Stock Talk

[Soulpieced]

I'm kind of surprised there's no formal thread regarding stocks and investing. Discuss!

I'll start off by remaining bullish on Research in Motion (RIMM), as I feel that Blackberry is "the" name in smart phones in the US, and is so entrenched that people will probably (already do?) refer to smart/business phones as "Blackberrys". Yes, I know the iPhone is bla bla bla, I expect RIM to counter with a competitive product, nor can Apple really capture the business consumers who account for most of RIM's US revenue. Current price may still be a bit high with a P/E of 53, but the forward is a little more reasonable at 29.

http://z.about.com/d/cellphones/1/0/V/q/4/blackberry-8703e-g.jpg

I have spoken!

[JohnDoe]

I'm very bearish and have been for the past 6+ months. Trade mostly options, but it's difficult to trade the market when it's like this. Today's whipsaw rally really kicked my ass.

SP - All my opinion here, but I'm bearish on the Nasdaq as a whole right now (including RIMM). Financial insititutions (banks, mortgage houses, etc.) are suffering, the technology that's used to support these businesses will follow IMO. Add in consumer downturn and I think it spells trouble for companies like this. You could argue that they have international exposure, but if the US goes into a recession, other countries are going to suffer as much if not more than us.

Again, this is just one man's opinion, but I wouldn't be bullish on anything right now. Looks like we're in a bear market and are probably in a recession (we'll see with next month's employment #s). I'd wait for things to even out (capitulation) before I went long on anything. IMO inverse ETFs are a safe long term short play right now or going straight to cash.

[Suppa Hobbit Mage]

I'm bullish on gold and oil!

[Drew2]

I hate the operating system on Blackberries. It's so cheap and open source-y. Give me a Windows Mobile device any day. It's SO much easier to make it sync with Exchange. In order to get the same functionality from a Blackberry that you do with a Windows Mobile phone, you have to spend upwards of $400 (depending on the size of your business).

Windows Mobile phones also come in a variety of shapes and sizes, whereas Blackberries are all ugly and boxy and bleh.

Yeah, this thread is about stocks, but I just wanted to point out that Blackberries suck when you know what you're talking about. =/

[Suppa Hobbit Mage]

Windows Mobile phones also come in a variety of shapes and sizes, whereas Blackberries are all ugly and boxy and bleh.


So you are saying you pick your phones on if they match your outfit, right?

[Drew2]

Gay agenda.

[JohnDoe]

It's a good point I think Drew. With iPhones and all the other shit coming out right now, RIMM has their work cut out for them. Add in the other shit in my original post and I think they could struggle.

[Soulpieced]

Gotta buy it down! I invest with a buy and hold (Warren Buffet way), in that I don't plan on selling any stocks I own for a very long time. The current bear market/recession only gets hurt by people not buying and selling stuff, which just drives it down further.

I can't stand the commercials saying, "gold is at a 15 year high!!!11!one!!". Too bad it has only returned something like 3% since 1900.

[Drew2]

iPhones aren't really on par with business class phones, because for one you can only get them with AT&T service, which limits the market. Also, Entourage (the Apple version of Outlook) is not very friendly with Exchange sometimes. I'm not even sure iPhones have Entourage or anything similar, but from an IT perspective if your phone can't sync your E-mails and Calendar on-the-fly, it's a waste of money.

[JohnDoe]

SP - it's possible that most will give back all the profits they made over the past 4-5 years. Why not be defensive a little and take some off the table? if this truly is a bear market, we aren't finished yet and it's quite possible we could hit levels reached back in 2002. Sure, this may be chicken little thinking, but look at how much we've given back over the past 5-6 months. We're sitting at 2006 levels right now and looks like we'll be heading lower IMO.

[Suppa Hobbit Mage]

Gotta buy it down! I invest with a buy and hold (Warren Buffet way), in that I don't plan on selling any stocks I own for a very long time. The current bear market/recession only gets hurt by people not buying and selling stuff, which just drives it down further.

I can't stand the commercials saying, "gold is at a 15 year high!!!11!one!!". Too bad it has only returned something like 3% since 1900.

I like gold because my Dad owns a pawn shop and gets all the bling from the broke folks, melts it down and sells it in ingots. He makes a ton of money on it.

Oil because, well, it's oil.

[JohnDoe]

iPhones aren't really on par with business class phones, because for one you can only get them with AT&T service, which limits the market. Also, Entourage (the Apple version of Outlook) is not very friendly with Exchange sometimes. I'm not even sure iPhones have Entourage or anything similar, but from an IT perspective if your phone can't sync your E-mails and Calendar on-the-fly, it's a waste of money.

I agree Drew. Point I was trying to make was that the iPhone is pushing portable technology in general. RIMM really stood alone for a while there, don't you think?

[Drew2]

Oh definitely. A few years ago Blackberries were the cat's pajamas. But now that Windows Mobile has become more robust and with the advent of the iPhone, the Blackberry is, in my opinion, the worst choice for a phone you
could make.

iPhones are amazing if you don't need them for business use. Trust me, I wish I could use one. I'll just have to settle with getting an iPod Touch, though.

Anyway, this thread isn't about Blackberries, so I'll let the subject die. I don't have stocks so really I have nothing else to contribute, haha.

[LMingrone]

I've been trading imaginary stocks over the last two years, and have been +, but I'm still a little afraid to jump into the real money market. Anyone trading currency right now? I've been thinking about it lately. Most of my college and credit card debt has been payed off, and I actually for the first time in my life have some extra money to play with.

[Soulpieced]

Absolutely pay off your debt first.

[LMingrone]

That is not a problem. I have 10k left after 80k debt two years ago.

My problem is that my parents are going through a divorce and I'm the only one that can actually afford our house (Appraised at $700k, only $107k left on the mortgage...and that's with taxes included on the monthly payment).

I'm trying to buy the house now. Looking at gaining a lttle more % on my $. Luckily my gf works for Wells Fargo.

[Valthissa]

Gotta buy it down! I invest with a buy and hold (Warren Buffet way), in that I don't plan on selling any stocks I own for a very long time. The current bear market/recession only gets hurt by people not buying and selling stuff, which just drives it down further.

I can't stand the commercials saying, "gold is at a 15 year high!!!11!one!!". Too bad it has only returned something like 3% since 1900.

You're young SP, make that work for you. Every month, buy some spiders, diamonds and triple Q's (or every other month depending on how much you have to invest). When the market goes down, you don't care, that's a buying opportunity. Eventually, with time on your side, you will be wealthy. If you want to pick stocks, wait until you have enough so that you can't screw up, take 10% of your account and play with it. The bet you're making is that the market will be higher 20 years from now. If you don't like that bet then you should be buying gold.

Dollar cost averaging will get you a nice return and it has very low transaction costs. The downside is that it will appear at times that other people are making a killing as the market runs up, but if you pay attention to those same people they never seem to talk about their investments when the market tumbles. It's also boring (which is why I have an account where I trade stocks).

C/Valth - whose best stock pick ever was BRK A in 1999 but I still managed to sell to soon.

[Revalos]

Long term calls here, don't expect to get rich quick overnight, but I'd buy:

OLED manufacturing companies - get them before they corner the entire display market

Russian prospecting firms - 'gold rush' coming for undeveloped oil reserves, and these guys will do what is needed to get it

US rail freight companies - air and truck shipping will start to slip and rail will have a resurgence in the next 10-15 years


I'd sell anything Chinese right now...get rid of it now while it is high. They cannot sustain their current growth.

[LMingrone]

I don't think most people realize how much the cost of a barrel of oil effects us all. Shipping and plastics. Your gas isn't just costing you mileage. My shipping costs have increased by %60 this year. I work for the sign biz, and my plastic costs have increased by about %40. Try passing that on to a customer.

I talked to a Dunkin Donuts rep the other day. Their flour cost has gone up 30% in the last two months. Damn oil.

[Kranar]

I left Google to start my own company trading stocks algorithmically. Just me and 3 other guys in our own office looking for inefficencies and opportunities that we can then scale to 1000s of stocks. So far it's working out pretty well.

Nothing long term for me, I get a loan every morning for 5 million bucks, and I have to return every penny of it by 5 PM or else I'm charged interest on the entire loan. Usually I make about 3k a day on average, most of it comes from participating in market imbalances/closing crosses which is a massive source of inefficiency, and other than that highly volatile and liquid stocks which my algorithm just scalps and engages in high frequency, short term trades.

Admittedly I'm no expert in the economy and what I do is a far cry from investing. However, from what I read every now and then, the US economy is going to fall really hard and the mortgage issue is only the tip of the iceberg with respect to the insane debt issues and nonsensical valuation model that US companies use. But who knows...

[Bobmuhthol]

Dunkin Donuts makes enough retardedly effortless money already, so it's hard to feel bad that their expenses are increasing.

[JohnDoe]

I left Google to start my own company trading stocks algorithmically. Just me and 3 other guys in our own office looking for inefficencies and opportunities that we can then scale to 1000s of stocks. So far it's working out pretty well.

Nothing long term for me, I get a loan every morning for 5 million bucks, and I have to return every penny of it by 5 PM or else I'm charged interest on the entire loan. Usually I make about 3k a day on average, most of it comes from participating in market imbalances/closing crosses which is a massive source of inefficiency, and other than that highly volatile and liquid stocks which my algorithm just scalps and engages in high frequency, short term trades.

Admittedly I'm no expert in the economy and what I do is a far cry from investing. However, from what I read every now and then, the US economy is going to fall really hard and the mortgage issue is only the tip of the iceberg with respect to the insane debt issues and nonsensical valuation model that US companies use. But who knows...

Huh, that's interesting Kranar. I'm assuming you're working with stocks, not with leveraged options or futures contracts, right? How did you make out today with the super high volatility? Tight stops in place always?

[LMingrone]

I could care less about D&D, I don't drink coffee. It's a sign of the times though.

PS: I don't know if you noticed, but their prices have gone up recently.

[Kranar]

Huh, that's interesting Kranar. I'm assuming you're working with stocks, not with leveraged options or futures contracts, right? How did you make out today with the super high volatility? Tight stops in place always?

Today we made a total of $2800, and usually it's about 3k a day although last Friday we took a massive hit of -5k for reasons I have been unable to figure out. The algorithms trade equities and futures, and for futures its only ESH8.NA which are the S&P500 minis. The future's algorithm was doing exceptionally well initially but not so much anymore and so I've put it on hold for a bit. While I currently have no plans to trade options, I do have some ideas involving using options information to trade stock, but at this stage I do not have a data provider for options information.

Obviously I can't go too indepth about how the algos work, but essentially before I had this company I used to work for SwiftTrade part time as a university student just doing this by hand. Without knowing any economics or market theory I just find some patterns that work here and there that did okay. Heck a lot of my stuff involves applying fairly basic techniques from electrical engineering such as digital signal processing to the stock market, but using the price of the stock as the digital signal.

Of course, the market being what it is and having read about nightmare scenarios involving the mythological "Black Swan," for all I know my entire business can go under tomorrow.

[JohnDoe]

Today we made a total of $2800, and usually it's about 3k a day although last Friday we took a massive hit of -5k for reasons I have been unable to figure out. The algorithms trade equities and futures, and for futures its only ESH8.NA which are the S&P500 minis. The future's algorithm was doing exceptionally well initially but not so much anymore and so I've put it on hold for a bit. While I currently have no plans to trade options, I do have some ideas involving using options information to trade stock, but at this stage I do not have a data provider for options information.

Obviously I can't go too indepth about how the algos work, but essentially before I had this company I used to work for SwiftTrade part time as a university student just doing this by hand. Without knowing any economics or market theory I just find some patterns that work here and there that did okay. Heck a lot of my stuff involves applying fairly basic techniques from electrical engineering such as digital signal processing to the stock market, but using the price of the stock as the digital signal.

Of course, the market being what it is and having read about nightmare scenarios involving the mythological "Black Swan," for all I know my entire business can go under tomorrow.

Cool. Understandable about not being able to go into too much detail, but I assume when we have a major up or down day you adjust stops so you can let it run up or down for more profit?

Options can be interesting especially with the different approaches you can take with them: straddles, strangles, etc. They're leveraged like the spoos (which I haven't traded yet - still educating myself), but have time decay and theta, delta, etc factored into the price on a daily basis. They may be taxed differently than the futures though. Not sure on that.