Investments Trade Log

Ask your investment, budget, and other money related questions here
Ydobon
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Location: Scotland

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Ydobon »

jennypenny wrote:Did the market really rebound because that woman was shot? I'm not sure I have the stomach for this anymore. :(

We're 50, so I figure as long as we have at least 50x expenses in the bank. I don't need to play the market anymore. Tempting ...
I think a more positive reading might be that when she was shot, there was an outbreak of common sense and that some of the tension and anger deflated from both sides of the argument (I'm not going to glorify it with the word 'debate'). A shared understanding that people had taken it too far, perhaps, an inflection point.

jacob
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by jacob »

$8000 down in the open... back to where I was 10 days ago. I think that's a new record for intraday loss but it wasn't as bad as I expected.

Edit: 1hr later, only down $2800.

Close edit: down $5030 (one years worth of living expenses)... I'm pleased that all of my three actively managed portfolios did better than the S&P500. I'm particularly pleased that the one that's essentially short-USD albeit indirectly (through commodities and Asia) also did better than the S&P. My fixed income and gold portfolio was positive for the day. I also note that if I account for the losses in EUR, I was actually positive for the day.

workathome
Posts: 1298
Joined: Sat Jun 29, 2013 3:06 pm

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by workathome »

I'm down $37,000 on on Brexit today. :o

Actually not feeling anxious about it, just wiped out gains for the year on my foreign stocks.

cmonkey
Posts: 1814
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2014 11:56 am

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by cmonkey »

We were up $800 yesterday and then down by about the same amount today at the open. Now we are at about $500 down. Both yesterday and today were records for us.

I'm not sure how I'd feel about losing over half a year of expenses (or 1.5 in your case) in just a few minutes. :cry:

bryan
Posts: 1061
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 2:01 am
Location: mostly Bay Area

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by bryan »

I feel like I am in the movie Trading Places ($1 bet that brexit will happen, woohoo!).

Overall my portfolio looks fine and quite bored. My play account with margin is up nicely (but nothing extraordinary like one of the specific companies coming out with a badly missed earnings).

Bought some RBS because I felt like doing something in these markets today..

KevinW
Posts: 959
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2010 4:45 am

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by KevinW »

The 4x25 permanent portfolio was up 1% on June 24, and is up 8.95% year to date. :)

Dragline
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Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Dragline »

Sold some shares of SLV and O today. Bought GS.

cmonkey
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by cmonkey »

Does anyone use Wolfram Alpha for investment research? I found you could look at historical P/E and it looks accurate. Some of the other numbers look questionable though.

jacob
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by jacob »

I like to use events like Brexit to get a good idea which of my securities/portfolios are swimming naked when the tides goes out. This one was/is particularly good because it's short, strong, and very directional, so no need to mentally filter the noise (3 steps down, 2 steps up) of a regular bear market. It makes for a good and fairly transparent shock test. I run three different portfolios. Comparing to the S&P500...

Friday: over, over, over
Monday: over, over, over
Tuesday: over, over, under
Wednesday?: over, over, under
Total?: over, over, over
Dollars compared to Thursday close: under, over, over

The simple random odds of at least that many overs is only 1.9%. I mentally note whether I'm over or under for each of them almost every day. Human biases aside, if I get the impression that I'm mostly under, I change things around. In particular, had this test been mostly under, I'd be very concerned about what would happen when the big one hits the US markets.

Dragline
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Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2011 1:50 am

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Dragline »

All I can tell you is that yesterday and today were/are "YUGE". Which means tomorrow will probably suck . . .

IlliniDave
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Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2014 7:46 pm

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by IlliniDave »

Even after today I'll probably still be down a percent or so compared to last Thursday. The only consolation is that I had less volatility than the equity/currency flailing.

JL13
Posts: 645
Joined: Sat May 17, 2014 7:47 am

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by JL13 »

Permanent portfolio is up ~ 11% YTD.

Pretty nice.

theanimal
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by theanimal »

I'm loving Brexit. My portfolio is up ~20% in the last 3 days 8-)

workathome
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by workathome »

That was a fast recovery.

Dragline
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Dragline »

Crazy isn't it? Some things like LT bonds and silver (up 10%+ this week!) seem to be attached to large helium balloons.

Any casual speculations as to why this is occurring? My best guess is that people are betting that all talk of interest rate hikes are off the table and there may be more QE and negative interest rates in the offing from more than one central bank. So it's buy everything that isn't locked down!

I also wonder if the recent government report/blessing on large US banks essentially freeing them up from stringent capital requirements has encouraged them to start buying more, too.

jacob
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by jacob »

@Dragline - Did you mean casual speculations or causal speculations? :geek: To me, it's yield seeking and flight to safety.

Because I've been following/stating the thesis for many months by now that a low-interest rate environment would be around for much longer than the Feds having been saying due to there being more to the world in terms of locks and connections than just "data driven" employment numbers (which incidentally are so massaged that they are too optimistic anyway) ... Yellen finally admitted to coming around to this viewpoint last week or so. So it just might be that investment advisers (e.g. your basic pension/mutual fund manager) who only follow the official high priests of officialdom are bidding things up slowly. Of course, this begets the question ... are there any even greater fools left other than noise traders? I can't really think of any ... well maybe the ECB :-P (BOJ seems to be giving up.)

Also that mainly Brits (specifically holders of British values e.g. stocks and currency ... so think Japanese hot money) are seeking safety in the usual places. Especially mean reverting trades out of the USD and the JPY.

JL13
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by JL13 »

What percentage of LT treasuries are owned by institutions who must invest in them by decree (Insurance companies, pensions, mutual funds. the FED)? I understand that the LT rates are just future expectation of short term rates, but at this point they're indicating that ZIRP will be around for a long, long time.

What would LT rates be if these players were not required to hold bonds?

jacob
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by jacob »

@JL13 - Higher for sure ... The negative interest rate policy is very much central banks telling/forcing pension funds to eat crud ... or whatever the appropriate term is. This works well insofar that those funds are defined contribution, but insofar they're defined benefit, it just transfers the problem and concentrates it in the pensions who then become underfunded because they don't have the cash flows from the low interest rates. See e.g. Chicago. Even a small differential of a couple of percent between the returns they get and the returns they expected to get "when promises were made" will blow up exponentially over a few decades.

Pensioners also vote, so this is one very strong lock on the interest rate/currency system, because when people are investing in the big game, politics get involved. I'm not even sure I would use the term "investing" for what pension funds actually do.

JL13
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by JL13 »

I just looked it up, and something like 1 trillion out of 19 trillion is held by "other", the rest is held by foreign governments, the fed, pensions, mutual funds, and insurance companies. Presumably all of these are required to hold them for one reason or another.

So really, ZIRP is a transfer from these to the federal government, correct? As long as real interest rates are negative, then the fed can essentially let inflation erase it's debt? They borrow $20T today at 0%, and pay it back 15 years from now at $20T nominal, or $15t real.

I guess this method beats paying down debt with raising taxes or increasing the money supply? Since all the debt they're issuing is just being absorbed by the guaranteed buyers, then it's not being spent. Is that why you don't see high inflation right now*?

*Granted, there is a lot of inflation in the financial markets, but not so much on main street.

Dragline
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Dragline »

jacob wrote:@Dragline - Did you mean casual speculations or causal speculations? :geek: To me, it's yield seeking and flight to safety.
Definitely "casual" in my case -- as in looking at silver while having a cup of coffee this morning. I thought the rallies would have been exhausted by today, or at least there would be a decoupling of asset classes.

@JL13 -- you don't see inflation because the velocity of money continues to decline, as it has since the 1980s. My pet theory is that this secular decline is ultimately related mostly to shrinking and aging populations in developed countries, who just don't spend and start businesses like they used to.

And negative interest rates in Europe and Japan will just make people hoard physical currency and assets (gold) and buy more US Treasuries as the cleanest dirty shirt. TLT is up 16% YTD and EDV up 23%, even as equities are near their highs. A lesson for most in why trying to predict markets is probably a bad idea.

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