OT: Stocks Talk
Figured with everything going on in the world people are paying more attention to the stock market than normal. This is something we can start to have a discussion on once a month, and we can look back at how we are doing. I tend to invest mostly in small to mid-sized bio pharmas and tech.
For this first post, I'll take a look backwards with two categories and forward with the all important stock market premonitions!
1) What have been your 3 biggest hits over the last 2 years?
MDCO (average of ~$25, got BO at $85)
INSG (average of $3, still own most of the position at $11.50)
VBIV (average of $0.80, still own most of the position at $6)
2) What is/are your biggest regrets of the last 2 years?
Sold TSLA at $550 after buying below $200
Sold SHOP at average of ~$400 after buying at $40 (this one still hurts a lot)
3) What are your favorite stocks going forward and why?
VBIV - Think this will be bought out (most likely by GSK, but many suitors) and having the best eVLP vaccine technology will be super valuable no matter if they discover anything to do with Covid-19. Final target of $12+
BCRX - I'm not optimistic on a vaccine any time soon for Covid, and in my opinion this company is about to release information about having the best antiviral (Galidesivir) to fight the disease. It is much better than Gilead's Remdesivir mainly due to a low toxicity (due to unique bonding) which allows for the loads to be optimal to get quick T-cell response. Currently at $5, I think the risk/reward here is amazing.
Overall, I think most of tech is over-priced at the moment, and therefor have lowered most of my positions there. Let's see what the Mgoblog community thinks and hopefully help each other make some money!
Keep this fun please! No Politics!
I prefer to invest in people.
Okay I like that, who are your favorite Oligarchs?
I hear the return on nationalizing companies and dividing the spoils among friends has an infinite ROI
May I suggest The Human Fund.
I enjoy r/wallstreetbets
Oh man, last one of these the OP said he bought Luckin, lol.
I have been accumulating Peloton and a gaming fund ESPO. I consider both to be COVID proof and election proof.
I worry about Peloton. While they definitely have a following, its a niche market and I think they hit a cap on earnings. I have seen a ton of competitors enter their space as well. They do have first movers advantage and brand recognition in that space, but how much more revenue can they actually get without expanding into other verticals? I seriously debated buying them a month ago and this was the argument against for me.
What makes you think they are anywhere near a cap? They are going to be introducing a new lower price bike and treadmill (rumors are 1 of them for the holiday season). I'm not sure if that is a great long term play or not to be honest. The more people that buy bikes the better though, because of their network where you can ride together. Every purchaser becomes free marketing. The competition is really coming on strong though. I don't expect the crazy growth to continue, but if gyms get shut down in the winter it may.
Look at the Myx bike and then get back to me on Peloton’s market position.
Double is a steep price to pay for a lot of people. Yes, the community/user experience is better. But you get to pay monthly for that too.
I think you are definitely right that gyms not being open helps them for sure and their subscriber revenue is going to be revenue predictions. I think they are in great shape for this year. I tend to look for stocks for the long term. I think actually part of the appeal is its for serious riders and $ makes it more of an elite company (Lululemon buyers). Short term cheaper bike helps sales, but they have to be careful what that does with the brand. Full disclosure my wife has a Peloton and she loves it and the workouts, so I can attest to the community appeal.
Interesting, I like ESPO and am kicking myself for not getting in earlier. I don't know enough about Peloton to have an opinion, might look into their financials.
Gaming is still in it's infancy and it's already so much bigger than movies. In 20yrs more dads will play video games on weekends than watch sports. There's so little risk in the fund long term. It may slow down but it's a long term investment for me.
I'm that OP from the last one and I sold Luckin for more than twice what I bought it at in two days. Thanks for the backhanded compliment sport.
I dunno if "I bought the accounting fraud company but sold it at the right time" is the own that you think it is! You take a big position in Wirecard too?
No kidding, this is your position? I don't feel bad about making money in the stock market.....and I stay away from companies I don't think are ethical when it comes to the human element. Our friend above laughed as though I lost my hat when I made more than 2x my investment in less than 48 hours. Whoops.
My position is that you should take a look at your investing philosophy when it turns out you bought a company that's entirely smoke-and-mirrors accounting, yeah.
You have no clue what my portfolio looks like. In fact I even mentioned that it was a very risky play that seemed likely to have a small window of opportunity, and I was correct.
Most of what I’ve bought since Covid are tech and aerospace companies for long term(Boeing at $98 a share, Apple at $270 a share, Delta at $30 a share, etc..) with some aggressive short terms(Luckin, Penn Gaming, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise lines).
My 3 biggest hits over the last few years were CVNA, NFLX, and DG.
Losers? I'm getting crushed on BA- what the hell do I do? I also sold TSLA too soon. I own LYFT at...too much
You might be right on tech, but I recently went pretty heavy into TWTR, SNAP, and DBX. Also pushed more into Ether and Bitcoin.
I did well on SNAP and if it holds above it's IPO I might get back in above what I sold it at about a year ago. TWTR is interesting as someone who loved FB and just recently sold...I don't know if they can capture the young as well as IG, SNAP and now Tik Tok do, so they will need to decide how to stay as relevant going forward. What do you like about DBX?
I've been tracking DBX for a while and I feel like it's found its bottom and could double in the next year or so. Earnings estimates have also been pretty strong. Not likely anything to get rich off of as they will have a ton of competition moving forward with companies like Google, Microsoft, etc, but I think it's a decent tech pick-up for the price.
Put Credit spreads on AMZN have been working great for me.
My best pick is NVAX.............had 1000 shares @$10 each
unfortunately instead of riding it up to $145, I sold at $25
Believe it or not, I currently have I huge bet on BCRX, started getting in at $3 and have been adding more since April. If Galidesivir hits it will be $30- to $50 this summer.
I got into NVAX at $48, sold at $98....it's at $140-ish now.
Bought PTON at $29.70, sold at around $60.
Roughly three months holding period on each. Yeah, it's taxed as ordinary income, but IDGAF. I'm still well ahead of the game on those two.
I'm sitting long-term on Apple (in at $160), Alibaba (in at $193) and Bank of Nova Scotia (just got in at $41.50). BNS has a really low P/E ratio and a dividend yield of over 6.5%. Very little debt on the books, from what I've seen.
Tesla is defying gravity at the moment. When they release earnings this week. the real key is whether they're profitable on actual vehicle sales. Last quarter they were not - profit was driven entirely from sales of GHG credits to other automakers.
TSLA is worth more than Toyota despite, as you said, not actually making money selling cars. Trying to call the top and hoping you will get out near the peak is a fools game. Enjoy the profits and put them in the bank. I don't know when, but TSLA will be worth much, much less at some point in the not too distant future.
I heard this one story about some king, and something about his clothes, I don’t remember.
Whether they report positive earnings tomorrow even if just a penny, is key short term, because if they do it will be 4 straight quarters and they will be added to the S & P which will require index funds to take a position. If they don't then it probably takes a healthy drop.
Diversity in funds is your best friend. Dollar average in and out of your equity investments. Never fight the Fed. Politics are irrelevant. Buy low, sell high forever more. When in doubt take no action. Look long term and invest even longer term. Need the money for tomorrow, be in cash today.
My words of wisdom.
hear! hear!
my biggest winner over the last 2 years: VTI up 18%
my biggest loser over the last 2 years: VTI up 18%
(not really, of course, but you get my point)
Biggest win for me is definitely Amazon. Bought for $1800, and it’s currently riding at $3200.
Right now, I’m thinking of parking a lot of money into SPHD which is low volatility, high dividend (5.5%) index fund that pays out monthly. I have a Capital One 360 Savings account that pays out only 1% interest, so I figure SPHD is a pretty solid alternative without having to do any speculative investing in search of a big win.
My wife makes great picks. She picked Zoom, NetFlix, and Tesla and has made anywhere from 2-4x on each. I am boring and go with mutual funds - although tech heavy so I'm still doing pretty well. She also bought Wells Fargo and Delta recently. I'm not feeling good about those right now but she may be proven right in the end.
I like Delta a lot of the airline stocks it was the one I picked when everything was tanking, but still about even on that. I chose Goldman on the banking front, and am out of that position now. I also still own my Boeing that I got around $120 (averaged down) as I don't believe the US government would ever allow it to fail.
What other picks is she making recently, I think Netflix was a great pick that I completely missed.
I’ve been sticking to an investment strategy that has worked well for me over the years:
I don’t look at my portfolio unless the market is up.
People might laugh but I think this is great advice. The only reason I will look on down days is to average down on some of my favorites...if I liked it at $10 p/s, and no news has changed the outlook, then why wouldn't I want more at $8?
My 3 biggest the best couple years were all in 2020.
TVIX - I bought in early March and made a massive gain and then rode it down to just a great gain by the time I sold.
GDX - Gold miner etc that should do well with QE infinity. Haven't sold yet, bought in March.
SLVP - Silver miner, see above.
bought Alteryx at $20 and bought shopify at $100. i just keep riding those waves, other than that just index funds
Nicely done! Wish I you have talked me into keeping my SHOP haha
Time in the market not timing the market. I don't know more about any company than Wall Street does, so my assumption is that I'll always come out behind if I try to pick them individually.
Buy funds when I can, and hold them until I need the money. It's worked out great so far, and my effort is approximately zero beyond earning the money to put in.
This is the only right answer, but it misses that the point of these threads is to circlejerk about how smart you are by reporting all of your big wins and ignoring all of your losses.
Either that, or this just happens to be the blog of choice of an elite group of Wall Street savants.
lol ?
My favorite is guys who report huge wins and then explain that their decisions are based on genius insight like, "gyms are closed because of Covid, so I bet people will buy more Pelotons." As if that wasn't priced into the stock the moment Covid became a serious pandemic.
It's all over this thread and every stocks thread...
"Oil has to go up!" Yes, of course, I'm sure the market hasn't thought of that yet.
While I agree that having a lot of ETFs and mutual funds (I’m younger so I prefer ETFs for now) are the way to go with a large percentage of your money, I have significantly beat the average over the years with my personal wins. With that said, I am down 97% on a small stock I bought last year, and was in an ETF that the algorithm crashed and went to zero...so I’m not going to tell you there are zero risks. I don’t think anyone is a savant, but there are definitely solid things where you can know more than “Wall Street” especially when it comes to bio stocks and other tricky fields if you know the science (i don’t but have great friends who do)
You enjoy the thrill of gambling with a portion of your investments, and that's totally fine. I just see that more as "entertainment with a chance of profit" rather than a strategy for building wealth.
As for bio or tech stocks where you have friends that can explain the science to you, that doesn't tell you anything about how well a company is run, whether they'll get lucky with the right publicity, etc. unless you're actually engaging in insider trading... If you know about it, so do a ton of other smart people that understand the science.
Glad it's worked out for you so far, though!
Playing things too safe is the most popular way to fail. Good luck with that
And playing things too risky is the quickest.
I'm glad day trading has worked out for you, honestly, but it's generally terrible advice for most people.
I'm not giving anyone advice and I'm not telling anyone to become a day trader. I'm simply telling my story and explaining to you that there are different ways to make money in the markets. Say for instance you invest in the S&P ETFs while I actively trade S&P futures. What makes up the S&P ETFs is essentially what comprises the futures index I trade. Your risk is less (ETFs) therefore your return is less while my risk is higher (Futures) so my return would be higher as well. We're trading the same index but thru different instruments. Everyone has a different risk tolerance so not everyone will be a successful trader, or should trade for that matter. As an investor, you can short an ETF. But realistically, how many ETF owners short. When the S&P has a down day, most ETF investors just roll with the punch and take the loss because they're in it for the long haul. But as a day trader, I'll short the market, play the trend and make money for the day while you carry the loss. No one sees the market the same as another, so what works for one may not work for others.
Personally, I don't like investing. I don't have the patience and I'm hesitant to hold overnight because so many things can happen in the world when the markets are closed. I'm a successful day trader but a liability as an investor. As far as I'm concerned, if someone is making money in the markets, whether a trader or investor, it's not my place to tell them they're wrong for the path they choose
Do you have a pension after 20 years hence easier to take the risk?
No. But why would a pension be needed if you can sit at home and make money? And if you're good enough, a pension wouldn't be needed
Love this conversation, I've dabbled over the years but nothing serious until the last 18 months.
Biggest winner recently: HTBX, 5600 shares in at .99, currently at $3.42
Biggest loser: Former Amazon employee, was given 350 shares as a sign on bonus in 2015, collected another 500 over the next 3 years, sold all in 2017 for additional down payment on house. Yeah, I'd love to have 850 shares right now....