Octopus Overlords

Marketing. Budweiser still positions itself as America's beer. Other brands play up overseas sophistication. Marketing makes the economy go round.

In with a hefty initial chunk of DIS. Struggled mightily internally about the timing, but it looks like the media sector is really undervalued currently, even if the market as a whole seems relatively...'frothy'.

Like most of my other positions, I plan to sit on this one for several years.

Have I ever mentioned, "I hate change"

https://about.scottrade.com/updates/announcement.html

Scottrade and TD Ameritrade Coming Together as One

Dear Clients,

I am pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached for Scottrade to be acquired by TD Ameritrade. Separately, Scottrade Bank has reached a similar agreement with TD Bank Group.

Oy. My FGP is the gift that keep on taking.

SPY dips below 200. I'm pretty much down everywhere and in some cases badly and it's getting really hard not to dip into my new car savings to drop more money in when I am not ready. My resolve is definitely being tested.

I am very interested to see how the results of the election affect the market, short term. I wouldn't be surprised if much of this volatility we are seeing now is due to the shifts in poll results.

In related news:
"Stovall looked at the data for every presidential election going back to 1944 (FDR v. Dewey). If stocks rose in price from July 31 to October 31, the party that currently controlled the White House won the election 82% of the time."

The S&P 500 index has returned about -3% since August 1...

Small sample size - 17 elections, 14-3 record. No indications on how many of those were incumbent or successors on the ballot.

F is flirting with the $11.50 mark, making it really hard to both not spend my car savings and not invest in individual securities until I have a whole lot more in various large ETFs.

So far my resolve is holding....

Ugh. CVS drops another $10 this morning. $10! This is on the news of a Walgreems expansion that is now apparently set to "lock CVS out"

I have picked nothing but losers that looked like they had good long term futures at what I thought were good valuation pricing points. I am just dumb.

Makes it much easier to commit to nothing but indexes and such in the future. Every time I get temptation and tell myself "long term" I just need to see how much money I have essentially pissed away and how long it will take to earn back.

Hang in there!

"Even with the extremely weak retail pharmacy guidance issued by CVS, we are reiterating our $104 fair value estimate and wide moat rating for the firm, as we believe its own pharmacy benefit management segment is the true driver of value for the firm. CVS reported solid performance for its PBM segment, and management guided to a continuation of these results through 2017. We believe this segment is positioned well long term and will churn out significant economic profits over the next several years."

I'm not going anywhere but the individual securities I own (all which I the plan of holding for the long haul) are

F
FGP
CVS
FRT

All were nice dividend paying stocks with what appeared to be good futures and solid valuation at the time.

All have tanked, not just small loses, but are at brutal downs, even the ones I bought in slumps, except for my purchase of F at like 11.70, I think, earlier this year. The loss is both small and negated by dividend payments.

I will continue to hold them but they will be a reminder to me that I am currently down close to three months salary in my combined investments in to individual securities over the last three(ish? maybe less) years, whereas my investments in to broader EFTs have been combined to be a small gain. That pain will keep me from pursuing what I think I know/have learned, and don't/haven't, as I have a magic touch.

Don't buy dividends.

That said, I've been trading PBR for DUK lately. PBR had a nice run, have to love 2B2F in Brazil.

I'm getting beat up in NE but expiring covered calls have eased the blow.

LawBeefaroni wrote:Don't buy dividends.

Not any more. Or not individual securities (and by extension, no individual securities that pay dividends)

I'm still looking at saving enough in early 2017 (extended from October by virtue of my trying to concurrently save for my next car) to make my next purchases for my IRA, which will be focused on blending index funds with something like VYM, which is a sort of ETF for dividend paying companies. I guess it's sort of the exact opposite of not buying dividends.

After that, it's is probably time to start looking at how bond fund works and how to find a good index for those and how the scottrade interface will let me purchase them. My first research will probably be in to something like VBMFX. It's hard to say for sure. That can is down the road quite a ways from today.

LawBeefaroni wrote:Don't buy dividends.

Why? I mean, if everything else is equal, wouldn't buying a dividend stock be better than not?

The trick is that everything else isn't equal. A growth stock is unlikely to pay a dividend, for example.

Okay - put then a general admonition to not go for dividends seems unwarranted.

The company is either reinvesting their profits to expand the business, or they're paying the stockholders.

Isgrimnur wrote:The company is either reinvesting their profits to expand the business, or they're paying the stockholders.

They can do both.

stessier wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:The company is either reinvesting their profits to expand the business, or they're paying the stockholders.

They can do both.

I'm saying don't base your decision on the size of the dividend. There are a lot of bad reasons for a high yield.

If you really want dividends, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, look at all stocks with a yield >0 and then pick based on other factors.

So what's a good buy this morning? Got to earn back some money I invested in other "areas".

Maybe we could have a thread in the bargain bin?

em2nought wrote:So what's a good buy this morning? Got to earn back some money I invested in other "areas".

Maybe we could have a thread in the bargain bin?

Last night's panic has given way to cooler heads. DOW futures only down 200 points or so. You can contain some of your glee.

The big indices are all up almost 1% today. The big futures crashes all never materialized.

A lot of the downturn was priced in already over the last couple of weeks. It looked flash crash like to be honest. Meaning there was possibly a lack of liquidity in the futures market overnight and automated trading hit an 'air pocket'.

Got Jan 2018 $12 F calls on Monday. It was a long term bet on F but they're up 25% on this weird Trump Rally. It's hard not to take the quick money and move on, probably making the same bet at the same price in a few weeks.


GOOG/L is a little ouchy today though.

No one took my up on my 1.16 ask on those F options yesterday. Good thing, they're at 1.3 now. In the realm of 60% for the week.

Definitely not part of my plan but I'll take it.


Unexpected run in LLNW too. Very small position with a 1.6 cost basis there but I'll probably cash that out as well.

LawBeefaroni wrote:Don't buy dividends.

That said, I've been trading PBR for DUK lately. PBR had a nice run, have to love 2B2F in Brazil.

I'm getting beat up in NE but expiring covered calls have eased the blow.

Pfizer, MS, SCCO, DIS and XOM have all been decent buy and hold for me. All on DRIP.

Pyperkub wrote:

LawBeefaroni wrote:Don't buy dividends.

That said, I've been trading PBR for DUK lately. PBR had a nice run, have to love 2B2F in Brazil.

I'm getting beat up in NE but expiring covered calls have eased the blow.

Pfizer, MS, SCCO, DIS and XOM have all been decent buy and hold for me. All on DRIP.

No doubt. I'm going to guess that when you bought them you didn't pick them simply because they had the highest/high yield. Those are all blue chips and I hold some of them too. Dividends on those quality companies are just gravy.

If I only make one post today, it is this PSA:

Do not fall for this shit. Total scam.

This last week's gains makes me want to take all of my losses out and put my money in a mattress.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ows-frenzy

The mid-afternoon surge in U.S. stocks came as futures on the S&P 500 Index notched their highest single-minute volume of the day, with almost five times as many contracts changing hands than any other point on Wednesday.

Trading of E-mini S&P 500 futures surged around 1:21 p.m. in New York, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Almost 50,000 December E-mini S&P 500 futures changed hands over 60 seconds, greater than any other minute of the day. Five out of the seven biggest trades in the contract since last night occurred within the minute.

Also still no new buys for me. I think it's because I've been saving for a new car, so I just can't get my general savings high enough to warrant a purchase. I should still be able to get my IRA purchased by the beginning of the year but my initial thoughts on my next purchase being September/October seem to have moved to February or later. Hopefully then I'm patient enough to look for an in.

Strongly considering buying more CVS here. That or more GILD (Gilead)

Carpet_pissr wrote:Strongly considering buying more CVS here. That or more GILD (Gilead)

No more individual securities for a good long while from me. I'm out.

SNL's Where'd Your Money Go

Watching THS and VRX, may jump.

Killing time until I do trading in and out of LLNW and F.

Deposited my 2017 Roth IRA today. I put the bulk in VTI, and a small amount in VYM and VYMI to test the waters. When the do horribly I will blame Izzy. As is usual for me, I deposited the money, Sunday, happy there was a down week last week. They wouldn't take after hours trades because they wouldn't clear my deposit over the holiday. By the time I had time to make the transactions this morning, it was at the top of a spike and then after my buy... it wasn't. After draining my savings for my IRA contribution, It will probably be a while before you hear from me again.

Likely I'll wait until I have a saving and there is a dip in VTI and just make a boring purchase. 2017 will be a year of boring purchases but that's OK for me as every single one of my single security picks have not been so good, whereas all of my broad ETFs have reasonably increased in value. Maybe this year, I might look into how to diversify, which I guess means, in my situation, how to start up bond funds. It will, in part, depend on how my savings goes, which means probably not this year. It looks like I haven't been able to buy anything aside from what I saved for my 2017 IRA since August.

I am dumbfounded by how much sway Trump seems to have. His people must be making a fortune.

In August he threatens Ford over plans they had in the works over two years as if they were just announced. and stock goes from $13.50 to $12 overnight. Yesterday he takes credit for Ford's EV initiative Flatrock (which he may or may not have influenced, malchior), but for an initiative that has also been in the work for over two years and stock goes from $12 to $13 over night and is still rising.


I wish I had money to burn and could actually play the games of investing and divesting with new cycles. I'd have been in Ford yesterday and getting out today.

Back to Amazon. Thoughts on this article?

My government retirement account was up 11.19% in 2016. Wooo.

LordMortis wrote: I wish I had money to burn and could actually play the games of investing and divesting with new cycles. I'd have been in Ford yesterday and getting out today.

That's what I've been doing with F options.

I have never seen a president (or president elect) manipulate the markets like this.

Pyperkub wrote:Back to Amazon. Thoughts on this article?

The thoughts on Amazon here sound about right though I think it is focusing on stuff that is just too far over the horizon right now. Could Alexa be huge for them? Sure but Amazon is firing on multiple cylinders and showing outstanding success now. On the cloud side AWS is a major profit center that keeps on giving. On the retail side they've used free cash (a large share from AWS) to build out infrastructure. They are at a point that they are now doing delivery using their own fleets with some USPS/Lasership supplementation. I haven't seen an Amazon package come via UPS/Fedex in about 6 months now. They are truly poised to dominate multiple sectors. That they haven't settled for success in retail or cloud computing is commendable. They aren't sitting still - and they generally succeed. I can't see anyone seeing anything but upside there now.

So, what's the word on Snap? How do they plan to monetize their product now that they've had an IPO?

LordMortis wrote:So, what's the word on Snap? How do they plan to monetize their product now that they've had an IPO?

An IPO isn't a mandate to act responsibly. It is a way to cash in.

That said, haven't read Thier prospectus or filing yet. Your answer, as far as their plan, should be in there.