I sold my SDS for an okay gain against my bigger losses on the DIG today. Bought more Dig once I sold the SDS.
what are y'alls take on the auto companies? any faith in them whatsoever? seeing a stock like GM hovering around $6 seems tempting...
*sigh*. I HATE trailing stops. I was a little nervous about today's action so I had put a stop on my short position from yesterday. I banked a nice profit by the time the stop triggered, but if I had just done things manually I could've made more than twice the profit. Grrrrr. Those things just never work the way you want them to.
I wouldn't do that if I were you...the risk is too great. If you have play money that you can afford to lose, then by all means.
damn i should have bought GS on friday and made a nice profit (( i bought some apple though at 103.83
Nope, it's too much of a gamble. I thought about it a while ago and did some reading on it. Unless the fundamental ways GM does business changes, they'll perpetually be in red. For example, They make something like over 10 different seat frames when Toyota makes around 3, or their door hinges are overly complicated...i.e. more parts to make. The sad thing is that it's difficult to drastically change this because of resistance from the unions (cutting redundancy means cutting labor cost). I also read an article by Lee Iaccoca saying another major problem with the Big Three is that CEOs are getting ridiculous salaries and benefit packages, especially compared to their foreign counterparts. While this isn't relatively much compared to the company's revenues, it encourages a "grab and go" mentality. For example, when gas was cheap, GM tooled their production into making gas guzzlers, while Toyota and Honda invested in efficient cars. Now GM is paying price in both image and sales. There's no real recourse for CEOs after they've made their millions during their short term. Unless major changes occur within GM, I don't think it's a good long term investment. The intrinsic value of the stock is too low. Actually, after some reading, I thought it would drop big time, but didn't have the courage to short (I don't short cuz of the inherent risk and lack of experience). You may see it go up and down with the tide though.
You don't get it do you? What sort of finance credentials do you even have? You named 3 companies. And that was the dumbest logic you could ever use. "You would be down 18% today" Who the hell said I would've held onto GE for 10 years till today? Just because you can name 3 companies that have lost during a certain amount of years does not mean that there isn't other companies out there that have performed well. Here's one of my examples in my portfolio. I've had Berkshire stock for 12 years. You can do the math on that one. My buy and hold strategy is not holding on to them until my retirement. My buy and hold strategy is finding undervalued companies in the stock market and selling them when they become overvalued. That can be one year, 5 years or 20 years.
Car companies as a whole will continue to have problems for awhile. After the economy starts growing again some car companies will rise, others will continue to be dragged down. I think GM and Ford are unfortunately in the second category. I think TTM will be in the first category because of its excellent management. However, I am waiting awhile before I buy.
An interesting stock to look into for the long run is America Airlines. I've posted before that I've made alot of money (my definition of alot of money is over 1K off a 3K investment) off them. Here's why I think they're good: - The price of gas has fallen. It will rise, but if it does on a predicted manor (unlike earlier this year), the increase in air fare (and expectation) is normalized by inflation. - Southwest, which hedged gas prices last year, will have to pay for gas at the same prices as everyone else by the end of this year. -Here's the big one. AMR has retooled it's operations in a major way because of the earlier crisis. It's looked at every corner of the company for savings, from the number of meals to the weight of cups on a plane. It's calculating the amount of fuel necessary to the exact amount tools needed for a maintenance job. GM could learn from this. Because of the retooling and falling gas prices, AMR post a profit of 45 million today. My prediction is after the recession, it's going to hover in the mid 20's.
Oooooh you must be SO happy! YAY! No my 401k is not up for the year, but I'd bet my returns since I've been investing are far greater than yours. Like I said, I don't care about a month, 6 months or a year. I care about 5, 10 and 15 years. Go make your little "investment" gambles with your 15-20k you MAYBE have in the market. Let the bigger money guys make the real investments.
Well I wasn't wise enough to short anything, but did manage to sell everything in my trading account the day after the 900 point run up, so at least I hung onto those gains. My 401k and IRA's on the other hand... oy.
Maybe there are three kind of investors The confident investors seem to really be knowledgable The careful investor seems to be knowledgeable but not self confident The nervous investors have stopped posting At this point it is getting down to who has the guts not the ability.
