Finances, Stock Market, Money Market, Mutual Funds, Investments, Savings, etc.

[flowerbug]

I have two stocks in particular I have been looking at. Amazon and PayPal. For personal reasons I regret buying them but money is money sometimes. But I am currently in a slight red with both of them. As soon as the scale starts to tip me in the other direction I will sell and add onto my lands a bit because I really want to go back home. And I might as well square off my property. I don’t know that I’m going to be able to make big investments in the future. I probably will just act like my grandparents who went through the depression if I am not satisfied with my wealth.

none of us know the exact future or paths we'll need to travel. if i had less than five years time horizon i'd not have bought the stock i recently put some money into but it wasn't that much so i figured it also is going to be a bit of an entertainment expense too since i will have fun watching it. other people aren't so easily amused.

i hope it works out well for you.

 

[flowerbug]

making good progress, i thought this current task was going to take me another week but i may be able to finish it up tonight or tomorrow. will be great to have this one done and then i can get on to the next one...

which has 25yrs less of history to transcribe and even better i have most of it already typed in and have been working on a program to translate it all so i'm really a long way further on that one.

the first task mentioned above is an acct i've had since i was 4yrs old. so far there have been only two errors (i knew about them already) and missing a few lines of transactions (because back then they wrote things in the passbook by hand - and someone just wrote a balance and didn't put in the intervening transactions - so maybe three or four transactions i don't have). when i get done i'll have good ammo to go talk to the manager and see what they think...

 

[FarmerJamie]

As I mentioned previously, some of the brokerages are in potential hot water selling shares of stocks they borrowed, but didn't buy.
Short selling caused the price of GameStop to explode

 

[flowerbug]

@flowerbug , my investment history at least started out similar to yours. My divorce 10 years ago wiped out half my savings, plus put a huge crimp in my ability to sock away money. In the process of recovering from that. Had a review with my portfolio company 2 weeks ago, doing okay.

I just have share a story.
Mid 90s, working in the data center of a small college. Had to attend a group retirement plan session with our benefits provider. An hour of listening to the sales pitch for all the new socially aware funds (with "hip" names) we were supposed to use (with rates of return 50% less than the standard funds available). Old guy in our group in all sincerity, asked why they didn't offer a "daddy warbucks" fund that was heavily into defense contractors, energy, and high tech companies. The next day, he, as well as all of us who laughingly agreed during the meeting, got invited to a "charm school" (our term for the "you hurt someone's feelings" lecture) to get lectured. Good times.

while i do find that funny it also points out that we are of different generations and that has been a common reason for conflict between me and a lot of people so i won't get into saying why i also find it sad.

 

[flowerbug]

As I mentioned previously, some of the brokerages are in potential hot water selling shares of stocks they borrowed, but didn't buy.
Short selling caused the price of GameStop to explode

for those who are interested in that topic you can search for it on-line.

if you want to talk about what a stock is and what short selling is then i'll greatly enjoy that much more.

try to keep political issues out of this please.

 

[flowerbug]

A critical component of shorting a stock is there is a date on which you need to returned the "borrowed" stock. That due date is what drives the squeezes.

Conceptually, it is similar to commodity trading where you promise to buy or sell a fixed number of commodity product units (e.g., bushels of corn) at a specific time.

there is no due date on a short sale that i'm aware of. note i did say i was simplifying and not saying everything but what you may be thinking of is the dividend pay dates that the borrower does have to cover those amounts to pay to the person they borrowed the shares from.

Short Selling Basics

Short sellers enable the markets to function smoothly by providing liquidity and also serve as a restraining influence on investors’ over-exuberance.

www.investopedia.com

note that even if the above link is pretty good it doesn't mention dividend payments so they've even missed some details.

or perhaps you are thinking of options which are time limited.

 

[flowerbug]

I’m lost as to why that’s a political statement?

i was referring to his funny story in his previous post (sorry i did not make that clearer).

as to the issue of GameStop and brokerages and strange things happening, there's more than one side to that story and it's not simple.

if you are investing in the market and putting more money in than you are willing to lose you've stepped beyond what i consider a reasonable expectation. there are laws and regulations and insurance even for those who invest in regulated securities and then there are people who want to do things that are more risky. my opinion for sure along with that a beginning investor should probably not be shorting stocks.

the problems that many people had were with a specific brokerage that was new. they screwed up in various ways. i'm not sure it has been fully resolved and i'm not sure the full details are available either. no matter what i think the point to learn is to not put your money into a new brokerage that doesn't have some experience behind it and also to not get into a hot trend unless you're willing to risk your whole investment (and in the case of shorting stocks it can go beyond your initial investment).

 

[flowerbug]

This is not political, it's a fact on what some of the big brokers are doing. It's important to know how these players act. Last year there was a run on crypto currency, there were issues with a particular broker throttling sales. It took 5 days for a transaction to clear. Not rumor, fact, we experienced it.

Have no clue why you would say this is political. A personal investor can lose their lunch with some of these bad actors

buyer beware is a common expression from days of old. my reference to political was the other story you mentioned. sorry for not being clearer.

 

[flowerbug]

I'm not sure about the stability of the stock market.

it goes up and goes down. there are ways of spreading the risk around and also hedging but that involves things i don't do myself. i've always taken the long view so that any momentary changes down usually mean that a longer term investor will be buying regularly so that you're buying when it is cheaper along with the rest of the time.

over the past 50 years the downward moves have often been good buying opportunities for companies i've been following for a while (for those willing to buy individual stocks along with their other investments - i also have mutual funds).

ultimately though you do have to accept that the stock market is not a risk free investment and that it can go down. that is why i always recommend that people have a savings cushion built up and other investments too.

 

[flowerbug]

Device to do it? Are you specifically talking about "mining"? To trade, you can do over your phone, like any other stock/security. Easy peasy to trade

yes, the creation aka mining does require a lot of energy. we don't have a smartphone and don't want one. i have no desire to ever get into them. you didn't see my comment about currency conversion fees or my other objections.

i'm not a day trader. i don't want to be tied to the market like that and automated things don't always work out well. i've seen so many times when people who set stops get knocked out of a position by a market change and then the very next day the market reverses again and so they've missed out and have to figure out how to get back in and where. to me that's just a mess. i don't care to play games like that.

what i do is watch certain companies and learn about them and figure out what range i might want to buy in at and then in time it usually happens that the news or some event might move the stock into that range. often what has happened then after that is that the stock has bounced back up and given me a cushion of gains (and also dividends). held on for a number of years and if the company is solid enough they keep increasing the dividends and that may eventually even pay for the initial investment plus pay a large % dividend of my original buy in - a day trader won't ever see that.