Screw the Stock Market...

[Color Me Badd Fan]

The only individual stocks in my portfolio are AMD and Apple. They've done really well and I've sold off a bunch in the last year. I moved most of those gains into an energy fund (when Moliere was moaning about the low oil price) and a real estate fund. Both are up so far.

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AMD is up around 25-30% over the past two days. Intel has control over the server CPU markets, but AMD is beginning to take a lot of market share on the retail side of things. Still, the segments that Intel still dominates are the significantly more profitable.

That said, I wonder if Intel's lag in the retail side portends something about the company overall. AMD on the other hand has a lot of momentum. I know for the PC builder geeks, AMD is very popular.

[Pelado]

The only individual stocks in my portfolio are AMD and Apple. They've done really well and I've sold off a bunch in the last year. I moved most of those gains into an energy fund (when Moliere was moaning about the low oil price) and a real estate fund. Both are up so far.

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[BigFatMeanie]

I have an IRA account which has historically just been in index funds. I pulled it all out of index funds and into cash on February 24.

In late march I decided to go back into the market but this time I decided to try my hand at picking individual stocks.

On March 27 I bought:

HD @ 192.2456, currently at 265.17, up 37.93% plus the dividend
V @163.7786, currently at 198.86, up 21.42% plus the dividend
MA @ 250.814, currently at 313.37, up 24.94% plus the dividend
XOM @ 37.1369, currently at 42.61, up 17.42% plus the dividend (which is yielding nearly 8%)
CVX @ 71.50, currently at 91.04, up 27.33% plus the dividend (which is yielding 5.67%)
NOW @ 277.4348. Chickened out and sold at 397.50 for a realized short-term gain of 43%. Currently at 441.60. Coulda woulda shoulda.

On April 29 I bought:
CB @ 111.15. Chickened out and sold at 128.09 for a realized short-term gain of 15%, plus the dividend. Currently at 135.75 C'est la vie.

So over the past 6 months my return is 21.21%, beating all the indexes quite handily. Over the last 3 months my gain is 20.61%. I still beat the Dow and the S&P over the last 3 months but couldn't even sniff the NASDAQ which returned a whopping 29.25% over the last 3 months.

Here are the 3 month and 6 months graphs right out of my brokerage account:

3 months
3months_small.jpg

6 months
6months_small.jpg

I definitely don't think I have any particular skill as an investor - basically just a blind squirrel that got lucky and stumbled onto a nut this one time. I've enjoyed doing the research and trading but I also feel more pressure to make good decisions. Sticking everything in an index fund is definitely lower effort and lower stress.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Nope.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-sto..._copyURL_share

A ton of the non-index stuff I bought in March was in Avis, Six Flags, Royal Caribbean and restaurants. I sold practically all of that and some of my index a couple days after things started declining in June. I got a really good return, but the second Rona wave was coming and I didn't like the sentiment. I put the initial amount I put in those stocks into safe companies outside of the index and then put the gains from the risky stuff and the index into some pretty risky companies that aren't quite as exposed to a long term lock down.

The best thing I bought this whole time was Square at $52. I really considered Nvidia at $200 back in March and regret not buying a handful of shares. Roku was at $60, didn't pull the trigger and balked at $90, now it's at $150. I bought some AMD instead and it's done pretty well, but not close to Nvidia.

[Moliere]

It's FOMO!

The stock market and economy have parted ways. It’s a FOMO market now.

Nope.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/are-sto..._copyURL_share

One fac*tor could be a pre*dis*po*si*tion among many bear*ish com*men*ta*tors to judge those who throw cau*tion to the winds as hav*ing de*fects of char*ac*ter. Will Goet*z*mann, a fi*nance pro*fes*sor at Yale Uni*ver*sity, says that this ten*dency ap*pears es*pe*cially strong right now among those who wish to ra*tio*nal*ize why they missed the stock mar*ket’s 40%-plus rally from its March low. “Peo*ple seem to be quick to judge those who par*tic*i*pated in the rally as be*ing stu*pid,” Prof. Goet*z*mann says.


It’s not just that they be*lieve the mar*ket will soon fall; they are pre*judg*ing those who will lose when the bub*ble bursts as get*ting what they de*serve.

[myboynoah]

It's FOMO!

The stock market and economy have parted ways. It’s a FOMO market now.

William Silber, a retired financial historian at New York University, adds an interesting twist to this story. Investors and traders remember what happened in 2008 when Lehman Brothers went bankrupt. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stocks fell by 45 percent by mid-March 2009. “But by the end of 2009, the stock market had recovered almost all its losses,” says Silber. Many investors, he says, vowed not to miss that sort of profit-making opportunity again. When stocks tumble, these investors fortify their positions.

Writing for Project Syndicate, an opinion website, Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller of Yale University argues that crowd psychology has driven prices up. He divides the current market move into three separate periods: a 3 percent increase from Jan. 30 to Feb. 19; a 34 percent decline from there to March 23; and about a 40 percent rise from the end of March until now.

Once the Fed made clear its determination to foster recovery, “FOMO” — fear of missing out — took over, says Shiller. What happens now is anyone’s guess.

[myboynoah]

Listen SU, you can't make a personal attack in every other post and then whine and act offended when you get a little pushback. Stuff like that is why people mock your lack of self-awareness.

It is clear that he is perfectly capable of doing just that. He is producing his own kook porn.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Keep it clean. I expect more of Your Honor. Don't you have some kook porn to post?

Listen SU, you can't make a personal attack in every other post and then whine and act offended when you get a little pushback. Stuff like that is why people mock your lack of self-awareness.

[SeattleUte]

It is bizarre how his entire online persona is now consumed with manufacturing and winning insignificant little pissing contests. Almost like he is compensating for something.

Keep it clean. I expect more of Your Honor. Don't you have some kook porn to post?

[Jeff Lebowski]

your ability to comprehend and synthesize is definitely something.

It is bizarre how his entire online persona is now consumed with manufacturing and winning insignificant little pissing contests. Almost like he is compensating for something.

[old_gregg]

You mean wouldn’t. Like when you went and did your little homework assignment and came here like a kid with a new ball sporting a paper that said deaths don’t increase in economic recessions. Like reading a paper on floods to determine the prospect of mayhem from a tidal wave. And Gregg saying only hot dog vendors would suffer from the shutdown.

your ability to comprehend and synthesize is definitely something.

[SeattleUte]

Lol. SU mocking people for predicting that the pandemic would harm the economy. Zero self awareness.

You mean wouldn’t. Like when you went and did your little homework assignment and came here like a kid with a new ball sporting a paper that said deaths don’t increase in economic recessions. Like reading a paper on floods to determine the prospect of mayhem from a tidal wave. And Gregg saying only hot dog vendors would suffer from the shutdown.

[All-American]

Surprisingly, my stock market tracker app shows that the S&P is up on each date metric it tracks: day, week, month, 3 months, 6 months, year, and two years.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Lol. SU mocking people for predicting that the pandemic would harm the economy. Zero self awareness.

[SeattleUte]

su, what would you say you are an expert in?

Next time I need advice on what shutting down the economies of the West for months and months will do for the welfare of humankind, I'm going to ask you! And JL.