Overlords Investment Conclave [OIC] Recruitment Thread

[Isgrimnur]

My buddy who knows much more than I do on the subject says I should have my money in a bank that's too big to fail, and that Chase is the biggest. Is it smart to be in a too big to fail bank?

Do you mean cash deposits or investing in the stock? JPM is fine as a bank to put your money in. However, if you you're looking to put in over $250K, you probably want to talk to a financial advisor.

If you mean the stock, it's just off an all time high in mid-July. Still one of the best bank stocks.

I'm talking about having cash deposits under $250k, and a certain worry about access to safety deposit boxes too. My current bank isn't one of the too big to fail banks. I've also got a Schwab account just for being able to use the debit card overseas and get ATM fee refunded. I'm glad I'm not a trader trying to use a Schwab account today.

Cash deposits under 250k, as long as the bank is FDIC insured, are protected whether or not the bank is too big to fail.

Or NCUA for credit unions.

[Isgrimnur]

My buddy who knows much more than I do on the subject says I should have my money in a bank that's too big to fail, and that Chase is the biggest. Is it smart to be in a too big to fail bank?

Do you mean cash deposits or investing in the stock? JPM is fine as a bank to put your money in. However, if you you're looking to put in over $250K, you probably want to talk to a financial advisor.

If you mean the stock, it's just off an all time high in mid-July. Still one of the best bank stocks.

I'm talking about having cash deposits under $250k, and a certain worry about access to safety deposit boxes too. My current bank isn't one of the too big to fail banks. I've also got a Schwab account just for being able to use the debit card overseas and get ATM fee refunded. I'm glad I'm not a trader trying to use a Schwab account today.

Cash deposits under 250k, as long as the bank is FDIC insured, are protected whether or not the bank is too big to fail.

I wonder what that means though? If a bank fails do the bank facilities close until they get picked up by a bigger bank? Do you temporarily not have access to your funds or safety deposit boxes?

What about money market accounts?

Say goodbye to Colonial Bank.

Troubled Colonial BancGroup will be bought by rival BB&T Friday, the government said after state regulators closed the bank whose assets had been frozen by a federal judge.

The Montgomery, Ala., bank, which has 346 branches spread across Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Nevada, and Texas, is the sixth largest bank failure in U.S. history and by far the largest failure of 2009.

With $25 billion in assets and $20 billion in deposits, Colonial is 100 times larger than the typical bank to have failed this year. BB&T (BBT, Fortune 500) will buy $22 billion of Colonial's assets, as well as its deposits and branches, leaving the remaining assets in the hands of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Did I mention that my work project for the last 18 months has been working with them??

[Pyperkub]

That article appears to be from 2009?

[Isgrimnur]

Most recently...

On Friday, April 26, 2024, Republic First Bank dba Republic Bank (“Republic Bank”) was closed by the Pennsylvania Department of Banking and Securities. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was named Receiver. No advance notice is given to the public when a financial institution is closed. Fulton Bank, National Association (N.A.), Lancaster, PA, assumed substantially all deposit accounts and substantially all the assets.
...
The full balance of all deposit accounts has been transferred to Fulton Bank, N.A.

You may continue to use your checks and ATM/Debit card. Direct deposits like paychecks and social security benefits will continue as usual.
...
If You Had a Loan
You should continue to make payments, including escrow payments, as usual; the terms of your loan will not change.

If your loan is currently in process or you had a line of credit, contact your loan officer.
...
Safe Deposit Boxes
You will have access to your safe deposit boxes during normal business hours. Any changes will be communicated by Fulton Bank, N.A.

[Isgrimnur]

That article appears to be from 2009?

That's because it is.

[em2nought]

Thanks for the replies.

[LordMortis]

Fed cuts by 50 basis points. Bad news is good news so the market is rejoicing. I'm going to lose a bit of covered call here. I'm OK with that. I can use some more liquidity even if I don't get market rates. I will have to start re-evaluating my growing TBill and CD positions. Not sure how yet.

[Isgrimnur]

[TheMix]

I have some change in my pocket. I could probably get them to $26...

[LordMortis]

I have some change in my pocket. I could probably get them to $26...

In equity or debt depending on if you gave or loaned it to them.

[TheMix]

I have some change in my pocket. I could probably get them to $26...

In equity or debt depending on if you gave or loaned it to them.

It's $1, I'm not too worried.

[Isgrimnur]

Federal judge blocks largest supermarket merger in history

A federal judge in Oregon blocked Kroger’s proposed $25 billion tie-up with Albertsons, ruling that the largest merger in US supermarket history would limit competition and harm consumers.
,,,
The merger, announced in 2022, sought to combine the fifth and tenth largest retailers in the country. The companies own dozens of grocery chains, including Safeway, Vons, Harris Teeter and Fred Meyer.
...
Kroger and Albertsons employ mostly unionized workforces and said they wanted to merge to be more competitive against non-union giants such as Walmart, Amazon and Costco. The grocers also face increased pressure from Aldi, the fast-growing German discount supermarket chain.

The merger would accelerate “our position as a more compelling alternative to larger and non-union competitors,” Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said when the deal was announced in 2022. Kroger committed to lowering grocery prices by $1 billion following the merger.

But Judge Adrienne Nelson rejected that argument.

In her ruling, she said that supermarkets are “distinct from other grocery retailers” and are not direct competitors to Walmart, Amazon and other companies that sell a wider range of goods. The merger would eliminate head-to-head competition between Albertsons and Kroger, potentially raising prices for consumers, she said in the ruling.

[LordMortis]

That is strange to me as Kroger is most expensive of the Big Box grocers and has been for several years. I even dared to step foot in a WalMart not that long ago and found them to be 'meh' on pricing and went back to Meijer as my primary grocer. Aldi is my second when I don't care about off brand purchases. BJs (closer to me though not as good of version of Costco) is my go to choice for bulk dry goods for as long as I'll have a membership. I watch Kroger for an occasional supercheap Kroger coupon event on a couple of things and that's about it. I think denying Kroger are competing with big box general marts is just an excuse or at least that's what it would be around here. Though I've never seen an Albertson's. OtOH, I know the Kroger said it would allow them to leverage pricing and I think that's a crock. As I said before, they are the most expensive of the large retail grocers around here, possibly because they have a zillion locations and that makes for a lot of overhead. It makes them convenient, but if convenience over pricing was that important, then more people would just continue to pay to ship to their house.

[Scraper]

I recently made the decision to learn how to invest in the stock market. By that I don't mean a 401k or mutual fund. I mean actually researching stocks and buying and selling based on my own decisions. I'm not going to start big. More than likely I will deposit $500 or so (I would keep it to my disposable income for that month) into a something like ETrade and see how I do over the course of a couple of months.

I sit at a desk with a computer all day and for all intents and purposes I am my own boss, so I have plenty of time to read up on things and monitor the market during the day. I have a separate pension and mutual fund that I will continue to fund that won't be a part of this. I'm also not going into this looking to get rich or earn a living, I really just want to see if I can learn how to invest in the market and create some extra wealth.

With all of that said, does anyone have any pointers that they would give a total novice?

[LawBeefaroni]

Make sure your account has zero-fee trades. I assume etrade does. With smaller accounts fees would eat up gains.


Don't be afraid to cut losses. Pick a loss limit and stick with it. Especially in the learning stage where you want to develop good habits.

[Scraper]

Make sure your account has zero-fee trades. I assume etrade does. With smaller accounts fees would eat up gains.


Don't be afraid to cut losses. Pick a loss limit and stick with it. Especially in the learning stage where you want to develop good habits.

Yes Etrade is 0 fee. I already set up an account with them but I haven't funded it yet because they make you wait for test deposits into your funding account.

Are there any websites that I should be reading on a daily basis to help make decisions (other than the obvious ones)?

[LordMortis]

WRT income equities. If the a dividend is too good to be true, then everybody knows something is wrong but you. At the same time be careful of the publishing experts. They're not acting as fiduciaries. They are looking out for themselves, not for the consumers of their time on media.

Really, if I were to do it all over again, until I learned how to really understand an individual equity, I'd stick with the broadest of market ETFs, like SPY or VTI. Lord knows I have not out earned either from some pretty big bad moves that outweigh all of my good ones combined (unrelated to broad market ETFs)

If/when you eventually get to larger sums of money and start working with derivatives. Don't sell call on things you have no intention of divesting, no matter how much upside you think you may getting. Individual equities tend to move all at once, very quickly in one direction or another, often on earnings reports, which is something you should learn for equities you are interested. First the published books and second the earnings call.

Finally, I don't know nothing, so don't pay attention to me...

[Scraper]

WRT income equities. If the a dividend is too good to be true, then everybody knows something is wrong but you. At the same time be careful of the publishing experts. They're not acting as fiduciaries. They are looking out for themselves, not for the consumers of their time on media.

Really, if I were to do it all over again, until I learned how to really understand an individual equity, I'd stick with the broadest of market ETFs, like SPY or VTI. Lord knows I have not out earned either from some pretty big bad moves that outweigh all of my good ones combined (unrelated to broad market ETFs)

If/when you eventually get to larger sums of money and start working with derivatives. Don't sell call on things you have no intention of divesting, no matter how much upside you think you may getting. Individual equities tend to move all at once, very quickly in one direction or another, often on earnings reports, which is something you should learn for equities you are interested. First the published books and second the earnings call.

Finally, I don't know nothing, so don't pay attention to me...

Yeah like I said I'm not doing this for retirement. I have separate safe funds for those. So I don't think an ETF is what I'm after. I also don't want to just lose money every month. So my hope is that I can learn how to be a smart investor while using money that I won't really miss If I end up being dumb or unlucky.

[LawBeefaroni]

Make sure your account has zero-fee trades. I assume etrade does. With smaller accounts fees would eat up gains.


Don't be afraid to cut losses. Pick a loss limit and stick with it. Especially in the learning stage where you want to develop good habits.

Yes Etrade is 0 fee. I already set up an account with them but I haven't funded it yet because they make you wait for test deposits into your funding account.

Are there any websites that I should be reading on a daily basis to help make decisions (other than the obvious ones)?

I prefer to find my own news rather than relying on a financial news agregator. I turn on CNBC every morning to get a sense for the days markets but do my own research.

Get to know fundamentals. Both corporate (business sector, revenue, profit, region, etc) and market (shares outstanding, P/E, technicals, etc).

[stessier]

And remember that low cost index funds are going to beat you 99 times out of 100.

[Carpet_pissr]

And remember that low cost index funds are going to beat you 99 times out of 100.

Not to mention most professionals.

[Isgrimnur]

Why risk failing to beat the market when you can just play the market as a whole?

[LordMortis]

Why risk failing to beat the market when you can just play the market as a whole?

To learn. To gamble. To have a shot at great wealth. To prove you're the smartest person in the room. To support companies you believe it. To not support companies you don't want to have support.

[LordMortis]

S&P down 2.5% in the last less than two hours on an already small down week. Since TD turned to Schwab the news that just flowed is no longer there. I wonder what's up, but not enough to go looking for answers.

Edit: Unexpected rate cut, presumed proactive. I wonder why they would be bracing for inflation. Also, I thought you raised rates when inflation is the primary concern.

Edit: Nearly 3%. Time to start trickling up my index funds, I guess.

[LordMortis]

So I'm doing some math and I'm sitting on close to 40% cash and short term cash equivalents (not inclusive of my 401k/IRA). I've been letting stuff slip away as the market goes up. I put a small amount back into SPY/VTI for pull backs but apparently way too small. I'm looking around and the broad indexes are too much for me think about. I mean 4-4.5% in CDs/TBills/etc... is nice but my cash pile is beginning to feel like I'm doing something wrong. However, at this point in life stock picking is too dangerous for my nest egg that needs to outlive me. So I look at something a bit more focused and the SPY sectors I feel good about are dominated by things I don't want to touch. Like now seems like a good time for consumer discretionary but the sector is 40% TSLA and AMZN. No thank you. Can I take the field? Utilities? CEG is literally already up 50% on the year one month in. Financials and Real Estate both just had a run and forced me out with covered calls. I'm already in Energy and Staples and don't want more exposure there. Industrial and Materials seem like a gamble at least for the next two years, probably longer and gambling is not what I want to do at this point.

If I get a new roof, a new car, and have someone look at my house foundation this year, I'll likely feel a lot different about my cash situation. Maybe that's what got me hoarding. That and politics.

Maybe it's time to finally break down and learn how to get an advisor. I'm much more risk adverse than I was even five years ago but being so cash heavy feels almost like I'm losing money. I'm caught watching things like a storm is a brewing with the myths of AI investing and shitcoin unicorns driving investments while watching them continue to rise. I wish SPY would have never taken on TSLA. That really is setting a stage.

[pr0ner]

I wish SPY would have never taken on TSLA. That really is setting a stage.

TSLA is in the S&P 500. Why wouldn't they be a part of SPY?

Also, why don't you just buy some broad marked index funds and call it a day if you don't want to sit on cash? I don't get why you continue to fret about covered calls and options all the time.

[raydude]

I recently made the decision to learn how to invest in the stock market. By that I don't mean a 401k or mutual fund. I mean actually researching stocks and buying and selling based on my own decisions. I'm not going to start big. More than likely I will deposit $500 or so (I would keep it to my disposable income for that month) into a something like ETrade and see how I do over the course of a couple of months.

I sit at a desk with a computer all day and for all intents and purposes I am my own boss, so I have plenty of time to read up on things and monitor the market during the day. I have a separate pension and mutual fund that I will continue to fund that won't be a part of this. I'm also not going into this looking to get rich or earn a living, I really just want to see if I can learn how to invest in the market and create some extra wealth.

With all of that said, does anyone have any pointers that they would give a total novice?

Number 1 important rule: be honest with yourself about what you want to get out of investing.

Learning, gambling, having a shot at great wealth, supporting companies you believe in, and not supporting ones you don't are all reasons and you can probably find many more. They are not all mutually exclusive.

For example, you can still learn about the stock market even if you just invest in the S&P 500. You can have a shot at great wealth by either holding for the long run (which I consider holding for at least 1 year) or by gambling and trying to time the market (anything less than a year). One of those options requires more work up front (research) but then after that you just periodically check and let your money work for you. The other option, IMHO, is more stressful and requires you to pay attention weekly or monthly. And in my opinion feels too much like work.

Put together a few short sentences stating what you want to get out of investing to help yourself remember why you're doing it and whether you're straying from the path.

In my case, I started investing in 1995 after hearing a bunch of co-workers talk about the DRIP stock in Coke. That got me interested in finding out about investing, and because my co-workers were in DRIPs and were more of the "buy and hold" investor that got me thinking about investing to build long-term wealth and not worry too much about timing the market. So my goals were: invest in stocks for the long term and build wealth by investing in good companies. Because of that I started reading books like "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" and "The Intelligent Investor".

As long as I stuck by my goals I was satisfied with my returns and wasn't too stressed out. But when I forgot them and did things like: invest based on a tip on a forum without researching how the company made money, or invest based on a suggestion from my advisor(when I worked for a company that had retirement accounts with Merril Lynch) or tried to time the market, I was either stressed out, lost money, or stuck with a lame stock that didn't do anything (the price barely moved more than 3% annually). Or a combination of the three.

My way of investing may not be your preferred way. In fact I will say my way is pretty boring. When others talk about shorting a stock or making trades in dollar stocks or waiting for the right time to buy in or sell, I got nothing. In fact, if someone were to ask me what's going on with my portfolio I'd say the most interesting thing is I sold some Tesla and Exxon to buy NVIDIA in January. Other than that I'm just periodically adding money and buying SPY (the S&P 500 index).

[stessier]

I wish SPY would have never taken on TSLA. That really is setting a stage.

TSLA is in the S&P 500. Why wouldn't they be a part of SPY?

Also, why don't you just buy some broad marked index funds and call it a day if you don't want to sit on cash? I don't get why you continue to fret about covered calls and options all the time.

Or is 500 is too few companies, go with the Russell 3000 or Wilshire 5000.

[LawBeefaroni]

I looked at my fund distribution and despite buying no NVDA myself, it makes up like 5% of my holdings. Possibly more.

[Pyperkub]

Why risk failing to beat the market when you can just play the market as a whole?

To learn. To gamble. To have a shot at great wealth. To prove you're the smartest person in the room. To support companies you believe it. To not support companies you don't want to have support.

Also, to invest in companies in an industry you know you understand the fundamentals of. Eg. I know tech much better than I know finance or health care...

[LawBeefaroni]

Interesting take:

The Dumbest Investment in the World Was Better Than Owning Safe [US] Treasurys

Investors who bought Argentina’s 100-year dollar bond were laughed at in 2017 for their naiveté in buying such a long bond from a serial defaulter. Sure enough, the country failed to pay after just three years.

But investors who stuck with the country are having the last laugh. The bonds they were given in the default, plus the fat coupons on the original century bond, are now worth more than the original investment. Not just that: They are worth far more than if the dollars had been invested in “safe” U.S. Treasurys.

I guess it depends on how much you value piece of mind and being able to sleep at night.

But what I see in the article are the seeds of "stability is overrated" and "Max profit from max risk & volatility".

[pr0ner]

Sounds just like crypto.