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

Beef Nachos · May 29, 2020

Iwilltaco said: ↑

Just buy 4,000 shares at 4, sell them at 5
You’ll have your vacation money much faster
Click to expand...

Iwilltaco · May 29, 2020

Beef Nachos said: ↑

Click to expand...

Honestly, anyone that thinks there is a 5% chance NRGU gets anywhere close to 40 in a year should feel certain it will get to 6 pretty quickly and would be willing to throw whatever money they have at getting a 50% return like that.

Beef Nachos · May 29, 2020

Iwilltaco said: ↑

Honestly, anyone that thinks there is a 5% chance NRGU gets anywhere close to 40 in a year should feel certain it will get to 6 pretty quickly and would be willing to throw whatever money they have at getting a 50% return like that.
Click to expand...

Right. All of this is an experiment until I get substantial employment after school — any + is a win for me.

Iwilltaco · May 29, 2020

Beef Nachos said: ↑

Right. All of this is an experiment until I get substantial employment after school — any + is a win for me.
Click to expand...

Experiments are good.
What line of work are you going into?

ThunderOne · May 29, 2020

my buddy called me for trading advice yesterday, asking when do you know when a stock has peaked. After finding out that he threw a few dollars at RCL and X, I told him to sell X and sell the equity he put into RCL (he has doubled his money already on that play) and let the profits ride. Then he told me one of our buddies bought bitcoin through some sketch website and he can't get his money out, apparently the 'company' said they no longer do business in the US. Sounds super illegal. LOL.

TreeFortRichard · May 29, 2020

theesotericone said: ↑

I'm buying some VXX calls at close today. Whatever Trump says I'm being it spikes volatility Monday morning.
Click to expand...

It's fun trying to explain the VIX to someone..."Wait, so the share value increases only when other shares fluctuate?" $37.50 calls look tempting for JUL

Iwilltaco said: ↑

Experiments are good.
What line of work are you going into?
Click to expand...

Prostitution...

Boyk1182 · May 29, 2020

ThunderOne[OP] said: ↑

my buddy called me for trading advice yesterday, asking when do you know when a stock has peaked. After finding out that he threw a few dollars at RCL and X, I told him to sell X and sell the equity he put into RCL (he has doubled his money already on that play) and let the profits ride. Then he told me one of our buddies bought bitcoin through some sketch website and he can't get his money out, apparently the 'company' said they no longer do business in the US. Sounds super illegal. LOL.
Click to expand...

It may be tough to get that Bitcoin money back if it’s truly not a U.S. company. That reminds me of China knocking off patented products, nobody to sue when they do that.

Beef Nachos · May 29, 2020

Iwilltaco said: ↑

Experiments are good.
What line of work are you going into?
Click to expand...

Business analysis or low level consulting. I spent 12 years managing and/or consulting in the retail sector with strong results. The wife had cancer a few years ago, stepped back from work to take care of her, got a job at Starbucks (100% tuition paid @ 20 hours), and will finish in 4 weeks

I was pulling 50+ hours between two part time jobs while taking 18 hours per semester (with a 4.22 GPA ). To say I'm determined to get out of retail is an understatement.

ThunderOne · May 29, 2020

TreeFortRichard said: ↑

It's fun trying to explain the VIX to someone..."Wait, so the share value increases only when other shares fluctuate?" $37.50 calls look tempting for JUL
Click to expand...

I was holding TVIX when it touched 1000. Probably one of my best trades this year. Unfortunately it didn't last, when I put it into SQQQ thinking "this is safer" and then we started the V recovery

Beef Nachos · May 29, 2020

TreeFortRichard said: ↑

Prostitution...
Click to expand...

That would have been better pay and better benefits

TreeFortRichard · May 29, 2020

ThunderOne[OP] said: ↑

I was holding TVIX when it touched 1000. Probably one of my best trades this year. Unfortunately it didn't last, when I put it into SQQQ thinking "this is safer" and then we started the V recovery
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I've been buried by the ultra shorts expecting some kind of a second wave...I'm now convinced they won't let it happen...So everyone ELSE should load up...

ThunderOne · May 29, 2020

TreeFortRichard said: ↑

I've been buried by the ultra shorts expecting some kind of a second wave...I'm now convinced they won't let it happen...So everyone ELSE should load up...
Click to expand...

So far I can't tell if yesterday's data is noise or not. Will be waiting for the next couple of days of data. As you can see the number of new daily cases is very spiky. Finger on sell button if things start to look worse, as it may be indicative of a new round of shutdowns.

(this is US only)

The world:

Brazil and the rest of South America, as well as Russia are getting hit hard but they are lagging behind so it makes it look like a second wave on the world graph, when it reality a few countries are just starting their first wave. Russia is already flattening out.

Brazil (other South American countries' graphs look similar):

Russia:

Just flipped through some countries, Iran is DEFINITELY having a second wave. Wonder if they are a future indicator of how things will be in the US. They were one of the first countries outside of China to be hit.

Iran

Bonus, in case anyone here thinks China ISN'T full of complete shit, this should be a giant red flashing indicator for you:

One more and I'm done, whatever Switzerland did seemed to have worked.

Link to dashboard in my sig.

TreeFortRichard · May 29, 2020

ThunderOne[OP] said: ↑

So far I can't tell if yesterday's data is noise or not. Will be waiting for the next couple of days of data. As you can see the number of new daily cases is very spiky. Finger on sell button if things start to look worse, as it may be indicative of a new round of shutdowns.

(this is US only)

The world:

Brazil and the rest of South America, as well as Russia are getting hit hard but they are lagging behind so it makes it look like a second wave, when it reality it's their first wave. Russia is already flattening out.

Brazil (other South American countries' graphs look similar):

Russia:

Just flipped through some countries, Iran is DEFINITELY having a second wave. Wonder if they are a future indicator of how things will be in the US. They were one of the first countries outside of China to be hit.

Iran

Bonus, in case anyone here thinks China ISN'T full of complete shit, this should be a giant red flashing indicator for you:

Link to dashboard in my sig.
Click to expand...

Nice info. There's whispers that Israel may be hitting a second wave. The data is VERY preliminary, like 3 days rising...
I've got some June DIS puts and TJX puts...bad news will help them, but I am not riding DIS down again...I'm probably pulling the cord at $110 on the rest of my shares and then I'll hold the cash and rebuy. I'm putting stop losses in NAIL as well. There's other things I'll ride down again and wait out..

TreeFortRichard · May 29, 2020

Oh....Well...By By Mickey...My $115 stop loss hit...I'm not riding it down to $100 again...closed out at a 10% profit. Expect it to shoot to $150 next week

TreeFortRichard · May 29, 2020

I still have DIS Calls for 22 JAN 2022 $135 call...

TreeFortRichard · May 29, 2020

ThunderOne[OP] said: ↑

Iran

Click to expand...

BTW the Iran rate could lead to an ousting of the religious government..if the people ever put together that that's why they had such a massive outbreak...

washingtonpost.com
Iran’s clerics have bungled their coronavirus response, stoking doubts about their rule
Erin Cunningham
8-10 minutes
The sketch was posted last month on the Telegram channel of a mainstream news outlet, the Iranian Labor News Agency, before being swiftly taken down.

Its appearance, however brief, represented a rare criticism of Iran’s ruling religious establishment by the media and came amid a wider outcry among Iranians over the role played by the Shiite Muslim clergy during the pandemic.

Since Iran’s outbreak first erupted in the holy city of Qom, religious leaders have resisted calls for quarantines, protested orders to close shrines, cast the coronavirus as an American conspiracy, and promoted traditional or Islamic medicine as a panacea for covid-19, the disease it causes. Their actions have angered senior health officials and stoked long-existing doubts within the Iranian population about whether the clergy are fit to rule.

In Iran, a Shiite theocracy, clerics preside over and participate in all matters of the state. But their botched response to the pandemic may be weakening the clergy’s political stature, at a time when its influence was already under pressure, political analysts say.

As the religious elite fumbled and deaths from the virus mounted — Iran has now reported nearly 7,000 deaths and more than 118,000 infections — the country’s powerful security services have stepped in to conduct disease surveillance, disinfect public spaces and even oversee victims’ burials, a role long reserved for civilian authorities and Shiite clerics.

The pandemic, Iranians inside the country and analysts say, has highlighted the clergy’s dwindling relevance while granting the armed forces an opportunity to consolidate power. It’s a dynamic with implications for Iran’s political future, as the battle heats up to succeed Khamenei and a more modern middle class grows tired of theocratic government.

“The clergy’s apparent resistance to the state’s virus control mandates will likely be marked as a point of no return for public mistrust of clerics and suspicion about their ability to serve as rational authorities in the political or social sphere,” Mehdi Khalaji, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, wrote in a recent policy analysis.

According to Khalaji, a former Qom-trained theologian, the clerics’ “spectacular failure” to respond adequately to the outbreak “will make power players less interested in seeking ideological or political support from the clergy post-Khamenei.”

“I can tell that [the clergy] have lost more credibility” among the people as a result of the outbreak, said Mohammad, 70, a retired resident of the capital, Tehran. He spoke on the condition of using only his first name so he could freely criticize the religious establishment.

“They could have repaired their image by helping people or giving emotional support” to victims, Mohammad said of the clerics. “But they ruined it further by weighing in on things they don’t know about, such as medicine.”

The cartoon depicting the huckster healers appeared to hit a nerve with the clerical-run government. While the artist, Reza Aghili, lives in exile in Turkey beyond the reach of authorities, the news director of ILNA and the manager of its Telegram channel were arrested late last month for allegedly insulting “Islam’s sacred principles” and religious leaders, according to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom watchdog group.

“In my opinion,” Aghili said in an interview, “not only the clergy’s popularity but Islam’s popularity in general is the lowest it has ever been.”

A fading authority
During the Islamic revolution in 1979, Iranian clerics helped overthrow the repressive regime of the Shah and then backed a new Shiite doctrine known as wilayat al-faqih, or “guardianship of the jurist,” which now guides Iran. But the reputation of the clergy, once known for their fierce independence from the government, has been sullied over the decades because of their involvement in politics and — some Iranians say mismanagement of — everyday administrative affairs.

Within the halls of power, political analysts say, the clerics’ authority has been fading amid the dramatic rise of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a sprawling military and economic institution whose influence now extends from politics to media to Iran’s nascent space program. The force was founded in the years following the revolution initially to protect the Islamic republic from internal threats.

“Even the highest-ranking clergy, and founders of the Islamic republic, are sooner or later denounced as traitors, counterrevolutionary, foreign agents and led to prison by the IRGC,” Alfoneh said.

Amir, a former philosophy student in Qom, said in an interview that the measures taken by the security forces are gaining them public support.

“I think that the Revolutionary Guard is winning the people’s trust, while the clergy has been losing it,” Amir, 30, said. He also spoke on the condition of using only his first name to comment freely about the security forces. “The older generation is angry at the clerics and will curse them,” he said. “While the younger generation just makes jokes at their expense.”

Mahshid, a 33-year-old market researcher in Tehran who spoke on the condition that her full name would not be used so she could comment critically without fear of reprisal, had nothing good to say about the clerics. “I think that the clergy is entirely irrelevant to society in Iran today,” she said.

In responding to the coronavirus, Revolutionary Guard members and allied militias have even broached the realm of religion themselves, distributing a collection of prayers recommended by Khamenei as protection against the virus.

“They put on a performance as if they were actually doing something to fight the virus,” Mohsen Kadivar, a professor of Islamic studies at Duke University, said of the Revolutionary Guard. But, he added, “I think that the people know that this has been a show. In general, I think that both the clerical and military arms of the regime have lost their credibility.”

Division within the ranks
The epidemic of coronavirus infections has hit Iran’s leaders hard, taking the lives of senior clerics, including the Islamic republic’s first ambassador to the Vatican, Khamenei’s representative in Langroud in northern Iran and a member of the Assembly of Experts tasked with choosing the next supreme leader.

That assembly member, Hashem Bathaei Golpayegani, died in March several days after announcing he was cured of the virus by eating soil from the grave of Imam Hussein, a revered figure in Shiite Islam, in the holy Iraqi city of Karbala.

And even as Iran continues to struggle with the largest outbreak in the Middle East, the head of Iran’s Islamic Development Organization, a cultural and religious body linked to the supreme leader, said Monday that all mosques in Iran will reopen this month.

Not all of Iran’s clerics, however, have eschewed modern medicine or opposed the public health recommendations, and many have supported temporary bans on collective prayer and enacting mandatory hygiene at mosques.

“When it comes to medicine and public health, there is a diversity of opinion within the Shiite clerical establishment,” said Amir Afkhami, associate professor of global health at George Washington University.

“The unwillingness of the religious strata of the country to place restrictions on pilgrimage and assemblies and on major Shiite shrines certainly worsened the crisis early on,” he said. “But most clerics are open to modern medicine.”

The pandemic has also highlighted the long-standing division within the clerical ranks between those who support the clergy’s role in running the country and more traditional religious factions that argue it is wiser for them to remain apart from the government.

Grand Ayatollah Yusuf Saanei, a former member of Iran’s powerful Guardian Council, is among those who reject the clergy’s involvement in political affairs.

In an interview via Telegram, Saanei, who is based in Qom, said those who have promoted alternative therapies and rejected public health guidance are part of “an inept group who try to cling to sharia” or Islamic law.

“The learned and enlightened clergy have never sided against hygiene and medical guidance and they never will,” Saanei said, drawing a line between himself and like-minded clerics and those affiliated with the ruling clergy.

“The executive affairs of a society are not the responsibility of the clergy, but if they act according to their religious obligations, including defending Islam and confronting oppression, then they will be trusted again by the people,” he said.
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Iwilltaco · May 29, 2020

TreeFortRichard said: ↑

Oh....Well...By By Mickey...My $115 stop loss hit...I'm not riding it down to $100 again...closed out at a 10% profit. Expect it to shoot to $150 next week
Click to expand...

Tempting

TreeFortRichard · May 29, 2020

theesotericone said: ↑

I'm buying some VXX calls at close today. Whatever Trump says I'm being it spikes volatility Monday morning.
Click to expand...

I just bought the 19 JUN 20 $37.50 for $2.10
COME ON VOLATILITY!!!!

Already have the sell orders in... 1/3 ea $3.5 $4 and $4.5...Just in case I blink...

Seems like a nice one month play...Either we're stable or more shit is coming...But I have failed on nearly every attempt to profit on negativity...

spglobal.com
VIX Back to Normal Not Really
4 minutes
This article is reprinted from the Indexology blog of S&P Dow Jones Indices.

The U.S. equities market had a wild start in 2020. Following the March 2020 sell-off, the S&P 500® posted its largest monthly gain (12.8%) since 1987. Meanwhile, VIX® went from its long-term median to an all-time high within a month before it settled around 30. One thing that has been debated lately is whether VIX, often referred to as the “fear gauge,” has gone back to normal and indicates that the market has hit the bottom. To answer this question, we need to investigate several aspects of VIX and its related trading activities.

VIX Futures Curve Not Completely Back to Contango
As pointed out in a recent VIX paper from the CFA Institute Research Foundation, the VIX futures curve is in contango about 80% of the time and usually goes into backwardation in distressed markets. On Feb. 24, 2020, the VIX futures curve flipped into backwardation, and it kept this downward sloping shape until May 6, 2020—the shaded area in Exhibit 1 shows the backwardation period of the VIX futures curve. However, the current price difference between the first- and second-month VIX futures is small, and the curve is more flat than upward sloping. In fact, the futures curve went back to mild backwardation on May 12 and May 13, 2020. This is unlike typical contango in VIX term structure.

VIX Level Remains Elevated
On Feb. 21, 2020, VIX closed at 17.08, near its long-term median of 17.27. In less than a month, it skyrocketed to an all-time high of 82.69. As of May 22, 2020, it was hovering around 30. Although this most recent level seems rather tame compared with its March peak, investors should understand that the current VIX readings are around its 90th percentile level of 28.7.

History has demonstrated that although volatility may rise rapidly, it often declines slowly. In other words, the market tends to remain volatile for a while after a shock occurs. A VIX level of 30 implies annualized volatility of 30%, or daily moves of 1.9% in the market during the next 30 days. Given that the S&P 500 has moved about 0.76% daily on average since 1990, the current VIX level implies that investors collectively anticipate outsized daily moves, at least in the short term.

VIX Derivatives Trading Volume
Derivatives trading on VIX dropped from its March peak, but it picked up again during the week of May 15, 2020. VIX options’ average daily volume (ADV) during the week of May 15 was only a quarter of the ADV during the week of March 13; however, it almost doubled the ADV from the week of April 24. The pickup in trading volume was accompanied by a jump in VIX levels and futures prices, indicating that investors were pricing elevated risk into June 2020 contracts. This is not surprising given that many states were positioned to reopen their economies after May 15, 2020.

Conclusion
It is yet to be seen whether reopening the U.S. economy will fuel a resurgence of COVID-19 cases. On top of that, President Trump’s statement to cut ties with the second-largest economy in the world cast an additional shadow over the market outlook. The VIX levels, futures curve, and trading activities seem to tell us that, despite the improved optimism in the market, elevated risk is likely to be the new norm, at least for a short while.
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GarlicFarts · May 29, 2020

Iwilltaco said: ↑

Honestly, anyone that thinks there is a 5% chance NRGU gets anywhere close to 40 in a year should feel certain it will get to 6 pretty quickly and would be willing to throw whatever money they have at getting a 50% return like that.
Click to expand...

I don't disagree, but right now I'm "gambling" with half of my truck payment from April. 5 grand is more than I can risk, for example.

Boyk1182 · May 29, 2020

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#12101 Beef Nachos Here for a good time, not a long time

#12102 Iwilltaco Well-Known Member

#12103 Beef Nachos Here for a good time, not a long time

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#12110 Beef Nachos Here for a good time, not a long time

#12111 TreeFortRichard Barcelona Red is the best red...

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#12113 TreeFortRichard Barcelona Red is the best red...

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#12101
Beef Nachos Here for a good time, not a long time

#12102
Iwilltaco Well-Known Member

#12103
Beef Nachos Here for a good time, not a long time

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#12106
TreeFortRichard Barcelona Red is the best red...

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Beef Nachos Here for a good time, not a long time

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#12110
Beef Nachos Here for a good time, not a long time

#12111
TreeFortRichard Barcelona Red is the best red...

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#12113
TreeFortRichard Barcelona Red is the best red...

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TreeFortRichard Barcelona Red is the best red...

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TreeFortRichard Barcelona Red is the best red...

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