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Stock-Age: Stocks, Options and Dividends oh my!

Cloudy

Banned
Before I sign up for Zecco (been looking at that one and sharebuilder), anyone want to share their experiences with the company?
 

painey

Member
I managed to sell my TTWO shares today
I invested £1,000;

bought:
100 @ $14.38
55 @ $12.44

sold:
155 @ $16.14

Total after all commission charges, and most importantly, currency conversion:

£1,239.21

23.92% profit, in 1 month, 3 days. Im delighted :D My first trades ever.
 

koam

Member
painey said:
I managed to sell my TTWO shares today
I invested £1,000;

bought:
100 @ $14.38
55 @ $12.44

sold:
155 @ $16.14

Total after all commission charges, and most importantly, currency conversion:

£1,239.21

23.92% profit, in 1 month, 3 days. Im delighted :D My first trades ever.

Nice.

Feds are going to make their announcements tomorrow, i expect a huge drop in the Dow tomorrow.
 

koam

Member
Can someone quickly get me the price of NTDOY (not using the pink sheets site, that's 15 min delayed)?

Selling off everything today, i got huge spikes, 5% and 12%. My new account is active tomorrow.

also, does anyone know when Q3's financials come out?

P.S I was wrong about the drop, which is good cause it's letting me sell today :D
 

koam

Member
Miroku said:
Were you expecting fed rates to stay the same?

Just curious

I was expecting a drop, but i also thought the Dow would drop as well. I was wrong, everything has soared.
 
I share the same questions as Cloudy.

I follow my 401(k) pretty closely (made $811.19 just today!), but I'm starting to get too much into my savings account and I feel comfortable testing the waters with a grand or two. Is it worth it to buy stocks with that amount of money? Where should I go to start? I want to get more involved in this stuff, even if I could potentially lose a chunk of change in the learning process.
 
mrWalrus said:
This might not be a popular opinion but I suggest buying a book or two first. Here's a great one to get started with and might be the only one you need to begin being successful.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0471225347/?tag=neogaf0e-20

It's much more prudent to spend $50 and take your time rather than jumping in feet first with all your clothes on.

Sounds like a pretty good idea. I read a lot of reports on the market nearly everyday, but I don't have a firm grasp on how to get involved. Kind of like following baseball statistics without knowing how to hit a fastball.
 
Cloudy said:
No one answered my question about the best/cheapest brokerage account for newbz :\
Cheapest place if you plan to invest with margins is Interactive Brokers. Their commission is .005 per share, and they have easily the best interest rate on margins in the business.
 
BTW, for the people buying and selling short term, do you realize that any profit you make will be added to your income for tax purposes if you sell a stock while holding it for less than a year?

If a stock is sold for profit while being held at least 12 months, it is only taxed at the flat capital gains rate of 15%. Short term, added to your income, most people are looking at a tax rate of 28-33% since the profit is added on top of your salary.
 
koam said:
Can someone quickly get me the price of NTDOY (not using the pink sheets site, that's 15 min delayed)?

Selling off everything today, i got huge spikes, 5% and 12%. My new account is active tomorrow.

also, does anyone know when Q3's financials come out?

P.S I was wrong about the drop, which is good cause it's letting me sell today :D
Why are you selling though, after the fed just dropped the rate by 50 points? Historically, the market has gone up an average of 12.5% in the six months following a drop like todays.
 

Tarazet

Member
@ Mr. Stroke: If it helps to stabilize the credit issues long enough for the economy to recover, good. If it fails, VERY bad.
 

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."
mr stroke said:

Sounds like the Feds are taking the possibility of a large recession very seriously. If this fails, I agree with sonarret...a very bad recession would occur.

I'm just not comfortable with the idea that the stock shoots up as a result of people able to get into debt easier. It's really not a long term solution. We're in a 1920s mentality almost.

If we do have another crash, I'm sure someone will blame it on capitalism or some nonsense. The Federal Reserve needs to stop encouraging debt, and stop inflating our money by printing it all the damn time.
 
What would be the best route for me to go to get like 10 shares of something like Ford (yes i know how low it is)? I'm just entering my second year at university, and I want to start building a portfolio (i live in the US). Any advice would be great
 

koam

Member
Maxwell House said:
Why are you selling though, after the fed just dropped the rate by 50 points? Historically, the market has gone up an average of 12.5% in the six months following a drop like todays.

Because my account is getting canned since i'm opening a new account elsewhere. The transfer fee is $50 so i'd rather just sell since i don't have many shares. I buy and sell short term only. I average out to a bit over $100 a day in profit on top of my salary. With the new account, i'll be make $46 more per trade thanks to the low commision so that should bump my daily average to about $140. I'm aiming to make $150 daily by year end.
 

teh_pwn

"Saturated fat causes heart disease as much as Brawndo is what plants crave."

koam

Member
mikeybwright said:
What would be the best route for me to go to get like 10 shares of something like Ford (yes i know how low it is)? I'm just entering my second year at university, and I want to start building a portfolio (i live in the US). Any advice would be great

10 shares? That's like $85 total. You're never going to make money off that, you need a lot more than 10 shares, especially considering the cost of transactions. Go with at least 100, if you can't afford that (har har afford) get 50 shares.

You should realize that stocks under $10 aren't very volatile so you're going to keep those shares for a really really long time before you make a decent amount of money.
 
koam said:
PANL is awesome, bought them at $14.98 at this time yesterday, they're at $16.74 right now.

Currently, i'm up $300 with my holdings. Which isn't bad considering that 2 of them are brand new and the other two weren't so hot last week.

Overall
Initial investment: $6000.
Current Worth: $7500.
First investment: April 2007.
Change: +25% :D:D:D
Ouch, you are short term selling with that little? Commissions and taxes are going to eat up your profits, IMO.
 

koam

Member
Maxwell House said:
Ouch, you are short term selling with that little? Commissions and taxes are going to eat up your profits, IMO.

I'm at $8200 now. Commission fees are only $7 per trade. Taxes don't matter, you get taxed a percentile.
 

Cloudy

Banned
Maxwell House said:
Cheapest place if you plan to invest with margins is Interactive Brokers. Their commission is .005 per share, and they have easily the best interest rate on margins in the business.

I'm a newb. No margins!
 
koam said:
I'm at $8200 now. Commission fees are only $7 per trade. Taxes don't matter, you get taxed a percentile.
Yes, but short term trading, your profits will be added to your income, which means a hefty tax rate.

Capital gains on long term trades is only 15%.

If you want a much cheaper broker, go to www.interactivebrokers.com. It is only .005 per share per trade. Buying 200 shares would cost you $1.
 

koam

Member
Maxwell House said:
Yes, but short term trading, your profits will be added to your income, which means a hefty tax rate.

Capital gains on long term trades is only 15%.

If you want a much cheaper broker, go to www.interactivebrokers.com. It is only .005 per share per trade. Buying 200 shares would cost you $1.

True, but if i can make more money in short intervals of time, than less money over a long period of time, i'd rather deal with the heavier taxes. I'm also in canada, we have different rules here.
 
koam said:
True, but if i can make more money in short intervals of time, than less money over a long period of time, i'd rather deal with the heavier taxes. I'm also in canada, we have different rules here.
Well good luck. :)
 

Javaman

Member
koam said:
True, but if i can make more money in short intervals of time, than less money over a long period of time, i'd rather deal with the heavier taxes. I'm also in canada, we have different rules here.

Your investment is going to need to gain over 25% (plus any trading fees) in under a year just to break even. :lol Good luck with that. It just doesn't sound worth the high risk to me. You would be much better off settling for growth mutual funds and hanging onto them for a while. While not as "exciting" it's much more safe, and more likely to gain you more of a profit.

http://www.travismorien.com/FAQ/trading/futradersuccess.htm
Odean's study of stock traders
Terry Odean, then a grad student at the University of California at Berkeley, and his Professor Brad Barber researched the accounts of 10,000 discount-brokerage trading accounts between 1987 to 1993.
Later, Odean repeated this study on a much larger scale, in the repeat he examined the accounts of 66,465 households from 1991 to 1996. So in total, he looked at a huge number of accounts, and a vast number of trades. The conclusions from each study were virtually identical: trading hurts your wealth.

Odean found that as a group all amateur investors underperform the market due to higher than necessary trading costs. But the 20% of traders with the highest turnover underperformed the most. In the sample, while the market went up an annualised 17.1% over the period, the average investor/trader with a turnover of 80%pa returned 15.3%, but the 20% with the highest turnover, 283%pa on average, got only 10%pa.
This study was performed with the clients of a discount (non web) brokerage. How would the figures change for the ultra cheap Internet brokers?

According to Odean, not very much. Commissions were an important part of the reason why active traders had the worst performance, but the main bogeyman was the bid/ask spread. In fact Odean believes that traders as a group are now doing even worse than they did in the old discount brokerage days because turnover has increased even more.

Odean offers the following example: The average trade in his sample was roughly $13,000 in size. Trading through a discount broker, an investor might have paid $60 or so in commissions "round-trip," or $30 for the buy and $30 for the sale. But by Odean's estimate, the typical investor also lost a full 1% to the bid-ask spread -- or $130 on this typical $13,000 purchase.

If this investor switches to an online broker that makes trades for only $10, the "round-trip" cost of the trade falls to only $20 -- but the spread still amounts to a loss of $130, for a total transaction cost of $150.

No doubt $150 is cheaper than $190 but it's only around 21% less, not the 66% that investors might believe that he or she is saving. And even this 21% savings could be swallowed up if investors choose to change their behavior and trade more frequently as a result of the lower commissions.

As a matter of fact, Odean did find a tendency to trade more when traders switched to cheap web brokers. In the second study he examined the trading records of 1,600 traders that switched from discount telephone trading to deep discount web trading. He found that turnover increased by a third and traders doubled their exposure to "speculative" stocks. That is to say that telephone traders were twice as likely as web traders to buy large stocks, compared to web traders that on average concentrated more on small speculative stocks trading on the NASDAQ and other minor exchanges.

The most interesting finding of Odean's research is that traders underperform as a group even after taking out trading costs. On average, the stocks these traders sold outperformed the market, and those they bought underperformed the market. One year after each trade, the average investor wound up more than 9% poorer than if had he done nothing. Two years later, the results were even worse.

Also a fascinating point...

Another finding was that the traders in the group had a strong tendency to sell the wrong stocks. Odean says traders "strongly prefer to sell their winning investments and hold on to their losing investments, even though the winning investments they sell subsequently outperform the losers they continue to hold." Selling a loser amounts to admitting you have made a mistake. Traders hate that, they much prefer to sell stocks at a profit, which makes them feel like a winner, as a result traders systematically weeded out good stocks from their portfolios and retained poor ones.
 
i've got a question for all you stock types...so this fed rate cut is responsible for a lot of the big gains today...how long can we expect those gains to hold for? is stuff going to go up, then dive back down again sometime soon, or should we expect things to hold for awhile?
 

Javaman

Member
bggrthnjsus said:
i've got a question for all you stock types...so this fed rate cut is responsible for a lot of the big gains today...how long can we expect those gains to hold for? is stuff going to go up, then dive back down again sometime soon, or should we expect things to hold for awhile?

I'm betting that it'll likely fall around each of the ARM resets, falling more then it should due to fears then the actual loss. Worried people trying to play the daytrade game will likely jump out bringing the market lower then it really "should" be. Once that happens it'll probably be a good time to buy. (With long term investment in mind) Of course no-one knows for certain what will happen, but historically speaking the market always goes up over the long term.

If you really want to make some money, keep slapping money into a decent 401k or Roth mutual fund, especially while still young.
 
Javaman said:
I'm betting that it'll likely fall around each of the ARM resets, falling more then it should due to fears then the actual loss. Worried people trying to play the daytrade game will likely jump out bringing the market lower then it really "should" be. Once that happens it'll probably be a good time to buy. (With long term investment in mind) Of course no-one knows for certain what will happen, but historically speaking the market always goes up over the long term.
ARM reset?

edit: adjustable rate mortgage? so when does that happen...when do i sell is what i'm asking really
 

Javaman

Member
bggrthnjsus said:
ARM reset?
Adjustable Rate Mortgage. Even with the Feds cutting the interest rate, most people with ARM loans are still going to be paying a lot more per month for their mortgage over the next couple of months/years.
 

Javaman

Member
bggrthnjsus said:
ARM reset?

edit: adjustable rate mortgage? so when does that happen...when do i sell is what i'm asking really

No-one can answer that except you. Personally I'm staying in for the long haul. I've managed to sock away $78,000 in my 401k over a decade a couple hundred at a time and am looking forward to retiring a happy man in 30 years. (barring a global disaster or course)
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
Javaman said:
No-one can answer that except you. Personally I'm staying in for the long haul. I've managed to sock away $78,000 in my 401k over a decade a couple hundred at a time and am looking forward to retiring a happy man in 30 years. (barring a global disaster or course)

Too bad! Global disaster is certain!:|
 

boo7z

Member
Javaman said:
No-one can answer that except you. Personally I'm staying in for the long haul. I've managed to sock away $78,000 in my 401k over a decade a couple hundred at a time and am looking forward to retiring a happy man in 30 years. (barring a global disaster or course)

How about a national disaster, such as the collapse of Social Security? You are going to need to invest at a higher rate than that if you want to retire when you are 60.
 

Stele

Holds a little red book
boo7z said:
How about a national disaster, such as the collapse of Social Security? You are going to need to invest at a higher rate than that if you want to retire when you are 60.
None of us will be relying on social security for retirement. So if it collapses, then it collapses. A bigger problem is the continuing devaluation of the American dollar. But yeah, even if that guy can guarantee an annual return of 10% for the next 30 years, $78K will still only be $1.5 million in 30 years, which is not enough with current inflation and woefully inadequate with higher inflation (which is expected with the plummeting dollar).
 

Javaman

Member
boo7z said:
How about a national disaster, such as the collapse of Social Security? You are going to need to invest at a higher rate than that if you want to retire when you are 60.

Yeah, I think 60 may be a bit too ambitious. I'd be far better off aiming for the full blown retirement age of 67. If I let it ride without putting anything else in it and it grows at an average of 7% it'll be close to $900,000.
 

Javaman

Member
Stele said:
None of us will be relying on social security for retirement. So if it collapses, then it collapses. A bigger problem is the continuing devaluation of the American dollar. But yeah, even if that guy can guarantee an annual return of 10% for the next 30 years, $78K will still only be $1.5 million in 30 years, which is not enough with current inflation and woefully inadequate with higher inflation (which is expected with the plummeting dollar).

I think I can live with that.
 

Stele

Holds a little red book
Javaman said:
I think I can live with that.
Yeah, if you travel back in time 30 years from now. People in their 20s today will need 4-5 million to retire.*

*Assuming the dollar doesn't plummet to hell or you don't plan on kicking the bucket when you're 67, as social security and most company pensions assumed people would do back in the day.
 

koam

Member
Javaman said:
Your investment is going to need to gain over 25% (plus any trading fees) in under a year just to break even. :lol Good luck with that. It just doesn't sound worth the high risk to me. You would be much better off settling for growth mutual funds and hanging onto them for a while. While not as "exciting" it's much more safe, and more likely to gain you more of a profit.

You need to take a tax course pronto because your math is complete off. My best friend is a broker and I looked it up myself as well and can confirm this. I've also consulted someone I know who works in the taxation department.

First of all, you're not taxed at all on commission fees, this is why every single broker in existance gives you your book value. Your book value is the price you paid for a stock minus the commission.

Secondly, let's say you buy a stock at $5010 (at $10 commission) and you sell it at $5510 (again assume $10 commission). Your profit is $500. You're not taxed on $5500, you're taxed on HALF of the $500. The amount of that HALF of $500 that you're taxed on depends on your tax bracket.

So in a nutshell. You're only taxed on the profits you made. So if we look at my case. I started off with $6000 and now i'm at $8200. These are both book values. So 8200 - 6000 = $2200 in profit. I'm going to get taxed 40% (my tax bracket) on $1100. In the end, my profit is $1100 + 60% of $1100.
 

mrWalrus

Banned
just in case anyone didn't get a chance to see this in the Fed rate cut thread.

mrWalrus said:
This is the dollar index over the last year two years.

skydollar.jpg

http://quotes.ino.com/chart/?s=NYBOT_DX&v=w&w=15&t=l&a=4
 

Cloudy

Banned
Wow ING already dropped their rates on savings accounts. Might be a good time to jump on a high interest CD if you've been eyeing one...
 

FightyF

Banned
My dad has stuck with penny stock, relating to oil related start ups, and that has been doing well for him. The last one he bought at $0.60 at a high volume, and it went up to $2.00 in around a week. I find that more appealing than anything else. I'm surprised that more people aren't doing it...I'm sure there are good reasons, perhaps it's too risky and these could easily drop to nothing.
 
koam said:
So in a nutshell. You're only taxed on the profits you made. So if we look at my case. I started off with $6000 and now i'm at $8200. These are both book values. So 8200 - 6000 = $2200 in profit. I'm going to get taxed 40% (my tax bracket) on $1100. In the end, my profit is $1100 + 60% of $1100.
NM, I realized you are in Canada. :)
 
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