Preparing to make my full IRA contribution for 2017 and Im concerned about buying into the market at this price. There has to be a pullback at some point this year, right?!? Perhaps when Trump's tax plans are announced? I know Im investing now for 30-40 years down the road so where I buy now isnt a big deal but still I hate overpaying, for anything.

3/1/2017 10:26:27 AM

I am the same way. I sold off some stuff a week or so ago in anticipation of wishing I had cash down the road. I have one I am holding onto for now because its doing well and a few smaller ones I am holding because they tanked somewhere along the way so will just sit on them for a while.

I am wondering at what point Target becomes a good buy. It took another beating this week but surely at some point it sets up for a good longer term play.

3/1/2017 10:31:23 AM

The whole idea for retail people (and 90% of wall street for that matter) is to do what you stated, DCA throughout 30+ years. Set it up on a weekly draft if it's not with work, and bi-monthly at work from your check if it's there. 9/10 wall st experts can't time the market consistently, and 99/100 retail guys cannot. Out of your money, the 90% invested shouldn't be traded or "timed," the 5-10% fun money is just that, fun money. Even the 30 year stretch from 1929-1959 returned 7.63% which would involve horrendous timing and no new money to DCA, just reinvested divs.

Now for the action junkies who've thrown that "safe risk averse garbage" out, I certainly would be full throttle in at this point with $2-2.5 trillion waiting to be repatriated at 10-15% tax rate in the next 6-12 months with a slight Republican Senate, an overwhelming House, and a corporate mogul in the White House. Even if the execs keep 90% after taxes for themselves and their shareholders that's still $300-400 billion injected, better than 0. Plenty of "expert" friends of mine and on the internet who have been waiting on a correction since DOW 17,000 (while completely whiffing on Jan-Feb 2016 at 15,700) and then got giddy on election night when futures plummeted 700 points only to finish flat the following day at 4:00 and then proceed on a tear upward since. Funny thing is the market could lose a thousand points over the next week and we'd still be higher than we were Jan 1.

3/1/2017 4:55:54 PM

Anyone trade options?

I've played a little with covered calls, to make a little premium on holdings I'm considering unloading, and wouldn't have to be convinced much if the price ended up rising more. Usually I just went for about the highest strike price that delivered any meaningful premium, and did it month after month until I decided to keep it, decided to sell it outright, or it ended up getting called.

Right now, with markets inflated in my opinion, I've been taking some profits, and have backed out somewhat to a substantial amount of cash, waiting for a pullback to re-enter. I thought about writing puts, where at least I'd make a few bucks in premium here as I wait, and if something gets put to me due to a significant fall in share prices, well, I'd been wanting to put that cash back to work, anyway.


So, then that kinda morphed into "Hmm, maybe this would be a good time to learn and employ limited-risk strategies and actually try to generate some real income with options. Anyone experienced with iron condors (or butterflies)? My desire is to be conservative, with wide spreads in strike prices, and just churn away for income with a very high chance of everything just expiring worthless, and if the premiums are correspondingly modest, that's fine.

3/3/2017 9:39:21 PM

Quote :

"I am wondering at what point Target becomes a good buy."

I bought almost at this exact price in 2014. I may sell off something and pick up another few grand.

Quote :

"Plenty of "expert" friends of mine and on the internet who have been waiting on a correction since DOW 17,000"

Hah, I hear that. I get lectured about it by one friend from time to time. Eventually I'm just going to tell him to show me his portfolio or stfu.

3/5/2017 12:01:02 PM

^^

I do. My philosophy on it is more from "Fooled by Randomness":

Quote :

"Many real life phenomena are not 50:50 bets like tossing a coin, but have various unusual and counter-intuitive distributions. An example of this is a 99:1 bet in which you almost always win, but when you lose, you lose all your savings. People can easily be fooled by statements like "I won this bet 50 times". According to Taleb: "Option sellers, it is said, eat like chickens and go to the bathroom like elephants", which is to say, option sellers may earn a steady small income from selling the options, but when a disaster happens they lose a fortune."

I occasionally play earnings if the implied volatility isn't too high, and definitely play events like Brexit and things that can make big multipliers. In my trading options last year I made about 20% even with some spectacular losses.

I have some coworkers that sell options and do condors, which I have been interested to do, but given the movement in the market this seems the better bet until things flatten out.

3/5/2017 4:15:52 PM

Quote :

""I am wondering at what point Target becomes a good buy.""

As an ex-Target guy who was planning to leave for well over a year before I actually left I can safely say that it will take, at minimum, a significant restructure and change in senior management before that company is worth investing in.

From a business standpoint they've got all the same problems as other brick and mortar retailers do in competing with Amazon and they've got the added problem of being in direct competition with Wal Mart. They don't have the same brand cache and loyalty as they did a few short years ago in large part because of the stupid PR moves they've made as well as bad luck with things like the customer data breach (which has happened to lots of folks they just happened to be one of the first big names).

The stock may rebound, but I don't know that the business will ever see near double digit SSS growth like it did in the early 2000s and it's hard to think of a reason that you would choose them over another retailer like Wal Mart or why you would even really want to play in the GM retail space. If you want a retailer you want to be in ones with a defined, specific niche whether that's a luxury retailer like Tiffany's or a health conscious Whole Foods type. It's just too hard to be competitive on price, convenience, or margin when you're just selling stuff.

3/5/2017 7:27:30 PM

Quote :

"Anyone trade options?"

I'm assuming you're open to trading on margin or you have a fairly large amount of capital in your account as they are typically pre-reqs for most naked strategies. What about vertical spreads? May work well for you in this market and provide a fairly probable capital preservation method.

Your "churn" mindset is right but I can't say I'm at a point where I'd put anything more into options that what I'd take to a casinoZ. You're basically looking for a slight edge, knowing that squirreling away gains will quickly get wiped out with a loss or two. Can definitely relate to taking CaelNCSU elephant dumps on my chicken feed (last week alone was up 45%, down 70%, up 25%, down 10%)

3/5/2017 10:46:29 PM

One of my regular taxable accounts is approved for margin trading, with about an $80k margin limit. The other is not, but only because I haven't requested it. It would probably be approved for something above that amount.

I don't really want to do this on margin, other than if just having it enabled is a necessary check in the block for whatever strategy i'm using. The only way I would write naked options is if there were offsetting options to guarantee the downside being limited to something tolerable...but the brokerage might not see that.

Quote :

"option sellers may earn a steady small income from selling the options, but when a disaster happens they lose a fortune.""

Many people do use options to magnify gains--either they're swinging for the upper decks, trying to generate a massive windfall...or seek to generate a modest, steady income from an amount of capital that wouldn't generate such income by owning anything outright. And yes, when they lose, they get fucking killed.

That's not me. That's not what I want to do. Well, the latter, kinda-sorta is--but I want to use limited-risk, limited-gain strategies, and then stay at the conservative end of those, so that I generate a stream of cash by winning the vast majority of the time, and even when I lose, it being impossible to be catastrophic.

Quote :

"What about vertical spreads? May work well for you in this market and provide a fairly probable capital preservation method. "

That's what I'm looking into, except that iron condor consists of a pair of vertical spreads (on the same holding). Calls + puts, with different strikes, on the same day. Basically, you can only lose a limited amount (although the most you can make is your premium on all 4 options); you cannot simultaneously expire in the money on both ends.

3/6/2017 12:02:14 AM

3/10/2017 1:39:47 PM

I believe the stock market will go either up or down this year.

3/10/2017 5:12:55 PM

so, no chance of just going sideways. at least it's 50/50 now.

3/15/2017 4:24:51 PM

I know this gets asked in every iteration of this thread, but I'm somewhat clueless and really need to put some money in a better account than a money market for medium to long-term, non-retirement investments. I understand the very basics of investing, but I don't know where to start really. So where's the best place for a beginner to start in terms of a service? Vanguard, ScottTrade, etc? I don't care to start picking individual stocks at the moment. I guess I'd start with a couple of thousand dollars.

[Edited on May 3, 2017 at 10:16 AM. Reason : .]

5/3/2017 10:04:00 AM

Vanguard and a total market index fund.

5/3/2017 11:37:46 AM

^^ Vanguard is good, scottrade is a shithole

5/3/2017 8:12:49 PM

Rode tsla from Dec last year till now. Time to get out and wait for a correction, or keep riding the hype train?

5/3/2017 8:14:10 PM

Can people post their portfolio ytd return rates?

5/4/2017 1:35:28 PM

I'm at +16% since January

5/4/2017 2:10:18 PM

10.04% but i haven't really been doing anything to manage it this year

5/4/2017 3:24:26 PM

18% but mostly dumb luck

5/4/2017 4:30:23 PM

16.32% Thanks to goog, aapl, and fb

[Edited on May 4, 2017 at 11:07 PM. Reason : ]

5/4/2017 11:03:09 PM

Quote :

"Can people post their portfolio ytd return rates?"

I don't want to spoil the party but no one posts their losses on the internet. As you can see, the four replies are all well above the US total stock market return of ~6% as of Friday at 4. Not sure how a 4+ month YTD return is relevant anyhow, but carry on.

[Edited on May 8, 2017 at 10:22 AM. Reason : .]

5/8/2017 10:22:27 AM

The ones I don't actively manage aren't doing quite as well

Roth IRA is 9.65
401K is 8.25
401K is 8.24
401k is 7.45

5/8/2017 9:59:13 PM

401k: 8.55% (target retirement fund)

Roth IRA: can't find the data

Taxable acct 1: 11.9%

Taxable acct 2: can't access it at the moment, because I just switched it to Scottrade Pro and need to finish setting up the acct.

5/9/2017 2:52:20 AM

Bitcoin is running circles around my other investments through the first of the year.

5/9/2017 11:32:19 AM

NVDA is going crazy! I wish I had bought more of it when it was near $100. I don't even know what is going on with TSLA.

6/9/2017 9:40:49 AM

I'm up about 114% YoY. High risk, only stay in a handful of stocks in sectors I know really well.

6/15/2017 9:34:52 AM

^ Whole Portfolio, or the high risk piece?

Whole portfolio is nuts. GG

6/15/2017 10:10:32 AM

whole portfolio. I only hold 3-4 stocks at a time. The real surprise was coke. I usually don't stray from tech

6/20/2017 10:29:02 PM

Does anyone invest in Muni bonds? The dividend income you get from them is tax free. EVM is a good buy.

7/3/2017 4:08:04 PM

so...NVDA... anybody else still in on this? trying to figure out where the ceiling is on this. is the ceiling the roof?!?!?!



[Edited on August 22, 2017 at 5:01 PM. Reason : also wondering this about MSFT.]

8/22/2017 5:00:41 PM

Bought some more aapl at 144. That's all I've really done as of late.

8/24/2017 12:42:46 AM

OK...finally got around to figuring out Scottrade Pro's trading platform (IAB-based), starting with my username, password, and token-key card, which I had lost, haha. Then, the platform itself has a learning curve due to the abundance of tools and modules. The support they offer over the phone is really first-rate, though.

Just placed my first iron condor. Just 2 contracts' worth...max profit $200, max loss $800. Let's hope that SPY stays between my short strikes of 234-252 between now and 20 Oct.

8/24/2017 11:53:11 AM

Assuming Oct. 20 $252/$253c; $233/$234p condor it's selling for $0.23 cents right now, you mentioned you sold it for $0.10 earlier this afternoon (2 contracts) so I'm missing something. Your short strike on the put side $234 is showing as a 23 delta which is a little high getting in. I like to see both short strikes at 20 or less and get 20% on the money.

I'm going to guess you have 2 contracts net premium of $0.20 per, so a $400 max gain and $1600 max loss.



[Edited on August 24, 2017 at 2:48 PM. Reason : .]

8/24/2017 2:45:20 PM

229/234 puts, 252/257 calls.

Yeah, that .23 delta is higher than I wanted...I planned on starting out around the .10 delta, or maybe .15. The pricing worked out while I was tweaking and setting up the trade, though, to make it look pretty compelling to me.

Just the day before, I set up almost the same trade, but it was a $100 max gain/$500 max loss. Fortunately, I got a penny or two too greedy in my limit order between the bid/ask (which was only a few cents spread, anyway), and the trade never executed.

8/24/2017 9:29:19 PM

long time no see..

recently i've only been trading with GBTC and UVXY.

bought and holding onto: V, GWPH, and INXX

9/7/2017 1:49:12 AM

Just day trading UVXY or doing options? Looks terrifying.

9/11/2017 2:18:02 PM

just looking for short term moves.. when Kim Jong and The Donald have pissing contests, there's a couple of days to play UVXY, then avoid it like the plague. GBTC is very high beta. tanked today, so i bought some and hoping to be out of it when the shorts cover at the end of the week..

9/13/2017 4:20:36 PM

other than V, GWPH, and INXX as long positions, looking to get into LIT

9/13/2017 4:22:13 PM

That "head and shoulders' on INXX though.....

9/13/2017 9:36:34 PM

Quote :

"229/234 puts, 252/257 calls"

And the fun begins

9/14/2017 8:58:39 AM

So about that pissing contest...

9/14/2017 7:11:01 PM

^^ Yep. I need the President or Kim Jong Un to say something crazy.

[Edited on September 14, 2017 at 8:03 PM. Reason : and just like that DPRK comes through in the clutch, haha. Hopefully enough to pullback just a tick.]

9/14/2017 7:58:32 PM

I'm thinking about 3M (MMM). I have moved significantly to cash over the last 6 months or so; I think think a correction has got to be coming (although who knows when), and I keep thinking that there can't be much more upside. On top of that, I think that the markets have been way overly optimistic about the potential benefits coming from Washington.

On the other hand, things keep creeping slowly higher, and my cash position doesn't do me any good for that.

MMM has outperformed since forever, less volatile than average (.93 beta), plus it pays a 2.x% dividend, plus I expect it would be more resilient than most in a down market. What I'd really like to do is sell puts on it and collect premiums until a dip comes along, but I don't know that I really want 100 shares of it.

9/16/2017 1:33:49 PM

holy fuck...NVDA still climbing. Almost pulled the trigger at 175, but held on. Glad I did. Ain't nowhere to go but up it seems.

10/12/2017 11:53:18 AM

nvidia just announced the only SoC capable of L5 autonomous driving from a company already known for producing hardware in the space. expect them to grow for another 3 years. I do see them losing hold in the datacenter though

10/12/2017 1:03:10 PM

NVDA and MSFT are $$$$ right now!

[Edited on October 30, 2017 at 10:29 AM. Reason : ]

10/30/2017 10:26:22 AM

Bitcoin is my biggest regret in life. Had 100 counts at the sub 10 dollar mark

11/10/2017 3:05:27 PM

^ i almost slit my wrists every time I see my 2011 posts in the Tech talk thread.

[Edited on November 12, 2017 at 12:39 AM. Reason : ]

11/12/2017 12:38:48 AM

ROKU on fiyah right now!

11/13/2017 10:13:58 AM