Stock Market thread

MartyMcFly

Ostrich
Other Christian

Australia Sucks

 
Banned
Other Christian
I would feel guilty investing in Coca-Cola due to their awful values. I sold off Disney and Kraft stock due to my reduced tolerance of woke garbage (as well as those companies going very crazy in pushing their woke agenda).

I do have money in ETFs which do have bad companies and I have Chinese stocks (which follow government policies of censorship), so I am not pure. However, it would bother me to buy stocks that are so blatantly hateful of basic decent values. Coke doesn't have to have bad values, it chooses to.


9. Coca-Cola aired ads in Hungary featuring same-sex couples kissing.

Coca-Cola ran ads in Hungary of same-sex couples kissing and holding Coke products as part of their “Love is Love” campaign. István Boldog, a Hungarian member of Parliament, called for Hungarians to boycott Coca-Cola until the ads were removed. Tens of thousands of Hungarians signed a petition calling for the removal of the ads. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban opposes the legalization of same-sex marriage, which is currently legal in Hungary.
The reality is there are very few large corporations that aren't doing things that are morally reprehensible. If you want to look at things through tat lens perhaps the stock market isn't the place for you to invest. If you go down that rabbit hole you may as well become Amish.

Lets look at a few examples:
-Large pharmaceutical companies don't even get me started on the Covid vaccines.
-Consumer food and beverage companies are selling products filled with high fructose corn syrup and seed oils, etc
-Tech/internet companies like Meta, Alphabet, etc de-platforming people, pushing woke leftist agendas and being used by governments as a back door to spy on citizens.
-Media companies like Disney pushing woke agendas to kids in their cartoons and movies
-Oil fracking companies contaminating the water supply of small communities and destroying/polluting their farms, etc

The reality is that at this point you would be hard pressed to find a large corporation that is not somehow evil, let alone enough to fill an investment portfolio. I invest in stocks. You just have to accept that companies will do things you do not agree with and you cannot control it. It is just the system we live in. Accept it or go Amish.
 

Australia Sucks

 
Banned
Other Christian
There're cycles they can't control, only delay. Secular bear market is due, which may include more than one recession. Under Trump enormous amount of dollars had been printed and dollar had been devalued at speed unknown before, inflation that started later is just the aftermath of that dollar emission.
That's not inflation adjusted (adjusted was a loss during secular bear markets, like shown in the 2nd picture). And that's not even adjusted for real inflation, just for the official CPI.

View attachment 39249


View attachment 39250
Anyone who advocates blind buying of ETFs without regards to valuations needs to look at this sobering graph.
For example 1902 to 1982 the price appreciation was zero in real terms! Yes dividends were paid but for example what if you retired in 1906 and were spending your dividends? You would get zero growth on your capital!!
 

joost

Kingfisher
Funny is how the market reacts to certain stocks. The other day Netflix rose because it lost "only" a million subscribers instead of two.

With rates close to zero and money printing, everything is distorted.

Nassim Taleb is a Wizard with his preparation. He told people to hold cash, even when everyone was concern about inflation eating all their savings.

He recommends you to use a small percentage of your portfolio to gamble on options. I tried reading his options hedging book but it looks like I'm reading a foreign language.

So far the best thing I can do is hold cash and hopefully I'll have some liquidity if the world burns and I'll be able to go shopping (probably real estate in some big city).
 

C-Note

Hummingbird
Other Christian
Gold Member
Nassim Taleb is a Wizard with his preparation. He told people to hold cash, even when everyone was concern about inflation eating all their savings.

He recommends you to use a small percentage of your portfolio to gamble on options. I tried reading his options hedging book but it looks like I'm reading a foreign language.
I haven't tried stock options yet, but from what I understand it means that you're basically renting your stock to other people to day trade or play around with it. It's a way to get passive income from your holdings (besides dividends) when you're not buying or selling due to market volatility. Since most of my holdings are in mutual funds, I haven't played around with options yet. If some of my current stock buying blows up, I may look at it, or I may just sell them.
 

Blade Runner

Crow
Orthodox
I haven't tried stock options yet, but from what I understand it means that you're basically renting your stock to other people to day trade or play around with it. It's a way to get passive income from your holdings (besides dividends) when you're not buying or selling due to market volatility. Since most of my holdings are in mutual funds, I haven't played around with options yet. If some of my current stock buying blows up, I may look at it, or I may just sell them.
Mostly I think that he recommends 1+ year holds too for tax reasons. It is important to do that for several reasons, since timing generally is hard and the tax rate for higher earners is never just 20%. Right now the anti-fragility play would be holding cash, yes.
 

Blade Runner

Crow
Orthodox
For those who have stocks this may come as welcome news. For those considering investing, now is the time to buy. I am impressed someone timed the bottom to the very day.

He could end up being right but I think within 10 days you'll see just how wrong he was again (like usual).
 

joost

Kingfisher
I haven't tried stock options yet, but from what I understand it means that you're basically renting your stock to other people to day trade or play around with it. It's a way to get passive income from your holdings (besides dividends) when you're not buying or selling due to market volatility. Since most of my holdings are in mutual funds, I haven't played around with options yet. If some of my current stock buying blows up, I may look at it, or I may just sell them.
What you're referring is Covered Call. If you have 100 shares of XYZ, you can WRITE/SELL a covered call. Depending on the stock, you'll get a good percentage out of it. The only downside is limiting your upside. If the stock rises (let's say) 20% in the period but your option was 5% above, you'll end up having to pass your shares at the agreed 5% price.




Mostly I think that he recommends 1+ year holds too for tax reasons. It is important to do that for several reasons, since timing generally is hard and the tax rate for higher earners is never just 20%. Right now the anti-fragility play would be holding cash, yes.
I don't think that's the case with Taleb. He recommends to do asymmetric trades. You "bleed" more often but when you're right you multiply the amount, compensating all the previous bets. The method Universa fund uses is something like this:
You buy PUTS with 2-months expiration at around 20% below SPY price (due to liquidity). When passes 1 month. sell it and buy a 2-month again. That's a type of insurance for a portfolio. It will drag your returns but if there's a crash you use the extra money you made to buy more stocks.
For a regular portfolio, 3% is the amount used. You can keep cash but you won't get any dividends to compensate the amount you drain. If you think you can time a crash...
 

EndlessGravity

 
Banned
Protestant
Nassim Taleb is a Wizard with his preparation. He told people to hold cash, even when everyone was concern about inflation eating all their savings.

He recommends you to use a small percentage of your portfolio to gamble on options. I tried reading his options hedging book but it looks like I'm reading a foreign language.

This book was the only one he wrote worth reading.
 

MichaelWitcoff

Hummingbird
Orthodox
The reality is there are very few large corporations that aren't doing things that are morally reprehensible. If you want to look at things through tat lens perhaps the stock market isn't the place for you to invest. If you go down that rabbit hole you may as well become Amish.

Lets look at a few examples:
-Large pharmaceutical companies don't even get me started on the Covid vaccines.
-Consumer food and beverage companies are selling products filled with high fructose corn syrup and seed oils, etc
-Tech/internet companies like Meta, Alphabet, etc de-platforming people, pushing woke leftist agendas and being used by governments as a back door to spy on citizens.
-Media companies like Disney pushing woke agendas to kids in their cartoons and movies
-Oil fracking companies contaminating the water supply of small communities and destroying/polluting their farms, etc

The reality is that at this point you would be hard pressed to find a large corporation that is not somehow evil, let alone enough to fill an investment portfolio. I invest in stocks. You just have to accept that companies will do things you do not agree with and you cannot control it. It is just the system we live in. Accept it or go Amish.
I don’t invest in any companies with woke values and I’ve done significantly better than the market as a whole. If you do the work, you can find good companies to invest in. There are even mutual funds you can find that are built specifically to non-woke values, but you should still check the companies they invest in because they sometimes miss things.

I use this: https://inspireinsight.com/?__hstc=...c=244782426.1.1658838532842&__hsfp=3909245150
 

C-Note

Hummingbird
Other Christian
Gold Member
California just voted to mandate no sales of new gas-powered cars after 2035. If the Biden administration approves it, which they probably will, then there may follow a rush of many more blue states enacting the same mandates. If that happens, there may be a rush on battery metals, battery manufacturers, and other related industry and commodity stocks.

I wonder if investors will pause upon realizing that California, and likely many more of these states, are rushing to pass these mandates without also making plans on how they will be improving their electrical grids to handle it?
 

Pointy Elbows

Pelican
Orthodox
California just voted to mandate no sales of new gas-powered cars after 2035. If the Biden administration approves it, which they probably will, then there may follow a rush of many more blue states enacting the same mandates. If that happens, there may be a rush on battery metals, battery manufacturers, and other related industry and commodity stocks.

I wonder if investors will pause upon realizing that California, and likely many more of these states, are rushing to pass these mandates without also making plans on how they will be improving their electrical grids to handle it?
This is a way to backdoor a new federal mandate - by practice if not by law.

Years ago, California enacted Tier IV diesel engine restrictions, targeting farm and small construction equipment:


Basically, any diesel engine larger than 24hp rating had to become compliant with all the emission standards. Modifications to diesels were large and expensive. Some manufacturers converted diesel engines to gas engines, but the gas engines had to be bigger to produce the same torque. Cost result - machines that cost 65k then became 72k. This even applied to low-usage specialty machines that may only run a few hundred hours per year.

Since California is such a large market, equipment manufacturers were forced to comply or lose all that CA business. But manufacturers can't be profitable at scale having the Tier 4/CA version and also run a non-Tier 4 version, so they had to chose machines that were compliant everywhere. Tier 4 became a de facto national standard for many manufacturers.

Looks like they are pursuing the same effect with cars.
 

C-Note

Hummingbird
Other Christian
Gold Member
Looks like they are pursuing the same effect with cars.
I have invested some money in battery metal miners and in the BATT ETF, which covers the electric battery supply chain. So, my question is if electrification is a long-term gravy train for those types of investments, or if it's a house built on sand. If it's the latter, I'll look to take profits and exit the sector within five years, hopefully right before the public realizes it's a big boondoggle and/or a scam. If it's the former, of course, I'll let it ride for longer.
 

budoslavic

Eagle
Orthodox
Gold Member
Re: electric battery.

FbBYuNfWQAAdtPF


 

Max Roscoe

Hummingbird
Orthodox Inquirer
For those who have stocks this may come as welcome news. For those considering investing, now is the time to buy. I am impressed someone timed the bottom to the very day.

Well, that didn't age well. Stocks are down considerably from last month.

I've never been big on picking individual stocks (or caring about short term returns). I have done extremely well with Berkshire Hathaway, but that's not really an individual stock, but a conglomerate that operates dozens of companies and owns or controls hundreds more. I'm a mutual fund guy.

Most stocks I've looked into recently are just too overpriced. My philosophy (and the way I've made money in real estate) is that you make your money on the purchase. For example, if you bought Apple stock when Steve Jobs took over, I don't even need to know how much you bought--you're a millionaire today. If you buy a share of the company today, when it is expensive, it may earn you 10% or so, but nothing like it would have performed if you bought when it was cheap.

One sector I wanted to invest in was international shipping. America is producing less and less, and as we flush our collective intellect down the drain and go all in on diversity and wokeness, I expect long term America will become more and more dependent on foreign goods. Also, as America's ability to enforce embargoes and sanctions declines, I would expect more free trade between nations over the long term. So international shipping, with its high barriers to entry with expensive vessels and lack of competitive ports to sail to, is a good niche.

The problem? The shipping world is dominated by foreign (mostly European) firms.
The only large American firm is Matson, with 29 ships and a 0.3% market share. The largest is Maersk, with over 700 vessels.
Matson would have been a good buy in 2020 at $29 / share, but the same company today at $73 is over priced.

So the only thing that leaves is foreign firms who are also traded on US stock exchanges, not something I recommend investing in.

But In my research I came across one firm that looked interesting: ZIM operates 80 shipping vessels with a 1.5% global market share.
It has only traded in the US since last year, but the company has been around since 1945.

zim.png

Look at that suspicious dividend yield of 69%.
And the P/E ratio of 0.73.
Something to raise your eyebrows at for sure.

Here's the kicker: It's an Israeli company. And the dividend and earnings numbers are just screaming "Jewish tricks."
It looks to me like they took advantage of the temporary price gouging situation available in the midst of the Ukraine war and jacked up some rates sky high and declared a huge payout.

For the insiders who were aware of this (and their NY buddies who got the stock listed on the NYSE last year) they can really make some bank. But I suspect next year we are going to be looking at earnings which are a fraction of those. If it wasn't an Israeli company I might even buy a little bit to see what happens Nov 21 with the next earnings. But I am mostly just posting this here for posterity to see what happens in a few months...
 

inthefade

Kingfisher
Orthodox Inquirer
But In my research I came across one firm that looked interesting: ZIM operates 80 shipping vessels with a 1.5% global market share.
It has only traded in the US since last year, but the company has been around since 1945.
I have some ZIM shares in an ira and ze jews still took a 25% cut (FOREIGN TAX PAID) of my last div. I wish I never bought them.
 

paternos

Kingfisher
Catholic
Well, that didn't age well. Stocks are down considerably from last month.

I've never been big on picking individual stocks (or caring about short term returns). I have done extremely well with Berkshire Hathaway, but that's not really an individual stock, but a conglomerate that operates dozens of companies and owns or controls hundreds more. I'm a mutual fund guy.

Most stocks I've looked into recently are just too overpriced. My philosophy (and the way I've made money in real estate) is that you make your money on the purchase. For example, if you bought Apple stock when Steve Jobs took over, I don't even need to know how much you bought--you're a millionaire today. If you buy a share of the company today, when it is expensive, it may earn you 10% or so, but nothing like it would have performed if you bought when it was cheap.

One sector I wanted to invest in was international shipping. America is producing less and less, and as we flush our collective intellect down the drain and go all in on diversity and wokeness, I expect long term America will become more and more dependent on foreign goods. Also, as America's ability to enforce embargoes and sanctions declines, I would expect more free trade between nations over the long term. So international shipping, with its high barriers to entry with expensive vessels and lack of competitive ports to sail to, is a good niche.

The problem? The shipping world is dominated by foreign (mostly European) firms.
The only large American firm is Matson, with 29 ships and a 0.3% market share. The largest is Maersk, with over 700 vessels.
Matson would have been a good buy in 2020 at $29 / share, but the same company today at $73 is over priced.

So the only thing that leaves is foreign firms who are also traded on US stock exchanges, not something I recommend investing in.

But In my research I came across one firm that looked interesting: ZIM operates 80 shipping vessels with a 1.5% global market share.
It has only traded in the US since last year, but the company has been around since 1945.

View attachment 47624

Look at that suspicious dividend yield of 69%.
And the P/E ratio of 0.73.
Something to raise your eyebrows at for sure.

Here's the kicker: It's an Israeli company. And the dividend and earnings numbers are just screaming "Jewish tricks."
It looks to me like they took advantage of the temporary price gouging situation available in the midst of the Ukraine war and jacked up some rates sky high and declared a huge payout.

For the insiders who were aware of this (and their NY buddies who got the stock listed on the NYSE last year) they can really make some bank. But I suspect next year we are going to be looking at earnings which are a fraction of those. If it wasn't an Israeli company I might even buy a little bit to see what happens Nov 21 with the next earnings. But I am mostly just posting this here for posterity to see what happens in a few months...
Interesting business. Containers globally.

Though shipping rates are about half of that of a year ago.

foto_no_exif.png

And these prices were around $1300 in 2019. Now rising fuel costs, rising costs for personnel. And when you get half the money for a container your margin is gone. Then they have quite a lot of debt, rising interest rates are then a risk

Numbers look great though, not a bad pick in my opinion, risky, not bad.
 
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