Lurker > red sox 777

Netflix down 9% after hours after an earnings miss. I think it's good news for our travel stocks. People are getting back to going out instead of hunkering down at home watching Netflix.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Forceful_Dragon posted...

10 minutes apart. Is that a new record?

Apparently cyber crime is not real crime. And who knows what the purpose of the infiltration was, but is that the point?

And since our intelligence is saying "yeah we're confident it was Russian groups that have been previously linked with Russian intillgence"
And Russian Intellgence has said "nah, that wasn't us".
I wonder who our president will believe?

It does matter. If they are trying to stop our biotech companies from succeeding in getting a vaccine - obviously that's bad. If they are trying to "steal" a vaccine that can save a lot of lives in Russia - is that bad? I mean you know we also spy on our allies all the time right? If they just want vaccine tech, then sure, hacking isn't the nicest way of getting it and breaks our laws but it's a fairly small thing in the grand scheme of things.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

I mean, what damage are these Russians doing, even allegedly? Maybe they just want the information on how to make a vaccine so they don't end up having to pay extortion-level prices to buy it from us.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

LordoftheMorons posted...

Corrik posted this earlier, but since a lot of you have him ignored:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/16/politics/russia-cyberattack-covid-vaccine-research/index.html

Beyond disgusting. By the way, Red Sox, since youve asked why Russia isnt our friend, heres yet another example!

Assuming this is real and not bad intel such as the claim that Iraq had WMDs, this is exactly why we should strive to be friends with Russia. If we were their friends, maybe they wouldn't try to hack us.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

ZaziGuado posted...

So are you proposing that he would lose less support this way than if he was actually able to accurately articulate his intentions from the start? Because I think it's more logical to say if people didn't misinterpret him, his ability to gain and hold support would be greater.

That would depend on his ability to fulfill his promises. He's generally an overpromiser (remember "you'll be able to file your taxes on a postcard") so I think it's better for him that his meaning is not clear.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

ZaziGuado posted...

Okay but that doesn't answer the question. Just because they misinterpreted doesn't mean their expectations were not unmet.

Well, if they decide they were in the wrong, they won't blame Trump for misleading them. Yes, they might still decide that he's not the best choice for reelection, but it's not nearly as bad a look as if they felt he lied to them.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

HashtagSEP posted...

red sox believes Trump having no accountability for anything is a good thing.

Whoa there. This topic is for discussion about the election. It's not for discussing the vices or virtues of any politician or policy in any capacity other than how it affects the election.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

ZaziGuado posted...

How is his ability to say things that can be misinterpreted a good thing?

People hear what they want to hear so they hear that he is going to do good things for them. If he ends up not doing them, they check what he said and decide he didn't break a promise; they just misinterpreted what he said.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Trump is not eloquent but that's part of his appeal - most people are not eloquent themselves and have some distrust for eloquent people. Trump is outstanding at saying things in a way that his words can mean different things to different people. You can interpret his words to hear what you want to hear.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

So the polling remains bad for Trump, but the prediction markets are not so bad (Trump is still at 40% chance of winning on PredictIt), and the stock market is signalling a Trump win. I don't know if a US President has lost a reelection bid before with the stock market as strong as this.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

SPCE now +15% for the day! Let's go short squeeze!

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

I'm in the green for the day. Thank you SPCE. Hopefully CAR and DAL go up some tomorrow so I can sell a bit and rotate the money into AMTD. I want to increase my position in AMTD before earnings.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Oh hmm, that TLRD bond is back down to $4 (to return $100 on 7/1/22 plus $7 interest per year). If you invest $1,000 in this and TLRD doesn't go bankrupt, in 2 years you get paid $28,500 or so.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Do you eat at IHOP or Applebee's though? I feel like if I'm going to risk eating out it'll be at places with better food.....

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Lopen posted...

Hmmm. Looks like this was a false start and all the travel stocks are gonna fall back to earth

I don't think $41 is a bad price for DIN but I'm not sure I wanna hold my $2000 for hostage that long. Maybe I'll just take my $100 loss and move on but let's see how the beginning of the day shakes out

The trend change is still here. Nasdaq is down more than S&P which is down more than the Dow. That's like 4 times of this pattern now after months of it going the other way nearly every day.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Jakyl25 posted...

Change you can believe in

(Thats a currency joke)

Are you telling me that Obama wants deflation so that spare change has some value again?

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Oh yeah. S&P 500 is 4 points below where it closed on December 31, 2019. We could get to positive territory for the year tomorrow.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

SPCE announced they hired a new CEO and the stock popped 5% after hours! Looks like the new CEO used to run Disneyland. Old CEO is taking on the title of "Chief Space Officer."

And yeah, you don't have to play when you haven't done research or don't feel confident. It's okay to park some funds in cash for a bit while you research.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Yeah, American food generally sucks.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

http://finra-markets.morningstar.com/BondCenter/BondDetail.jsp?ticker=C632019

If you want to bet on TLRD this bond is probably a better deal than the stock. Currently priced at $7.60 to return $100. I was looking at this last night and it seems it went up 90% today, as it was trading under $4 yesterday. I think 12:1 odds are not bad, especially as bondholders might not get wiped out in a bankruptcy. The senior debt has to be paid first, and then the junior debt (this) and then shareholders last. A lot of times they reorganize the company in the BK court and the result is the creditors are paid with shares in the new company, while the existing shareholders are wiped out.

Unfortunately it went up 90% today and 12:1 odds aren't nearly as good as 24:1, but could still be a good deal.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Moonroof posted...

Got into WYNN. Hoping for a quick sell tomorrow and if not, Im fine holding it. Im thinking the momentum from today coupled with the Macau news from a few days ago will continue surging jr for at least one more day.

I have $25k left for another stock, I almost went with a bank but opted against it. Any ideas?

I'd go with AMTD. Their earnings report is next week. Analyst expectations are low but I feel like business should be extremely strong for brokerages right now.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

And I strongly applaud Moderna for the ticker symbol. It stands for both their name and Messenger RNA, which is the basis of their vaccine. Bravo for a well-chosen ticker symbol.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

MRNA now up only 7% for the day. It gave up the majority of its gains, which is weird given that travel stocks have increased their gains from this morning. If this vaccine is really a gamechanger I feel like it should be up more. Maybe an opportunity.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

CAR just touched $31. We're getting close to my limit sell order now. DAL is only 50 cents off my limit order as well.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

StartTheMachine posted...

Naw, XELA is being scalped. AVCT sitting pretty over 3.20 still. I don't see the dump happening. Well, I sold 2000 shares at about 50 cents less which means I've only missed out on a grand...for now. It's just incredible how badly I timed that. This is exactly like last time. It's honestly kind of funny.

I lost like $300 on TLRD before my order even came back to show it was filled. I submitted a market order at market open. I watched as my order showed pending and TLRD plunged from like $1.85 to $1.21, not knowing where my order would be filled and hoping it was later. It ended up coming in at $1.68 but by that time the stock was at like $1.38. So, an instantaneous loss of $300.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Here's a list of my stocks since the pandemic started and how I did:

CAR: +137% (still holding)
LK: +42% (closed)
HPR: +5% (closed)
AMTD: +3% (holding)
F: +2% (holding)
AXP: -0% (closed)
KO: -1% (closed)
UBER: -4% (holding)
SPCE: -7% (holding)
DAL: -11% (holding)
COTY: -25% (closed)
TLRD: -30% (closed)
HTZ: -31% (closed)

Overall: +30%

The majority of funds have been in CAR and DAL. Biggest gain in dollars was of course CAR, accounting for more than 100% of all gains. Biggest loss in dollars was DAL even with a relatively small percentage loss as it's been my biggest holding since June.

HTZ looks bad but I only lost $100 on it because the amount put in was small. Don't regret it, it was a small price to pay for getting to be part of the world's first Initial Bankruptcy Offering. I do regret TLRD a lot - it's currently the 2nd biggest loss in dollars and will be the biggest loss if DAL goes up a bit more today.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Lopen posted...

I'd be pretty surprised if Amazon dropped below the 2300 range it was hovering around in May, but I could see it falling back down to that before it gets back to 3300.

I do think it's overvalued because of scared investors wanting to put their money SOMEWHERE.

Based solely on the shape of the standard bubble chart (so take this with a grain of salt), and looking at Amazon's, I'd say most likely Amazon makes one or 2 more pumps to get to 4000-5000, then plunges down to 1500ish, then ends up stabilizing north of 2000. 2018 could have been a bubble top but that long period of not rising after that means the actual bubble top should need to be high enough to make the chart look like a mountain with a jagged peak rather than a rounded dome.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

But um, if you want a tech company with better fundamentals, how about Apple? Market cap is less than 15% higher than Amazon, but almost 500% the amount of earnings. I mean 30 price to earnings ratio is still kinda high for a company that big but it's a lot saner than Amazon's P/E near 150. That means Amazon would need to generate its current profit levels for 150 years to make back the money invested in it at current prices.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

I think Amazon's valuation is still outrageously high, but who knows when the bubble will burst. It'll probably be higher in 3 months, but be prepared for the possibility of a 50% drawdown. Might be better to get out now so you aren't caught in it. If that does come and you hold through it, don't get shaken out at the bottom. People who bought Amazon at $94 in 1999 and sold at $7 in 2001 and have then watched it soar to $3,300 in 2020 probably feel awful.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Moonroof posted...

I really want to sell amazon. $3k loss at this point.

You might as well sell it and mark it as a lesson in not buying companies with a 150 price/earnings ratio and a 1.5 trillion market cap. 150 price/earnings requires a rapidly growing company, but how does a 1.5 trillion market cap company grow? Buy out the US government and raise taxes through the roof?

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Eventbrite was up more than 12% this morning but has since faded back down to +4%. I had been looking to buy that stock and thought my opportunity was gone when I saw the +12%.

Glad to see Amazon and Tesla finally declining. Some sanity returning to the market (although this could end up just being a short pullback).

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

I set limit sell orders for a portion of my shares for CAR at $31.30 and DAL at $29.40. Well, CAR is unlikely but possible, DAL looks like it's not happening today barring some more major news. Looks like we probably won't be hitting those today so we continue holding.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

https://www.oldschoolvalue.com/investing-strategy/kelly-criterion-investing-portfolio-sizing/

Here is an article on the Kelly Criterion which I find to be very useful in helping with bet sizing. The Kelly Criterion tells you what percentage of your capital to bet given the odds and your expected edge. Roughly speaking, an optimally sized Kelly bet is:

Percentage of Capital = Edge / Payoff

So, let's say stock A is trading at $10. You think it has a 50% chance of going to $30 and a 50% chance of going to $0 (bankruptcy). How much do you bet?

Applying Kelly, we first calculate your edge. The expected value of the stock price is $15 (1/2*0 + 1/2*30). You can buy it now for $10. Therefore, your edge is 50%.

Next you divide your edge by the payoff (+200%). So 50/200 = 25%. Thus, an optimal Kelly bet for this situation would be 25% of your capital.

As the article says, in practice a full Kelly bet is very risky and humans are likely to feel extreme psychological pressure when a full Kelly bet goes bad. Thus, in practice, it's probably better to do a half-Kelly bet. So in the above situation, bet 12.5% of your portfolio instead of 25%. According to the article, a half-Kelly bet captures 75% of the edge of the full-Kelly bet with only half the risk.

Once you increase your bet beyond full-Kelly, your expected bankroll growth actually starts going down because your risk is increasing much faster than your edge. Thus, betting substantially more than full Kelly is likely to lead to portfolio ruin even if you have an edge because the volatility will be so high that when a downswing comes it will wipe you out. For an extreme example, imagine playing Powerball when the prize has reached $1 billion. Your EV is majorly positive, your edge may be something like +400%, but if you invest your life savings in Powerball tickets, there is still a 99.999999% or something chance you go broke. If you have enough money to buy every single combination of numbers, you would do that for $200 million or whatever it cost and pick up your free $800 million. But since you don't, even though the edge doesn't change, the risk does.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

New vaccine news this afternoon! All the travel stocks are up big after hours.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

StartTheMachine posted...

No doubt about this. When I chased it during its sudden surge I was putting most of my money on it, GNUS style. When it went down I really should have cut my losses, even as badly as a 4k loss would have hurt. I stuck with it because I believe in it and absolutely still do, but I realize that the whole "you only lose money when you sell" mentality is asinine for speculative stocks like this.

I mean, I fully expected it might drop to the levels I originally bought it at (2.12) when the end of June ER didn't have the Computex numbers or forward guidance. And now I could now be putting my capital back into it at these levels. I guess the reason I didn't is because as likely as I thought it might be that it would keep bleeding out, stocks are still unpredictable and I would've been mad if I sold and it suddenly surged again if there was PR. I didn't 100% know I would be given the opportunity to buy again this cheap, I just thought it likely.

It's pretty tricky, and I'm not sure there's even any takeaway I can have from it. Cut losses quickly even at a significant chunk of your portfolio, and even when it's a company you've researched for hours and fully believe in? Hard to swallow.

Actually, one good takeaway is that if I ever double down on a surging stock I need to get out just as fast. There was a point that my account value was at 36k and I could have closed my position. Now it's half that.

I'm not saying to sell a position in a fast moving stock quickly, whether it moves up or down. I'm saying to avoid making that position so big that it's potentially portfolio-destroying in the first place. If you limit opening a position to say, 1/3 of your equity, one big downward move in a stock won't do a debilitating amount of damage.

Now you may say, but then a big move up doesn't give me as much reward. True, but you can use the other 2/3 of your equity to buy other stocks. Those can move up too. It's much less likely that all 3 of your stocks suffer big downward movements at the same time, so you don't have to worry so much about cutting losses or taking profits too early and can be more objective in your decisionmaking and comfortable. The thing is a -50% move is a much bigger deal than a +50% move. If you suffer a -50% move, you need a +100% move to make back what you lost!

3 is way less diversified than most people would advocate but I think it already captures most of the gains of diversification. That is, if you were to go from 1 stock to say, 100, I think the move from 1 to 3 already provides probably 60%+ of the variance reduction that you would get from going to 100 stocks. Warren Buffett has advocated holding as few as 3 stocks that you've heavily researched and strongly believe in rather than holding a lot more in the name of diversification, because the number goes up you have to invest in companies you don't believe as strongly in, losing advantage.

But if you want less risk, maybe go to 5-10 stocks. If you're one of those people who wants to hold 30+ stocks you might as well just buy SPY and save yourself the time and effort.


---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

CAR is quietly up 5% today. I love this stock.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2018/1/23/48558512-15167626365862508_origin.png

I'm sure people have seen this, but this is super useful. This bubble pattern happens over and over and over when dealing with companies that have no earnings or very little in earnings at the present, but tremendous future growth opportunity.

You just have to buy and sell on the correct parts of the graph!

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Amazon is still higher than it was a week ago. You should be able to handle a 10% loss. I mean I do think it's overpriced but it was even more overpriced yesterday.

And the odds of it closing on Friday higher than your purchase price is like......not at all low.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

StartTheMachine posted...

I'm so fucked. I thought I left enough available margin that this wouldn't happen, but I'm in another margin call now. It's because AVCT keeps bleeding out, which I fully expected to happen until the next ER in August with the Computex numbers. I knew better than this, was just hoping I could make money off LCA and GAN before that happened. I have no one to blame but myself.

You're overinvested in AVCT. You shouldn't be putting most of your portfolio in one stock unless it's something extremely stable like Berkshire Hathaway or Apple or something. Like you don't need a lot of diversification but having like 3-5 stocks is a world of difference from 1.

And I say 1 even though you have more than that because your exposure in AVCT is around 100% of your portfolio equity. That's effectively the same thing as putting all your money in it.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Amazon and Apple have close to the same market cap (Apple is like 10% higher) but Apple has nearly 5 times the earnings.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

2nd day that Dow is outperforming Nasdaq. Hopefully the long-awaited sector shift rotation is here. Still think there's a significant chance of a June 11 type day this week, but I guess if it does come it's probably going to be the tech stocks leading the way down. I guess I'm still holding.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

If you hear a lot of people saying that ABC stock can't go down or it'll go up forever, it's probably about to go down.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

I should have sold out everything at Dow +500 and VIX +5%. I didn't think of checking VIX until after that crash started but it was telegraphing the upcoming move all day long. Exactly the same behavior (market and VIX aligned) as on June 8 and March 20-23. I mean it even aligned with Moonroof buying a big position in a non-meme stock that had moved up a lot recently. All the signs were there!*

Well, I guess I couldn't sell out everything, because I wanted to hold through DAL earnings tomorrow. Hopefully that comes out good. I feel expectations are so bad it'd be pretty hard to do worse than the expectations.

*Now watch the market rise the rest of the week now that I've said this. I'd be happy to be wrong about this since I ended up not selling a thing other than converting my AXP shares into SPCE shares.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Note to self: Check VIX constantly. If VIX is majorly green and the market is majorly green, SELL everything.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

TSLA and EVRI both red for the day now. I'm not sure we're going to keep a green Monday on SPX - barely green now.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Huh, Nasdaq turned red for the day. VIX is up nearly 6%. That's weird with Dow and S&P still up.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

Moonroof posted...

I told you!

I feel like this happened with some bank stocks and AAL as well. It's probably just bad luck, but if it isn't, you may have discovered a way to make a lot of money - just wait until you want to buy, then short the stock instead.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

masterplum posted...

Delta earnings tomorrow morning.

might be a good time to sell puts as I bet premiums are insane

Oh DAL earnings. This is going to be exciting.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

You got it at $3,336? *Looks at AMZN chart*

That's....almost exactly the top for the day. That's some impeccable timing.

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!

I sold off my AXP today and bought more SPCE. I thought about it and decided that people aren't spending a lot of money now even though they are saving a lot. I do think AXP is probably going up but decided to seek greater gains. Come on Tesla winners, SPCE is the next big moon stock!

---

September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
Congratulations to DP Oblivion in the Guru Contest!