This is where you can exchange some investment opinions and advice Posted on 09/23/2013 3:55:27 AM PDT by expat_panama
This is the Weekly Investment & Finance Thread (Sept.-23-27 edition)----
Trying to focus on the markets for today and each day and the economic news
This is where you can exchange some investment opinions and advice
If you see another FR economic thread you like and want to link to it here, please do
Post your favorite economic site links. Your favorite economic blogs and precious metals blogs and sites
Ping list -- on or off let me know here or via freep-mail. If I missed you then Freep-mail me
I might ping you to other interesting economic threads a few times a week. One per day maybe
Sites that posters have recommended ------
Check this out. They are going out of their way to blame Republicans for something.
Treasury Secretary: Markets too calm about debt ceiling
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3070838/posts
Yesterday's trading was flat and so are this mornings stock futures.Today's big story:
(CNNMoney) Treasury Secretary Jack Lew says Wall Street should take the looming debt limit more seriously. [hat tip to Lurkina.n.Learnin]
--other 'news':
Global stocks down as US budget duel heats up By PAMELA SAMPSON - AP - 50 mins ago BANGKOK (AP) — Global stock markets fell Wednesday, dragged down by fears that political gridlock in Washington over the federal budget might shut down the U.S. government. (full story)
French budget tries to turn page but growth weak By SARAH DiLORENZO - AP - Wed Sep 25, 1:24AM CDT PARIS (AP) — The French government has declared the economic crisis over and is promising that its budget for next year will bring growth and jobs, but experts are criticizing the proposal from all sides and a true rebound looks a ways off. (full story)
--going back to bed...
--and another beautiful day to all! This morning's futures are looking flat to upbeat leading into today's claims & gdp numbers. What could be easier?
I bought in at 54.36 not too far back I hated to lose $300 but my stop got me out at 51.4044 so saved me another $100 loss.
Some stocks seem to be holding their own. I think I'll sit it out the rest of the week and take stock. I don't think it was so much my screwup, just the market and something I didn't know about that company that others obviously know.
Probably a good buy now. I'm kind of bummed. I didn't expect to lose that $300. I am all cash for now and overall net gain.
Who do you trade with at $4x fees? I think $7 is cheap, have to factor it in, does give me leeway but cheaper is cheaper lol.
Check out https://www.tradeking.com/. I found opening an acct super easy --they got it connected to banking & checking etc. Any time you want to get something fixed w/ a human you just click on the 'CHAT' in upper right hand corner. The bell'n'whistles aren't as good as say ScottradeElite but they got streaming quotes w/ tradeking live which I've never tried.
Roger on the stop loss thing. I hated posting a stop trade only to find out it fired off on some 2-second dip. Having paid my 'tuition' on that lesson I've been just holding when I can watch it; sometimes I prevail upon one of my kids to watch it & I tell them the current sell rules etc.
It's possible the market makers blew a lot of stops this morning to rake in some cash but I think for some reason there was a massive selloff. I would say I watch for 1/2 the time the market is open.
That's good to know about tradeking. ST Elite only works on PC's. I think I'll stay where I am right now but ST has offices all over the country. You think $7 trades support that?
They seem to promote certain stocks. Maybe they get a commission both ways? You'd think they'd take AA off their front page as an example with their indicators.
But I can call them on the phone and they always answer or kick me up to the corporate level.
Rather than switching horses right now, I think I'll put my energy into learning options even if I end up not trading them.
In 2008, one person on my comm forum said they lost 200,000 day trading. So they learned to short, said they shorted Lehman Bros all the way down and got their money back. That's gutsy. Now they just daytrade one stock, says you should know all their moves over a period of time.
There are people that can trade options, day stocks, even commodities and real estate but I’m just not one of them —seems a person has to go with with what’s intuitive for them. I’m remembering a guy that spent all his time trading currencies and telling me that he liked it because (he felt) currency info was so much more dependable than stock info.
Go figure.
I looked at trading currencies, too, at first, also considered grain futures. Currencies I don't like the idea of betting against friendly countries' currencies although, apart from what Soros did, I don't necessarily think it is immoral.
Grain I have my own I sell so equities suits me better as I always was curious about the stock market. Corn is going to be 4 something a bu this year but yields expected to be good despite lack of rain for some weeks.
I'm still upset about losing that money. They say the market makers can see your stop losses (we have argued over that). Someone decided they can see them all except trailing stop losses. I've used those, too, to good effect. But everything that was working before is not working for me now.
I’ve went back and forth on trading strategies (won money and lost money) and have finally decided on short term day trading. I try to go with either momentum or catalysts. Averaging down don’t work for me - I’ll sell first. Being an investor (buy and hold) has cost me plenty so I don’t do that anymore (maybe I picked the wrong stocks?). I’ve made good money the last 60 days which in a sick way is worrisome because it came easy - too easy. When that happens I go back to my greedy ways and lose a pile. I still have the one stock and am waiting for a October Monday Meltdown next month before I buy more.
The problem I'm having right now is finding suitable stocks. My strategy is to try to choose a stock that would be profitable to hold if the day trade goes bad on me. I was day trading KRFT but the dynamics of that stock changed due to lower quarterly earnings and the short sellers are making it hard to get a nice run up and exit point.
I can feel your frustration. I feel it, too. I had losses but the gains came a lot easier. Maybe I'm just bored with my stock list and need to find some new ones. Best just to trade ones on S&P 500 or undervalued ones you have a good hunch about.
But I've got to tell you I had a heck of a time with one of my INTC buys, KO I got fed up and sold at a loss to put into something that made money, good thing it's further down now. PFE gave me fits. And now LLY I did that myself but who wants to wait for it to go up by $4. Been there done that with FCX (copper and gold mining).
I think we'd better get used to this crazy kind of market. I don't want to get scared out of it or do something really stupid. You post all those links of reports coming out, let's face it, we are on borrowed time financially speaking.
Take it easy. You can't afford to lose too many piles. Better to sit it out and see what happens.
On top of everything else, this O care has got investors rattled, too.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis has revised its estimates for the personal consumption expenditures price index. It’s an important number, because this is the index the Federal Reserve targets. And remember, it’s aiming for inflation of 2 percent.
Instead, the index fell in the second quarter. That is, the U.S. is experiencing deflation.
Thought you would find this interesting.
Stock futures down but easing, not sure why. News not particularly scary...
US fixed mortgage rates drop New York Daily News - an hour ago Washington, Sep 27 - US fixed mortgage rates edged down to a two-month low after the Federal Reserve decided to keep its bond buying program in place, according to the Primary Mortgage Market Survey released Thursday.BOJ's takeaway from Fed bungle: keep the message simple Reuters - 2 hours ago By Leika Kihara. TOKYO | Fri Sep 27, 2013 12:24pm IST. TOKYO (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Reserve's surprise decision not to start tapering its massive stimulus convinced the Bank of Japan about one thing - the need to keep market expectations anchored ...Ahead of the Bell: US Consumer Spending AP - 12 mins ago WASHINGTON (AP) — The Commerce Department reports how much U.S. consumers spent and earned in August. The report will be released at 8:30 a.m. EDT Friday. (full story)Ahead of talks, feds find $100M for broke Detroit By COREY WILLIAMS - AP - 43 mins ago DETROIT (AP) — The federal fingerprint in efforts to fix Detroit is growing larger as the Obama administration has found millions of dollars in grant money to help the bankrupt city hire more police and firefighters, and clear out blighted neighborhoods. (full story)
Thanks, it was --though everyone's clear that this can change and that it's debatable. What I'd like to understand is why so many people oppose the fight against deflation, calling it a 'wallstreet bailout' that's 'funding Obama's spending' and that we're falling into Germany's 1922 hyperinflation. So many FR threads on that topic and there are a lot of reasonable good people that go along. Don't know what I'm missing here.
“What I’d like to understand is why so many people oppose the fight against deflation”
I think there is a disconnect on what is inflating and deflating. They leave out food and energy which is in everybody’s budget. When you go buy gas at $4.00 a gallon and not that long ago it was $3.00 it is hard to wrap your head around the deflation side of the argument. Same thing at the grocery store. I’ve yet to hear anyone say “hey remember when a dozen eggs was five bucks? WTF!
Most people see prices creeping up in their day to day lives and don’t picture the problems with deflation. I’m not even sure I entirely understand why they fear deflation so much more than inflation.
Maybe you were thinking of the article's "better gauge of inflation comes from the core PCE deflator, which excludes food and energy", but what he was talking about was problems with the Fed's CPI-U which does include it. I can argue that food'n'energy are down. Crude oil's now at $104 compared to $140 a few years ago, along with current producer food prices lower than a year ago. OK, so those are cherry picked numbers that really don't prove food'n'energy deflation, but they do show how those prices are a bit goofy.
That may because we haven't had a bad case of it in 80 years.
Back in the bad old days of gold money our periodic deflation meant consumers stopped purchases because of expected future price cuts. Meanwhile producers stopped hiring because of expected falling sales income. With people out of work and factories shutting down everyone defaulted on loan repayments with their increasingly precious money. Deflation is unemployment, bank failures, and business failures.
My understanding of the ‘fear’ of deflation is that it discourgages producers from producing as they face diminishing returns on production. This, it is believed causes a slow downs in production, layoffs, etc. which only exacerbates the underlying issue -a lack of demand/consumption. Outsourcing is also a cause of deflation and I think is a larger cause in the present then it was in past deflation threats. Both causes are countered by over-issuance of the currency (inflation) and most wester countries have been doing this for years to offset deflation.
Unfortunately, western governments have been doing a poor job stimulating consumerism preferring to invest in banks rather than consumers. Instead of programs like WPA and CCC the government’s ‘investments’ are going to banks in the QE ‘stimulating’.
Without a strong consumer class as the currency devaules the citizens will react. We’re seeing the beginning of this with reaction to O-care. It is certain to get worse. Think French Revolution.
DJ Federal Authorities Search Lumber Liquidators Headquarters
By Ben Fox Rubin and Shelly Banjo
Federal authorities on Thursday executed a search warrant at Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc.'s (LL) headquarters in Toano, Va., a move the company said involved "the importation of certain products."
Brandon Montgomery, spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations, confirmed that special agents from his department, including U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the Department of Justice, searched the headquarters and another Lumber Liquidators location in Richmond.
"The warrants are sealed and no further details are available at this time of the investigation," he said, declining to comment further.
In a separate statement, Lumber Liquidators said: "We are cooperating to provide information and documentation to answer the questions being asked relating to the importation of certain products."
Lumber Liquidators is a specialty retailer of hardwood flooring with more than 300 locations.
The company's shares were down 11% at $100.65 in heavy premarket trading. As of Thursday's close, the stock had more than doubled since the start of the year.
Sold 1/2 a week ago at $109.58; this sounds like Obama's war on Gibson guitars over the imported wood thing. This is why people diversify though I may have to consider diversifying more into cash...
Thing I wanted to mention Aliska is that we don't want to dwell on losses because the negativity erodes judgment. We got to review, decide what to change and what to keep, and look forward. Not easy but it's the difficult work that ends up paying well.
While politics can make us all hate Soros, we we need to love what he did in the market place. Back in the early '70's he invented the hedge fund and paid an average thirty percent return to investors in his Quantum Fund. 30% = doubling every 2-1/2 years, and he did that for two decades. He also made billions in currency trades by making offers to other traders at far better rates than they were getting elsewhere. People can say he made a $billion on his Bank of England trade forget he had to risk $10billion to do it.
Betting is done with known odds coming up to a completely unknown turn or the dice, and one man's winnings are the next man's losses. The market sees different risk levels for each trader and each transaction is supposed to make both parties better off --if it doesn't we don't come back.
fwiw, my LL is now at $104.20 --I'm now down 4% from when I bought it.
For what it’s worth, Jim Rogers said (two months ago) that things will go south between 9.30 and January 1.
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