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Lost $8000 this month !

dun use metastock (altho would sure like to try it someday!), but concur: a few of my watched counters are beginning to show signs of coming to life again.

at this stage tho, wld personally rather buy at a higher px on a 'surer' signal, rather than risk being in the below-mentioned 5% of herd. lol.

wait and see. market will decide. good luck to us all! :)

scotty, it's ok. what's lost can be made back. it's only money after all. may be good to sit out the last leg and prep for bear next year tho. best chance to pick up all the good blues. :)

 

a few of my metastock systems, which i use quite often to scan, signal me for a potential buy tomolo provided certain conditions are met. interesting!

 

Anyway... I'm out of the market now. Basically wiped out a few months of my salary in the last 3 weeks. 

 

hey mister kilroy, since you're a value investor, name ya one counter, tell me what you think of it? easttech.

hahahha cashiertan, that's more like a kidnapper method! ya know, where the guy surrounds himself with a ring of people so that the police can't get him? keke.

digression, sharks do hunt in pairs/small groups you know. great whites. they use one as a decoy and the other/others to whack the victims. >~<

 

*I think my trading style has been the what elf mentioned. not the fastest and not the slowest. let the fastest take the hits and risk and the slowest ppl behind buy from me when i sell. Maybe the front got sharks and the back got sharks, those in middle will die last. lol

 

think abt it, my trading style has been the what elf mentioned. not fastest and not the slowest. let the fastest take the hits and risk and the slowest ppl behind buy from me when i sell.

 

asleep, lol, agreed. its what i like to call the shark theory: ie, if there's a group of ppl swimming and the shark is after them, ya don't gotta be the fastest, just gotta NOT be the slowest. haha.

what i meant by herd mentality: just because 'everyone' says "chiong ah!" doesn't mean you follow and just jump blindly. just because someone 'in the know' recommends a 'hot tip' doesn't mean you don't do your research and just follow. investment doesn't work that way. so a definite no-no to this definition of herd mentality. that's what i mean by one must understand what one is putting his/her money in.

as for not being the first 5%--depends. it all boils down to individual style. would say that a value investor totally doesn't fall under this definition at all..

k back to wk, cheers! good that you're starting young, and yea, same mentality. value investing is not for now, cos the returns are too slow too long for the capital i have. necessitates a certain amt of risk in order to hit min sum required for financial indep.  

 

asleep,  here's all the best to your 'free style' fighting spirit. : )    May your GenX/GenY generation prosper as well.

 

the crocs usually pick off the weak ones. The stronger ones will then cross to greener grasslands and then multiply.

Quite similar to stock market.

 

Elfin, I will have to disagree and the herd mentality aspect. Safety in numbers is always the best. But make sure you are in the 10-15% of the herd. Do not try to be the first 5% though. For example, when a herd of buffalo cross a river with crocodiles, normally the first batch like say 20% will remain unscathed or maybe a few casualties from the leading buffalos (first 5%). After the 20%, the crocs will recover from their shock and start picking their targets and attacking them.

Sounds silly? Haha, but that's what I think.

 

Kilroy, actually if I have the resources, I will take on a slightly longer aspect. But currently, I am still schooling. I do not have the capital required for long term investing. My strategy and money management have been worked out. I just need time to do back testing, and I will do it after my exams.

Actually I've only been trading since this July, and I made a decent percentage gain. Luckily my system stopped me out from having major losses these past 1-2 months.

In the mean time, I will be busy upgrading myself with books about TA and FA. I strongly believe a combination of both will be better than being a purist. Its like those freestyle fighting competition for example, UFC. The best players are always those who know different fighting styles, such as range attacks and grapples, so whatever situation they are thrown in, they will know how to react.

 

I guess the end state in a simplier term to most is - Whatever strategy/ies you have employed and if it makes money, you scored 10/10.

How about this.  Whatever strategy/ies you have employed and if it makes money CONSISTENTLY, you score 10/10.   : )

So here's said, I am not bias towards my way of investing.  *wink*

 

asleep,  I dont have to become one as I am one. : )  I have the patience and the resources to help me with the fundamentals.  I dont bet on the market, I pay in return to reap profits.

If short term trading is what you want, thats your prerogative and its nothing bad if you have your strategies and moolah mgmt worked out.

I see a little contradiction in which you say but don't want to challenge it.  You mentioned the stock market has been going up from 1920 until now (with all the natural disasters, inflations factored in) so why take a short term view if the long term proved to be a winner?

 

 

lol. cmi. i'm not a long term value investor myself. i live and breathe short term, esp as i  know first hand how markets can be manipulated. and i've consistently done better trading than holding. the entire piece i wrote below was from a value investor pt, which as i stated at the start, was not my own personal stand.

altho, just cos it's not my personal stand doesn't mean i can't see from its pt of view. must always keep open minded (but not so open your brains fall out!) ahhahahaha. :P

aiyah, at end, live and let live. the market decides the winners and losers. we're just the players. :)

yah. shorting is good for traders because it allows ya to play both ups and downs. must take care to understand what one is doing tho. herd mentality is the worst thing to follow.

 

hullo! good to know you're still a-walkin'. haha.

nope, not in warrants anymore; locked in all of 'em little ones before i left. haha. am hunting calls now tho, but at strictly low, low levels. doesn't hit my strike, i don't buy.

asterisk's my kid bro lah, not my pet... he's doing ok, last exam right now. muhahahahahhaa.

i'm an elf! what do little elves like hoarding best? Gold!!

heehee. i know good for damn short term trading, unfortunately working now, so i only go for longer trends since can't always watch. sigh.

i dun think it'll be gloomy, i just think it'll depends on whether one has funds to buy at the downturns. Feddie and Bernie are caught! the elfie bets on a cut!! any takers? :P

(don't ask me 50 or 25 tho.)

eeee....you lucky bug. *envy* Alaska. sigh. one of the must see places before i konk. ahaha.

 

Like what elfin had written, the strategy is a long term one. And judging from the the stock market from 1920s in the states till now, it is going up and will remain so with the increasing population. However, blue chips do row over and let younger and more promising newcomers takeover.

For my case, I play on a shorter term basis. I do not want to plan for something and wait for the returns in 5-6 years, provided if the company does not have some sudden crisis and it drops to oblivion. Natural disasters do happen and by the time you pull out, it might just be the same price the value investor bought. By adding the time and inflation factors into play, that particular value investor will lose out.

Instead of planning and waiting for the stock to bottom out, why not look for companies which are fundamentally weak and short them as the tide is changing now. There's one book called the art of shorting by Anne something, which aims for fundamentally weak companies to short (No TA was taught in the book). It uses similar approaches to long term investing. Anyway, in order to really go into depth about FA, these people actually hire PIs to investigate the company, check their balance sheets in detail, talk to the people of the company, etc.


The key about long term investing is patience. The investor knows that the company is strong period, but when will the price start climbing is the main issue. My psychological profile and nature rules me out as a long term investor, therefore I cannot participate in that aspect.

I wish you well in becoming one. Cheers!

 

My legs are still straight up. :)  How are your warrants holding and pet asterik going?

Short term trading is good for now esp during the consolidation and ranging period (momentum) which I think has started and I have seen lotsa turns on the technical front.

A gloomy Chrissy?  I dunno. Am looking to next week for the payroll and ISM numbers.  That will give an indication to the Fed as to what he might want to do with the rates. 63% bets on 50 basis pts cut which will be good for the market to go excite bull. 25 basis pts is expected but the drawdown will be hard felt on the stock markets.

I am lookin for a long hols on Jan - probably visit the glacier in Alsaka one last time before the whole thing melts and collapse.  :)

 

heya, kilroy doing ok i believe? :)

yea. article is written from a strictly value investor's point of view. so speaking from that stand (note: my normal nature is to trade short term, and not value; not now at least):

in first place, you'd not put everything into the market at one shot, since value investing necessarily means slow dollar cost averaging.

you'd not buy just because everyone is buying. bull or bear,  your strategy would remain the same: LONG TERM (think 10 years), based on the business and not the stock price. Based on fundamentals like NAV, PE ratio, ROE, div yield. It's a very strict set of rules, and at the start, one buys if and only if all these fundamentals are satisfied (a pure value investor would buy only at share px ~1/3-1/2 of NAV. not 2x, 3x as traders would).

thereafter it's a matter of rolling in the dividends year on year, to reinvest each time, as long as the fundamentals hold. a slow, steady and solid way of playing the market. advantage: you last longer. in bears and volatile downs, you make more. disadvantage: you make less in crazy ralles.

but then, the aim of a value investor is long term, it's not to catch all these crazy roller coasters.

in fact, the coming downturn in 08 presents the perfect chance to build up such a portfolio.

assuming one's still alive after all these downs tho... of bulls and bears: sudden rampaging bulls bring the gold rush of adrenaline, but sudden marauding bears leave a wake of red blood and white crysanthemums.

so it all boils down to a question of how one survives the transition between the bulls and the bears, the bears and the bulls.  

 

I seriously don't think that the person doing the cartwheel will 'hope'. The word 'Hope' is out of the equation for value investors.  'Unless he plans to hold on to a few years' - Value investors takes long term approach and they typically buy the business with value rather then based on the stock price.  One needs to understand the writer investment strategy before putting into pen a fair comment on his action.

 

Some people are very optimistic even though the bear market seems to be here for the time being. That's good. I wonder if he had bought that shares and it dropped 50% to 60% of its original value, would he still be any cartwheels?

Unless he plans to hold on to a few years and hope that the shares he bought will make a come back, I really doubt he will be smiling much.