Board 8 > Stock Topic 14

(+) Yeah! (+)

Up $3k now so I sold 2 of the spreads

Bought two when it was craziest for $300, just sold for $1,000

Nice

And yeah I use ThinkOrSwim for crazy option days and just regular old td ameritrade when I'm making boring trades

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https://www.marketwatch.com/story/amc-entertainment-stock-rockets-on-very-heavy-volume-after-issuing-of-100-million-in-notes-due-2026-2021-01-19

Looks like AMC announced a couple days ago that they had gotten the financing they needed to avoid bankruptcy. 15% interest is really high for a company but the point is - it's looking like they will survive. It makes perfect sense for the stock to go up 50% in a couple days after that news.

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this has been very exciting to watch unfold, congratulations to those of you that made money today

following Lopen's moves is like paper trading except im somehow invested emotionally so it's very educational

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Thanks Cly it's good to know I'm not just spamming the topic. I aim to please.

If you love me I made $4000 today
If you hate me I lost $10000 today due to not being quite aggressive enough on pulling the trigger to sell (when I saw my account balance was 25k and unlimited day trading would be unlocked I said "I'm selling now" and then boom market halted)

There's something for everyone here.

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Supposedly r/WSB is naturally manipulating stocks due to how big it has grown now. This is what happened with Gamestop. The next stock they are aiming at supposedly is Blackberry. Take it as you will.

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missed opportunity gains are an infinite black hole that the human mind is not meant to look at

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Lopen posted...

Thanks Cly it's good to know I'm not just spamming the topic. I aim to please.

If you love me I made $4000 today
If you hate me I lost $10000 today due to not being quite aggressive enough on pulling the trigger to sell (when I saw my account balance was 25k and unlimited day trading would be unlocked I said "I'm selling now" and then boom market halted)

There's something for everyone here.

Losing 10k in probably 60 seconds is too stressful for me. And if you had held those calls from yesterday, it would probably have been more than a 20k loss in the same time. Now of course it's a huge net gain..... but still, just too stressful! At least for me, it's much easier to handle psychologically if I never bought in the first place, vs. buying and selling too late.


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Amusingly, I had a 50Call I sold this morning to exit my position I sold for 20 cents.

good timing

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red sox 777 posted...

Losing 10k in probably 60 seconds is too stressful for me. And if you had held those calls from yesterday, it would probably have been more than a 20k loss in the same time. Now of course it's a huge net gain..... but still, just too stressful! At least for me, it's much easier to handle psychologically if I never bought in the first place, vs. buying and selling too late.

Main thing that bugged me was the market halt TWICE. But the consolation was I didn't sell on the dip. It never came back enough that I would have made much more.

But my overall income graph for the day is a bit depressing



But a win is a win. I really think selling a lot of calls early to eliminate risk let me be a lot more cool headed about it

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Cant wait til we collectively gain $1,000,000 from these topics.

As far as what happened to me today with GME, its the same thing as NKLA. I set a stop at a price lower than what the stock had been at the previous five minutes, constantly refreshed to make sure it never executed, then the moment I went to cancel the stop it says it executed.

I honestly believe that some shenanigans go on. There are people with way more sophisticated computers than what we see on our apps so Im sure the data were seeing isnt as accurate, but still. I lost out on $25k from NKLA and $12,500 today from GME. I have to take the advice and stop using Stops.

Sunroof posted...

As far as what happened to me today with GME, its the same thing as NKLA. I set a stop at a price lower than what the stock had been at the previous five minutes, constantly refreshed to make sure it never executed, then the moment I went to cancel the stop it says it executed.

I honestly believe that some shenanigans go on. There are people with way more sophisticated computers than what we see on our apps so Im sure the data were seeing isnt as accurate, but still. I lost out on $25k from NKLA and $12,500 today from GME. I have to take the advice and stop using Stops.

Today GME did something like a regular year's worth of volume in a day, so it was moving much faster than the speed at which refreshing is possible. And yeah, there are high-frequency trading firms that exclusively make money from having speed advantages over human traders. Setting up a stop loss is like asking for one of these firms to eat your lunch.

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I shouldnt complain too much. I was in the middle of a three hour drive for work when I decided to stop for an early lunch which just so happened to be when the craziness unfolded. Im lucky to have gotten anything ($450)!

if you parked in money at apple's low you'd have a 16% return give or take

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estimating the low to be 110 and the high to be 130

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I have $75k in Visa at the moment. I couldve sold it for a 1.25% profit earlier in the week but got a bit greedy. Now Im even. But I reckon it will go up at least 1% on Monday. Chump percentage but its at a very good price and is a safe stock.

Still waiting to get out of Bandwidth. Terrible timing with that one.

Sunroof somehow throws the most money down on the smallest movements.

I swear if your play is $75,000 on visa just buy an index fund and leave it there man. Its not shameful. Ill have around $30,000 sitting in one once my 401k rollover clears.

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I think he's just really risk averse and holding for only hours or minutes is his way of coping.

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Corrik7 posted...

Supposedly r/WSB is naturally manipulating stocks due to how big it has grown now. This is what happened with Gamestop. The next stock they are aiming at supposedly is Blackberry. Take it as you will.

I went into BB after I quit from PLTR at 31.00
A small 1.5% profit when the market closed...but looks like the afters are soaring
My gamble is they get bored of Gamestop and move to another stock - Blackberry
It's a pure gamble

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Nanis23 posted...

I went into BB after I quit from PLTR at 31.00
A small 1.5% profit when the market closed...but looks like the afters are soaring
My gamble is they get bored of Gamestop and move to another stock - Blackberry
It's a pure gamble

While BB might go up, the short interest is nothing like Gamestop.

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Sunroof posted...

As far as what happened to me today with GME, its the same thing as NKLA. I set a stop at a price lower than what the stock had been at the previous five minutes, constantly refreshed to make sure it never executed, then the moment I went to cancel the stop it says it executed.

I honestly believe that some shenanigans go on. There are people with way more sophisticated computers than what we see on our apps so Im sure the data were seeing isnt as accurate, but still. I lost out on $25k from NKLA and $12,500 today from GME. I have to take the advice and stop using Stops.

this can be hard to visualize, imagine there's 10 buy orders out there for $55 and then 100 buy orders in for $52. There's 10 sell orders for $61 and 100 sell orders for $65. These all just sit here because the sells are higher than the buy orders, so they aren't going to meet.

Then someone comes along and lists a sell order at $58. Still higher than those waiting buy orders. Someone places a Market Buy order and it takes that immediately (it just looks at whatever is available and buys it), or somebody also places a buy order for $58 and it meets the sell order and they match off together. Or people start placing Market Buy orders and take 5 of the $61 sell orders off the table, and some people places Market Sell orders and it takes the $55 buy orders. These transactions average together to give you a $58 average sell price. So you are constantly refreshing the page and it tells you the price is $58

So you set your stop order at $55 because you think that's below the current trading price. But is it really? There's all those buy orders for $55 READY GO TO. All it takes is for some high volume sells to go through and start digging into those 10 waiting $55 buy orders to trigger your sell order, and now you are set to a market order that will take whatever buy orders are waiting. And there's tons of buy orders waiting to immediately buy your shares.

Your stop limit was just wayyy too close to what was actually happening. I think you are lucky you didn't get hit by some opportunistic buy orders at a much lower price. Imagine if all of the waiting $55 buy orders got taken and you got hit by $52 ones?

You probably think this sucks but it's kind of working as intended - after all, if the price crashes to $20 you *want* your stop order to grab the $52 order as soon as possible before other people do so your losses don't pile up. I think you are expecting price to be more precise for you to target but that's not exactly how it seems to work.

(red sox please sign off or refute this, as this is my observation over the last few months maybe I'm way off)

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I should not use Stops with volatile stocks, thats the long and short of it.

But yes, I dont like holding stocks too long because I get anxious. So I like to put big amounts in safe stocks that will go up a little bit at a quick rate.

I do like the idea of a safe ETF or Index fund and putting around $25k into one. Whats the difference? And what are some good ones (I feel like the ARK ones are trendy but I question their long-term success?).

CoolCly posted...

this can be hard to visualize imagine. there's 10 buy orders out there for $55 and then 100 buy orders in for $52. There's 10 sell orders for $61 and 100 sell orders for $65. These all just sit here because the sells are higher than the buy orders, so they aren't going to meet.

Then someone comes along and lists a sell order at $58. Still higher than those waiting buy orders. Someone places a Market Buy order and it takes that immediately (it just looks at whatever is available and buys it), or somebody also places a buy order for $58 and it meets the sell order and they match off together. Or people start placing Market Buy orders and take 5 of the $61 sell orders off the table, and some people places Market Sell orders and it takes the $55 buy orders. These transactions average together to give you a $58 average sell price. So you are constantly refreshing the page and it tells you the price is $58

So you set your stop order at $55 because you think that's below the current trading price. But is it really? There's all those buy orders for $55 READY GO TO. All it takes is for some high volume sells to go through and start digging into those 10 waiting $55 buy orders to trigger your sell order, and now you are set to a market order that will take whatever buy orders are waiting. And there's tons of buy orders waiting to immediately buy your shares.

Your stop limit was just wayyy too close to what was actually happening. I think you are lucky you didn't get hit by some opportunistic buy orders at a much lower price. Imagine if all of the waiting $55 buy orders got taken and you got hit by $52 ones?

You probably think this sucks but it's kind of working as intended - after all, if the price crashes to $20 you *want* your stop order to grab the $52 order as soon as possible before other people do so your losses don't pile up. I think you are expecting price to be more precise for you to target but that's not exactly how it seems to work.

(red sox please sign off or refute this, as this is my observation over the last few months maybe I'm way off)

I believe you are right. The price movement is NOT continuous. It can skip between prices, and it can do so during the day in addition to the obvious gaps between market close and open.

I don't know if stop losses are visible to counterparties (I think they shouldn't be but I'm not certain). But even if they aren't, I don't doubt that HFT firms have AIs/algorithms that are quite good at predicting where retail traders will set stop losses and then cleaning them out. For example, suppose HFT firm knows that you and a lot of other traders have a stop loss set at $55. The price is currently at, say, $55.30. The HFT firm wants to buy the stock, but they'd rather pay $55 a share than $55.30. So they don't buy at $55.30, they wait until a point with a lot of stop loss orders ($55) and buy at that point.

Or, alternatively (I don't know if this is legal), they sell stock at $55.30 for the purpose of driving down the price to $55, where they believe there is a big batch of stop loss orders. Then they buy a bigger number of shares at $55. If it's legal I'm pretty confident HFT firms are doing it. I think either way, the best policy is to just not use stop losses.


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ARKG and ARKK for life baby

Quick definitions:

Mutual fund

• Actively managed fund, they regularly make trades
• High management fees
• sign up and contribute through your broker or investment fund and they handle the rest
• Are supposedly NOT good at making money as they bring back less returns than the market on average, because nobody knows what to do

Index funds:

• Same thing as mutual funds, except passive managed to match index
• Invests in a list of major stable companies (the index) instead of actively trading all the time
• low management fees due to way less activity to manage
• Supposedly better at matching the market as it just stays invested in the major companies in the market
• isn't going to make MAD money though because it's intentionally safely matching the market, it's not trying to beat it

ETFs

• Can be either Index or Mutual funds (most etf's are apparently index funds)
• Traded on the stock market so you can just buy them directly instead of signing up through your broker
• Many ETF's exist for many sectors and strategies and you can be in a bunch of them
• can just sell any time!

ARK is actually more of a mutual fund though as its very actively managed and has higher fees, so it is more risk.

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red sox 777 posted...

I believe you are right. The price movement is NOT continuous. It can skip between prices, and it can do so during the day in addition to the obvious gaps between market close and open.

I don't know if stop losses are visible to counterparties (I think they shouldn't be but I'm not certain). But even if they aren't, I don't doubt that HFT firms have AIs/algorithms that are quite good at predicting where retail traders will set stop losses and then cleaning them out. For example, suppose HFT firm knows that you and a lot of other traders have a stop loss set at $55. The price is currently at, say, $55.30. The HFT firm wants to buy the stock, but they'd rather pay $55 a share than $55.30. So they don't buy at $55.30, they wait until a point with a lot of stop loss orders ($55) and buy at that point.

Or, alternatively (I don't know if this is legal), they sell stock at $55.30 for the purpose of driving down the price to $55, where they believe there is a big batch of stop loss orders. Then they buy a bigger number of shares at $55. If it's legal I'm pretty confident HFT firms are doing it. I think either way, the best policy is to just not use stop losses.

Thanks!

Yeah that's one thing I'm curious about - just how much of everything is visible to everyone else. I know the "serious trading platforms" have WAY more detailed info on whats happening than I see in my normal platform i log into, but how deep does the rabbit hole go? You can even subscribe to get more data and live feeds so it has to be very detailed.

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So continuing on my previous post, this is also why it's probably a bad idea to follow any kind of mechanical system that's popular. Suppose, for example, there's a lot of traders with a system of, sell when a stock has fallen 10% below its last peak. Smarter money that has figured out that people are following this system can beat it by using a strategy of buying just after a stock has fallen 10% from its last peak (or driving the price down on lower volume to trigger the selling and then buying for cheap). Or, if there's a lot of people with a strategy of buying once it's broken above some calculable resistance line, someone's who's figured it out can frontrun the crowd by buying just before it's broken across that line and benefitting from the crowd driving the runup.

There are Wall Street trading firms that exclusively focus on trading, and it's very unlikely that a retail trader is going to beat them at this kind of thing, especially if you are following an unsophisticated system. If you are following a predictable system, you're setting yourself up to lose. I think this may have something to do with the statistic of some really high percentage of day traders losing money - a much higher percentage than you would expect if they were trading randomly. They're not trading randomly - they're trading in predictable ways - sometimes based on recurring human emotions and sometimes because they are literally using the same system as each other - and that predictability hurts them.

And the more you trade, the more you lose to this. If you are a buy and hold investor, it doesn't make much of a difference if you lose 10 cents a share. If you are a heavy day trader, and losing 10 cents a share every trade, you're going to be broke pretty soon.


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While I like the ARKK funds, do realize that they have made a lot of gains this year, but a lot of it was cause of tesla. I would say they are still pretty safe but not as safe as something like VOO which just tracks the S&P 500. You will see potentially bigger gains in ARKK but it's also got riskier plays so you may see more volatility, and also your getting a lot higher fees.

I don't think either will do you wrong (I would actually recommend both) but the main thing to note is that while the volatility is less than stock picking, they can still go up and down. As long as you are in it for the long haul (multiple years) you are almost guaranteed to make money off of either of them. Just dont buy into ARKK, see it drop 5% in a week and panic and sell. It will recover and go up its just a matter of waiting.

There are other ones as well, such as VGT and VTI, as well as the other ARK funds, that are etfs but track different things.
-VGT tracks tech stocks. It has seen higher returns than VOO this year due to tech being good this year, but since its just a single sector its more volitatle. If you have confidence in tech it might be worth picking up some of this, if you think tech is in a bubble or overvalued you probably dont want this.
-VTI is similar to VOO except it holds a lot more stocks (I think its most of all the real stocks in the us, don't think it includes penny stocks though). It's a little more diversified than VOO and has a little better returns but its a little riskier if something like a depression hits cause some of the stocks in it won't survive while most in the S&P500 will. Still pretty safe though.

The various ARK funds are good, just look at the website to see a blurb of what each tracks. Do note that these are technically an etf but the stocks are handpicked as opposed to tracking an entire sector or market. So you'll see some stocks weighed higher if the team behind it likes the stock. As opposed to the vanguard etfs where you are betting on a sector, here you are betting on the team of investors and their picks for a sector. It's similar but a different nuance.

Overall i'd recommend looking at these as a starting point, figuring out what sectors you want to track, looking at historical returns etc and going from there. If theres a sector you like, theres probably an etf for it.

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Also note that this is a cat and mouse game. Suppose there is a widely followed system A which is hard countered by system B. People make a lot of money using system B (because it hard counters A, which a lot of people are using). But eventually, people stop using A because they are losing money and maybe some people switch to B because they've discovered it and found it's historically done great. So what happens now? Well, some people will have already developed system C, which hard counters system B - so they make money, and the new crowd of people who have switched to B continue to lose.

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I try to trade based on other peoples emotions. What is the underlying tension? I made 3k today not because I knew where GameStop was going (Nobody does) but I correctly read the room that short term options were heating up dramatically and having the ability to sell them was extremely lucrative in that moment.

You want to buy stock from people who are selling stocks for no other reason then they are scared

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masterplum posted...

I try to trade based on other peoples emotions. What is the underlying tension? I made 3k today not because I knew where GameStop was going (Nobody does) but I correctly read the room that short term options were heating up dramatically and having the ability to sell them was extremely lucrative in that moment.

You want to buy stock from people who are selling stocks for no other reason then they are scared

Welcome to social arbitrage investing - almost as profitable as going long on undervalued companies' warrants!

Well, not really. But still my second most reliable trading strategy.

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StartTheMachine posted...

Welcome to social arbitrage investing - almost as profitable as going long on undervalued companies' warrants!

Well, not really. But still my second most reliable trading strategy.

Absolutely agree with the investing based on others' emotions strategy.

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How does anybody actually see what the short interest is? And when expiry dates are going to be? I have no idea where you would actually find this.

People are saying that its somehow just as bad as before or maybe even worse. Does that mean there's STILL opportunity here? Jesus.

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Yes, it looks like if you get in Monday you could be set for something big. Gonna buy a bit more I think.

The short squeeze has yet to happen.

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GME is still a buy, you guys reckon?

I don't think the short squeeze is finished yet either. I feel like if it was over it would have kept on falling from $55 on Friday instead of stabilizing and moving back up to $65.

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Oh boy. If thats the case then Im selling Visa at open and putting $25k into GME.

This is not the same as putting 25k into Visa or something like that. That 25k could be 150k (if the big squeeze happens) or under 10k (if people take profits and rush for the exits) within hours. The volatility is probably 2 orders of magnitude higher.

I think it's a good play, but way beyond your normal risk level if you are doing it with 25k. So just be aware.....

I don't remember if it was posted here or somewhere else, but I went into Visa because of the statistics that it only incrase by 3-4% in the final days of December
And it did, so yay me!

The problem was that I forgot to sell so now I am holding at like 3% loss or something
And...earnings this week

I mean's a low amount of money and it's fucking Visa it can work for a long term but...still

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A 3% loss in one stock is nothing. Gotta stop feeling that.

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just hold Visa for a while unless you think the economy will crash and burn

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Sunroof posted...

GME is still a buy, you guys reckon?

*blinks*

red sox 777 posted...

A 3% loss in one stock is nothing. Gotta stop feeling that.

Yeah, if a 3% loss in a blue chip bothers you, park your money in an index fund and dont look at it more than twice a year. You will lose more money being scared and touching things you shouldnt.


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Nanis23 posted...

I don't remember if it was posted here or somewhere else, but I went into Visa because of the statistics that it only incrase by 3-4% in the final days of December
And it did, so yay me!

The problem was that I forgot to sell so now I am holding at like 3% loss or something
And...earnings this week

I mean's a low amount of money and it's fucking Visa it can work for a long term but...still

Yea, I posted that back in December. I have a feeling itll go up tomorrow though. Not a whole lot but still. Also, if it doesnt, just hold another week or two.

Also Visa will go up once Bidens stimulus package gets approved which will happen sooner than later. I might hold longer and put my remaining $10k into GME to play it safe.

Uhhhh I wouldn't call buying a stock that has run like that solely from Wall Street Bets "playing it safe"

I wouldn't hold that shit for more than a day. Buy AMC instead, since that's WSB's next huge pump. I think I might buy some calls on Monday.

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Buy long calls at 12.5 btw. That's what I am doing.

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I meant safe as in $10k as opposed to $25k.

When is AMC expected to skyrocket?

DoomTheGyarados posted...

Buy long calls at 12.5 btw. That's what I am doing.

For AMC? I was thinking of buying calls just a couple weeks out at 5, but this is tempting too. I'd have to sell warrants I don't want to sell to hold onto long calls though.

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