Your Thoughts About the Stock Market

[Recyclersteve]

This board has been pretty quiet while we are having some very interesting things happen in the stock market.

Just curious what people are thinking...

One thing I noticed about a stock I follow closely (A-Mark) (Ticker: AMRK) is that the stock will typically (over the last several quarters to 1 1/2 year go down or sideways during most of the quarter. This frustrates many who might say something like "Hey the stock is down way more often than it is up." I didn't count the number of days, but that wouldn't surprise me at all if true.
That said, it isn't how many days it goes up or down, but the amounts up and down in total.

Another thing- that just seemed to begin Monday (Jan. 31st) is that the bigger moves seem to be almost all just before earnings (say up to 7-10 days) or just after earnings. I imagine someone could calculate that those, say, 20 days have way more movement that the other 70 combined. Anyway, that's just my thoughts on A-Mark.

Predicting the market is super difficult and opinions are all over the map as they should be. If they were all bullish or bearish, I'd be super skeptical anyway. So I'm not gonna make any market predictions here.

I think the far more valuable skill is predicting yourself. And THAT is VERY difficult according to many. And many of them don't even trust themselves to manage their OWN money. As someone with almost 20 years in the brokerage business, I spoke with over 100,000 customers over that time and encountered virtually everything you could possible imagine. It was (I left Charles Schwab in 2017) very interesting.

[Recyclersteve]

Boring ‘ole United Parcel Service (Ticker: UPS) is having a GREAT day after solid earnings and raising their dividend 49%. How many other companies are hitting 52-week highs today? Not many!

[fasteddy]

maybe it hit bottom last Friday and is on its way up....don't see how with Obiden's policies...but anything can happen on Wall Street...I did bounce out for know.

[thecrazyone]

I'm still learning the intricacies of that Beast, but, I've been consistent with taking any small gains that I make on stocks like SUN, and moving them over to smaller price-per-share real estate stocks.

I then take half of what I've made in dividends for the year, cash it out, and put it in a safe place. That way I can never truly "lose everything" in the market.

[Recyclersteve]

Took a modest profit for myself last week. Not concerned about AMRK, but became more concerned with the market in general mostly because of what happened to Facebook recently. So I had an open order (Good Til Cancelled- so good for up to 60 days) which automatically sold last week.

Not making any bold predictions now. Just too much other stuff going on now like raking old leaves on the ground in the backyard that have been wet for a while. Part of a trash can felt quite heavy because of how wet the leaves were. Ok, I was never an Olympic athlete. Dad joke.

[Recyclersteve]

Accidental duplicate posting.

[silverflake]

Most of what I have is down along with the general market (though my miners are showing some life). I continue to rave about the beauty of selling calls against my stocks. It creates some income while I wait for them to turn around (or stop out).

My "less weak" stocks of late have been in timber (RYN), farmland (LAND) and the miners (though they are bouncing of some REAL lows....)

Regardless, keep stacking the real stuff!

[thecrazyone]

Has anyone else been picking up stocks that have dropped in light of the Ukraine incident? The ones I am watching are American stocks whose prices have dropped, simply because panicked owners are selling off their shares and driving the price down.

I don't like the thought of "capitalizing" off of war, but, buying my regular stocks now, that I buy normally anyway, has significantly brought down my average cost numbers.

[DTEJD1997]

Hey all:

I've been VERY heavily invested in precious metals companies (primarily gold), and a good chunk of oil & gas.

The stocks have pretty much all gone up, some more than others though. The one common thread is that I bought them for "cheap" valuations. They are all still sporting "cheap" valuations. It has been VERY frustrating. By cheap, I mean low, single digit P/E's, strong (sometimes rock solid) balance sheets, frequently paying dividends, good future prospects, etc. I think most of these stocks should be trading for DOUBLE what they currently are. Even if doubling, they are STILL at a huge discount to the market.

I am also starting to get more consumer discretionary. One example of this is GES. Another example is STLA.

I think that eventually, as tech melts down, and inflation moves on, investors will slowly move to gold.

We will see. Going to be interesting, volatile times ahead.

[silverflake]

So I happened across a recommendation by a guy I watch on youtube sometimes by the name of Joseph Hogue whose channel is all things finance/stock market. He seems like a pretty common sense guy who warns you about the risk involved in some of his picks, recommends position sizes etc. Anyhow, last week he mentioned VMW (VMware) which is being bought out by Broadcom. Broadcom announced a buyout of VMW in May at $142/share but VMW was trading down below $110. Of course the stock popped 30% up toward the target price immediately. But over the summer the price of VMW has slipped all the way down to about $110 again (but has started moving back up). He said buy it now and sell in November before the deal goes through. I bought 100 shares on this but does anyone know how often these takeover bids end up not going through? Recyclersteve are you out there?


Thanks for any opinion or thoughts.

[Recyclersteve]

VMW closed today at $120.11, which is quite a discount to the reported buyout price. That tells me there isn’t much confidence the deal will go through. It should be trading at $135+ IMHO.

If the deal falls through, you might consider buying more shares at a lower price and then selling the entire lot at a modest profit when the stock bounces. Don’t forget seasonality as well. The market often bottoms out around October.