Early Retirement Extreme Forums

Der Leiermann wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 13, 2021 3:39 am

Did they control for how well the economy was doing? If the economy is sh*t, it might offset the increase in dollar value of a given asset due to inflation, because that asset is now no longer able to produce profits.

Maxed my tIRA this morning from some premiums I've been collecting since December (PLTR cash-secured puts), and some additional after-tax savings. Put all this money into increased international allocation (VXUS). With all the excitement and trading bubbles lately...I figured it was time to allocate towards the boring.

I still have open CSPs on PLTR that expire in February and if I'm lucky that might even close today for 50% profit after the 10% underlying stock pop.

My large allocation towards AMD is dragging me down lately. Intel is stepping up the plate lately with some changes. I'm confident AMD earnings will bring it back up. AMD is long-term anyway so I probably shouldn't be too concerned with short-term price drops, but I do have deep ITM Leaps here.

I've been sitting on way too much cash (>30%). Right before the pandemic I was 80% cash. Keeping cash makes me comfortable regardless of market situation, but it's too much. I'll be DCAing large chunk of future savings into a broad tracking instrument until I spot something within my (rather narrow) circle of competence that I'm comfortable owning.

One of the best, if not the best, investments I made so far was in my education---this includes studying books on topics outside my formal training, such as finance textbooks. I've spent $450 on (new and used) books in the last few months.

Added to AMD position in lead-up to earnings. Stock currently trading at $90.

@Giskard PLTR up 25% today. Should be good for your LEAPS.

I was able to close out a CSP and open up another one. I might even be able to close that one out soon as well. Maybe even as early next week.

Nearly all of my portfolio is in pretty boring dividend stocks. But finally this year I have decided to start a little bit of speculative growth trading.

So far, all of these trades are small, 0.1% to 1% of NW.

MTCH because, everybody needs some lovin'. I bought in mid 2019 at $74. In late 2020 I set a limit order and sold at $120. sell at

I will be watching the Bumble IPO as that approaches. Last I was in the U.S., Bumble was more popular with people that have more disposable income.

QCOM - I bought at $155 recently. This is a long-term bet for me
Thinking about AMD, NVDA, and INTL. Might think about buying AMD before or after their earnings report.


Just bought a couple of super speculative 'meme stocks'.

BB - (Blackberry) (They're are transitioning from a phone company to other business related to data transfer for car type sensors. Selling patents. Still trying to sue Facebook for patent infringement(?))

GME - (Gamestop) - Big hype in January. Famous guy joined their board. New plans. Price jumped from $4 ... now up over $60. I bought at $44. Appears to be a big short squeeze going on and lots of news coverage.

C40 wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 22, 2021 7:40 pm

GME - (Gamestop) - Big hype in January. Famous guy joined their board. New plans. Price jumped from $4 ... now up over $60. I bought at $44. Appears to be a big short squeeze going on and lots of news coverage.

Did you sell after the 100% gain today?

The speculative frenzy has me left watching in awe. Not getting anything done today. Incredibly GME was halted more than once and almost every big retail broker has had intermittent issues today. What a time to be alive.

I'm going to start reducing risk a little bit. We have to be just a few months from some kind of crash at this point. Probably not THE crash, but probably a crash (especially if bond yields keep going up).

@giskard.

My thoughts are very similar this morning. I still opened up another CSP on PLTR but if assigned; that one is a long-term play for me.

Things are looking .... bubbly.

Its very tempting but I haven't done it - you could probably pick through a couple of random SPAC's and find a lotto ticket if one is willing...or anything that has a high short-interest ratio that gets captured by the frenzy. FIZZ was another one today.

As for AMD, I'm adding shares every paycheck as long as AMD trades under $100. My price target is in the $115-$130 range this year. I think upside is on the ARM architecture rumor (which would be a direct competitor to Apple's M1 chip) and continued growth in the 5G sector.

giskard wrote: ↑

Mon Jan 25, 2021 12:54 pm

Did you sell after the 100% gain today?...

Nope. I would have sold some, but... I was going to set limit orders over the weekend for selling a couple shares each at various prices on the way up, but I had bought these with proceeds of another sale immediately, and got the message that if these GME shares sold before settlement, I could get a 90-day buying freeze. I don't know enough about quick trading to know if that is really a risk.

I'm not sure what I'll do now..probably just pick some prices starting at about $100. I only have 12 shares, so, even if it keeps going crazy, I wouldn't gain much.

Yeah, it is super crazy. BB also went up a lot today (50%)

Seeing PLUG power at $70 makes me ill. At some point I owned a lot of shares under $10.

This is just wild....seeing a massive short squeeze right before my eyes. This stock literally became a 10 bagger over a span of 2-3 weeks.

https://i.postimg.cc/d3L1p5tV/pictures-gme.png

I've been following (but not making any moves) on GME but its sure has been fun to watch.

This is blowing my mind that my first foray into meme stocks is working out so well.

I only put in ~$600 to GME, so I will never get much profit from it. But if I sell right now, the gains would pay for 3,000 Bánh mì (Vietnamese sandwiches). I could be sandwich rich!!


Edit - now even Elon Must is tweeting about it



what in the fuuuuuu
("stonk" is a slang word used for 'stocks' used in the meme stock community, so he is making it clear that he has been reading their posts)

It finally seems like we are nearing the Euphoria phase

This is not going to end well.

Quite obvious that it will come back down.

For me it's just a question of when to cash out my bahn mi money, and it is more entertainment than stress. I have limit orders set at various prices. Because yesterday's gain was fairly linear, and it is up more after market close, I raised my sale orders. I set a couple really close to current after hours price, to make sure I pull out something.

There seem to be a lot of people that bought calls, or who bought $50k or more of the stock, and are currently up millions of dollars. And many of these folks have their ENTIRE net worth in this one stock. It is amazing how long some folks will continue to let it ride. Also interesting to see people debate what difference having $10-15 million would make to a person's life vs $2 million.

Gamestop is about to turn Melvin Capital and Point72 into the next Lehman Bros. This is most entertaining thing I've ever seen, it's going to be written about in textbooks.

My favorite is all of the billionaires jumping into the game on Twitter. Steve Cohen is getting comments about if he is going to be able to make payroll for the Mets.

I'm watching on the sidelines for now but at some point it might be time to buy some puts.

surely these two funds are nowhere near that systemically important?

what's the mechanism here

Add: speculation on twitter that after this blows off, options will only be available to accredited investors. Not a good psychological effect; makes me feel like this is my last chance for some mad yolo

C40 wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 26, 2021 11:05 pm

Quite obvious that it will come back down.
There seem to be a lot of people that bought calls, or who bought $50k or more of the stock, and are currently up millions of dollars. And many of these folks have their ENTIRE net worth in this one stock. It is amazing how long some folks will continue to let it ride. Also interesting to see people debate what difference having $10-15 million would make to a person's life vs $2 million.

This feels so surreal. I thought I did okay this past year but compared to what better known meme stocks are doing my performance is abysmal. Trying to understand industry economics; then reading through annual reports trying to understand company's business strategy and its position within the industry; trying to understand company's balance sheet health, profitability, potential for future etc; upper management compensation, insider transactions, payout ratios, dilutions ... None of it matters right now. In today's casino environment momentum trading would give awesome payoffs - think TSLA, BTC, GME, whatever - but I don't have the personality for it. I wonder how many of these meme stock buyers have never invested before second half of 2020.

When reading memestocks subreddit is more profitable than diligent analysis we're likely in a mass delusion.

I came across this blog post on dot com euphoria: https://blogmaverick.com/2013/01/10/the-stock-market-2/ Topical reading for today's environment.

I tried doing a little research before dumping money into stocks that guys who called themselves autists and retards were hyping..

One place I looked is here:
https://swaggystocks.com/dashboard/wall ... -sentiment

Scroll down a little to the ticker section. These charts show sentiment on reddit.com/r/wallstreetets (# mentions, bullish vs. bearish - though keep in mind that bearish comments are basically not allowed and may be bannable there), and the stock prices. Most of the stocks they've been bullish on have went up significantly. I tried a little to look back at older history, but didn't bother since I was only putting a little in, and I'm buying these stocks now, not a wsb fund.. But also note, a lot of people buying meme stocks have picked total failures many times, many lost their life savings, sometimes their parents' retirement savings! Right now is the number one most successful pick they've made.

(note that when I say 'they', I am talking about overall sentiment of the subreddit. It is not one message, as there are nearly 2 million members of the subreddit. Some members have more popularity but anyone can post)

I don’t understand why people sometimes pick arbitrary yardsticks to measure performance.

Would I feel bad because Valentino Rossi can ride a bike faster than me?

Would I feel bad because crazy guy X powers through a red light and gets to the other side alive and faster than me?

The answer to both is no for me.
I mean these crazy things happening, wether it’s TSLA being worth more than the entire oil industry while never being profitable though its existence, Hertz going up triple digit while bankrupt, GameStop going from $4 to $100+ because of a Reddit board or some imaginary made up currency supposedly being worth $40k are things that amaze me.

But never in life I would think “oh I could/should have done that”
These aren’t things I’m built for.

It would be like being envious of the guy who won the lottery. I never play the lottery because I consider it stupid and an overall losing proposition, so why would I be mad or suffer FOMO?