My WFH time has made me very in tune with the stock market.

[thecrazyone]

I have turned lemons into lemonade, and while WFH due to the pandemic, I've been using the money that would have been buying my lunch, to buy stocks. A friend jokingly told me I should now write a book on that as well, but I don't know if I have enough experience yet to fill a book on that topic!

Members of my family were always investors in the market, but it always kind of intimidated me to ask them about it. I was always afraid that they'd be like "I'm not telling YOU how much I have invested!!"

Anyone else been able to learn more about the market while they've been restricted from other activities?

[Recyclersteve]

I've been trading stocks since the 1990's and have had years where I did thousands of trades. So I follow it quite closely.

I just shorted Eastman Kodak (Ticker: KODK) last Thursday at $40ish and covered my short the very next day at $20.56. My profit was 96% (not the 50% or so that some think it would be) in just one day. I like trades like that. Remember, the shorts make money when the stock goes DOWN. Selling short is a very good skill to have in your back pocket for when you see something that is obviously overvalued. Most anything that has gone up several hundred percent with Robinhood investors is potential fair game. Still, you don't just blindly sell short. You have to have a strategy. If I had never sold short before, I'd start very small and use only gambling money that I could afford to lose until I became proficient at it. Over the years I've personally shorted well over 1,000 different companies. You develop instincts after that much experience. Still, it is important to really know yourself. How do you handle your emotions when you have a loss of 20% in just a few minutes after initiating a trade?

I used to believe in cutting my losses, but then I just had a whole bunch of small losses. I changed that to where I then started taking smaller sized positions and having more in reserve so I could double down on a stock if nothing was really wrong. If Warren Buffett buys a great company and it goes down 20%, he likely feels it is on sale and might buy even more. It is hard to do that when you already bought too many shares in the first place. So figuring out your finances and how much you can afford to lose is a process that takes some time.

Good luck. It is nice to have you back.

[thecrazyone]

Thanks!

I've been playing the field from a more long-term stance. I'm investing in stocks that pay dividends, and have them configured for DRIP. I don't do well with the stocks that fly up and down in value, daily, like Regeneron. Those kinds of scnenarios will land me in the hospital, lol.