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

That's awesome! 100% not judging, I hope it works out and I can look back and say "damn I should have done that too" but its outside my risk tolerance. You have a good strategy that's working for you!

I'm like Boyk, I buy and hold for a long time and look for blue chips and consistency. Yea it's boring, but I like boring with my investments.

 

It's just too hard to know when to buy and sell short-term. I started getting interested in CCL at about $20. I almost bought a bunch, didn't think it could go lower. Then it got below $10. I am glad I didn't do it, I was close to giving trading a try.

 

Man I did that for a while when I first started. JNJ, WM, RSG, KO, MMM, etc. I’m headed back in that direction though slowly but surely.

 

Yup. The nice part is if the stock did go to zero you would be able to write the losses off. Hmmm maybe I will buy some, jk.

 

I just saw ACB is about to do a 12:1 reverse split. Anyone else make the mistake of buying into that one? I lost a couple hundred. Glad it was only that. No more weed stocks for me lol

Maybe it will just get to zero....

 

You do have to have some speculatives in the portfolio to keep you interested. That's where I kind of fail in my strategy, I go a little bit too conservative.

 

I own most of what you mentioned here. Those I plan to own forever. There are a few things I may get out of if they ever break even, or I'll just hold those forever too.

 

It’s mostly luck. I always leave money in the brokerage account that I can use to average down in case shit hits the fan. A safety net so to speak. We talked about this a while back. “Investing a portion or investing a lump sum” was the topic. And if I ever find myself in a losing position then I just hold. Sometimes it almost feels counterproductive (when there aren’t wild swings). At that point I’ll just swap back to a holding position long term. I love the swings and I love the volatility. That’s the name of the game.

 

I'm really lucky, I'm 26 (I think...I forget my age a lot) and have a house/married/good job - worked hard for it, but I'm here. I'm far from the norm in my generation. Used cars aren't cheap anymore, a normal used car has all the bits and bobs and gizmos, so that skyrocketed. And, since everyone started to realize used is cheaper - they started using the market! Just when we almost recovered from the cash for clunkers fiasco to the used market, now it's being saturated by buyers who have been told online by bloggers time and time again, go get the used one it's so much cheaper and look at the depreciation curve on new hurr durr. which made the depreciation curve on used change dramatically and - you get the jist of this. I won't keep going.

Housing? I call bullshit on most of my contemporaries. We lived in a janky apartment (decent ish area), bought a small ranch (1200sq ft, lucky on the yard size though!) well within our means. My friends are complaining because they're in a gentrified expensive area and can't afford giant houses. Some areas genuinely are screwed, SF Bay area got all jacked up with rents and housing costs, true. I can't argue that. But there's a ton of areas (not in the middle of BFE nowhere) where housing is still affordable, rent or buy. The other annoying part is pre-approval amounts. We were pre approved for way more than we were willing to spend with our basic calculations. Blew me away. Our first realtor wouldn't take no for an answer and pushed stuff at the pre-approved limits. Told her to pound sand and went with another guy who didn't push our budget we set.

Live below your means. I am stretching a little bit early, when we bought the house we were at the top of our budget which was at the top of our means ("means" factored in everything including investing, plus retirement contributions, etc etc) -- full well knowing we would grow into it easily (and we have already). I bought a tacoma new -- my mazda was trashed (I beat the living piss out of that car, I was not gentle on it!) and I knew if I didn't get a Tacoma, I'd trade in whatever I got for one within a few years. I can afford it, still well below means, but the tacoma is my financial "mistake" (knew it going in, accept it, and to me, still worth it).

Zero intention of moving to a bigger house*. But I do agree: I can calculate a hypotenuse really good (and to be fair, I did use that in construction!) I'm really good with programming, I know a lot from school - I had zero idea how any of this mortgage, car payment, pre-approval, etc thing worked -- from school. That was all a self venture.

Sorry I'm off on a tangent. It's worse now than it was "back then", but not nearly as much as my drama queen contemporaries make it out to be. I'll get off my soap box/tangent now

There's going to be a lot of people who realize they can do a day a week from home, etc. I'm in manufacturing, I don't foresee a big change in my industry from this other than a few people trying to leverage at home hours every so often.

 

GWPH is the only pot stock that I would trust. I don’t own any, but their chart speaks for itself.

 

I have "two" investment accounts. One is my true investments, that's in ETFs and bonds spread (right now with betterment, looking to go DIY though and ditch the fees). The other (newer) is my "wall street bets" account, where if it gets wiped to zero tomorrow, I'll be sad but it was just a fun hobby. None of the money in that account I can't afford to lose.

 

Another example, I averaged BA at $98 and sold them at $171 then bought back in to average $147. it’s a higher average but everything from $147 to $171 went into my pocket to invest in the next drop. Which I did that too.

 

I let go of loosing positions as soon as volatility spikes. Then I use that money to invest short term and make gains. It's all about your trading strategy. I've got plenty of time left until retirement so I'm pretty aggressive in high risk stuff.

 

Same here. I have the maxed and aggressive 401k for the conservative retirement. I will swap my 401k to conservative as well as my investment strategy to conservative when the time is right.

 

Any good blue chip stocks around $30 right now? I have 33.05 and it’s bugging me I can’t invest it lol

 

Yep. It's hard to take a loss but it happens. I have a pretty structured approach that relies on net gain and net loss. As soon as my net loss or gain meets the criteria I set for the trade I sell. The name of the game is simply to have more net gains then net losses. I need high volatility to make that happen quickly. Watching the VIX today is killing me. lol

 

T

 

Yep - anything is better than nothing.

Best is to have it taken out of the paycheck before you ever see it - either as direct deposit or 401k - if you're not seeing it drop into your checking account it's easier to not miss it.

Folks can still make wise choices even if many do not. We know a young couple with their first child who bought a pretty house last year, lots of upgrades. Our daughter is great friends with them and mentioned they'd said something about being "house poor" recently - so I looked up what they paid. Holy cow. And 5% down. No wonder they're house-poor. (There are nice options for 2/3 of the price in the area)

Secondary benefit to this is that economic troubles tend to be far less stressful when you've had the discipline to ensure you have lots of runway to handle surprises.

 

Oh no I mean I have a while till retirement haha! I’ve let go off a loss before but it was because of a damn short sellers report and if I wouldn’t have let it go I would have lost more. That was on XPO a year or so ago. I try not to take a loss and instead try to average down, but with XPO it was bad. Anytime some one is accused of cooking their books it gets bad. But I also made my money back on them by trading their dips and losses back up to their current position. That’s actually where I got my current strategy from!

 

I made my money back and then some on all of these “camel back” up and downs (Even the really small and short ones that you see on the way down in the end of 2018. These were all just over periods of days). I noticed a pattern and I bought and sold on the regular and it worked. It was also a lot of fun and it kinda just stuck with me I guess.