So I am a big fan of Google products, business plan, and vision. On the charts their technical have a lot of positive indicators.

I have noticed though that there has been several insider sells of google stock by several unique individuals since November with the largest being 80,000. Based on this alone, is it time to cash out my 10 shares?

1/6/2016 2:41:05 PM

Too late for FANG.

1/6/2016 9:14:56 PM

bought more Kinder Morgan (KMI); thinking about adding to my AMZN position. I sold off part of my XOM position.


Also, an idea that I've had is to sell off some stocks in my regular (taxable) brokerage accounts while the market has pulled back some and the tax hit could be minimized/eliminated (depending on what I sell and how much), and then increase my 401k contributions beyond my current 6% (which maxes the company match), using the money from stock sales to maintain my normal monthly cashflow.

Effectively, I'd be converting regular stocks to 401k for the tax benefit. I could do up to the max of $18k/year. Is there any downside/catch that I'm not thinking of?

1/6/2016 11:48:43 PM

So I'm looking to dabble into this. What platforms are you using? TD Ameritrade? Scottrade? Something else?

1/7/2016 9:08:25 AM

i use etrade for long term and robinhood for day trading

1/7/2016 9:33:14 AM

Hmmm, could this be 2008 all over again? Just replace housing with China...

1/7/2016 2:34:31 PM

The global stock market is estimated to have lost $2.2 trillion so far in 2016.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/07/global-stock-index-has-lost-2-trillion-this-year.html

[Edited on January 7, 2016 at 10:56 PM. Reason : .]

1/7/2016 10:55:14 PM

so where is the bottom? i some cash to burn and try to find the right time to throw some money.

1/7/2016 11:47:16 PM

^No one knows, it's all gambling in the short term.

1/11/2016 2:25:55 PM

might just put all my money in the lottery and Draftkings.

1/12/2016 8:43:04 AM

The lottery is at 1.5 billion.

1/12/2016 12:22:10 PM

Aside all the gloom and doom news about the market on CNBC, is there any real evidence of any sort of economic crisis???? Unless you are a hedge fun manager, drilling for oil in North Dakota, or some other piece of the energy sector; the rest of the economy seems to be chugging along fine.....

1/20/2016 11:47:43 PM

just waiting for the right time to dump more in at this point

1/21/2016 8:10:03 AM

The slowdown in consumer spending in China and Europe is also part of the issue. I think this is mainly an overreaction to the fluctuations in the price of oil. Once the price stabilizes for a while I think the markets head back up.

[Edited on January 21, 2016 at 9:26 AM. Reason : a]

1/21/2016 9:26:22 AM

I have calls on SPXS, so if it does tank again I'll be in a nice spot. I made pretty good money on puts on TSLA and AMZN. Will probably do more short term puts on TSLA the week of earnings.

1/24/2016 4:45:15 PM

My April PUT on AMZN at $500 is paying off excessively since I bought it when it was trading at $620. Cashed out half at double cost basis. Call on SPXS is down over all but rebounded a lot this week. I bought a $149 put on TSLA for earnings this week that doubled in value almost immediately. Overall I'm up 2x over my 2014 losses.

Wish I'd of known LNKD was doing earnings, some of the positions were 22x up.

2/6/2016 12:47:57 PM

Quote :

"just waiting for the right time to dump more in at this point"

Haha, yeah. Was debating throwing in my whole 2016 roth contribution two weeks ago, but got busy with work.

2/6/2016 11:33:48 PM

I sold my TSLA position and bought puts at 120 and 100 strike. Reasoning being if it goes to 110 I'll make 2.5x and cover the cost of the 100 strike put. If it goes to 70, I'll make about 30x on the 100 put and 5x on the 120.

It could already be priced as disaster, so I may just be throwing money away. Seems like a good gamble though, and lots of interest around the 100 mark.

2/9/2016 4:00:03 PM

Not looking too good.

2/10/2016 8:59:07 PM

Definitely not. It looks like I'll be lucky to have 20% of what I put in.

2/10/2016 11:50:51 PM

Made 25% on my GoPro stock over the last two weeks! Also trying out Robinhood. Pretty handy app.

2/17/2016 12:10:02 PM

Hitler finds out about negative interest rates: https://vimeo.com/65679960?ref=tw-share

2/18/2016 7:35:47 PM

Any recommendations for a trading platform for beginners? I've been meaning to start learning/doing, just haven't yet. But I need to get on it.

3/10/2016 9:59:30 AM

Yeah get Robinhood on Android or iOS and throw a couple hundred dollars in there and start messing around. Completely free and real easy to set up.

3/10/2016 10:09:30 AM

^yep that's what i've been doing the last ~4 months...it's easy to use and straightforward.

3/10/2016 12:30:18 PM

Thanks. Got it last week, threw $500 on there, did a little reading, took a $150 gamble on a low, but somewhat volatile stock (X) with some recent good news, and one-week later, I'm out 7.6% up. Or $11.08.

[Edited on March 17, 2016 at 9:49 AM. Reason : /]

3/17/2016 9:48:33 AM

Yeah I have about $550 on there now for messing around. I'm currently up 30% on Square, 21% on Cisco, 13% on Apple, and 21% on GoPro. Biggest loss is some Twitter stocks down 3% since I picked it up.

3/17/2016 9:52:47 AM

Man glad I bought a bunch of square a while back. I'm up 71%

3/31/2016 3:18:28 PM

This might as well be an online poker thread. No one loses!

3/31/2016 5:52:04 PM

Hah, ah the poker thread.... I sold my rimm at a loss last year and can't find the damn cost basis to do my taxes.

4/1/2016 1:22:41 AM

I've got several positions that are currently unrealized losses. Been a tough year for pharma so far, hoping for a bit of a bounceback on next earnings cycle, if not I'll probably go ahead and take the hit and move on.

Broke just to the good side of even on my latest apple position. Dumped it right before the feds dropped their case so I missed that little bump, but not going to sweat it. Moved that money over to GOOG, at the $740 I got it at that may end up being a loser.

4/1/2016 2:16:25 AM

watch XIV(short near term VIX futures). Anytime spx sells off, it is a great buy. Short vol has been the trade of the last 100 years as long as you can bear the blips. Want proof? Take a look at the price history vxx including reverse stock splits. $1k invested in VXX (long vol) in 2005 is worth $2 today while $1k invested in a product like XIV would be worth close to 20k, yes that's with 2008. Again just have to be willing to add when there is a significant drawdown in the market. I bought it from $35 all the way down to $16 recently, meaning that i just finally crossed over into the black this month. Like I said super volatile, but it is a pure vol play and you don't have to worry about idiosyncratic bs and headline watching with individual stocks

[Edited on April 1, 2016 at 9:23 AM. Reason : ^^ who is your broker]

[Edited on April 1, 2016 at 9:24 AM. Reason : ^ i think its going to get worse for pharma. Esp with the election coming ]

4/1/2016 9:17:34 AM

Yeah, pharmaceuticals may have a tough year next year, but I don't think the current election cycle will do much to damage them in particular. For all the rhetoric about income inequality and Medicare for all there really hasn't been that much talk about price fixing or anything really injurious to their margins. Hell, if we really do get something close to single payer without price caps on drugs first it'll be huge for pharma.

4/1/2016 4:37:01 PM

^^

TD Waterhouse -> Scottrade

Bought it over a decade ago and my account has been closed with td for quite some time.

Any of you guys bullish on Citi or BOA?

4/2/2016 1:57:56 AM

I own some BAC, wouldn't say I'm bullish on it though. They announced a pretty decent sized stock buyback recently which pretty much never hurts.

4/2/2016 7:52:16 AM

I'm not bullish on BOA at all.

1) Their ROE is well below industry as a whole
2) Their management is poor (frequent reorgs and entire business strategy reboots multiple times a year)
3) They have heavy exposure to oil on their books, which doesn't seem like it'll be back up any time soon.

Since equity usage is inefficient, leadership can't provide clear direction across either consumer or commercial, and since they're highly leveraged it'd be hard for me to say BOA is a good buy.

4/5/2016 9:51:43 AM

^ good points. Another factor for me that is less technical and more emotional is waiting until the presidential election is complete. If Bernie continues to gain traction on his message of anti-banks and anti-Wall St. it could be a big hit to the banking industry. Even if he doesnt win he will still force Hillary to move in this direction.

4/5/2016 10:36:37 AM

Eh, once Hillary gets past the primaries she'll move towards the center, not to the left. No way she's tough on the banks.

4/6/2016 7:03:06 PM

I thought I had a shitty year with the market last year. Then I got my tax statements. Apparently I was up 37% for the year and now owe quite a bit for damn capital gains.

Only thing I missed on was SQ. sold my position at +15% two weeks before they got the huge bump from the loan announcement. Doh.

Oh and fuck Twitter . Got out before the bloodbath ranking in the fall, but still took my only loss on them.

4/10/2016 2:12:19 PM

You've got to be fucking kidding me? What kind of dumb humble brag the fuck is that? You thought you had a shitty year but were up 37%? It doesn't count when it was only $1000 in your stupid little dick account you asshole.

4/10/2016 11:00:21 PM

Lol

4/11/2016 7:19:04 PM

^^Huh? Just an honest assessment of my year, which didn't seem very good until tax time. There was so much insane volatility, it felt like a rollercoaster. Where'd you even come up with $1000?

Back on the topic, I bailed on most of my positions after the Chinese dumps recovered in January. Currently only holding APPL and NFLX along with a couple of index and blended funds and my company stock. APPL I'll continue to hold onto, I think there's still a huge upside whenever they announce their Auto strategy. NFLX I'm just hoping to get back to even with, but they are really overvalued and the balance sheet and growth numbers aren't looking good.

I've got 55% sitting in cash waiting on the next slide. I think 2016 is going to see more bloodletting across the board and very little upside.

4/11/2016 10:22:17 PM

Post your statement, bro.

4/12/2016 5:50:50 AM

Thinking out loud here about covered calls.

If I'm holding dividend paying stocks and don't see any reason over the intermediate term for why I would sell, why wouldn't I sell covered calls against the strategy provided the strikes have a little bit of time premium? If the stock moves sideways or down I win. If it moves up then I just close when there is no time premium left and I'm out the in/out commission.

Granted, if I tried this every month over a long and strong bull market then the commissions would eat me up, but I'm talking about when the technical analysis and the "news" would tend to point to a pause or maybe a bit of selling on something I'm intending to hang on to?

4/13/2016 10:26:42 PM

A buy-write strategy? Classic way to juice returns from dividend paying large cap stocks that don't move much.

4/14/2016 10:45:14 AM

z

[Edited on April 15, 2016 at 1:21 AM. Reason : Z]

4/15/2016 1:17:19 AM

Shit, should have bought more amazon instead of getting into some Google.

4/29/2016 6:33:09 AM

I'm now 50% real estate, 5% s&p 500 index fund, 20% bonds, 2% options and the rest cash.

Quote :

"This might as well be an online poker thread. No one loses!"

I had a huge loss with the TSLA position I mentioned above, though I am net positive for the year. I got a 5x bump from AAPL Put bought 5 minutes before closing that was priced right. To keep the poker theme going, I bet outside my units and lost.

Quote :

"I'm not bullish on BOA at all."

The options market has considerable activity for Calls expiring Jan 2017. Maybe in case Hillary is elected? https://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=BAC&date=1484870400

^ AMZN I couldn't make any positions work, it seemed like a loss no matter how I sliced it, but a straddle would have worked.



[Edited on April 29, 2016 at 12:16 PM. Reason : a]

4/29/2016 12:15:18 PM

thoughts on an entry point on a new AAPL position? they have had a bad month but I am thinking that around $94 is a good price to buy some more shares. can someone smarter than me confirm or deny this?!

5/3/2016 12:21:41 PM

http://www.indra.com/cgi-bin/spikes-8-ball

Hopefully the new iPhone is the bee's knees and the car doesn't make them into a joke.

Spend $137 dollars and if it goes up to a price of $130 by January, you make about $1000 https://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=AAPL&strike=120.00

Low risk, High reward.



[Edited on May 3, 2016 at 2:14 PM. Reason : a]

5/3/2016 2:10:09 PM