Depends on the market. Indices? Definitely frustrating. Not much to do on this low volatility slow death grind up unless you are an investor counting your winnings at home. Spanish/italian markets currently imploding should put a halt to that and bring back some volatility soon. Plenty of opportunity in other markets though. Currency crosses have treated me well, shorting euro/yen and euro/dollar. Currently short some gas cracks- short gasoline/long crude, should work out. A lot of money to be made in grains just fading every one of these crop reports. Overall its just like any other year, all about choosing which table to sit at to maximize your chances.
I don't really "trade" per say I pretty much just hold for until I think they reached their value, so what I do is probably uber boring. But doing better than the major indices so far this year which is my goal. Overall even with this recent plummet its still doing good, with it going up so much these past few months you knew this pull back was going to happen. Bought some BAC earlier this year it looks good. Ive only been investing since OCT 2010 made some costly mistakes doing whatever the public does. However I think I am doing ok now.
I didnt have time to read through the many pages and posts so forgive me if its already been posted but does anyone here use morningstar.com for analysis? I heard Dave Ramsey refer to it when talking about his mutual funds. He gets criticized alot for reporting that his funds are hitting 12% when no one else is getting that. According to him, he uses "this 500.00 software" to sort which mutual funds are performing the best and he buys it. When he sees it going down he will switch over to whatever fund is the top one. Has anyone used this software and is it helpful to you? I see that its relatively cheap at 21.95 a month and lower if you subscribe by the year. I am interested in it but wanted to get some thoughts on it first.
i wouldn't bother with it. if he's not investing in index funds, they're probably heavily loaded. add the cost of $21.95/month, your losing a lot of money before even investing.
This seems like a terrible idea. First off, his 12% is just the historical rate of the market - nothing more: http://www.daveramsey.com/article/the-12-reality/lifeandmoney_investing When Dave says you can expect to make 12% on your investments, he’s using a real number that’s based on the historical average annual return of the S&P 500. The S&P 500 gauges the performance of the stocks of the 500 largest, most stable companies in the Stock Exchange. It is often considered the most accurate measure of the stock market as a whole. The current average annual return from 1926, the year of the S&P’s inception, through 2010 is 11.84%. Buying mutual funds that did well and then selling them when they don't seems like a classic "buy high, sell low" philosophy. Few funds are going to consistently outperform, and much of it is luck with the right sectors simply outperforming for that period. If you're always buying the ones that already have done well and then selling them when they don't, you're likely get more underperformance than overperformance. But as far as Morningstar ratings go - those have some value, and if you're interested in those ratings, Yahoo Finance and other sites will list the ratings of each mutual fund, so you can get that information for free.
Shorted some aapl this morning. I think with US sales falling, I doubt they can keep the same margins in china and India plus the European recession.
I feel like 85% of the people in this thread can only discuss Apple stock... There are other stocks you know, and if Apple is the only stock in your portfolio, that's just dumb. Other stocks that have been great this past quarter are qualcom, lululemon, chipotle, salesforce, and coke.
Hey guys, I been wanting to buy some stocks for a while but I have no experience whatsoever, can someone please refer me some websites, tips, ideas or reading material so I can educate myself. I have $5,000 I want to invest, it's not much but I don't want to risk a lot. Thanks.
Hmmm. I suggest putting half into VEU and the other half into VTI. Pay zero attention to it for 20/30/40 years and see where you land. Odds are that you will beat 2/3 of the other investors over these longer hauls.
Honestly he is right. Just invest it in the S&P 500, with 5000 dollars it will be hard to diversify your portfolio enough to get rid of the systematic risk. Only 1/3 of the mutual fund investors are able to beat the S&P 500 since the market is so diversified it usually will beat these hack investors. Good websites to read are bloomberg, seekingalpha, yahoo finance, morning star. Especially if you aren't a finance/economics type major/person you should just invest in a good mutual fund or invest in the S&P500 (SPY is the ticker). If you really do not want to to invest more or do not want to take the smart option of indexing then make sure to at least diversify your portfolio over 25 stocks. A couple high performing stocks are the ones I mentioned a couple posts ago.
Yea I got lulu back in the day 200% so far with them however I think they are going to peak around 78 based on their current financials.
