Stocks to Watch Thread

[Ob1]

I sold a few things in my IRA today so I have cash if states start shutting down and market crashes again.

I do not suggest trying to time the market with a large portion of your retirement accounts. I would park it in a few index funds and mess around with taxable money (if any).
If you do have taxable investment accounts, then you can mess around with the money in your retirement fund (IE put the ones with highest dividends/worse tax implication stocks/funds in the IRA, but make sure your taxable account stocks/funds are then correctly balanced.


For example, I love the $O. It's been a great stock to hold in my IRA as it produces a monthly dividend that would cost me an arm in a leg in taxes if it was in a taxable account. However, I invest an equal amount of money in vanguard total stock index in my taxable account as a quasi retirement fund so that I can keep my 60-20-10-10 approach (IE 60% total us stocks, 20 total international, 10% bond, 10% fuck around stocks.)

I know I'm in the "stock" thread but just my 2 cents.


On a stock note, a few players I am evaluating and/or have invested in over the last few years:

1) Royal Dutch Shell - seem to be ahead of their rivals on green energy. I look for them to bounce back.
2) Raytheon or Lockheed Martin... I am not sure which of these I want to invest in yet, but I know I want to hit one or both. Any thoughts?
3) Baba - been sitting on them for a few years, but rumor is they are going to have a stock split soon which should help get more of the average investor back in play
4) Microsoft - Bought 70 shares in 2016. Sold enough to pay back my 70 shares and keep the rest as profit. MSFT might be my favorite stock on the market. Honestly, I sometimes debate putting part of my (very conservative) emergency fund into MSFT. I have 12 months saved up, probably only need 6, so I might throw 6 months of it into MSFT.
5) Walmart - with Walmart+ I see a real competitor to Amazon. Think Amazon but with the ability to get actual fresh perishables and home products.
6) Activision - I invest in things I like, and I like Warzone.

 

[KI4MVP]

I do not suggest trying to time the market with a large portion of your retirement accounts. I would park it in a few index funds and mess around with taxable money (if any).
If you do have taxable investment accounts, then you can mess around with the money in your retirement fund (IE put the ones with highest dividends/worse tax implication stocks/funds in the IRA, but make sure your taxable account stocks/funds are then correctly balanced.


For example, I love the $O. It's been a great stock to hold in my IRA as it produces a monthly dividend that would cost me an arm in a leg in taxes if it was in a taxable account. However, I invest an equal amount of money in vanguard total stock index in my taxable account as a quasi retirement fund so that I can keep my 60-20-10-10 approach (IE 60% total us stocks, 20 total international, 10% bond, 10% fuck around stocks.)

I know I'm in the "stock" thread but just my 2 cents.


On a stock note, a few players I am evaluating and/or have invested in over the last few years:

1) Royal Dutch Shell - seem to be ahead of their rivals on green energy. I look for them to bounce back.
2) Raytheon or Lockheed Martin... I am not sure which of these I want to invest in yet, but I know I want to hit one or both. Any thoughts?
3) Baba - been sitting on them for a few years, but rumor is they are going to have a stock split soon which should help get more of the average investor back in play
4) Microsoft - Bought 70 shares in 2016. Sold enough to pay back my 70 shares and keep the rest as profit. MSFT might be my favorite stock on the market. Honestly, I sometimes debate putting part of my (very conservative) emergency fund into MSFT. I have 12 months saved up, probably only need 6, so I might throw 6 months of it into MSFT.
5) Walmart - with Walmart+ I see a real competitor to Amazon. Think Amazon but with the ability to get actual fresh perishables and home products.
6) Activision - I invest in things I like, and I like Warzone.

I have non IRA account in indexes, I don't want to deal with the tax issues of selling them, but am not buying more right now. I'm accumulating cash.

I don't have to worry about the tax issues with the IRA. I didn't sell a huge percent

This isn't a typical time of trying to time markets. I have to think there will be shutdown issues coming, hospitals are at capacity, and after falling quite a while, COVID deaths are now rising. Also, the extra unemployment expires in a few weeks.

 

[Chardon]

Been into penny stocks lately

 

[bigking777]

I do not suggest trying to time the market with a large portion of your retirement accounts. I would park it in a few index funds and mess around with taxable money (if any).
If you do have taxable investment accounts, then you can mess around with the money in your retirement fund (IE put the ones with highest dividends/worse tax implication stocks/funds in the IRA, but make sure your taxable account stocks/funds are then correctly balanced.


For example, I love the $O. It's been a great stock to hold in my IRA as it produces a monthly dividend...

Crazy you mention O (Realty Income). Nobody ever talks about that stock. Owned it for years. Sold it in April on a little bounce.
Don't like your idea of indexing in this market. Yeah it's cheap to diversify but I don't want to own 30% of the S&P 500 right now (financials, most retail, international, travel and lodging, etc. ). I concentrated my portfolio to 15 stocks; ones that I believe have a little more clarity.

I am a little nervous about the level of the market though. Certainly not cheap but you can't fight the trend or the Fed.

 

[Ob1]

Crazy you mention O (Realty Income). Nobody ever talks about that stock. Owned it for years. Sold it in April on a little bounce.
Don't like your idea of indexing in this market. Yeah it's cheap to diversify but I don't want to own 30% of the S&P 500 right now (financials, most retail, international, travel and lodging, etc. ). I concentrated my portfolio to 15 stocks; ones that I believe have a little more clarity.

I am a little nervous about the level of the market though. Certainly not cheap but you can't fight the trend or the Fed.

Guess it depends on your time horizon. If you've got 20+ years left before retirement like me, indexes are definitely that way to go. They may see a dip or even a crash soon but they will recover as quick or quicker than individual picks and historically carry far less risk. If you don't like the s&p try a world index fund or total stock fund.

 

[The Wizard of Moz]

The idea of a Fed put is not new. Greenspan Put, Bernanke put, even in the Great Depression people thought that “external support” from the big banks meant that there couldn’t be a crash

the “Fed put” it adding a ton of debt to an already highly leveraged economy. Now, that means that it’s unlikely that we see a liquidity crisis which is what was legitimately possible in March when credit markets absolutely froze and corporate bond yields exploded out. This is why I think even if we’re on the way down again it won’t be as vicious as before. QE infinity isn’t something we’ve seen before and it basically said the Fed isn’t going to let this become a financial crisis without doing everything in its power to stop it.

but companies taking on more debt, cheap as it may be, and having revenues slashed for what could be years (looking at the airlines, cruise lines, travel) isn’t a good thing for these companies. So maybe don’t fight the Fed isn’t as appropriate as don’t fight the idea of the Fed??? Idk

this is going to cause long term pain. It’s just ensuring markets are functioning and a situation doesn’t arise where people can’t offload assets at any price which is when everything melts

but it’s very important to keep in mind that new era thinking is the most prevalent of bull market thought processes. For every boom there’s always justification for why this time is different and how it was extremely obvious that last time would burst.

I highly recommend the book Irrational Exuberance to anyone interested in looking at a history of the market from a bubble perspective. It’s honestly a book that challenged some of my core beliefs and changed them which is no small feat. The books as dry as cattle dick, but page for page it was one of the best I’ve read. Schiller wrote it which is the guy who made the CAPE ratio

that’s not to say my opinion is we are in a bubble, just to be cognizant that new era theories such as the Fed put (Bernanke put, Greenspan put, Powell’s money printer) pretty consistently have been raised in the past. Greenspan oversaw the dotcom crash and Bernanke the Great Recession. I actually just read a book about the Great Depression and it’s amazing how even in the bleakest of times people still refused to turn bearish. The funny part is back then the new era theories revolves around televisions, radios, and, I kid you not, prohibition radically increases worker productivity

I’m currently right around 50/50 in and out. I think both bulls and bears have good cases. I have dry powder in case I need it, but some bullish exposure as well. I also actually like the financial sector so I’m kind of confused about avoiding SPY for that reason. I guess as a bigger point, if you think the financial sector is in serious trouble beyond their already extremely depressed prices, it’s very difficult for me to picture an economy not in turmoil. Like I can’t really picture this world where tech is thriving while the financials get pummeled. Because banks getting pummeled means there are a toooon of defaults and loans being written down. That means a lot of people being laid off and businesses closing. That means less consumer spending and less business spending. Hard to understand how in that scenario places dependent on ad revenue don’t take hits. The lack of recovery in banks while tech explodes has truthfully been one of the more puzzling ones for me and I’ve asked several people who are much more knowledgeable than I on markets and haven’t gotten answers that make sense to me

I get that tech is sexy, but if banks are in bigger trouble than expected there’s blood in the water. That’s our economic backbone.

 

[KI4MVP]

I also actually like the financial sector so I’m kind of confused about avoiding SPY for that reason.

I have SPYX instead of SPY to avoid fossil fuels, they are going to crash over the next decade+

 

[KI4MVP]

Anyone here do options trading? I just started a couple of weeks ago and have been learning on the fly.

Seems pretty simple idea to start with, but I keep learning new things that seem better than what I've done so far.

Late last week I just figured out what a rollout is and how to do it.

This weekend I discovered spreads and that pretty much changes everything. I wish I'd discovered those a week earlier. Some of it I'm still processing because there are so many different ways to do it.

 

[The Wizard of Moz]

Anyone here do options trading? I just started a couple of weeks ago and have been learning on the fly.

Seems pretty simple idea to start with, but I keep learning new things that seem better than what I've done so far.

Late last week I just figured out what a rollout is and how to do it.

This weekend I discovered spreads and that pretty much changes everything. I wish I'd discovered those a week earlier. Some of it I'm still processing because there are so many different ways to do it.

Yep. I’ve been doing mostly cash secured puts on stocks I want to be in anyway and writing covered calls on positions I’d be ok with cashing out on.

Option Alpha podcast I’ve been checking out lately and have really enjoyed it so far. They had a show on earnings plays which I really needed to hear because I was having a hard time not FOMOing into “obvious” earnings plays

I also did the quant finance track for my FSA so I had to study options at a very theoretical level as well. If you ever have any questions about the Greeks or Black Scholes feel free to reach out. I don’t use the Greeks when I trade because I use more simple strategies and it’s a very small part of my portfolio, but I always look at implied vols which fall out of the BS formula

 

[KI4MVP]

Yep. I’ve been doing mostly cash secured puts on stocks I want to be in anyway and writing covered calls on positions I’d be ok with cashing out on.

Option Alpha podcast I’ve been checking out lately and have really enjoyed it so far. They had a show on earnings plays which I really needed to hear because I was having a hard time not FOMOing into “obvious” earnings plays

I also did the quant finance track for my FSA so I had to study options at a very theoretical level as well. If you ever have any questions about the Greeks or Black Scholes feel free to reach out. I don’t use the Greeks when I trade because I use more simple strategies and it’s a very small part of my portfolio, but I always look at implied vols which fall out of the BS formula

I fell like I should learn that part

I've now done a few covered calls. Including stocks I don't want to sell, but push the strike price out so far that it brings in some money.

I also did a cash secured put. Then discovered rollouts and realized the account I did it in didn't support a rollout as a single transaction, so I tried to move the secured put into another account by selling it there and then covering it in the other account. Only the stock moved down between trades now I have two puts. Ugh.

I really like the idea of spreads. If I don't really want the stock but think it'll either stay steady or go up, I can sell a put and secure it by being a put with a lower strike price. I haven't tried to do this yet. Thing I think I discovered here is that the further out I go on the strike date, the more money I get up front and the less money I actually risk if it does fall. I think the cash to secure it is just the difference between the two strike prices.

Or if I really think it'll go up I can buy a call. Problem is the price to buy the call eats into the potential profit, but figured out I can solve that by selling a call at a higher price and cut the cost/risk in half, but limiting the upside. But if I'm 99% certain the price will go up, such as earnings day, it seems a very low risk way to clear cash. I think the one earnings trade I did made would have cleared more cash had I done it this way. Of course the day I did that trade, I missed the fact that Apple and Amazon both had earnings the same day.

 

[brownindian]

So how many of you sold your Tesla stock before it "peaked" ?

 

[bob2the2nd]

So how many of you sold your Tesla stock before it "peaked" ?

I bought 9 shares at what turned out to be the low of the low in middle of march (i got them for 365). i sold 5 when it hit 800 (thinking 1000 would be the upper range), and thought i could roll those profits into other stuff that still hadnt taken off yet. About a week later is when it actually hit that everything was going to be closed for a very long time, and the market lost a bunch of value again.

Mean while its been 3.5 months and nothing I bought (primarily airline and cruise ships) has done shit all. Meanwhile Tesla has gone from 800 to 2200. If i had any idea that this was a possibility I would have never sold.

 

[bigking777]

Still holding my 10 shares I bought probably right before bob ($570 on 3/13).
Keep thinking to sell half but can't find anything else I like better or don't already own.

 

[KI4MVP]

So how many of you sold your Tesla stock before it "peaked" ?

Haven't sold any and don't plan to for years. Bought another share at 1399 when it dipped a couple of weeks ago.

 

[The Wizard of Moz]

Tesla honestly reminds me a lot of bitcoin. Take that for whatever it’s worth. Obviously not as a company but as a financial asset. The FOMO on it, the sex appeal, the attracting of new investors they really don’t know much about it

there’s a heavy amount of retail in it that either
1. Doesn’t own any other stocks
2. Doesn’t know what stock ownership entails
3. Has no idea what a valuation metric is
4. Doesn’t even know much about the company (FinTwit isn’t short of people saying SpaceX should impact Tesla valuation positively in the future)

I think Tesla is in a vicious feedback loop fueled by new era thinking that has literally been present at every expansion in history. I think it’s absolutely a FOMO induced bubble. People here stories of great wealth creation and people getting rich quickly. They want that same instant wealth so they pile into something because “it’s easy money” then they push up the price and attract others. And then a vicious feedback loop occurs where Tesla is all of the sudden a 400B company (lol)

And the classic response now is Usually “then why don’t you short it”

because I value my money. There’s a fucking graveyard of Tesla shorts. Shorting what you believe to be a bubble based on valuation metrics is a great way to lose money. I have no long position or short position and likely never will. I’ll say it’s pretty telling the amount it was cut down in March, well more than the broad markets or the big tech darings.

tesla bulls keep saying “see we told you” but you don’t make any money until you sell. And with a bubble

we’ll see I guess. I have little to no doubt they won’t be returning any value to shareholders in the next decade so the entirety of your return is pretty much hoping it stays with this immense growth and new era story.

there’s been a lot of dancing by Tesla bulls but I think it’s all extremely premature. There’s been speculative darlings before and very few ever manage to sell the peak.

Tesla is a cult stock to me. You get money from a stock by either someone buying it from you at a higher price or the company paying you dividends or buying shares back. Tesla is more interested in issuing new shares so you better hope that this insatiable demand for it is never.... satisfied

up 50%+ due to a stock split is... I mean I wouldn’t be dabbing on this one. But what do I know, I’ve never made a dime on it