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Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:29 pm
by Bankai
Yeah, I'm wondering if a 'total oblivion' strategy might paradoxically be optimal for index investors. I.e. since we know that investor is her own greatest enemy, the strategy of not checking any financial news and deliberately losing the password to her brokerage account might prevent her from shooting her own foot.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 5:37 pm
by Seppia
I agree.
Usually the best managers of 401ks are dead people and those who forgot about their 401ks existence.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:19 am
by jacob
My stock screen has only showed 16 viables (out of a universe of 3500+ traded stocks) for months, but yesterday the count went to 17 and this morning there were 20.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:43 am
by RealPerson
jacob wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:19 am
My stock screen has only showed 16 viables (out of a universe of 3500+ traded stocks) for months, but yesterday the count went to 17 and this morning there were 20.
Which website have you found the best for screening stocks?

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:50 am
by jacob
Whatever one I have (broker) ... I haven't gone out of my way to look for a "best" one since I just use it to generate a starting list for further research.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2018 5:39 am
by thedollar
jacob wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:19 am
My stock screen has only showed 16 viables (out of a universe of 3500+ traded stocks) for months, but yesterday the count went to 17 and this morning there were 20.
What are your criterias?

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2018 5:59 am
by slowtraveler
Very curious as well.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Sat Oct 13, 2018 7:52 am
by jacob
IIRC, it's low debt (under industry average or just under 30%), high ROE, a dividend over 2%, and a rating that's 4/5 or better. It's pretty hard to have all those at the same time. Right now, it's mostly revealing auto-part retailers, chip makers, and a few mining companies which is not concordant with my "other" understanding of where the economy is... so I continue to invest in cash.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2018 1:31 am
by thedollar
Interesting. What would the 2% dividend achieve? You might miss out on good stocks delivering value purely through capital gains.

Do you hold a significant share of cash out of total allocation or simply investing new money coming in in cash?

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Sun Oct 14, 2018 7:50 am
by jacob
Value can be faked. Dividends and cash can not [as easily]. I'm increasing my allocation of "can't be faked".

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Tue Oct 16, 2018 5:36 pm
by jacob
Some data points for the price-sensitive investors among you:

Federal deficit for 2018 increased 17% to $779B (highest in 6 years).
CBO forecasts $981B in 2019 and >$1000B in 2020.

Interest payments on debt in 2018 increased 24% to $325B

Corporate tax receipts fell 31% (as corporate tax drops by ~1/3 from 35% to 21%)
Tax withholding on individuals increased 1%
=> Overall receipts were flat.

GDP grew so tax receipts fell from 17.2% of GDP to 16.5% of GDP.

Moody's foresees 2018 GDP growth ending at 2.9% for 2018, 2.8% for 2019, and 0.9% for 2020.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Wed Oct 17, 2018 1:54 am
by Bankai
Wait, aren't 'good times' the time to reduce/eliminate deficit and prepare for 'the rainy day', i.e next recession?

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2018 8:01 am
by oldbeyond
Big picture, nothing was solved after 08/09. Crisis was averted, but we're still in all the predicaments we found us in then(households/governments indebted, eurozone a mess, low growth, high inequality, asset bubbles). Some things are marginally bettter, sure, and the doomsday predictions proved to be false. But no issue is really taken care of.

Currently all assets in my AA(global large cap, global small cap, domestic mid cap, emerging markets equity, precious metals(mostly gold)) are below their 200DMA in my local currency. Interesting to see wether I'll be all cash come rebalancing date.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Sat Oct 20, 2018 11:00 am
by Seppia
I'm fairly pessimisting about the next decade, but to say that "nothing was solved" seems a tad strong.
The USA has the lowest unemployment rate in years (decades?), banks have much less leverage, and the S&P has experienced a 200+% rally from the lows in 2009.
The next cisis will definitely not look like the past one (they never do).
The euro zone is a mess for multiple reasons, but I'm fairly confident in saying that the austerity measures played a major role: this to say that I believe without zirp the world would be in a worse place than it is now.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Mon Oct 22, 2018 7:33 am
by jennypenny
Volatility Lessons, recent article by Fama and French (PDF)

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Wed Oct 24, 2018 4:40 pm
by George the original one
Mr. Market (S&P 500) is down 3% today and my portfolio is up 1%. I really like days like today, they make all the sideways days feel better.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 9:17 am
by jacob
My impression from staring at the matrix is that it's beginning to hurt. Even safety-issues are beginning to go down today, so to me this suggests a different tone than the easily identifiable risk-on/risk-off plays we've seen this week. This is people getting margin calls.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 9:47 am
by Seppia
For the first time in a couple years, I have manually added to my indexes.

Europe is down 15% from the May peak, while emerging is down 20%, so I threw in 10% of my dry powder.
Let's see how this evolves

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 1:18 pm
by slowtraveler
International Index VXUS has a dividend yield above 3.1% it seems quite nice relative to the last few years. It's almost up to Wellesley but more tax efficient.

I recently noticed Kimberley Clark and Chlorox have insane ROE ratios due to efficiently using their leverage. Satisfactory dividend rates. I'll look into them more as this plays out. I'm still praying for a market crash and keep adding to my indexes and to my CDs each week.

Proctor and Gamble, has been my best performer to date. At this point I hold around 30 stocks, which, I'm hindsight, is way too many. I think 10 would have sufficed. Still going to do my best to hold them even though I'm tempted to dump a few that don't seem as high quality as the blue chips I have.

I like the companies with a solid dividend that I trust to maintain a quality product and safety margin in the product, interest coverage, payout.

Re: Investments Trade Log

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 3:22 pm
by cmonkey
George the original one wrote:
Wed Oct 24, 2018 4:40 pm
Mr. Market (S&P 500) is down 3% today and my portfolio is up 1%. I really like days like today, they make all the sideways days feel better.
I love days like that and I've had a couple lately.

So far I'm down 4.6% for the month which is half the S&P's losses. Feeling pretty good so far...