Investments Trade Log

Ask your investment, budget, and other money related questions here
vraxxos
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Location: UK

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by vraxxos »

Only getting started on my portfolio, but I bought some Lloyds today (LLOY in London, LYG in New York). On a share price of 53p, they will earn about 8p for the full year 2016. Bank valuations as a whole just seem crazy low, I hope I am doing the right thing by backing up the truck!

George the original one
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Location: Wettest corner of Orygun

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by George the original one »

Picked up WDC today, now that we have some numbers to play with after they bought Sandisk.

Dragline
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Dragline »

Last week sold covered calls in IBM, O, WY and MMP. Bought some more GS.

jacob
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by jacob »

Another notable feature of the new findings: they're really pessimistic. If growth over the next 20 years otherwise held near its average for the 1960-2010 period — about 1.9 percent — adjusting for the demographic shift would lower per-capita GDP gains to 0.7 percent this decade and 1.3 percent next, based on the estimates.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... his-decade

Note that's just average growth(*). However, given the impact, this also means that some sectors should benefit more. Particularly those servicing the old demographics and those who provide a yield. Of course, since this has been known for a while, it could be it is already priced in.

(*) A full percent will mean that historic firecalc calculations will be optimistic (compared to expected reality) for the next two decades.

cmonkey
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by cmonkey »

I have noticed that utilities have been on an absolute tear for the past 6 months or so.

My holdings in ED ( +25% ), NWN ( +30% ) almost look in bubble territory but I'm not sure. PPL and MDU not so much but there are many others that are up a lot YTD.

Why are utilities so high right now? I'm not looking at selling ED or MDU, but am considering NWN as it looks abnormally high and its in my HSA so the gains are tax free.

jacob
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by jacob »

@cmonkey - Not just utilities. Pretty much any income producing bond-like investment. Reason being that the market finally realized that hiking interest rates would be delayed longer than previously thought. Great news about the economy will boost equities at the expense of income. Like we're seeing today.

Chad
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Joined: Fri Jul 23, 2010 3:10 pm

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Chad »

cmonkey wrote: Why are utilities so high right now?
More than likely it's desperate attempt to find yield.

*Oh, I see Jacob already answered it.

cmonkey
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by cmonkey »

Aha! I have so much to learn, I hadn't even thought of that. Thanks guys.

I'm selling NWN since the gain is tax free. If the trend of yield seeking continues, I would be wise to find a low price, high yield champion that hasn't been found yet.

bryan
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Location: mostly Bay Area

Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by bryan »

bryan wrote:will be going short on VRSN, GDDY, maybe AMZN.
bryan wrote:to scratch the itch I'll just short another stock for fun: SYMC (though my gut says it will run up for a while yet.. so just a small bet for now and probably more in a month or so)

doubled down on shorting VRSN, GDDY, and SYMC (gut was right.. oh well). Never did bring myself to short AMZN (AWS business is just too strong).

Chad
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by Chad »

bryan wrote:Never did bring myself to short AMZN (AWS business is just too strong).
That's a good thing, as right now they are the fastest growing internet shopping company in India. They are beating homegrown Flipcart. Not to mention they are crushing it with cloud services here. I keep waiting for a pullback, because I want in.

bryan
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by bryan »

@Chad, I was originally thinking about it because I've cancelled my own Prime membership in the last year and figured a lot of others might. Additionally, I sold something on Prime recently and the fees were much higher than they were (maybe) 2 years ago. After thinking about it, these changes could actually be better for Amazon's profits...

Reminds me of those situations of shorting companies that should underperform, but they take actions to get out of the worst markets and reduce costs (layoffs) and the stock shoots up.


bryan
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by bryan »

Amazon introduced changes in 2016 like higher shipping costs for non-prime members, more items excluded from prime shipping (or requiring a min shopping cart total for the free prime shipping), and added a more expensive monthly membership option. Not to mention the decreasing profits of third party sellers (at least those that don't pay some monthly fee or have high volume?) on Amazon, but that was probably before 2016. On the face these were not good changes for the users of Amazon, so I cancelled (and am trying to find alternatives to selling on Amazon: tough). On the flip side, these will likely will be a boon for AMZN profits.

bryan
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by bryan »

Anyone thinking about shorting YELP now? Unexpected positive earnings and hit a 52w high..

cmonkey
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by cmonkey »

A nice read. A snippet in there about the question I raised last week about utilities. I had noticed the same with REITs as well.
As Treasury yields have fallen to such low levels, it has spurred investors to search for higher-yielding assets in other markets. One area in particular that has benefitted has been bond-proxy, or high-dividend yielding equities, including stocks in the utilities, REITs, and consumer staples sectors. During the past year, bond-proxy sectors such as REITs and utilities have attracted a net $11 billion in inflows, while the overall equity market has seen a net outflow of $96 billion.1 The surge in demand has pushed high-dividend-yielding stock valuations to historically high levels relative to their own past, as well as to the broader equity market (see chart, below).

jacob
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by jacob »

Today's FOMC and I paraphrase: "We turned less hawkish than we previously said we'd be because although data looks good there still seems to be some incomprehensible issues, but maybe next time ...".

Yield-instruments are up again.

bryan
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by bryan »

Could anyone point to a resource that shows how to make trades (preferably without getting eaten by fees) such that they translate from "$TICKER will {under, out}perform $TICKER2/$index (binary or % range/probability distribution)"? Preferably this is just a formula that is already represented by some software..

I seem to be good at picking relative performance of things but the trades I make are clearly not optimal or making me rich.

cmonkey
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by cmonkey »

Dipped my toe into the MLP pool today. Added MMP.

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jennypenny
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by jennypenny »

We have a close acquaintance who's been a cheerleader of Fed policies for years (wouldn't surprise me if he had a tattoo of Bernanke :P ). Yesterday, even he moved all of his 401K money out of stocks.

Has everyone pulled the bulk of their money out of stocks? What happens if there's a crash and nobody comes?

cmonkey
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Re: Investments Trade Log

Post by cmonkey »

I have not, no, but I am in it for income not equity. However, I am having a hard time finding much of anything to add to my 'buy' list. I have also become a bit pickier with what I want.

Any little sign that something might do well is getting picked off pretty quickly (DE, BBY).

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