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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   Edited 2yr ago   2706 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 7, 2022

Be advised; this thread is not for serious in depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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How are everyone’s stocks doing? Market was obviously overvalued, but I thought the fed would be even more anemic than it has been, so inflation would devalue it, not straight-up losses. I tried to crash-proof my portfolio with gold miners, but they’re the worst of a bad bunch. You’d think with the inflation and gold’s historical reputation, it wouldn’t move 1-to-1 with the stock market (or the printer, same thing). But it’s not a loss until you sell, so in for a penny, in for a doubloon.

Fortunately, the oil stocks I bought during covid have been keeping my head above water. Now I’m just waiting for spy to go lower to I can lever it to hell, either through leaps or 3x etfs .

And thanks to the guy on here who recommended tobacco based on historical overperformance, that’s been good. I’ll crash-proof it to the (black) gills with cancer next time (it’s okay, I used to smoke).

I've taken a beating, down 20-25% or so I'd say, mainly due to being seriously overweight in the tech sector (company stock), compounded by generally being tech bullish. I have some diversification, including some energy funds, so that's helped a bit, but not a lot. Still I'd gone up a lot over the last N years, so I can't really complain.

I have bought in a bit more occasionally on the way down, and considering doing more, but it will be slowly and carefully, no 3x ETFs you madman! For various tax reasons, it generally makes much more sense for me to buy single stocks now, which sucks (broad ETFs is the way to go!) so I'm looking at things like INTC, GOOG, APPL, MSFT, AMD, MRNA, BTI, BRK.B (those last two as counterweights to the tech heaviness).

I am 100% Twitter at the moment, so I'm doing great. I just wish I'd bought more calls. Then again, I thought I had at least a couple more weeks to buy them.

I’m down 10% for the year although I don’t really have the time to actively manage it. I hold a little energy (VDE) which is the only reason my NASDAQ heavy portfolio isn’t substantial worse. Will need to look into tobacco… that sounds like a good idea potentially.

Here's the blog post about industry returns (table at the end) : http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2015/09/industry/

I think some industries are a terrible investment. It's always the same sectors: You hear about airlines never having made money, a steel company is always going bankrupt, and even buffett had a lot of trouble with his textile company. Boom-bust cycle in capital intensive sectors kills the return. You end up selling product at a loss half the time because you're stuck with all this unmovable machinery. For the winners otoh it looks like a 'sin stocks' effect.

I've written off my stocks as a loss. Doubt I'll be able to do anything with them any time soon.

You still have access, right? Just -50% loss. Do you own western stocks too? Can you buy and sell those? Would you get them if you left the country?

I own only western stocks, and I am unable to sell them, since my broker is sanctioned.

I do a combo of Roth IRA + the lazy portfolio 3-way split. I'm avoiding looking at the numbers as of late so as not to stress out since they're investments for the very long term. I don't really do individual stocks or options since I don't value my financial predictive ability that highly. I recently broke that rule and tried crypto trading and wound up with universal losses, though fortunately I only used a relatively small amount of play money to buy in. This has only reinforced my personal rule to stick to long-term stuff and not try to beat the market.

Buy and hold is comfortable and has good expected returns, I recommend it to friends and family. For me though, even though I know it’s a tall order, I attempt to beat the market, because I enjoy the time I spend thinking about it. Even if I fail, as long as I keep transaction costs low, the expected return should be the same, minus my time, which is worth zero.

My go-to example for how beating the market can be done, and after which I decided to become more active, is covid: rats saw it coming, we had a discussion where people suggested puts on cruise companies, which would have 15xed a few weeks later. The main opposition to buying those puts wasn’t because we didn’t believe covid would be bad, but an ill-placed faith in the all-knowing market.

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