Investment Tips

[billcoe]

Here's one: Apple (AAPL) currently selling at $175 or so. Check this in a year and lets see....

 

haven't they saturated the market already? what are you seeing here?

 

I do not believe so, I think that they are just starting. If you check out some other cell phone makers market cap/vs their market penetration, I think one can get an idea of where that might possibly go.

 

As the iphone is but one of their new products....but one which alone could increase the market cap/income of the company in a substantial way....

 

As usual, this is but an idea, we must all do our own due diligence, blah blah blah.

 

And Hugh, someone told me about gold when it was over $300 an oz an going down. Of course you do your own due diligence....which is why I bet the money on the bottom, ie, to make it interesting, however, I did bet in a big way for myself as well at $280-$290 an oz. Tips and ideas are often better from people like SC than fund managers. If you think otherwise, I'm fine with that, but no need to stay around and bag on those who feel other than you.

 

 

[Hugh Conway]

but no need to stay around and bag on those who feel other than you

 

I always fond contrary advice much more useful than pump and dump circle jerks.

 

As for the iPhone & AAPL - watch overseas sales; they are the bellweather. The major revenue driver on the iPhone is AAPLs kickback from the service providers.

[KaskadskyjKozak]

don't let the bastard grind you down Cocoa!!

 

chinga tu madre pendejo!

 

Пішов ти на хуй, зайобаний засранцю!

[Hugh Conway]

yob tovyu mat!

[KaskadskyjKozak]

yob tovyu mat!

 

срати на матір твою.

[sexual_chocolate]

oh yeah? now i will call all of you names, by your names.

 

see if you can stand it.

 

 

who can stand it, really, in the end.

 

can god stand it?

 

i am standing.

 

[joblo7]

on a real note. Peru is getting in on a free trade deal with Us. can u please synops on what will happen to prices here and also investement ideas.

[archenemy]

I think we can start our own investment mag here.

[JayB]

-Spend less than you earn.

 

 

 

[denalidave]

-Spend less than you earn.

 

 

Buy low, sell hi. Or was that the other way around? These things are so complicated.

[olyclimber]

-Spend less than you earn.

 

 

 

i wonder how the economy would do if this was put into practice by even 75% of the populous. Not that I don't think its a good idea, for our people, for our government.

[Hugh Conway]

i wonder how the economy would do if this was put into practice by even 75% of the populous. Not that I don't think its a good idea, for our people, for our government.

 

he acknowledges he's an America hater.

[mccallboater]

Dollar cost averaging is about the only way to beat stupidity into submission, and since I know I'm stupid with investments enough to not trust my intuition, it works for me.

 

But the best investments I have made have always been in real property. As the original Baron Rothschild said: "Buy when there is blood in the streets." Or something to that effect. Real property works like that. The smart guys are buying up Gaza beachfront as we speak.

[sexual_chocolate]

somewhat vague prognostication on citigroup:

 

link

[JayB]

I'd also recommend reading anything written for the individual investor by David Swenson (head of Yale endowment) and John Bogle (founder of Vanguard funds).

 

Beating the market as an individual investor is like an individual gambler beating the house in Vegas. Possible, but the odds are against you, and the more you chase the big payoff/return, the more likely you are to lose.

 

I also have found it interesting how few people honestly asses the performance of their investments. Real returns = returns net taxes, transaction fees, and inflation. For real-estate, toss in insurance and maintenance. I've also noted that belief about one's investing prowress and the capacity to honestly evaluate one's performance tend to be inversely proportional to one another - at least for most individual investors.

 

How much of this is the desire to impress others, and how much is honest to goodness self-delusion, wish-thinking, etc at work? How many of us have encountered someone loudly exclaiming how much a particular stock, investment property, etc has made them? How many have ever encountered someone confessing that they lost big-time on whatever investment they favored, what the financial strains brought on by the losses have cost them in terms of marital stress, etc?

 

 

[Hugh Conway]

How many of us have encountered someone loudly exclaiming how much a particular stock, investment property, etc has made them? How many have ever encountered someone confessing that they lost big-time on whatever investment they favored, what the financial strains brought on by the losses have cost them in terms of marital stress, etc?

 

I've met several who would admit to having lost big in the tech bubble. Clearly it was a strain on them, especially as they watched others make it big. Most interesting is they were all still bullish on tech stocks, whether because of habit or faith I don't know.

[JayB]

Most of the post-confessional conversations that I've had with folks that have talked about their tech-bubble losses have been interesting. Few were willing to chalk the experience up to bad decisions, poor-analysis, wish-thinking, etc on their part. Far more were eager to consign blame to crooked analysts, etc.

 

Much the same rhetoric that we're hearing from the dipshits who took out the stated-income, neg-am, I/O loans for 10X their annual income these days.

 

I'd estimate that ~0.5% are/were victimized by another party, and the remainder have only themselves to blame.

[Hugh Conway]

Few were willing to chalk the experience up to bad decisions, poor-analysis, wish-thinking, etc on their part.

 

The flip side of the coin is talking to the successful ones - how many will say it was just dumb luck?

 

I'd estimate that ~0.5% are/were victimized by another party, and the remainder have only themselves to blame.

 

I'd perhaps rate it slightly higher, but my experience is colored by dealing with this crony capitalist

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54922-2005Jan6.html

[fear_and_greed]

As someone who daytrades everyday for a living I can only offer these generalities:

1. Take no advice from anyone or any source that tells you what a particular stock is going to do in the future. No one knows.

2.Have no pre concieved notion in your head that YOU know what a stock is going to do. That concept will beat you psycologicly forcing you to hold on to losers by not admitted you were wrong.

3.Pay yourself as the market make money available to you. Holding out for the home run is foolish. Cashing out of singles, doubles,triples puts real money not phantom profits in your pockets.

4.Buy uptrending stocks. Short sell downtrending stocks. Reverse your position when the stocks reverse their trends.

5. It takes no skill at all to put on a single winning trade. You are either right or wrong. Move on. The skill is managing the losing trades so they don't take too much away from your buying power and managing the winning trades so you can increase your buying power.

6. Trading/investing is a probability game just like a casino. Ask yourself how can a casino make consistent profit on games that have a random indivdual outcome? Because over the course of time the system they use(money/risk managemnet)puts the probalities in their favour. AS a trader you can use the exact same techniques.

 

7. Know yourself before you start this game because the markets teach expensive life lessons to those who don't.

 

 

[AlpineK]

Casinos are an interesting subject.

 

In one class in college we spent a lecture discussing casinos most specifically roulette wheels. Obviously your chances of winning by picking one number are slim to none and slim just left town. You can bet on red/black. If you do that your chances of winning are something like .48 and the casino's chances are .52 since the house gets 0 and 00.

 

The bottom line if you bet all your money once and walk away afterwards then your chances of winning are .48 but if you bet red/black 4 times then your chances of winning are .0530...

 

The Casino starts with .52 odds but after you place 4 bets their odds of winning go up to .0731...

 

If you do the math the casino has a 73% chance of taking all your money after 4 bets. The more you gamble your chances of winning approach 0% and the casino's chances of winning approach 100%

 

Your best bet going to Vegas is to take your money to the roulette wheel and bet red/black once then walk away no matter what happens after your one bet.

 

Sure there are other ways to gamble, but I guarantee the casinos have done a bunch of math on every way to blow money there.

[chucK]

But if you bet four times, your odds of winning go down to 5% but your payoff goes up sixteen times (though you only risk the same amount of money).

 

And red only pays off 47.4% of the time. Better to put it on the Pass Line (49.3% chances of winning).

[Bug]

I am holding cash right now. In a couple months we may see a turn around.

Investing is different from day trading and there are a few different stratagies for investing that work. Some are simple like buy a stable stock that pays dividends and plow the dividends back into the stock. Weyerhauser might be good that way. Or buy a specific mutual fund and do DCA as JB said. The key there is sticking with the same fund for a long time assuming you picked a good one. I like some of the Vanguard funds. Fidelity and Janus too.

If you are into managing your own stocks, take a look at the Motley Fool. Hidden Gems has done well for me so far.

But as a gamble, there is BIDU. Down to 322 today after topping at 422. Their CFA died last month. When they get a good replacement, they might come back big.

SDA, major meat packer in Brazil. Fast growing economy and not dollar based.

I like China in general. With the weak dollar, prices are high but growth in the country that holds our debt has some inferrences I will pay attention to.

But mostly, I just pray that we don't get in another stupid war.

[TREETOAD]

All my money is in groceries