The Stock Market

[Jay]

Any investors? I've began my foray into the stock market and wanted ask any of you potentially more experienced people if you have any advice. Not looking to day trade, just looking to park some money in a good spot and get dem gainz.

[10sun]

Look for long term performers that already represent a diversified portfolio for 75%
BRK.B and let it ride.

Look for low cost stock that represents a sector you can track for the other 25%

I have played around with a few others over the years. SanDisk was a super strong performer for me. I bought $10k worth at 8 and change in 2008 and sold at $100 in 2014 after a market dip. I bought them knowing that the stock was undervalued and they were due for explosive growth with the mobility market ramping up and there would be a secondary demand for flash memory.

I still have Alcatel Lucent stock...that did not pan out; I thought that it would definitely rebound strongly from $2 a share. Maybe someday it will hit $5 a share again; I have it set to sell at that point.

Best advice: don't ever take money out.

[Drem]

It's too volatile for me. I'm doing mutual funds

[Harrison]

I've put maybe a couple hundred in ETFs with solid returns year over year. (10% or so)

I'm using it more as a savings method than moneymaking. I'm probably the only person my age actively putting money towards savings and I'm broke AF.

I just started, though. I don't have enough money to begin a "CD ladder" of buying increasing levels of CDs and reinvesting them when they mature, but that's my next step when I graduate and whatnot.

[10sun]

It's too volatile for me. I'm doing mutual funds

BRK is essentially a mutual fund; just a proven diversified holdings company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_a ... e_Hathaway

I just want to buy some BRK.A stock and start attending the annual shareholder's meeting, but I need a few more years.

[Reynaldo]

I LOVE everying stock market. It's very addictive to invest / save.

For my personal investments I tend to stick to long standing profitable companies that pay dividends, mixed with a tiny bit of risk/growth

My portfolio now consists of

Altria (MO) - long term growth plus a 3-4% dividend
Brk-B - for reasons listed already
Google (Goog or GoogL)
Amazon
Disney
Caterpillar
JPMorgan

One of the "risk" stocks I got into was Arista Networks (bought at 60 and sold like a dummy before getting back in at 88).


For safe investing, you can't really go wrong investing in stuff like IBM, General Electirc etc. Solid long term grown with 3% or more yield guaranteed.


For my daughter's college fund, instead of doing a 529 or one of the pre-paids I just started an S&P 500 index fund (like Buffett said to) and I'm up about 2000 on a 16000 investment over 3 years since she was born. So not awesome but not bad.

[leah]

It's too volatile for me. I'm doing mutual funds

BRK is essentially a mutual fund; just a proven diversified holdings company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_a ... e_Hathaway

I just want to buy some BRK.A stock and start attending the annual shareholder's meeting, but I need a few more years.

ermahgerd that would mean a road trip to nebraska if you go to the shareholder meeting hehe :D

[Jay]

Right now I have:

Alibaba (BABA)
Microsoft (MSFT)
Facebook (FB)
Amazon (AMZN)
Tal Education Group (TAL)
Johnson and Johnson (JNJ)

@Reynaldo
How often are those Altria dividends and how much is it usually per share? I don't quite understand how dividend percentages break down but I was reading about Realty Income Delaware (O) and how its a 4% dividend supposedly but they pay out monthly at 22 cents a share per month with shares costing around 60 bucks.

@Drem
It depends on what you consider "volatile". You can get low volatility stock like Microsoft that will gain/lose .1 or .2% a day then suddenly jump up 3%. A giant like Microsoft typically doesn't dip far and when they do, people swarm to buy and bring them right back up.

@Harrison
S&P500 or Vanguard is pretty much a guaranteed 14% a year. CD's are pointless now. Even online CD's with the best rates are terrible compared to the market since lending is low based on my research and some broker advice thus far.

I will look into BRK.B but I'm a little more interested in Vanguard Total Stock Market (VTI). Any commentary on that?

[Jay]

So uhhh...ouch lol.

[Harrison]

Right?

So glad that my investments are basically just a parking spot for money I hope pays off someday in the moderately distant future.

I watched my meager portfolio just go, "brrrrppppptttttt!!"

[Jay]

I'm still ahead and much of yesterday's losses are corrected today but it certainly didn't help the heart seeing the numbers yesterday lol.

[Harrison]

It looks like everything bounced back.

[Reynaldo]

Yeah that's where the stock market (dealer) wins when people bail after a big drop. Granted if you guess right and it goes down 500 per day for a week straight like it did a couple years ago then good for you.

But the hedge fund guys gobble up the stocks the day after they're battered driving the price back up the next day (today) and bam, easy couple million.

[Reynaldo]

One I'm keeping my eye on right now is Blackstone (BX)

Was down to 29 recently but semi recent highs of 46. 11% dividend.

Looks like a long term winner.

@Jay - The payouts are basically just whatever the yield # is divided by 4 for each quarter. So say you own 500 shares of X stock and their yield is 4 dollars per share. Every quarter you'll get 500 x (4/4) so 500 bucks each quarter but 2000 per year. It would make more topical sense for the finance pages and stuff to list yield per quarter to simplify it.

[Jay]

Thanks for the info. I bought a few shares of BX and so far its been slow acceptable losses and nothing major. Great track record with them based on history so I'm excited to see this stock have its day. TAL has been emotionally abusing me like a tattooed girlfriend though. Up 5% down 5% up 5%. Right now my biggest winner is Alibaba which is up 20% since I bought it.

[Reynaldo]

Anyone taken the plunge on cryptocurrency investing? I put in about 10k a few days ago.

Read an article that made some sense, saying just to put in 1000 bucks (if you have it obviously) in about 10 different "coins" under 50 bucks valuation. Even if you hit it big on just one of them you're set.

[Tossica]

I made about $15k this summer buying and selling crypto. Paid for a bunch of new toys. I bought 5 bitcoins when they were at $1000 each and sold them when they hit $2200 and stayed there for weeks. I also had 40 litecoins that I foolishly sold at $66 each right around Thanksgiving. Those currencies combined would be worth almost $100k right now. I mean, I did well and made a nice profit so I can't complain but DAMN.

[Tossica]

In also dabbled in ETH. Bought in to those when they were $110 and sold them for $400 each a few months later. Now they just passed $700! I guess the lesson is, put money in and leave it there for longer than I did. There will be dips when the price plummets but then it always climbs back up eventually.

[Reynaldo]

Very nice!

I split it up with about 2000 worth of ethereum at 450 each. 2000 worth of litecoin at 180 each, then put the other 6000 into the bitcoin trust investment (GBTC).

So far up on all of them but try not to look at them much since I know it will be pretty large peaks and valleys

[Jay]

I’ve made a stupid amount of money via crypto arbitrage. I’m making sure I dividend out some profit for myself in case this bitch crashes

[Reynaldo]

I feel like this is a turning point thing right now.

Where all the people that are crapping on it are the old crusty bankers that don't want a different currency to succeed. But the younger generation isn't having any of that crap and pushing ahead with the alt-coins. IMO they're just going to keep going up and up since there's a limited supply on each one.

Now am I willing to put my life savings on that? Heck no lol....but I threw 10k at it just to see if I can get on the train.

[Menelvir]

BRK/B: Yes, absolutely. All hail the Oracle. I got in relatively early, currently sitting on 50 shares.

Also SPY (SPDR). My SPY and BRK/B taken together represent a little over 2/3 of what I've got in stock.

crypto: This one strikes a resonant chord -- I really want an alternative to the current centralized monetary system, but this arena (bitcoin specifically) is so incredibly volatile right now -- I don't know when (or if) the speculative nature of it will allow it to actually be a currency (without the ridiculous transaction fees, etc.). And it seems a new contender (or three) appears every single day. I could have made $10K off of BTC, and probably should have, but I sat on it, and probably will continue to hodl.

I use Scottrade (which is currently transitioning under a change of ownership to TDAmeritrade) -- hopefully the change will be fairly smooth for end-users.

[Reynaldo]

I signed up for Robinhood to do some trading on the side.

No commissions, will be able to trade quite a bit of different cryptos starting soon. Here's a link if anyone interested. If you sign up we both get a free share of stock! Free money omg

https://share.robinhood.com/roberth2597

[leah]

BRK/B: Yes, absolutely. All hail the Oracle. I got in relatively early, currently sitting on 50 shares.

Also SPY (SPDR). My SPY and BRK/B taken together represent a little over 2/3 of what I've got in stock.

crypto: This one strikes a resonant chord -- I really want an alternative to the current centralized monetary system, but this arena (bitcoin specifically) is so incredibly volatile right now -- I don't know when (or if) the speculative nature of it will allow it to actually be a currency (without the ridiculous transaction fees, etc.). And it seems a new contender (or three) appears every single day. I could have made $10K off of BTC, and probably should have, but I sat on it, and probably will continue to hodl.

I use Scottrade (which is currently transitioning under a change of ownership to TDAmeritrade) -- hopefully the change will be fairly smooth for end-users.

i still do freelance writing for the ad agency where i used to work, and TDA is their biggest client, so i've been getting a lot of random assignments for transition materials. sounds like they're going to try really hard to make it an easy transition. ALSO, from the perspective of having navigated their site, products, and educational stuff, it seems like a pretty decent user experience. YMMV.

i gotta add, they offer a shitload of premium educational content for free. i think that's pretty cool.