Investing General Discussion

Shonuff

Shonuff

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Zog said:
It's always interesting to see how other traders think and do things. I haven't been doing this very long, I am one of the millions that got into it with the publicity from GME.

I've lost a ton of money "figuring things out" and I had no choice but to chalk it up to investing in knowledge but the reality was I didn't do real $$ trades until after paper trading for 6 months and I consider it an entire waste of time.

Nothing can prepare you for putting real money on the line and it's honestly only gotten harder as I go because I know so much more about how those little charts can fuck you in the blink of an eye.

Everything I thought I knew and tried to put it into little logic algorithms didn't work because theres some guy out there trading against that very logic.

The stop loss is a powerful tool but its also a crutch that will more often than not guarantee losses as oppose to guaranteeing gains.

The second you think you figured everything out is when you're going to get your precious stop loss gapped and you lose a mortgage payment(or multiple) in the blink of an eye as you desperately try to get out of a trade.

There was a guy who invested his entire life savings into GME not far from where I live, when the stock dropped from 483 down to the 50's he blew his brains out, thinking he lost everything he worked for and the sad part is the stock did go back up to 350 not even a month later. That has stuck with me throughout my trading career and I really dont know how to wrap my head around it... It's a double edged sword really, to hold on to a loss in the event it can recover or you end up holding for something that never recovers.
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Perhaps you shouldn't be on GME. Fuck that stock. You are getting stopped out because its too volatile. In general, its so volatile you can't get a clear signal.

100% disagree on stop losses being bad, if they are based correctly on volatility. I tried paper trading for GME. Problem was the correct stop loss was like 5% it was so volatile. You could literally lose 4% and still be in an unbroken trend. If you placed a 1% stop on GME, you'd be stopped out and its still moving the direction you wanted. No thank you.
 
Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Zog said:
because I know so much more about how those little charts can fuck you in the blink of an eye.
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The charts never fuck you. The charts are data. Sometimes we can misinterpret the data and sometimes that 98% chance rolls a 00 and sometimes Elon Musk tweets at an inopertune moment.

It's never the charts fault.
 
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Shonuff

Shonuff

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ShakyJake said:
Hey I know, post what you're buying/selling here in real time!
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That's not possible, unless you can think of a way to automate it. I have to spend all of my time looking for the perfect setup. And when I execute the trade, its a two button hotkey. Like I showed you on the 40 second trade where I made $72, there's a lot going on.

Not wanting to sound weird, but I have my pattern. I turn on CNBC, I put on my Harley sweatshirt with my hood, I have two oatmeal fiber bars and a Gatorade, and shut myself off to the entire world.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Shonuff said:
That's not possible, unless you can think of a way to automate it. I have to spend all of my time looking for the perfect setup. And when I execute the trade, its a two button hotkey. Like I showed you on the 40 second trade where I made $72, there's a lot going
Not wanting to sound weird, but I have my pattern. I turn on CNBC, I put on my Harley sweatshirt with my hood, I have two oatmeal fiber bars and a Gatorade, and shut myself off to the entire world.
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I stopped watching CNBC a long time ago. I have Active Trader Pro on one screen and I am refreshing twitter for any possible news tidbit I can jump on fast within the stocks and sectors I am monitoring. I don't day trade though, just looking for swings or something that could be a long term hold or better yet a tasty option trade.
 
Gravel

Gravel

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Since we're getting super close to the end here, we finally shut off the automatic deposits to our IRA's. I stopped 401k contributions when I changed jobs.

It feels incredibly weird to switch from saving so much (we were in the 60-70% savings rate range) to not putting a single cent away. It's going to be even weirder drawing them down. Luckily that doesn't start until next year as we have pretty close to a year already liquid to hedge against sequence of returns risk.

But even more than those, as I was describing to my wife, is when our accounts increase so much each month (I track our net worth once a month). We increased our net worth $17k in July without putting any money into the accounts. But then I think, the market averages 10% a year, so it shouldn't be surprising seeing monthly moves of more than $10k.

We're finally seeing how it works when your money makes money. Actual, substantial, money. Enough money that it makes more than you would working, so you can quit your job and live off your investments. It's something I've been preparing for for years now, but I'm still surprised at it actually working. I guess I'm trying to say that even though I knew how the math worked, I don't know that my full faith was there that it'd actually...work.

My wife is super anxious about it. And I get why. But I'll be retiring in my late 30's, so worst case scenario is it all goes to hell and I find a job in a few years to soften the withdrawals, and then we go back to retirement. There's plenty of time to go back to work if we're not comfortable with it. We meet with the construction company next week and hopefully he's got a solid closing date for us. I'm guessing sometime in mid-September is when we actually make this early retirement thing a reality. I'm also going to beat my mom to retirement (although she could've retired a few years ago; her and her boyfriend went heavy into Tesla and have so much more than they need).

It's all because I read this blog post back in the spring of 2014. I have a finance degree and retirement spreadsheets have been a thing I made back when I was active duty (and I may have even done them in high school). I just never looked at expenses as the driving factor behind retirement, and so always assumed I'd need $5 million even for conventional retirement.

www.mrmoneymustache.com

The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement

This is the blog post that shows you how to be wealthy enough to retire in ten years. Here at Mr. Money Mustache, we talk about all sorts of fancy stuff like investment fundamentals, lifestyle chan…
www.mrmoneymustache.com www.mrmoneymustache.com
 
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Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Gravel said:
Since we're getting super close to the end here, we finally shut off the automatic deposits to our IRA's. I stopped 401k contributions when I changed jobs.

It feels incredibly weird to switch from saving so much (we were in the 60-70% savings rate range) to not putting a single cent away. It's going to be even weirder drawing them down. Luckily that doesn't start until next year as we have pretty close to a year already liquid to hedge against sequence of returns risk.

But even more than those, as I was describing to my wife, is when our accounts increase so much each month (I track our net worth once a month). We increased our net worth $17k in July without putting any money into the accounts. But then I think, the market averages 10% a year, so it shouldn't be surprising seeing monthly moves of more than $10k.

We're finally seeing how it works when your money makes money. Actual, substantial, money. Enough money that it makes more than you would working, so you can quit your job and live off your investments. It's something I've been preparing for for years now, but I'm still surprised at it actually working. I guess I'm trying to say that even though I knew how the math worked, I don't know that my full faith was there that it'd actually...work.

My wife is super anxious about it. And I get why. But I'll be retiring in my late 30's, so worst case scenario is it all goes to hell and I find a job in a few years to soften the withdrawals, and then we go back to retirement. There's plenty of time to go back to work if we're not comfortable with it. We meet with the construction company next week and hopefully he's got a solid closing date for us. I'm guessing sometime in mid-September is when we actually make this early retirement thing a reality.

It's all because I read this blog post back in the spring of 2014.

www.mrmoneymustache.com

The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement

This is the blog post that shows you how to be wealthy enough to retire in ten years. Here at Mr. Money Mustache, we talk about all sorts of fancy stuff like investment fundamentals, lifestyle chan…
www.mrmoneymustache.com www.mrmoneymustache.com
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The curve in a retirement account goes parabolic near the end. Its why time is the most important variable. Congratz.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Gravel Gravel I just noticed you mentioned late 30's. Have you done serious modeling of health care costs down the road? Since you have so many more years than the standard retiree, it's even more important. The number one expense after retirement tends to be health care. Obviously at your age your base health should be much better than a 65 year old, but costs will rise as well. Healthcare cost modeling is imperative for retirement if you haven't done it already.
 
Gravel

Gravel

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Sanrith Descartes said:
The curve in a retirement account goes parabolic near the end. Its why time is the most important variable. Congratz.
Click to expand...
That's definitely true. And 2020 made it look even more ridiculous. I was actually telling that to my wife the other day. Our net worth from September 2019 - January 2020 was around half what it is now.

It was on a fucking rocket ship by November 2020 (went up about 40%), and then from November until now it's another 27%.

That gave me pause at first, thinking that maybe we're being a bit too quick to pull the plug. But the math makes sense.
 
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Gravel

Gravel

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Sanrith Descartes said:
Gravel Gravel I just noticed you mentioned late 30's. Have you done serious modeling of health care costs down the road? Since you have so many more years than the standard retiree, it's even more important. The number one expense after retirement tends to be health care. Obviously at your age your base health should be much better than a 65 year old, but costs will rise as well. Healthcare cost modeling is imperative for retirement if you haven't done it already.
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Yes, healthcare is basically the bane of early retirement. And it essentially becomes the biggest hurdle and expense. If we were in some socialized, single payer country, we probably could've retired years ago.

It's the one reason I regret not sticking it out with the military. Healthcare for life is nice. The pension is too, but it pales in comparison. I also wouldn't have been able to retire for another 3 years, which I find hilarious, because I've somehow been able to beat out military retirement.
 
Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Gravel said:
That's definitely true. And 2020 made it look even more ridiculous. I was actually telling that to my wife the other day. Our net worth from September 2019 - January 2020 was around half what it is now.

It was on a fucking rocket ship by November 2020 (went up about 40%), and then from November until now it's another 27%.

That gave me pause at first, thinking that maybe we're being a bit too quick to pull the plug. But the math makes sense.
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Just try to keep doing what has worked and not go hog wild on spending. Did you shift your holdings to more fixed income stocks to try to limit eating into the principle if possible?

I have my mom's IRA geared to provide enough fixed income that with SS and her dividends she doesn't touch the principle in either the IRA or her brokerage account (which is little more growth oriented)
 
Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Gravel said:
Yes, healthcare is basically the bane of early retirement. And it essentially becomes the biggest hurdle and expense. If we were in some socialized, single payer country, we probably could've retired years ago.

It's the one reason I regret not sticking it out with the military. Healthcare for life is nice. The pension is too, but it pales in comparison. I also wouldn't have been able to retire for another 3 years, which I find hilarious, because I've somehow been able to beat out military retirement.
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If I recall you were heading to FL. Check out if there is a volunteer firehouse in your area. Maybe get on with them. You "used" to be able to get benefits from them if you made it long enough to retirement with them and it might not seem like a job to you.
 
Gravel

Gravel

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Oh, we're not going to go crazy with spending. Believe me, I've thought of everything. I'm way too risk averse to just be jumping into this haphazardly.

We're already in Florida. Renting right now, but our offer for new construction was accepted Thursday. House isn't finished yet, so that's why I'm not exactly sure on a retirement date.

And yeah, there are options for health insurance. But I've decided I really just don't like working. At all. It's not necessarily that I hate working either, I just don't want to be on someone else's time. I probably wouldn't mind doing something to keep me occupied, but the fact that they're going to want an employee that shows up on certain dates, and works a certain amount of hours, just isn't for me if the option is anything but that.

If I could find some miracle job that lets me take off months at a time to fuck off, and only come in when I want, then yeah, I'd be all over it. But that's not really reasonable.
 
Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Gravel said:
Oh, we're not going to go crazy with spending. Believe me, I've thought of everything. I'm way too risk averse to just be jumping into this haphazardly.

We're already in Florida. Renting right now, but our offer for new construction was accepted Thursday. House isn't finished yet, so that's why I'm not exactly sure on a retirement date.

And yeah, there are options for health insurance. But I've decided I really just don't like working. At all. It's not necessarily that I hate working either, I just don't want to be on someone else's time. I probably wouldn't mind doing something to keep me occupied, but the fact that they're going to want an employee that shows up on certain dates, and works a certain amount of hours, just isn't for me if the option is anything but that.

If I could find some miracle job that lets me take off months at a time to fuck off, and only come in when I want, then yeah, I'd be all over it. But that's not really reasonable.
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Get a real estate license and you can work as you please.
 
Shonuff

Shonuff

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Sanrith Descartes said:
The charts never fuck you. The charts are data. Sometimes we can misinterpret the data and sometimes that 98% chance rolls a 00 and sometimes Elon Musk tweets at an inopertune moment.

It's never the charts fault.
Click to expand...
Sometimes the volatility is so high that there's no way to read it. Experimental drug companies are the worst to try to read. You could like up two experts and they'd both give you different answers. If volatility is greater than 5%, I'm not doing it.
 
Shonuff

Shonuff

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Sanrith Descartes said:
I stopped watching CNBC a long time ago. I have Active Trader Pro on one screen and I am refreshing twitter for any possible news tidbit I can jump on fast within the stocks and sectors I am monitoring. I don't day trade though, just looking for swings or something that could be a long term hold or better yet a tasty option trade.
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I keep CNBC on so I can hear from Cramer. Maybe him, Joe Terranova, Tom Lee and one other guy on there are worth a damn. This money I've made on AMD, that was a tip from Cramer from his actionalerts club. He's not perfect, I do my research and I don't buy everything he suggests. Sometimes, I wish I did. Like when he said buy EL, I didn't buy it, and it went up 9% in the week after.

What are you subbed to on twitter for stocks?
 
Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Shonuff said:
I keep CNBC on so I can hear from Cramer. Maybe him, Joe Terranova, Tom Lee and one other guy on there are worth a damn. This money I've made on AMD, that was a tip from Cramer from his actionalerts club. He's not perfect, I do my research and I don't buy everything he suggests. Sometimes, I wish I did. Like when he said buy EL, I didn't buy it, and it went up 9% in the week after.

What are you subbed to on twitter for stocks?
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It's a long list. Since I focused almost exclusively on blue chips and other big caps it saves me from trying to keep up with the thousands of smalls and mediums. Let me grab some names.
 
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