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

things continue to be interesting.

i raised cash by quite a bit (taking profits and reducing exposure to some companies) so while i generally don't try to time the market i like having some extra cash on hand in case we get a big enough correction that makes some stocks a bargain. right now a lot of things are not bargains.

i'm also learning some new things and making mistakes so it is all going about as expected. :)
 
happy to have finally gotten my initial version of a program done so it helps me out with my record keeping.

it searches all my past transactions and finds and lists out the lots of stocks that i still have and then it will generate buy or sell transactions and spit out the text into a file in a nice format for me with all the math properly done. this saves a lot of time and aggravation in that i don't have to go back through my transactions and find the appropriate lot any more and i don't have to do the math (which for someone who transposes digits quite often is very nice) and then i also don't have to wonder if i've got the format screwed up.

so version 0.0.1 is out to the world for others to use it too if they want. :)

now i get to play with it more and work on improvements and it also helps keep me interested in learning more about the programming language Python.

this is why i like winter and time off from gardening, it gives me other things to think about and reminds me of how much fun i used to have writing programs (much larger and more complicated programs).
 
days like Thursday and Friday are exactly why i raised extra cash a few months ago.

even if it is very hard to be certain of when to put some money back in as you don't really know how far it might go down yet.

also why it pays to develop a plan beforehand and think a lot about it and pay attention and also hope.

i still sleep ok - even if it isn't any fun to see numbers decrease it still is all theoretical until you sell or buy - also i don't have so much involved that it can't be tied up for a while as i am also capable of being patient.

i hope everyone else is weathering the storms ok...
 
in a place far, far from here someone said, "How do you know what to do in a market like this?" my reply was, "That is why you have a system and try to stick mostly to it."

this morning was a prime example. some things i follow were in the buy range that my system sets up, so as much as i didn't really think it was the best idea, it was what i did. of course i had no idea what was going to happen later today. so after i did those buys i went off and did some other things and wasn't paying any attention to the market. came back a while later and saw what was in some of those buys a big enough jump that they were now in my sell ranges. so i lined up the sales and got most of them done (waiting on one small one at the moment).

of course this is in a trading account where i may be holding things for a short while and some other things are not in the money (aka, i'm not going to sell them at a loss) so they are future sales waiting to happen (and a few of them may not ever happen - or i will have a loss at some point or they go out of business and i won't be able to sell them). my longer term account i don't do much with other than cash dividends and once in a while add something to it, but not much these past 20 years as i've needed the income.

and just as i posted this the last bit of selling i wanted to do got done...
 
file this under if you ever wonder why accountants go nuts... :)

i wrote a little program to compute some numbers on buy, sells and splits of investment shares. in researching it i found out about things i didn't know before (a newer programming language (Python) that has a data type (Decimal) that does things very accurately and is also very specific about how you can check for failures, etc.) so that is fun, but also as a computer science student of many years ago i also knew that dealing with fractional amounts can be quite an interesting issue/challenge.

i put my program out there for other people to use. i didn't completely test it as i did admit it was a rather hacked together thing and not formally developed. so errors did appear and i've been correcting them as i go along when i get time to go back and poke at it some more.

one of the interesting things i learned was that it depends upon where you were taught rounding it can be different, there are many different kinds of rounding methods and i assumed the one called bankers rounding was the right one. nope, at least not for my brokerage account. surprise!

today i'm working on this and seeing if i can figure out all the quirks i need to work around and then i see yet another example of a different but related issue of where the stock brokerage has alternative values that it shows (in some cases it reports one value, but if you look at it in another view you may see it being slightly different which can change your results by a fraction). when things are shown in an inconsistent manner which one do you pick? eventually this does become important for tax reporting purposes...

and then that gets me to where i have the same sort of beef with my insurance annuity company that doesn't give enough digits to calculate the results to match what appears on their statements.

whatever hair i might have left will soon be torn out...
 
got a test version done this morning (4-6am is a great time to not be interrupted :) ) now to see how it tests out and to use it... i won't replace the current version until the new test version gets some use to make sure i didn't do anything silly.
 
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it sure has been an interesting time with the markets. my recent update is mostly in line with sticking to my system.

currently my trading account is running 70-75% cash and a big chunk of that is invested in a money market account that pays a reasonable rate.

my long account (almost 100% invested in my handful of favorite stocks) is doing fine with the markets hitting highs. i do a once in a while comparison to see if trading is helping with returns and it does but right now with me considering it very risky in the market in general i'm more interested in being more cushioned from market moves until we have a more stable administration.

i have plenty of other exposure to the market anyways so my efforts to reduce volatility are only moderating the changes and keeping some cash ready for good opportunities is usually a good idea no matter what.
 
"May you live in interesting times." seems like a fitting comment or perhaps even curse for some people...

to me being in the market and watching the metals go all over the place the past few months it sure is very interesting. i don't invest in metals directly myself nor do i keep any here at home - i don't like the risks and fees involved with them. indirectly i'm sure some of the companies some funds invest in probably do have some exposure to them, that's good enough for me.

i've weathered a few small rounds of market corrections and my system is getting a good workout but with the market being very high and beyond what i consider fair valued for what i'm doing i am still somewhat more in cash than i would otherwise be with a more stable form of leadership. the destruction of value and brands right now is going to come back in the future. :( it creates opportunities but for those who are not able to take advantage of those opportunities it's not an easy time at all.

making sure to have some land, a way to grow some food and also having water seems a good way to be, but like anything else if the overall system isn't stable enough to where you can actually grow something and know it will be able to be harvested then even that is a rather tough road to be on.

in the meantime i'm keeping my powder dry and following the plan.
 
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