Anyone here with a special interest in stocks/investing?

Post Reply New Topic

1. That must be an American thing. I don't know anything about it, so I don't have an opinion on it.

2. Again, must be an American thing. I don't know anything about it. However, guaranteed that something big in US tax policy will affect peoples' propensity to invest in various things depending on how the tax is structured. I'm not overly concerned about it because I select stocks in companies I think have long term upside potential based on how they're managed, demand for their products/services, how they're marketed etc vs. caring what others are doing with their money.

3. Who is the IMF stealing land from this time? Haven't read anything about that.

If the USD loses it's reserve status I'll probably be in the same position as most people: either monetary wealth will evaporate, or it won't and the value of firms held in USD will be converted to some other currency in time. No matter what the sun will still rise & set every day, so, so what? Life goes on. I'm not going to not invest for the future just because the world might end, because, what if it doesn't?

Same answer, pretty much. Who cares? If the world falls apart and the financial system gets deleted like the end of Fight Club, so what? I'll still be living and breathing and life will still go on however it does.

That said, I'm not investing in companies that I think are high risk long shots and praying for my horse to come in. Sure, some choices are a bit riskier than others, but with small amounts of money in the grand scheme of things. I'm selecting stocks I think will perform well because the companies' operations are being managed with systems and processes that create or add value to their product/service/bottom line.

lol that's probably pretty good advice.

I don't mind saying what I think are good companies to invest in, but I'd rather discuss the process of how I select them and how others select theirs. It's sort of the old "give a man a fish, feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime."

You'll get a lot more out of learning how to pick out the signal from noise in business & technology news and determine what information indicates that a company is likely to increase in value than just being told a few stock symbols.

That said, if the consensus here is to NOT discuss individual stock picks, then I'll refrain. If people want to discuss my picks or theirs openly & transparently, then I'm open to that. I'll tell you what my picks in my simulator account were and why, and what my more current picks are and why. The important part would be the why, as, IMO, there's a lot more to learn from the why if it teaches you how to spot value being added to a system, process, product, service, company's bottom line etc.

I don't understand anything about the stock market, or any other kind of investment. I can learn and understand pretty much anything else, but this is one subject that is completely foreign to me.

I bolded the part that matters. IF you want to learn about it, go ahead, no one's stopping you but you.

I respect your choice.
One day you will remember the opportunity I have given to you.
Be well.

Goldfish,

There're different approaches to investing. What makes sense to me, and one thing I'm interested in is Value Investing - basically doing an insane amount of research concerning the fundamentals of lots of companies. I've been in learning stages for a couple years, and I'm thinking about making my first significant purchase in the next couple days, so I can't really recommend any individual stocks.

But, I can recommend three great books.

Value Investing, from Graham to Bufet and Beyond, by Bruce Greenwald. This talks about the theory and practice and gives some basic steps to valuing companies.

You Can be a stock Market Genius by Joel Greenblatt This is an enjoyable read and gives good info about special situations where great deals can be found.

Latticework by Robert Haggstrom While this isn't very focused on any specific advice concerning investing, it does give great advise on the mental approach.

Also, while they don't generally talk about specific stocks to invest in, you can listen to to Buffet and Munger share their thoughts for about six hours a year by buying as little as one share of brk.b for about $125. I'll be making my third trip to Omaha on Friday.

I'm sure those books are worth reading. Perhaps I'll read 'em someday. I do read a fair bit, but have a couple books to read first and foremost then another several books for whenever I get around to them. I might squeeze one of these in before the others.

The Warren Buffett meeting sounds great. Feel free to share anything about it when you get back.

Me. I've long since been interested in shares and investing, since before I was legally allowed to hold shares. So I've been investing on and off since I was 18. I didn't really know all that much at first, but the first company I bought into was BP, which I sold a bit before its peak. First company I did well out of was KCOM (bought at 50p and sold at 82p or so back in 2006) and first big loss was also in 2006, with Victoria Oil and Gas. To this day I have a disliking for speculative oil concerns which may or may not be justified.
Current holdings are WM Morrison Supermarkets (very contrarian I know and so far seems like it has deserved the bad publicity, I'm down 20% on it) and Cityfibre Infrastructure holdings (up about 20% on this one). I did nearly double my money with Albemarle & Bond a few weeks before it went into administration at that too, but I'd say my average return is about 15%. Nothing miraculous but nothing terrible either and certainly better and more exciting than any savings account.

As for the recession? I sold all my holdings almost by accident in December 2006. I did spot opportunities in early 2009 and planned to buy in but had trouble getting a stockbroker to recognise my student address. How I wish I could go back in time and get the necessary identification documents/register from home!

I've had a bit of an interest in it ever since I was a kid, but never really devoted much time to learning about it until more recently. Even during/shortly after business school I never looked into it. Granted, I literally did not have time during business school - and then afterward, well, I guess it just wasn't meant to be a part of my life at all yet.

I don't have any concerns about losing money on speculating on oil stocks because I have no intention of investing in oil companies. I'm sure I could pick some out of the bunch here in Canada w/ the tar sands projects that are likely be increasingly profitable, however, I don't care for what they do and don't want to support it with my money.

In the simulator account I've been running for a year+ now my rate of return has fluctuated from a low of 20/21%ish to a high of 47.x% on the same several stock pics. I only sold one and doubled down on another, and in that move I bet on the wrong one - otherwise my roi would be higher. Everything else has been buy and hold.

I've literally just started buying stocks in a few different companies with real money in the last couple weeks. I'm watching many others and carefully considering which one(s) to buy next. I have several on my shopping list to pick up - but I'm trying to determine which priority order I should buy them in. Thing is, there's at least one that I want in on before a certain event occurs, but I don't know if said event is going to happen in a matter of days, months, or more than a year from now - so it's difficult to decide whether I want to park some money in it and wait up to 2 or so years before it should go up significantly. I think it may be easier to justify parking a few bucks in it as my cash reserves replenish over the next month or two. But then again, there are others I want a piece of, too. Hmmm, decisions, decisions.. either way, over the coming months ahead I'll be buying into several more companies in a variety of industries, just a matter of which one first while keeping enough cash on hand to invest in some highly seasonal stocks at the right time around the end of the Summer. If only I had a heck of a lot more capital to work with already I wouldn't be having this prioritizing problem! I'd just buy 'em all, yesterday.

If I can pull off 20%+/yr in real life returns, I'll be a happy camper. If all goes well and I make better sell decisions vs. continue to hold, perhaps I can outdo that. Time will tell.

And yeeeeah, having made 21-47% with a simulator account, I've experienced the frustration of not having the ability to buy 'em in real life when I knew they were good investments. Same goes for times in the past when I'd read certain business news and realize it was going to positively affect stock values and WISH I had money to throw down on it. Ah well, that's all in the past - it's now, now - so all I can do is make the best moves I can in the present moment.

I'm really not one to judge another person, but he sure seems to be a perfect fit if you read even a summary biography. Three points always seem to be repeated. First, he and a friend used to record all the licence plate numbers of the cars that passed his house and then tallied the digits to see if there was a pattern. Second, he often praises a Dale Carnegie course he took to practice speaking to other people, along with a class he volunteered to teach to practice his speaking skills. Third, he bought his first stock at around age 7 or 8.


It was a lot of fun. He wasn't really presenting facts, so much as answering questions and explaining his thoughts on different topics. One thing that is always impressive is how he really seems to know nearly everything about each of the stocks / companies he owns.


One aspect of their investing is that they are strongly in favor of having few stocks, (usually fewer than 10) compared to most financial advisers often having hundreds. They were famous for investing 1/3 of their money in Coke. They view the 'cost' of a stock not as how much cash they're giving up, but as what's the 'next best' investment they're forgoing.



If you aren't sure about whether or not the event will occur you may consider buying an option. There's much more bang for the buck on sharp upturns, but if the stock isn't in the money at expiration you have a 100% loss. There are also LEAPS which are basically the same but last up to 2 years, and warrants, which are even longer term, but are not as commonly available. Remember, being too far off on the timing is effectively no different than being wrong.

Interesting. I'm watching several, maybe more than a dozen now. I'll end up investing in somewhere between a dozen and 20 different stocks within my first year. Definitely not hundreds. There's only a dozen or so in my simulator account that's done quite well, because each has been selected for a reason - not simply speculation and diversification which is about the only way you end up buying into hundreds of different stocks, IMO.



If you aren't sure about whether or not the event will occur you may consider buying an option. There's much more bang for the buck on sharp upturns, but if the stock isn't in the money at expiration you have a 100% loss. There are also LEAPS which are basically the same but last up to 2 years, and warrants, which are even longer term, but are not as commonly available. Remember, being too far off on the timing is effectively no different than being wrong.[/quote]

I suppose it's impossible to be 100% certain it's going to happen, but the source of the information (which I received in person) knew things that he couldn't have known unless he truly knew the details. I believe he's credible. The even will occur sometime between now and 2017, but there's no way to know for sure when unless you're somehow involved with the companies in question. Obviously timing is key... ideally I'd have a crystal ball and know exactly when the event will occur, and invest the day/week before. But not knowing that, I simply have to invest knowing that I could be waiting until 2017 for their to be serious movement on the stock. I think it will move up a fair bit before that, and then continue to after 2017, but when certain things will happen and demand for the stock will rise sharply is a bit of an unknown & unknowable. I suppose in order to invest in it today and wait I'd have to believe that the rise will be significant enough to take into account an up to 2 year waiting period. Hmmmm, decisions, decisions.. well, timing - I've already decided to buy the stock, it's just a matter of when.

"anyone here have special interest in stock or investing?"
I wish

I noticed a stock dropped quite a bit yesterday (and again today) so I looked them up on http://www.stockhouse.com to see why. Q1 report just got released and they had either a small gain, or a bit of a loss, depending on which accounting principles you go by. Seems silly to me that people would dump their stock, potentially at a loss, just because they have a lower quarter - especially since the reason for the low Q1 is r&d and expansion costs. Meanwhile they have higher sales and improved margins with nothing but increased demand in the forecast. So, I bought a few more shares at a lower price than I'd paid before and am going to continue watching them daily. If they drop significantly more in the next week or two, I'll simply buy more while they're on sale and then wait 'til they go right back up where they were - and then beyond that in time.

Soooo, take an interest in it and start learning?

Damn, missed a good one.. I knew that Blackberry was back on the path to profitability, but like everyone else figured that it wouldn't be for another several months before they were back in black, so I have not bought any shares in them.. then they posted a surprise $23M profit this quarter and their stock price has gone up 20% or so over the last few days. Oops, underestimated them and missed the boat on that one... but I still think Blackberry is a great long term bet. Maybe share prices will have spiked soon and come down a bit again? Hmmmm, time will tell, but eventually I think I'll be in BBRY because I think many of the things they're doing and deals they've announced recently are going to pay off well over the long run.

It would also depend how much you invest and how big of a share you buy.

I'm sure the guy that invest $500,000 in a multimillion dollar company is going to get more money than the guy that only invested $20.

I watched a particular penny stock fluctuate up and down for a few days and then decided I'd try to buy low & sell high, day trade it basically - which I'd never done before. With the year and a half or two of using a stock market simulator on investopedia.com, and the brief couple of months I've been investing real cash, I've never done anything like this. But I figured wtf, why not? So I bought some shares last Friday for $0.07 with the intent of selling them when the stock rose 1.5-2 cents. It did go up, but then when I tried to sell them at $0.085 cents no one was buying.. there was 1 person bidding, and 230 people trying to sell their shares. Obviously this is an extremely common strategy on volatile stocks and not so easy to execute. So, I put the stock up for sale at 8.5 cents for one day at a time in hopes that it would rise above 8.5 and I'd sell my shares for a quick profit. The first couple days it didn't happen, but today it peaked at 9 cents & I was able to offload my shares at 8.5 cents for a quick 21.43% profit in 6 days.

Further, because I'm in Canada and have done this within a TFSA (Tax Free Savings Account) I don't have to pay any capital gains tax on the profits.

I'll continue to watch this, and other stocks, and if it happens to peak and then dip back down again in a fairly regular pattern... well, I might even just re-buy some shares in the same company again and repeat the process. Time will tell if that happens or not. In the meantime I'm in the black on this one. edit: It rose further today after I sold it, so I left some money on the table on this rise.. ah well, at least I'm up decently on it & can go ahead and do it again once it dips back down.

Also, today was a big day. Apparently there were 7 IPO's today - the most in several years. I have no idea what the other 6 even are, but I did buy some shares in the one big buzz one: GoPro. I'm going to hold onto them for quite some time as I believe that they have good long term potential considering they've doubled their revenues every year for the last decade, are THE dominant player in their market, AND are exploring how to monetize media content online. If they nail the last part, they're going to be a fair bit more valuable than the $3-4Billion their current market cap puts them at.

As for the Blackberry price spike I mentioned earlier, it's come down a bit now & I think it will slide a bit further before their next quarter. I don't own any yet, but may buy some before their Q2 announcement because if they made a surprise $23M in Q1 then chances are they're going to continue to do better and better with the various deals they've just struck. Obviously time will tell and there's certainly risk involved.. but Blackberry could potentially be the biggest tech comeback story of the next couple of years considering they used to trade at well over $100 and are now under $10/share.

Another I see playing out is Tesla announcing another loss in August's Q2 report due to R&D and expansion costs. When they announced a $40M loss in Q1, I read the details of the report and they actually had higher revenues AND higher profit margins per widget sold, so the fundamentals of their business are still improving.. they just lost money that quarter due to R&D on the next widget model and Elon Musk's instructions to his team in China to "Spend money as fast as you can without wasting any." So, predictably, the stock price dropped about $60/share. That's when I bought some. Now it's back up to nearly what it was before the Q1 loss announcement. Because I believe they've still been spending money as fast or faster than they're making it, I foresee similar things happening in the beginning of August with their Q2 earnings report. Taking the chance on it, I'm likely going to sell the few shares I have before their Q2 announcement in hopes that I am correct and a reported loss will send the share price tumbling back down. This is because people are stupid and won't read the fine print. They'll see a loss and get spooked and make emotional decisions to sell, and after they drive the price back down again, that's when hen I'll buy back in and hold - at least until I anticipate the same thing happening again if they're still in R&D, spend & expand mode the following quarter.

Most of the other stocks I hold have ticked up a bit since I bought them, but nothing major.

I figured Apple would to better than it has after it's 7 way split.. but it's hovering around break even. It's going to depend on their next quarter report how they do, as well as if institutional investors that couldn't buy into Apple start doing so now that their share price is low enough to be included in various market performance indexes. When it was up over $500 it wasn't included in these indexes, and some insurance companies/pension plans etc have rules that say they can only invest in companies included in them. So, that could change things for Apple stock this year. Hmmm, time will tell. In the meantime, I'll continue to hold the shares I do have as I don't have another opportunity I'd rather have the money in and I feel Apple is very stable. If that changes, though, well then, I always have the option of selling and shifting into something else. Like with everything, time will tell.