Investment BS Thread - Stocks/Futures/Mutual Funds/Bonds/Commodities/Options/ETFs/401ks/Etc

Good call learning first, my advice is just start small and don't go crazy. Options have wrecked more accounts than anything else. It is easy to look at something and think "If this goes to where it should be I'll make a bazillion dollars with these options!"

 

Lol, SIPC basically told Robinhood to pound sand and their new accounts aren't going to be insured by them. Ouch.

“Robinhood would be buying securities for its account and sharing a portion of the proceeds with their customers, and that’s not what we cover,” says SIPC CEO Stephen Harbeck. “I’ve never seen a single document on this. I haven’t been consulted on this.”

Robinhood Will Retool Checking Product Following Scrutiny
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/robinhood-retool-checking-product-following-034523132.html

 

Can any of y'all get this chart to load? Mine hangs up on "loading settings"

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-c...istoric-LongTerm-Rate-Data-Visualization.aspx

 

Don't know if you considered it, but I recently began investing with a focus on dividend payouts. It's definitely not a short game, pros and cons for sure. The main benefit though is that it is not effected by stock market swings, companies will continue to pay out. Obviously now is a good time to buy. Do some research though. I receive the IQT subscription and focus on the Timely 10. Armature here, but have a lot of experts in the family some of which have written books.

https://www.marketwatch.com/legacy/story/retirementweeklystitch/2018-12-14?siteid=nwhrw

https://iqtrends.com/subscriptions_timely10.php

$1,217 Technically Speaking: Tips and Strategies from 16 Top Traders

https://www.amazon.com/Technically-Speaking-Tips-Strategies-Traders/dp/0934380392#customerReviews

 

Another day of losses in the thousands! Lol

I did buy more though, wish I had more money freed up, prices are great right now.

 

what a shitshow. Still holding out for a bounce, but it's looking a lot like capitulation at this point.

 

Well it can’t go down forever.

And dividends will keep getting paid, so I see humor in the irrational selling.

 

there's plenty of rationality involved, the bull market we saw over the last decade is what was irrational. ZIRP is coming to an end, many companies with gigantic P/E ratios, and other inflated asset classes will get big haircuts. Today is merely a 'pricing in' of the Fed's imminent interest rate increase, an indication of what's to come. Slowing growth around the world, decline of housing market, tariffs, etc. also playing a factor, along with the -only temporary- trump tax cuts wearing off, and the increasing difficulty in rationalizing stock-buybacks to manipulate prices higher. I find it hard to see anything good unless something is maybe done about tariffs, but it's highly unlikely the Fed will hold on interest rates this wednesday.

 

I agree that all of the things you listed are the causes of the sell off. There are probably a million other causes too. Some P/E did get out of control. But many companies are doing great, reporting great numbers, and still getting hammered. That’s is what I mean by irrational. I look at fundamentals, and am looking 5 years down the road. What happens this week or next year means nothing.

 

true, I do believe dollar cost averaging works to some extent, but not as much as some say it does. I will be waiting this one out until there's a good enough "discount".. we are far from it. Fundamentals didn't matter in the bull market, they don't matter now. They may matter later.

 

Good luck, timing is difficult! I obviously wish I had waited on many purchases, but I don’t beat myself up because I know I have no clue where the market is going in the short term. Today I was up, then down, who knows, tomorrow may be the end of this. Or we might drop another 30%. I just buy, for dividends and hopeful growth, not too worried about what I pay for something I hope to never sell.

 

Yeah, I'll be moving my money into short-term treasury securities and seeing if some of this hysteria subsides. The whole year of 2018 has been complete madness, and all of it was basically for nothing. The same worries that we had going into 2018 are starting to rear its ugly head now and we are seeing it pop up in data all over the place.

 

I expect a good year after this negative year. I am just guessing (like everyone else) but I expect a big year in 2019.

 

maybe if we go back to ZIRP lol

 

I heard we might get a pause on the hikes, even that should cause a huge bump in the market.

 

it's not likely tho, they are increasing rates in an attempt to prevent another financial crisis. They are trying to give all these insane P/E companies a big haircut to bring them back down to reality, so they don't default on debt which would cause the economy to do a tailspin.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/financial-stability-report-201811.pdf

 

That is what I meant by irrational. Most of the companies I own are blue chip, dividend aristocrats, with low P/E. I think haircuts for these companies is irrational. But AMZN, NFLX, and many others do need to have their bubbles popped.

 

yes, and unfortunately they will bring down everything else with them, due to their mega-cap status. The sting will not be as much as those with heavy allocations in FAANG, but it will still hurt, as seen by the Nasdaq, SP500 getting used as punching bags.

 

I have also seen some begin to talk about how index funds are dragging the market where it doesn’t necessarily need to go. By buying SPY, you’re buying a bunch of companies (and then selling) that probably shouldn’t be in the crossfire. I have always seen this as a possibility of passive funds getting overused. I’m just getting dragged along for the ride.

 

yep, but those massive companies near the top, that make up 10-15% of the market cap, many of which have large P/E ratios, are dragging the entire index around. 'Twas good while it lasted. Unfortunately I was not a 401k contributor until late 2015 or so, so I missed out on this glorious bull run, while I only had a portfolio value less than $5k.