of pent-up phone demand and now the 6s launch will be weak because everyone anywhere close to needing a new phone bought the 6/6+ already. Still doesn't seem like a crazy buy right now, but I'm jittery about the market in general and staying away.

George Chen ‏@george_chen 22 minutes ago

BREAKING: Shanghai benchmark index lost over 7% with over 600 stocks down 10%, losing all key support levels and no one dares to step in now

https://twitter.com/george_chen

Now down 8.5% as I posted that...

whoa fuck

The crazy thing is that it's still only down to about their level six months ago and still 44% above where they were a year ago. Probably gonna fall further is my guess.

here we go

Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi were all down 7-8% yesterday and the Chinese exchanges were expected to get hammered today. Oil is now at its lowest level since the 2008 financial crisis, i believe. Australia's exchange had AU$60bn wiped off it.

I was expecting the MICEX index to drop at least 5% today but it has only gone down about 2% - the FTSE has been hit worse already.

I sold all my shares three weeks ago - they would have fallen 9% if i hadn't.

http://i.imgur.com/sSetybU.png

Not quite sure how the Shanghai Composite went from 3100 in February to 5200 in June but it's worth noting that the losses today have only taken it back to its level five months ago.

Glencore and Anglo-American mining companies both closing in on 60% declines over 12 months:

http://i.imgur.com/aZ8pRSc.png

May mean people stop stealing railway lines and telephone cables for scrap, though.

IT IS HAPPENING AGAIN

now's the time to buy
assuming you have any money left

http://cdn.history.com/sites/2/2013/11/stock-market-crash-of-1929-newspaper-AB.jpeg

Good luck bnw

Buying in a falling market is great because at least you can always say buying today was a better decision than buying yesterday.

my brother called me last week with a stock tip and it's up 15% today

Is it some kind of ultrashort etf?

Market taking bnw advice

lol true. But I wouldn't be surprised to see another big dump before close.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNLXnSkWgAAZQMK.png

Dan Davies
‏@dsquareddigest
what is happening today is called "a liquidation". Chinese policy has caused a large scale sale of securities portfolios for cash. So ...
5:29 AM - 24 Aug 2015

Dan Davies ‏@dsquareddigest 3h3 hours ago
... you don't buy anything until you know that the liquidation is close to having been completed. In fact you might even sell to raise cash
Reply Retweet 2 Favorite 2
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Dan Davies ‏@dsquareddigest 3h3 hours ago
There is nearly always some sort of public piece of news that will tell you that the liquidation is ending. So watch headlines, not prices
Reply Retweet 1 Favorite 2
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Dan Davies ‏@dsquareddigest 3h3 hours ago
Alternatively, you can just sit tight and come back in a month or so when the prices will have stabilised anyway
Reply Retweet 2 Favorite 3
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Dan Davies ‏@dsquareddigest 3h3 hours ago
China is a massive creditor that is liquidating, not a debtor that is defaulting. I don't think this can turn into a crisis like 08
Reply Retweet 67 Favorite 43
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Dan Davies ‏@dsquareddigest 3h3 hours ago
There's nothing to change your beliefs about the intrinsic value of financial claims - they just need to find new owners.
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Dan Davies ‏@dsquareddigest 3h3 hours ago
These are the conditions in which smart people with good risk management make a killing. A genuine crisis is when smart people get blown up.
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i enjoy these plunges since i had to shave my 401k down to the nubbins

xp oh yes, the #stockpitches come out in full force at times like these

Everybody's selling to pay for their Ashley Madison divorces.

lol the NASDAQ is now only off .3%. Whatta day we're having so far.

So far it looks like greed has the upper hand over fear in the US markets.

greed runs in both directions

i dont understand the stock market but dan davies is good i trust him

I don't know if he's right or not, I just know that there are always very strong-sounding arguments why this time it's not a crisis, whether or not it's actually a crisis.

An email from Tim Cook to “Mad Money” television host Jim Cramer helped save Apple nearly $80bn in its market value amid the China-induced slide on global stock exchanges yesterday.

After the company’s stock started the week 10 per cent down following a “Black Monday” for Chinese equities, Apple’s chief executive insisted in a rare intervention that consumer demand in Apple’s most important growth market remained “strong"

The world’s most valuable company clawed back $78bn in market capitalisation it had lost earlier in the day.

Seems legit.

In that set of tweets from dan davies, most seem to me fairly sound. The most perceptive one imo:

"China is a massive creditor that is liquidating, not a debtor that is defaulting."

But the next one bothers me:

"There's nothing to change your beliefs about the intrinsic value of financial claims - they just need to find new owners."

It's that word intrinsic that needs examination. During a liquidation of assets and the process of finding new owners, financial claims on the future are revalued against currency (which btw is 'currency', because it is currently liquid). He is simply asserting there is no reason to change one's beliefs, but those beliefs about the future are what set the value of those claims on the future, not some intrinsic value. The future is not realized.

This assertion seems muddled and without an evident basis.

Surely the revelation that Tim Cook is taking any kind of financial advice from Jim Cramer will cause Apple stock to plummet.

I feel like this slide is a response to lack of faith in the chinese's tinkering with their economy.. at least thats how I see it. I dont trust these dudes to make good decisions after the economic run up was fueled by building a bunch of ghost towns and gigantic empty apartment complexes all across china.

xp aimless i think this tweet clarifies

Dan Davies ‏@dsquareddigest 6h6 hours ago
A liquidity crisis isn't "just" a liquidity crisis - they can be the worst thing there is. But it's not the same as a fundamental crisis
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the economic run up was fueled by exports not building gigantic apartment complexes. one of the problems is they can no longer rely on export led growth (to maintain previous insane growth rates) and need some domestic demand

was fueled by building a bunch of ghost towns and gigantic empty apartment complexes all across china.

― panettone for the painfully alone (mayor jingleberries), Monday, August 24, 2015 2:43 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

not a fair read of the economy

double rainbow chart pattern forming

Shanghai Composite down another 7.5% today. I don't think there will be a huge knock-on effect in Europe and the US immediately, though.

European exchanges are all rising. Could see Chinese exchanges falling again tomorrow and for the rest of the week. As someone pointed out on Twitter, there was no good reason for them to grow 150% - 180% over the course of the last eighteen months so no reason for them not to fall back over the next few weeks. It's unlikely to be hugely catastrophic for the economy as a whole but the bubble seems to have been caused in large part by the Chinese government encouraging small investors to plough cash into the markets. You're going to get a lot of individuals who have borrowed money to invest completely wiped out.

I'm more concerned about the end of ultra low rates than I am about China. I think China is just sparking panic because people are already on edge for other reasons and any catalyst could have set the markets off. I'm guessing there will be a lot of ping ponging between panic and relief in the coming months.

lol

the market looks so rigged at times like these

Good piece from Feb.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/feb/20/crispin-odey-debt-deflation-downturn-predictions

that is good

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was written in 1900.

China falling through the floor again it looks like

http://www.businessinsider.com/buybacks-disappearing-could-mean-recession-2016-3

zzz these broken clocks predicting recessions that never come... bring it on bitches

I counter with "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"

i wish we had Bob Shiller-style GDP futures markets so i could bet on there not being a recession

TBF I'm not really sure why a stock market crash due solely to the end of buybacks would cause a recession in the larger economy, but the thesis about the stock market is somewhat compelling.

lol flopson 2016 'bring it on bitches'

flopson 2018 'ok could u pls stop bringing it on now'

why is the volume up so much since December, and is that something that should be of concern?

Dow, 1-year:
http://i.imgur.com/kqajDse.png

Dow, 3-year:
http://i.imgur.com/y837IkX.png

you have to go back to the meltdown of 08/09 to find volumes this high (except for a blip in mid-2011)
http://i.imgur.com/kDN80Sn.png

maybe this is a question better posed to the algorithms that run the markets now

definitely a concern

something's brewing

and it ain't starbux

it's fun to look at that 10-year chart as a reminder that the current heights of the stock market are entirely due to donald trump

http://www.scholastic.com/parents/sites/default/files/field_asset_image/girl-blowing-bubbles.jpg

was there something that happened in early Dec 16, though, that i'm forgetting? seems odd that volumes would triple, overnight, and stay that way.

if only it'd just be a burst

there's a theory that when the stock market is strong and keeps "overperforming" there is war on the horizon

i carry more than a passing interest in this since basically my only assets are my retirement savings, which are tied up in the government version of a 401K. i can choose (once per day, before noon, to go into effect the following business day) to allocate my savings in large cap stocks, small cap, international, or bonds. although it's generally recommended (for younger people who can accept more financial risk, esp.) to just stick it all in the large/small caps and don't touch it, i do try to at least pay attention to impending disasters so that i can shift my money to bonds and avoid huge losses. but that can blow up in your face, too. a week before trump's inauguration i shifted everything to bonds, assuming that there was a high probability of trump doing something incredibly stupid that would destabilize the global financial markets. i forgot that traders love trump because they know he'll deregulate, if anything, and so my retirement savings stayed flat while everyone else's jumped up 10% over a month. now i'm back in the game, so to speak, by allocating most of my savings to the large/small caps, but i'm concerned that there will be a crazy day out of nowhere and i'll lose a 1/3 of my savings in one fell swoop. but then again, i can't just stay out of the market for the next 4-8 years.

IT'S SO COOL THAT THE GOVERNMENT DECIDED TO TIE ALL OF OUR RETIREMENT SAVINGS ACCOUNTS TO THE STOCK MARKET

if only we could tie our Social Security accounts to the market as well, am i right!?!?!!

http://www.barrons.com/articles/war-is-hellbut-not-for-the-stock-market-1492702379

Consider how the Dow Jones Industrial Average has performed both before and after the U.S. military became engaged in past foreign hostilities. We focused on seven discrete events since the early 1980s:

• The U.S. invasion of Grenada (1983)

• The U.S. invasion of Panama (1989)

• The first Gulf War (1991)

• The U.S. bombing of Kosovo (1999)

• The U.S. war on Afghanistan (2001)

• The second Gulf War (2003)

• The U.S. bombing of Libya (2011)

...

On average over the month prior to the beginning of these seven events, the Dow fell 0.6%, or 1.4 percentage points lower than the average of all months since 1983 (see chart). But this underperformance was quickly reversed: In the month after the U.S. military entered a conflict, the Dow soared an average 4.0%—3.2 percentage points greater than the average of all months since 1983.

i assume that's something specific to the DJIA and the way it's defined/calculated. there isn't the same jump in other indices.

i do try to at least pay attention to impending disasters so that i can shift my money to bonds and avoid huge losses. but that can blow up in your face, too

don't do this. don't do this. don't do this. buy 30% bonds and 70% in a broad equities tracker. check your account once a year. increase 30 and reduce 70 as you approach retirement.

also that seems to say that the stock market over performs after the war start but under performs beforehand so i don't think an overperforming stock market suggests imminent war

it says it underperforms during

and no, not imminent, it's just a theory

On average over the month prior to the beginning of these seven events, the Dow fell 0.6%, or 1.4 percentage points lower than the average of all months since 1983

don't do this. don't do this. don't do this. buy 30% bonds and 70% in a broad equities tracker. check your account once a year. increase 30 and reduce 70 as you approach retirement.

This.

xp

keep reading

"But this underperformance was quickly reversed: In the month after the U.S. military entered a conflict, the Dow soared an average 4.0%—3.2 percentage points greater than the average of all months since 1983."

right - exactly what i said. before the conflict the stock market went down. after entering the conflict it went back up.

that's at the very start

then it goes down

More than half the DJIA's weighting is [10 stocks](http://indexarb.com/indexComponentWtsDJ.html). There isn't a notable volume increase in more representative like SP or NASDAQ; indeed volumes been declining. I think we're just seeing two short covering rallies in Nov and Apr, and when that supports gone and we have our government shutdown we'll see support breaking on those larger indices.

they changed the way they calculated volume - https://stockcharts.com/articles/dont_ignore_this_chart/2016/12/whats-the-deal-with-that-intraday-volume-on-the-dow-indu.html

Can't fool all of the people all of the time

I started to wonder today if the ridiculous bull market we have right now is purely the result of all that money pumped into the system after the financial crisis finally starting to exit other asset classes (e.g. real estate) and flow into equities.

A large part of the enthusiasm atm is based on the newly passed tax bill. The anticipation is that the profits currently parked by big multi-national corporations in their foreign subsidiaries will quickly be repatriated to the USA at the much lower tax rates, which could be rolled back if the democrats take Congress and the White House. The thinking is that the vast majority of that money will be used for stock buy-backs or for mergers and acquisitions, since there's little appetite for investing it in new equipment, new factories, or (exploding laughter) higher wages.

Market was growing before the tax bill. Not saying it makes no impact (I don't have the analysis skills to make that determination) but it seems like there are other factors.

Market was growing before the tax bill.

Markets are all about pricing the future. But, yes, the tax bill isn't the only factor in play. It's just a very big factor. If the market started to believe the Fed was going to boost interest rates at an accelerated pace, that could slow it down a fair bit. Right now, exuberance is the order of the day. Even having an unstable semi-literate running the executive won't change that calculation... for now. Expectations about the future are inherently unstable.

It's been growing at an insane rate since trump was elected, but maybe it's all on the assumption of tax breaks and business giveaways

A big infrastructure bill loaded with lots of goodies would just whet their greed even further. That's another business giveaway the market is hoping will land in their lap. In fact, overheating the economy seems to be the Republicans' main strategy for avoiding big losses next November.

http://www.macrotrends.net/1358/dow-jones-industrial-average-last-10-years

^^ worth a peek for context

mid 2015-2016 on that graph is basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

haha i was thinking wonder woman / weezer / wwf wrestling

Watch the bond market (which dwarfs equities). July 2016 was the "top" (lowest yield). There's an important test of the "lows" (high yields) of December 2016 and March 2017 in the next couple weeks.

Also, the yield curve is growing ever flatter: expectations for slowing growth.

Reuters: Chinese agency Dagong cuts U.S. sovereign ratings to BBB+ from A-

The growing reliance on the debt-driven mode of economic development will continue to erode the solvency of the U.S. federal government, the Beijing-based ratings agency said.

“Deficiencies in the current U.S. political ecology make it difficult for the efficient administration of the federal government, so the national economic development derails from the right track,” Dagong said.

“Massive tax cuts directly reduce the federal government’s sources of debt repayment, therefore further weakens the base of government’s debt repayment.”

Levis IPO -- trading at $22.50 per share with 0.75 earnings per share. That's 30x earnings. Earnings growth is completely flat for the last three years. Valuation makes no sense. Tell me why I'm wrong.

The p/e is 30? That’s not unusual

It seems unusual for zero growth. A&F is 23x earnings, Gap is 10x earnings, American Eagle is 13x earnings. Maybe you could say the Levi's brand is stronger.

IPO starved hype

I think that growth is the idea, though. The growth plan is apparently to sell more stuff online instead of at kohl's, convince women to wear jeans instead of yoga pants, sell more shirts somehow, and sell more outside of the US. Buying the naming rights to the 49ers stadium is supposed to help somehow.

My plan is to look at this every morning
https://www.macrotrends.net/2488/sp500-10-year-daily-chart

For morning kicks?

to remind yourself we might be partying like it's 1999?

1999 would have been such a horrible year to put all of your chips in. 15 years to see a return.

Jay-Z weed SPAC y/n

i know this was a year ago but

1999 would have been such a horrible year to put all of your chips in. 15 years to see a return.

― say it with sausages (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, March 21, 2019 6:20 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

it was pretty bad! one year in 20 is this bad https://github.com/zonination/investing

The only answer to that is you have to put your chips in gradually over time I guess.

No you just wait until the stock market is at it’s lowest point and about to go up. It’s easy.

Time to mortgage house, cars, even family members and put it all in AAPL. P/E ratio is 12.23 for the world's most successful company!

― Mr. Snrub, Sunday, August 23, 2015 11:48 AM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Up 411% since this post, nbd.

couldn't have predicted in 2015 that apple was going to be successful

whaddya got now snrub?

The stock market is easy. Just buy reasonably successful companies and never ever ever ever ever sell until your son goes to college.

AAPL has been the worst since it split.

Learning the wrong lesson here. Bought stock last week for the first time in my life (outside of a 401k from a past job) and am up 5%+ one week later (did Sonos, Shopify, and Redfin).

Wait, what is the wrong lesson?

xxp what if you're ready to retire? the stock market feels like a giant bubble right now

Oh, if it’s always been instilled in me that the stock market is gambling, it’s like having a good first hour in the casino and feeling guilty about it. But if I just hang onto those three for a long while...

"Casino" was always a flawed metaphor for the stock market. Casinos are rigged so that you virtually always lose money if you play long enough. The stock market isn't necessarily like that -- historically if you ride the market long enough and are broadly invested enough (e.g. in an index fund or a broad basket of stocks) you make money. But if you think of the market as a baseline, trying to pick individual stocks tends to be a losing proposition in *relative* terms, because you will virtually always underperform the market in the long run, especially when factoring in transaction costs (although IDK how no-fee trading is going to impact that in the long run if it survives). So basically you "lose" in the sense that by actively trading you are actually doing worse than if you just passively invested.

And that's also part of why active trading is both addictive and deceptive -- my dad used to say "When the market is going up, everyone is a genius." You pick stocks, they go up, wow, you were right! You know what you're doing! But most likely you got lucky, and that luck was probably magnified by the overall direction of the market at that moment.

Stuff like Gamestop is a lot closer to reckless gambling because it's not really based on anything except hope.

When people do anything that they just decide to jump into emotionally, it usually ends badly.

Haircuts!

look out below

-0.7% hardly worth a revive lads

horse track betting is not a perfect analogy but much closer to the stock market than casino gambling, in that there is a knowledge base and experience that can help you be more successful than the people who come out once a year to the track

Bought stock last week for the first time in my life (outside of a 401k from a past job)

Were you actively managing the 401k holdings ... or was it just one of those things where the company just did it for you? Granted there are certain things you can do in a regular brokerage account that you can't do in a retirement account but ... it's pretty much the same.

i love having a perishingly small value of stocks and looking at the app and seeing "today's return $0.50"

the second best thing i did all year, after Gamestop, was shorting the shit out of TSLA last Friday.

Were you actively managing the 401k holdings ... or was it just one of those things where the company just did it for you?

I set up the allocations while I was still at the job and have pretty much left it alone. I also used to copy-edit both equity research and bond-ratings research but never invested outside of setting up that allocation (Gen X artist values, lol).

Meanwhile, with those stocks above I’ve gained 10% so far, thanks mostly to Sonos being 30% of my portfolio), even with today’s correction. Two of the four report tomorrow (TJX and Redfin).

I generally stay away from retail companies -- "consumer discretionary" -- e.g. TJX -- because of how the economy and capitalism has "evolved" over the past 30+ years, but maybe it's undervalued? idk ... I'm sitting on some commercial real estate companies that at the time I thought were a solid investment, but that was pre-covid.

TJX was based on going into HomeGoods for the first time last year, and literally anytime I’m in there — no matter the hour or day — at least 10 people are in line for the registers. And Marshall’s as well: never seen one without a line. Which makes me think there might be something about the thrift-store-like scavenging that is an in-person experience that isn’t the same online. (None of this has to do with its current value, and I did read some research, but that was the instinct behind it.)

xp to self: but for now, I'm going to hold onto them with the rationale that rich property speculators and the people that make money off of them (e.g. mortgage holding companies) are going to get rewarded by the US Government because our country sucks like that.

Commercial real estate seems like such an unknown now, as far as how office life is going to change, but assuming the rewards are coming either way makes sense.

i love having a perishingly small value of stocks and looking at the app and seeing "today's return $0.50"

― himpathy with the devil (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 9:44 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

up another $2 since this.

https://i2-prod.dailyrecord.co.uk/incoming/article10126257.ece/ALTERNATES/s810/MDthen-2.jpg

being flat is better than being down.

though I had a few stocks/funds that I had been holding for 5 years or so that were always down that in the past year have gone up for idk law of averages, who knows ... I have no idea what best practices are for when to cut your losses and sell at a loss. Most of my investments have gone up since I purchased them, and I have probably "sold too early" according to people more knowledgeable than me. However, I felt like, "I made enough on this" when I decided to sell.

Which companies do you have the least respect for management's competency that you are bullish on and which companies are you bearish on despite management being on the ball?

xpost generally if you are investing, as opposed to trading, in single name stocks or sector funds you should have an idea of why you bought it, what you expect from it and during what time frame. If you have held something for awhile and it hasn't made any gains, would that money be better moved to another opportunity. Like, AAPL has kind of been maxed out since it split but people like it being slow + dividends and are happy to just hold it forever.

If i have sizeable gains and still like the company, I sell enough to cover my cost basis and let the rest ride so at least I don't lose the money I put into it if there is a correction or it just completely dumps. You can always buys it back on a dip if you miss it. There are lots of ways to invest depending on how active you want to be.

If i have sizeable gains and still like the company, I sell enough to cover my cost basis and let the rest ride so at least I don't lose the money I put into it if there is a correction or it just completely dumps. You can always buys it back on a dip if you miss it.

Yeah! that's kinda been my philosophy ... I forget what I bought back ... might have been Intuit. I got nervous about a bubble and about the odds of beating the market so I sold big chunks of some of my profitable stock holdings and put the money in index funds, like everyone on here has in their 401(k)s, and caek demonstrated via complex math that that's where I should put my money.

If you know which stocks are going to go up you should buy those stocks. That’s my ... two cents.

I don't buy anything that I don't understand what it is and how they make money. Like a lot of the derivatives and complex stuff and anything related to calls, puts, shorts, margin stuff -- I am not touching that because it's way too easy to fuck it up, and also I see it as "too easy money"

Like buying Apple or Microsoft and holding it and getting dividends reinvested ... that's like, chill, bro

During the GME frenzy I was like “maybe I’ll buy a stock” and I bought some Nintendo stock bc I like Nintendo. And I also bought Vanguard’s tech sector ETF bc I was like I might as well get some extra exposure to that nonsense and a biotech ETF bc companies like Illumina and Thermo acquire like everything remotely promising and it’s all expensive as shit. But that’s like basically my only foray into anything other than the Vanguard target retirement fund.

i bought stock in a company awhile back because I thought their abbrev was funny ... like it was an inside joke between me and a few friends ... it's done pretty well!

like, i trade a lot of garbage companies (note: i don't consider GME a garbage company) because most of the market is now full of garbage companies that do stupid price swings because of what happened to the options market last year. I would not recommend that unless you are really bored.

It actually had a decent rating by Schwab and Morningstar -- DOOR

because we used to have a DIY space together, and there was a room, off to the side of the main space that served as a sound booth/gear storage area. One of the members of our co-op felt that it was necessary to write in sharpie in all caps "DOOR" on the door to the room, which was very obviously a door, and did not need additional signage or explanation as to its door-like nature.

basically this guy was really into getting high and labeling things with sharpie in all caps

a pot etf has a stupid ticker, YOLO

lol omg

ILX:
Ilex Medical Ltd. engages in the import and marketing of medical laboratory equipment and in the development of medical information management software. It operates through the following segments: Medical Laboratory Equipment and Diagnostics Materials, Medical Equipment, and Inhalation Devices. The Medical Laboratory Equipment and Diagnostics Materials segment engages in the marketing, distribution, and sale of laboratory medical equipment and diagnostics products, diagnostics systems, and kits and consumables for the examination of medical laboratories in hospitals. The Medical Equipment segment engages in the import, marketing and distribution of medical equipment and devices in Israel. The Inhalation Devices segment development, manufacture, and marketing of mobile inhalation devices. The company was founded by Moshe Ben Shaul in 1977 and is headquartered in Petach-Tikva, Israel.

we could literally invest in ILX

i have a really dumbass question about the stock market, if the ilx braintrust will induldge me.

i don't do stock market gambling in the wallstreetbets type of vein. i have a few etfs that i put money into and hope will grow in the next 20 or 30 years. but i have looked at penny stocks often and wondered the following: if i see a penny stock that is habitually going up and down, say between 0.40 and 0.60, on a daily/weekly basis, the company looks fine, as in not about to go bankrupt, books look fine, no big news coming out imminently that you can tell that might tank the stock etc. what is to stop someone just doing an order to buy the stock at 0.40 (or below) and then an order to sell at 0.60? i mean other than it not being all that profitable. i guess slippage, your order to sell might not be executed at a profitable price/you might even lose money?

yes, people do that regularly as their trading method. It's called scalping. But you have to be certain of the volume (liquidity) esp if there is a huge spread between the bid and ask.

GAMESTONKS

Also, always set limit order if you do this, never market.

good to know! will maybe do it with some disposable money for a bit and see how it goes

or just do paper trades. i think there are programs, or literally just write it on paper when you would have executed (no cheating) and figure out if you are good at it.

also, none of this is financial advice, it's just generally what people do when they are figuring out trading before they use real money.

that's a good idea. will try the paper method for a bit and see how i get on. even if that goes well i will literally only be spending very little money on the scalping endeavour, if i bother to do it at all

Anyone have any thoughts on Berkshire Hathaway? It absolutely trounced the S&P for most of its history but over the last 5 years or so has been kind of blah. Is it because Buffet is old and people assume he's the business?

apparently I cannot purchase shares of ILX online through Schwab.com ... oh well. I did look into other ILX-adjacent stocks, and found ILATF -- not that we have a subboard for I Love Alcohol Tobacco (and) Firearms

xp. friendship ended with warren buffet

now cathie wood is my best friend

oh no. Cathie is already over. Just kidding, i don't give opinions about whether a stock/etf is good or not but she got a lot of backlash recently for being a trump supporter weirdo biblethumper (the reason it's named ARK).

If her fund becomes full of illiquid tickers, just know it is the lord's path that he chose for her. They did really well last year!

i don't know enough about markets to judge but personally i am kind of weary about anyone with as much faith in tsla

Didn't Musk himself come out like 6 months ago and say "Hey guys, our future earnings can't possibly match these valuations!"

Or maybe it was longer ago

this is not an endorsement at all just an entertaining observation, today Gamestop went from $45 to $169 right now. I love this.

So I became an investing Maxxinista (TJX) and their stock is flat/up a little after reporting below-expected earnings (thanks, snow and cold), while Redfin (RDFN) beats whisper numbers and doesn’t have any glaring new downsides but is down a few bucks after hours, and Shopify (SHOP) did a similar thing last week. Learn in’ by the day!

I haven't actually picked an individual stock in years. I used to come up with really good ideas and then not hold them for long enough - I'd always panic and sell too early.

I now have $4.75 of unrealized gains on ILATF

ILBets

most stocks dump after earnings these days. People play the run up and buy short term options and the volatility on the options goes way up and the day after earnings is a let down or just random and options' volatility gets crushed.

The positive thing about that is, if it’s meant to be a medium/long-term investment, there’s an opportunity to buy more at a lower price, if pre-earnings doesn’t end up being an unrepeatable high.

listening to a podcast with the ARK head of research, pretty damn interesting tbh. Def taking with a grain of salt as to whether I'm listening to someone who generally has discovered some kind of unconventional thinking secret sauce or just a gladwell-esque storyteller

my account's broken even thanks to GME and AMC. insert rocket emojis here, degenerates!

GME is having an interesting one:

Day's Range 172.00 - 348.50

lol - of course, i don't check for an hour and my gains were undone

can't be holding on to these ultra volatile stocks

this is how people give themselves strokes...

good lord, it's climbing again.
gotta remind myself i held from $300 to $40. anyone else on this rollercoaster ride?

i have been doing paper-trading and i am staying the hell away from GME because it makes no sense to me. i want a volatile stock but not that volatile

i just put down 15 large on mcdonalds

If you bought the dip an hour ago, you'd already be back up 95 points per share. Insanity.

gonna dump some money into this next time it hits $40 and then it'll immediately sink to $2 and never recover

omg nhex, you've been holding since round 1???

did you average down at all when it was 40-50?

i don't understand the appeal of GME unless you are making all-or-nothing small bets with huge returns if you catch a spike

i am not sure the answer you are looking for; people trade all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons.

i posted this in the slack but this was good and it did a pretty accurate job of describing what happened minus how wsb was making fun of Jim Cr4mer and he started talking about gme all the time so the attention to it started to blow up (she is kind of known at this point re: her NOPE indicator)
https://nope-its-lily.medium.com/trading-salience-in-a-hyperconnected-marketplace-part-1-efbd93712dac

WSB's $GME play for seems like a kind of mass performance art or situationist happening, like levitating the pentagon only it actually gets off the ground for a bit here and there. I find the energy and nihilistic enthusiasm around it really fun and amusing tbh.

do not find amusing stories of people who "YOLO their mortgage" and lose though

they were doing that for other tickers before GME. people seem to forget the "bets" part of the name.

Weed stocks and experimental pharmaceuticals still seem to dominate the bets of WSB. YOLOing on the cure for brain tumors.

they were doing that for other tickers before GME. people seem to forget the "bets" part of the name.

― Yerac, Wednesday, March 10, 2021 6:58 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

does that apply to the 7.5 million+ people who joined the sub strictly because of GME?

I am so glad that I invest in relatively boring things and these bros aren't fucking up my spot

meanwhile I watched about 45 minutes of a documentary about Warren Buffett the other night ... See's Candies are really fucking good btw

xxpost
does what apply? are the millions of new people forgetting about the bets part of the name? I know a lot of people drifted away from there because the amount of new people and bots made it unreadable, I am not sure what they are doing day to day.

i'm saying that this happened on the backs of a lot of first time investors who got caught up in WSB memes promising them riches, who didn't know the first thing about stocks other than "oh you can trade stocks on an app now, how easy"

there were obviously tons of bagholders whose lives became worse when the stock dropped and i can't really blame for getting caught in the ultimate FOMO get rich quick scheme. the millions of people who got caught up in it weren't getting a message of "this is risky and stupid, be careful," they were getting TO THE MOON DIAMOND HANDS nonstop for a week. you can say "they knew what they were doing" but this all blew up way too fast for that to be the case

like literally the entire message of the sub that week was "IF WE STICK TOGETHER WE CAN NOT FAIL", do you really think the sub having "bets" in the name is more powerful than that?

um, i don't work for wsb. but the entire deal with the robinhood congressional hearings and people being upset about the "gamification" of broker apps goes beyond what happened last week and GME.

you could very well replace gme with btc or pltr or cciv or any amount of other things there.

i mean yeah, when this was happening i was comparing it to the 2017 crypto boom, which also saw a few smart early adopters make a lot of money on the backs of an enormous drove of late adopters catching FOMO, having no idea what they're doing, and holding the bags when it crashed. it sucked then and it sucks now

the entire market has been a huge garbage dump for years. people are in lockdown with no money or assistance from the gov't, of course stuff was going to get more bonkers.

How do you get rich multiplying your investment by 10 buying a stock if you aren't already rich? I'd argue most of these lives would change more multiplying their investment by 0.1, which is the downside. Only people seeing anything special are buying options and then hyping shares. Why make them rich for a possible 10× upside at most?

And then post memes about how amazing they are bc you had 2 grand of unrealized gains

what? are you talking about those pump and dumpers with a lot of followers? like on twitter?

anyone like that including the kitty, yes

i don't follow people on twitter although i know a lot of people do. i don't consider the gme guy in that category.

but for your first line about "getting rich" multiplying your investment by 10 if you aren't already rich, technically due to convexity of certain option plays, your initial investment can go up in the 1000s percent somewhat quickly. I am a fairly (by wsb) conservative trader and it is not unusual to see 100-500% gains on options, thus why retail jumped on them so hard last year.

that is why I am saying you are probably taking on too much risk for the reward if you aren't making those option plays

what is the upside for the people who bought shares at 350? and then it is sad when they dominate a large chunk of current reddit posts. "Damn, bought at the peak. But i am holding, fellow apes."

sure? i mean i am not trying to convince anyone that "this is the way."i had a friend that was texting me about starting trading yesterday but he doesn't want to actually do any of the work around learning. it's a lot of work sometimes and people are generally terrible with money and don't want the responsibility.

that was an xpost

lol and every post made by these people contains that same amount of compassion. I'm not accusing you of anything btw. Just trying to express what turns me off about the whole phenomenon.

wsb is basically 90% unusable due to GME, are you actually asking a real question? because there are trades to be made out of almost anything but i don't think that is what you want to hear. and that entire ape group thing I really don't know how that started. it's weird.

i am not asking a question. i am also stating that the ape thing is sad and weird. it is the very thing that makes this trade difderent from the other trades to be made out of almost anything.

i agree that the same scam could be applied to other trades. I do think gamestop was chosen due to reddit nostalgia potential, though.

i had assumed it came from that bartstool guy or something sports related. I wish it hadn't gotten that much attention because too many outside variables got involved in what should have been a pretty straightforward thing.

Apes strong together is a meme from the Planet of the Apes remake isn't it?

xp yes, i agree it was already a more straightforward good call. And i believe you are right that kg was in it long before the madness. Also a bit hilarious that Burry exited before the party began.

did you read that salience article though? it touches on that. like why RKT pumped last week, stuff aligned with earnings, dividend, float, timetable and the name of the company is Rocket, of course it was likely to get a push. xpost

Oh yeah, it's super dangerous and stupid for anyone to be involved in this. Definitely gotta stay aware of that through this thing. As said many times in /wsb, don't bet anything you can't lose, though God knows what percentage of subredditors are all-in or not-in at all.

(p.s. there are many other reddit communities that aren't /wsb, boring ones like /dividends, /investing,/bogleheads, /stockmarket etc that aren't as wild. they can still be suspicious pump-and-dump grounds, though.)

I'm only in for a handful of shares, i didn't risk my retirement - though clearly some people have, which is nuts. I've freaked out just over the small holdings I have. I did cash out a teeny bit of profit on AMC, wot wot :) various weed stocks, not so much, but to me still worth as a lottery ticket. Last week was RKT and UWMC, which of course crashed immediately after I bought. At least they look like decent long-term plays.

And Yerac, I bought GME near the top - right before RH and the other brokers caused the crashdown - and said to myself, fuck it, it's pretty much all gone, so i might as well hold. When it jacked up from $40 -> $100 and seemed to be swinging back, more slowly this time, I bought a few more shares to average down, which was the right move, which is why I'm now in the green.

Haven't yet gone full idiot - I'm afraid if I start trading options that's where the real reckless/profitable all-or-nothing bets happen. The lure of the evil, insane market is very tempting. When the markets paid no price for COVID and raced to all-time highs it was a real awakening, or just massive confirmation bias for me about it all being a casino.

How do you get rich multiplying your investment by 10 buying a stock if you aren't already rich? I'd argue most of these lives would change more multiplying their investment by 0.1, which is the downside. Only people seeing anything special are buying options and then hyping shares. Why make them rich for a possible 10× upside at most?

Also, the smarter play it seems is to just invest in S&P/market indexes forever. Most of my safe "boomer" money is in that stuff which I have no control over

I am about ready to chicken out - setting a stop-loss today at just above my break-even

There is no chickening out. Everyone should manage their own level of risk. There is always another trade, you don't need to marry this one if it's not working out. I sometimes hold thing for 5 minutes and realize...naaaaahhhhh back it out.

Also, the smarter play it seems is to just invest in S&P/market indexes forever. Most of my safe "boomer" money is in that stuff which I have no control over

― Nhex, Wednesday, March 10, 2021 10:40 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This is what I do and my stomach lining thanks me

I do that naturally as well in the 401k. I have an IRA that was leftover from grad school. It was small so I've used it in 2 riskier single stock plays over the last 5 years. that one is 15x but started so small. even winning feels bad.

that's mostly what I've done for a while, but starting to dip my toes back into active trading

pic.twitter.com/lAVYztmTq1

— Roaring Kitty (@TheRoaringKitty) March 9, 2021

I am still waiting for Congress to wake up and pass a 'financial transaction tax' of one-tenth of a cent on every purchase or sale of a stock or bond and every bank transfer of funds, to be collected and paid by the broker, bank or insurance company who initiates the transaction.

yes. i think everyone is waiting for that.

it's why i'm long $IRS

Wondering if the stimulus checks will actually move the needle on retail investing, if temporarily. I'm guessing not even that, though, despite hopes of the GME bag holders.

lol https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-price-target-2/

to the mars!

the price of tesla just seems completely untethered from "fundamentals" in a way that suggests that a ludicrous price target like that is potentially not wrong to me. i feel like if i had a spare 6 figures lying around i would absolutely be buying a bunch of tesla shares, although i would probably get out once it reached less than half of that targeted price

the primary input to the model was cocaine

ARK's largest holding is TSLA and they can't buy anymore to prop up the price because they are at or near 10%. Gotta pump!

Their bear case is $1500/share.... so they're saying at worst, it'll be double it's all-time high in 6 years. Hmm. Possible, I suppose.

If I were going to make a buy case for TSLA it would simply be that Elon Musk is a fantastically talented hype man.

Nothing in ARK's model makes a shred of sense though. "Bear case" in which 2025 sees them selling 10x the vehicles they sold in 2020, absurd assumptions about their as yet nonexistent ridehail/autonomous taxi businesses, etc.

Interesting that ARK funds, TSLA, and bitcoin are all crashing yesterday/today

Tech's had a really bad week. Telling myself it'll bounce back next week

This is pretty freaky:
https://www.ft.com/content/2542af81-9e93-4d05-a0b9-26c0f6aab6f3

Apparently you can just amass positions equivalent to 5 or 10% of a company's stock via swaps and never report it? And major investment banks are fine with giving you tons of leverage to do it, until it blows up and a single hedge fund's implosion causes 30% drops in multiple large stocks?

Stock market is totally having a normal one right now

What the hell? https://t.co/92RWejK16A pic.twitter.com/hgzLMhrpN4

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) April 15, 2021

there is something very weird going on with that one that is probably not at all indicative of the wider market. I don't know if it is a form of money laundering or what, but I can't imagine it's a bunch of retail investors running up the price. It trades less than 400 shares per day.

lol this is one of my favorite stock descriptions ever

Hometown International, Inc., through its subsidiary, Your Hometown Deli Limited Liability Company, operates a delicatessen store under the Your Hometown Deli brand name in the United States. Its Your Hometown Deli store provides sandwiches; soups; salads, including made-to-order green salads, prepared pasta, potato, chicken, and various wet salads; deli meats/cheeses; hot/cold drinks; fresh breads/rolls; breakfast products, such as pastries, bagels, and toast; yogurt; and small retail items for cooking, baking, and home use, as well as coffee, tea, and other hot and cold beverages. The company was incorporated in 2014 and is based in Woodstown, New Jersey.

Please do not think for one minute this reflects badly on the security of those stock mutual funds in your 401K. Pretty please. With sugar on top.

sounds like a mafia front posing as a public company

xp, Oh certainly not -- but there are dozens of SPACs that are like 60% as ridiculous as that. I think the point is more that there isn't a lot of evidence of oversight.

What do you guys think of something like VIAC, which had it price destroyed to one hedge fund dumping it?
The business hasn't really changed much, meaning it's seriously undervalued right now or it's still pumped too high due to current market exuberance. Still higher than it was in Jan/Feb '20. The company has remained profitable regardless.

FWIW, I just listened to this: https://open.spotify.com/show/1te7oSFyRVekxMBJUSethH?si=sbeWrWYnR4iZo_apx0LkUw which was v interesting on greensill, credit suisse, and archegos among other things, and the guy made a pretty good case for VIAC being a slowly dying business.

There are usually a lot of profits to be squeezed from a slowly dying business. Look at what vulture capitalists are doing to the newspaper industry. The question is whether those remaining profits can translate into a higher share price. Probably not.

link between price and profits seems a lot more tenuous these days anyway, so it's about a good a dice roll as a lot of other things.