Stock Market

Dream_Inn

YYZRC said:

rasbury said:

I bet you guys have a blast in vegas!

Honestly! I’ve done well in Canadian bank and energy stocks. I’m just another boring dividend investor. 

nothing boring about dividends.  Honestly, I've been putting a lot in long term good dividend stocks. ENB, T, BGS, NRZ, IBM, NLY.  Watching a few others to get like SAR, HGTC, ABBV, BANX, DOW.  They are great long term and stick with it and do well long term.  Heck, I'm even in boring KO (Coke), V (Visa) and VTI, all doing ok long term.

Ras, I hear you and there are things out there that allow you to play.  As far as vegas, I really have a hard time losing money, but I did get taught how to play craps.  &, if you play it right, it actually has the best odds against the house compared to anything else, period.  But, you have to play it right and only play on the COME line and then place odds on that COME bet.  I love playing it and can play it for hours getting free drinks and usually break even.  For years when I'd end up out in Vegas for work, I'd play a little at least every other night for the 10 day trip.  Had at least 8 or 10 of those trips and came out pretty close to even, plus all the free drinks.  & lots of good time!

MarkB

rasbury said:

I would like doing that if I understood it better...I wished you could go to one of these brokers sites and you could set up an account and use monopoly money just to see how it all works...

There are exchange platforms that already allow you to do "paper trades" ... basically all fake trades to see what would happen. You can even use historical price action (so trade against the price action of Feb 2020 or March 2020, and pretend you didn't know what is going to happen next).  People use this to obviously sharpen their skills, but they also use it to test tools ... for example if you have a hypothesis that some piece of information is an indicator for what will happen to a price, you can test it to see how many times the indicator would have told you to do the right thing ... most people look for 70% accuracy (nothing will ever be 100% right as a predictor).  Some people create bots (programs) to basically take these signals and buy/sell automatically ... and they test their bots on these "fake platforms" before they launch them in real life.

boatman37

Yep, thinkorswim has a paper money account that you can set up with any amount. I just set one up for my wife today with $30,000 or monopoly money...lol. By default it has a 20 minute delay but for long term trading that really doesn't matter. If you want real time you can call them and they will switch it to real time. They might give you a rough time but if you give them a good story or call back and talk to a different person they will do it. Now even that isn't 100% accurate since it is based on 'fake' trades. Example was a few weeks ago my step-son, who is just starting out and doing paper trades, set a sell order for let's say 7.00. It sold showing him a nice profit but in reality it only went to about 6.80 so it would have never sold for $7.00. It is still a good experience though. Thinkorswim also has an 'on-demand- function where you can 'rewind' the date and go back and make actual trades on real data (but they don't count...lol). The problem with this is there is a bad lag. I have a 6 core 32GB trading computer and even it lags using this.

Willhound

rasbury said:

I would like doing that if I understood it better...I wished you could go to one of these brokers sites and you could set up an account and use monopoly money just to see how it all works...

You can actually. Many bank and investment sites let you set up a dummy account to play with. No cash involved.

Willhound

Partly because of this post but mostly because of a chat with a friend who was able to give me a better understanding of Bitcoin I bought a small $500 stake yesterday. I'm gonna just sit on it, maybe lock in a stop loss order for protection and just see what it does. Something to do for the winter.

rkinross

BNGO = BioNano Genomics Inc   BNGO stock has largely flown under the radar. But that changed recently because Bionano has a genome-imaging system, Saphyr, that is drawing attention from investors.  Recommended by ZipTrader.
 
APPN = Appian Corp - produces low code software to produce apps with little or no code.  Recommended by Motley Fool. 

MARA = Marathon Patent Group Inc - bit coin miner - Recommended by ZipTrader - Price target $70.

Dream_Inn

I bought a little in BYDDY today which makes rechargeable batteries for about everything.  I'm also looking at BYDIF, which is their electronics division.  The other I started watching and may buy a little is STPK (Star Peak Energy Transition Corp).

@rkinross I've had BNGO on my watchlist for about a month, thinking I missed the boat when it was half the price, but it probably still has a way to go.  But, it is down quite a bit today, maybe good buy in the dip time.

boatman37

So it was alluded to that trading is like a casino and I said not if you do it right? Well today I didn't do it right. House won today...lol. I started following a new Discord channel that has shown good results. I have been too busy at work lately to watch charts for setups. This guy has shown good results. Problem is there is a delay between when he gets the alert and when everyone else sees the alert. I made some money following him this week but he alerted TSLA long at about 3:50 yesterday so I bought this weeks $800 calls for about $1300. I was up about $50 on it and had a sell order in but it pulled back and the closing bell rang. Woke up this morning down about $700 on it. So then got dumb and tried making it all back on AMZN and lost another $500. No discipline at all today. Really this whole week. This week was OPEX week (options expiration). Monthly options expire tomorrow and there is a thing called 'pinning'. Look up max pain for options. Market makers will try to 'pin' a stock at a certain price so the most options expire worthless so they don't have to pay out. Yeah, manipulation, just like they are claiming wallstreetbets did. Market makers have been doing it forever but when the little guy does it it's a crime. I don't follow max pain anymore but it did come up the other day so I looked at my bookmarks and had one saved that I used years ago. SPY max pain I think was 388 this week so they may try to pin it there at the close tomorrow.

LaRea

Do any part-timers make a reasonable wage doing this? 

I mean, you could put money in a mutual fund for five years, and earn X dollars with zero effort. Or you could use that money to play the market, earning X + Y dollars after expenses and losses.  If you divide Y by the number of hours you spent doing it, are you earning like four cents an hour?

Or is this like @rasbury said, more about fun and gambling than making money?

When I worked as a part-time musician, I earned four cents an hour in the GOOD years!     But it sure was fun.  

Dream_Inn

I'm kind of looking long term for most of my "bets" in the market.  But, I do have a few that are possibly short term if the price goes up quickly.  I did just learn last month more about a short squeeze and to take some profit in it.  That was in BGS when I had just bought into it for the dividends and long term at 26.5. It shot up to 47 & I thought wow, I've only been in 2 weeks and didn't want the short term tax implications & wanted the dividends.  I should've just pulled it, but I'm still up 6% and getting dividends. 

Again, I enjoy reading about the companies and like investing long term in them.  Heck, in two months I've made enough (only if I pull all of the money out) to cover a years worth of boating!

@rk@rkinross BNGO has really gone up well today.  I have a limit buy in on it from yesterday, but it didn't bite.

MarkB

Bitcoin just hit a new record ... $55k.

randy56

Stocks I'm picking are 1 to 3 year. play, not for ever, this is Wednesday buy's 
Bought ALPP,BLNK,GILD I f they do not preform soon I get out and my money back. Then move on.
bought BNGO thanks @rkinross

boatman37

LaRea said:

Do any part-timers make a reasonable wage doing this? 

I mean, you could put money in a mutual fund for five years, and earn X dollars with zero effort. Or you could use that money to play the market, earning X + Y dollars after expenses and losses.  If you divide Y by the number of hours you spent doing it, are you earning like four cents an hour?

Or is this like @rasbury said, more about fun and gambling than making money?

When I worked as a part-time musician, I earned four cents an hour in the GOOD years!     But it sure was fun.  

Yep. I know quite a few that have quit their jobs and trade full-time now. They all started trading part-time and many started with small accounts. With options you can easily make $500 off of a $3000 entry. That's only about 16% and with options 16% is very easy to hit if you got a decent entry. Are they all going to be 16% winners? No. But my average win is probably closer to 25-30% and lasts anywhere from 10 minutes to a week of hold time. I bought AAL Wednesday and I'm up 15.98% on it right now. I only bought 3 contracts and spent $210 to buy them so nothing big there. But they are April 21st expiration so I have lots of time. If I had bought this weeks expiration I'd probably be up 75% or so. I'm not saying it is easy but it can be done and I know lots that do it. I'm averaging about $700/week profit (after fees, etc) this year and usually only have about $5000 of my account tied up at any one time. Most of my trades are day trades though.

If I put my $30,000 into a mutual fund and even having great years at 20% ROI I'd make $6000/year. Even with compounding I still wouldn't make what I do now. Sure there are losers, look at me yesterday. Yesterday was a fluke. I got careless and didn't follow any of my rules.

1) you need to have rules and need to stick to them

2) you need to have a target and a stop before you enter a trade or your odds of it being a loser go up

I use a system called The Strat. If anyone is interested look for @CyberDog2 and @TradeSniperSara on Twitter. They are also stratters and are great at it and are great teachers. Also, The Strat was created by Rob Smith (@robintheblack). He offers all of his videos free of charge but he is so high level he is a little hard to follow. Jermaine (@CyberDog2) and Sara break it down and make it easy to understand. The Strat works on all timeframes and all markets. It uses a numbering system for the candles and looks for reversals. The key is multiple timeframes. If you are green on the daily, 60 minute and 30 minute but red on the 15% then look for a reversal on the 15 back into full timeframe continuity. The key then is there are buyers at all timeframes and that is often when algos kick in and start buying for big firms. An inside candle is a 1, an outside isa 3, everything else is a 2. So if you have all green on higher timeframes and get a 3-1 setup on the 15 then look for the next candle to break the high of that 1 candle then you enter as soon as it breaks the high of the 1 (inside) candle. I'd say it works about 80% of the time if I had to guess a number. There is much more to The Strat but that is the crux of it.

You can also use this for longer timeframes. Maybe a yearly chart, quarterly, monthly and weekly. Use the daily as your key to enter on a reversal. There are more than just a 3-1 setup, there are 2-1-2, 2-2 reversal, 3-2, 1-2-2 reversal, etc.

Sorry for the long boring post but just wanted to give a 10,000' view.

boatman37

This was created by Sara

J3ff

If you guys missed the house finance committee 5 hour grilling of various CEO's and reddit user DeepF'in value you really missed something epic. 

DFV is the guy who started this whole GME thing. During the hearing the REP. from MI asked him this:

https://youtu.be/lxdp-wU3UZI?t=5320

He basically LAUGHED at the profit of wallstreetbets when he said he'd buy at 45.

Well. As usually happens on reddit. DFV doubled down and bought 50,000 more shares today at 38/share. 

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/lnqgz8/gme_yolo_update_feb_19_2021/

This my friends will be part of the movie some day. Just like The Big Short. We are watching history in the making. 

DFV knows something that the rest of us don't. He put 2 MILLION dollars into GME at 38/share after being laughed at by a congressman. 

All I know is this is the way and I like the stock!

RiverRat232

I admire the investing acumen in this group. I don't actively invest for the same reason I don't rewire my own house. Too much at stake. I am in coasting mode towards retirement and while it won't be lavish, it should be comfortable.

Dream_Inn

RiverRat232 said:

I admire the investing acumen in this group. I don't actively invest for the same reason I don't rewire my own house. Too much at stake. I am in coasting mode towards retirement and while it won't be lavish, it should be comfortable.

Nothing wrong with that.  I agree it's like wiring your house (which I've done almost half of as well, but electricity is my thing - plumbing on the other hand I'd never touch).  As long as you have someone you can trust to help you with your investments.  The last thing you want to do is either take care of things on your own and not invest at all or put it in someone's hands and they screw it up.

Everyone has their own level of risks as well & need to know them to sleep at night.  I'm a huge penny pincher and big time saver (one may think differently with my boating, but I can only have it because I do most of my own maintenance).  So, I hate to see my money being lost or not making something for me. I learned last year that, for the first time in over 25 years, my risks in investing has changed.  Seeing my retirement slip 10% in a day at this point in my life was not helping me sleep at night.

Willhound

My $500 in Bitcoin is worth $550 after two days....but I also realize this is a fast rising bubble that can burst at any time. Wish I'd got into it a month ago but hindsight is 20/20 and doesn't work in investing. That $500 is what I would have spent on an overnight get away someplace which I can't do right now, so if it's gone, it's gone. I'm watching it and if it drops below $450 I'm out. Crypto held directly in Canada is taxed as Capital Gains, so if I'm up $100 I'd get to keep about $65 of itast best, so I'm not doing it for the $$, it's keeping me occupied.
All my other stuff is strictly blue chip, long term, dividend paying....

J3ff

I am the proud owner of 410 doge coins  If it ever gets anywhere close to what BTC is I'll be a very rich man. You'll prob never see me in the US again!!

boatman37

My daughter made quite a bit on DOGE a few weeks back. She bought 51,000 for about $500 (about .01) and sold about 2/3 of it at .07ish. She made about $3000 on it and still has 1/3 left. I bought $200 of BTC and it's now worth about $500. I also bought 25 shares of ETHE the other day at about $21.

I don't blame anyone for not delving into trading. It is very hard to become profitable. To get to the point I'm at has taken me about 5 years and cost me about $40,000. I didn't have a pathway to learn the right way and jumped from system to system. My kids are getting there much faster than me but I have guided them and steered them away from the wrong things I did. My step-son started in December with about $100 and is now up to about $1400. He traded biotech penny stocks before and lost about $500 then started trading options following me. My daughter is very aggressive and kind of doing her own thing but she is up about $5000 this year but being very aggressive can lead to bigger losers too. 

Willhound

The other tricky thing with Crypto is the market never sleeps. Trades 24/7 from what I understand. No rest for the wicked...

Dream_Inn

Yeah, I'm not fond of crypto, I just don't know enough about it and it doesn't make sense to me.  Just me.

I probably jumped way too much into a lot of different stocks, but I'm tired of seeing no return and losing to inflation.  I figure even if I only made a few percent a year, it's better than CDs.  

Aqua_Aura

Dream_Inn said:

Yeah, I'm not fond of crypto, I just don't know enough about it and it doesn't make sense to me.  Just me.

I probably jumped way too much into a lot of different stocks, but I'm tired of seeing no return and losing to inflation.  I figure even if I only made a few percent a year, it's better than CDs.  

At least you diversified and didn't just buy a couple stocks. My supervisor just told me he owns 250k in Pinterest stock and I am guessing his portfolio isn't millions of dollars. 

When I started to diversify I feel like things really took off cause I stopped worrying about a few stocks and just look more at the averages over time. My portfolio seems to always be ahead of the market so that's what I look for and just make a few adjustments as needed. 

Dream_Inn

Aqua, you are right about diversifying. I made sure I'm in different sectors, so if for example oil drops, my share in coke or IBM may be ok even if my SLB or NRG drops.  Can't guarantee it won't all go down some with things like pandemic, but it helps me worry les.

Anyone see the good news more about CCIV and lucid today?  Looks promising for a possible merger this week.  I had bought another 100 shares on the late Friday dip.  I may hold this one long term if it truly becomes Lucid.  If I had only bought more than the 285 shares I have, it would buy that next boat sooner!👍😁🍹

boatman37

Diversifying is definitely the way to go. I have VXX calls right now just as a hedge if the market drops. VXX is often called 'the fear index'. VXX is only an index, nothing tangible. Usually when the market drops hard VXX goes up. Overall VXX drops until it is so low they do a reverse split to get the price back up then it will continue to drop again. I know a few people that short it right after they split it. For options traders you would buy puts and just ride it down.

My daily watchlist is AAPL, NFLX, NVDA, FB, TSLA, CAT, NKE, DIS, DKNG, ROKU, SBUX, and SPY. I have alerts set on these for inside bars on the 60 and 30 minute charts

boatman37

What I'm watching this week. There are a bunch of others that hit my scanner but either aren't options friendly or don't have enough room to the target, etc. UPS is an example. I like it but they have a dividend this week and sometimes that can cause unforeseeable moves. So for this week I only have 2.

T1= means target 1, target 2, etc

ABBV - triple inside week. like this below 104.02. T1 = 101.81

SPCE - inside day. Like this over 53.25 to give a 2-2-2 weekly reversal but over 52.24 if you are aggressive. T1=56.90. T2=60.07. T3=62.80

Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and this is only what I am watching. If you follow these then you are doing so at your own risk.

randy56

Interesting info boatman. Wonder if there is a rule of thumb on the 11 sectors.

 and 24 industry groups. Long term. Day trading is interesting, not ready yet. New to this more study is required. I have a buddy, we bounce different stock ideas. so we went together and purchased a soft ware program just for day trading, we will see how it turns out. 

Obviously the more diversified, holding's in the different sectors make's you less likely to lose during a pull back. what are they was my question. Here is the list. 

Energy, Materials, Industrials, Consumer Discretionary, Consumer Staples, Health Care, Financials, Information technology, Communication  services, Utilities, Real Estate.       

CCIV here is what I found, Lucid Motors plan to go public could be announced Tuesday. There is a lot of hype right now in E cars and related industry. 

Dream_Inn

Boatman, ABBV has been on my list for about a month.  Then they made a change into more cosmetic stuff and I was concerned.  It had dropped around $102 at that point.  I may buy some around 100ish for the dividend.

Randy, yes that is the list of the sectors.  Most brokers will show you your diversification in those sectors which helps.  I believe I have some in all of those except Consumer Disc.  The financials, I'm not in yet, but looking at BANX.

boatman37

Dream_Inn said:

Boatman, ABBV has been on my list for about a month.  Then they made a change into more cosmetic stuff and I was concerned.  It had dropped around $102 at that point.  I may buy some around 100ish for the dividend.

Randy, yes that is the list of the sectors.  Most brokers will show you your diversification in those sectors which helps.  I believe I have some in all of those except Consumer Disc.  The financials, I'm not in yet, but looking at BANX.

Yeah I saw a few other top pickers that I know have ABBV on their list but to go up. I normally look at them to break either direction but the longer timeframes are red so I was looking at a pullback but turns out there has been some big $$$ buying and they are expecting it to pop again. Could be. I had planned to sit it out if it did pop and only enter on a drop but now that I'm seeing a few others that I respect looking for a pop then I will watch for that too.

Now that OPEX is out of the way things may get moving again.

randy56

Looking at SELB, TLMD in Biosciences, Watching a  penny stock, mostly stay away from them TTTSF