Investing General Discussion

Blazin

Blazin

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As we near the breakout support level near SPY 420. Some are probably wondering if they should take a stab if sitting on cash. Issue with this trade is that if it fails the next major line becomes 390 ish and that's a good bit of pain. The 390s represents the entire uptrend off the Oct lows being at risk. That drop is not a buy, if we lose that level you do not want to be in the market, it goes from being a "deal" to being trouble as we could see significant declines from there as the bear market reasserts itself.

Now that's a little premature but it important to at least understand that at some point declines go from something to embrace to something to avoid. So trying to be as direct as possible this is how I see it.

If you can watch super closely a stab near 420 is worth it if you're confident in being able to trail it with a dynamic mental stop and cut the loss quickly. If you can't or don't want to be obsessively watching it then you should be willing to take the 7% loss if a further break down of the 390s occurs. It will be either that or stomach possibly just holding through another protracted bear leg (>20% decline).

If someone told me they aren't comfortable with any of that, then simply wait until the market takes on a more bullish position and accept that you are likely going to pay a good bit higher price for that safety.


Trade Choices:
Day Trade low 420s tight leash
Swing Trade 420s risk losing 7%
Invest at 420 for the LT confident to not panic in a >20% decline.

Today almost all of us would say stocks will be higher in a few years. IF we face a real bear market low not that pansy bullshit from last year it wont FEEL like it. In a real bear market low we will be questioning the entire system and with reason.

I'm not suggesting people do one or the other or anything but I think it's very important to enter a trade understanding your plan and thinking about how it MAY play out.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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I'm sort of surprised that the DOJ is going after AMZN now. It has such a large influence on the indexes and the fact an anti-trust case can last years and years has potentially just created a significant headwind to equities for quite a while.
 
Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Blazin said:
As we near the breakout support level near SPY 420. Some are probably wondering if they should take a stab if sitting on cash. Issue with this trade is that if it fails the next major line becomes 390 ish and that's a good bit of pain. The 390s represents the entire uptrend off the Oct lows being at risk. That drop is not a buy, if we lose that level you do not want to be in the market, it goes from being a "deal" to being trouble as we could see significant declines from there as the bear market reasserts itself.

Now that's a little premature but it important to at least understand that at some point declines go from something to embrace to something to avoid. So trying to be as direct as possible this is how I see it.

If you can watch super closely a stab near 420 is worth it if you're confident in being able to trail it with a dynamic mental stop and cut the loss quickly. If you can't or don't want to be obsessively watching it then you should be willing to take the 7% loss if a further break down of the 390s occurs. It will be either that or stomach possibly just holding through another protracted bear leg (>20% decline).

If someone told me they aren't comfortable with any of that, then simply wait until the market takes on a more bullish position and accept that you are likely going to pay a good bit higher price for that safety.


Trade Choices:
Day Trade low 420s tight leash
Swing Trade 420s risk losing 7%
Invest at 420 for the LT confident to not panic in a >20% decline.

Today almost all of us would say stocks will be higher in a few years. IF we face a real bear market low not that pansy bullshit from last year it wont FEEL like it. In a real bear market low we will be questioning the entire system and with reason.

I'm not suggesting people do one or the other or anything but I think it's very important to enter a trade understanding your plan and thinking about how it MAY play out.
Click to expand...
For those with comfort with options, an alternative play is also writing out of the money puts at the $390-ish neighborhood. If it does go way south and fall from $390, you can always buy out the options and while you take a money hit, it's not nearly as significant as buying and riding down 20%.

I say this as someone who did exactly that, I have written puts in SPLG with the equivalent of just about SPY $390. If we get to that level and fail, I can then choose to take the shares or pay the price to buy out the position.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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The other number to keep an eye on is AAPL $166
That's the 200-DMA and should be a line in the sand.
 
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Gravel

Gravel

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Sanrith Descartes said:
I'm sort of surprised that the DOJ is going after AMZN now. It has such a large influence on the indexes and the fact an anti-trust case can last years and years has potentially just created a significant headwind to equities for quite a while.
Click to expand...
Not to Politics thread it, but if your goal is to tear down the entire country, it sure is. And everything the government has done in the last few years certainly seems to point to "not in the country's best interest."
 
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Kirun

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Gravel said:
Not to Politics thread it, but if your goal is to tear down the entire country, it sure is. And everything the government has done in the last few years certainly seems to point to "not in the country's best interest."
Click to expand...
Amazon has needed tearing down for a LONG time. To act like they aren't essentially a monopoly is ludicrous, especially now that they've expanded into film, TV, etc. They own like 40% of the ecommerce market and almost the same on the cloud side, which is fucking insane in 2023. Back when I worked for Walmart, they outsold Walmart on the ecommerce side 99 to 1 at one point (Walmart has since narrowed that gap a bit, but still).

Then you have the fact that a massive portion of their shipping costs are/were basically subsidized by the USPS, etc.

Fuck Amazon.
 
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Blazin

Blazin

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Sanrith Descartes said:
For those with comfort with options, an alternative play is also writing out of the money puts at the $390-ish neighborhood. If it does go way south and fall from $390, you can always buy out the options and while you take a money hit, it's not nearly as significant as buying and riding down 20%.

I say this as someone who did exactly that, I have written puts in SPLG with the equivalent of just about SPY $390. If we get to that level and fail, I can then choose to take the shares or pay the price to buy out the position.
Click to expand...
Put selling certainly a way to play it but my take on that and reason I didn't mention is with the vix still being shit you aren't being paid very well for that risk. If we can get into the mid 20s on the vix you'd see me presenting this idea more. If someone wanted to play a put right here and now I'd be looking at much much higher strikes than 390
 
Sludig

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Kirun said:
Amazon has needed tearing down for a LONG time. To act like they aren't essentially a monopoly is ludicrous, especially now that they've expanded into film, TV, etc. They own like 40% of the ecommerce market and almost the same on the cloud side, which is fucking insane in 2023. Back when I worked for Walmart, they outsold Walmart on the ecommerce side 99 to 1 at one point (Walmart has since narrowed that gap a bit, but still).

Then you have the fact that a massive portion of their shipping costs are/were basically subsidized by the USPS, etc.

Fuck Amazon.
Click to expand...
Dont forget they offer pharmacy and telemedicine now.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

Sanrith Descartes

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Blazin said:
Put selling certainly a way to play it but my take on that and reason I didn't mention is with the vix still being shit you aren't being paid very well for that risk. If we can get into the mid 20s on the vix you'd see me presenting this idea more. If someone wanted to play a put right here and now I'd be looking at much much higher strikes than 390
Click to expand...
Can't disagree. My strategy is to write them on the support levels and be happy if Im assigned. I know I could make more writing higher strikes but I am only writing prices I would be happy owning (and also prices I could see a bounce happening).
 
Mist

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Kirun said:
Amazon has needed tearing down for a LONG time. To act like they aren't essentially a monopoly is ludicrous, especially now that they've expanded into film, TV, etc. They own like 40% of the ecommerce market and almost the same on the cloud side, which is fucking insane in 2023. Back when I worked for Walmart, they outsold Walmart on the ecommerce side 99 to 1 at one point (Walmart has since narrowed that gap a bit, but still).

Then you have the fact that a massive portion of their shipping costs are/were basically subsidized by the USPS, etc.

Fuck Amazon.
Click to expand...
Going vertical is not anywhere near the same thing as monopoly.

All of big tech needs a breakup, but that's not the right reasoning why.
 
Kirun

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Mist said:
Going vertical is not anywhere near the same thing as monopoly.

All of big tech needs a breakup, but that's not the right reasoning why.
Click to expand...
Who actually competes with Amazon outside of Walmart? And Amazon owns about 4x the market share they do, on the ecommerce side.

They broke up AT&T for the same shit - constantly gobbling up rival companies, which Amazon does all the fucking time. Go look into all their acquisitions, it's fucking nuts.

It's a monopoly and it has been for probably the better part of a decade. Use whatever buzzword you want to mask it, like "going vertical". But that's just a gobligook, mealy-mouthed way of obfuscating the word monopoly. It's like calling a janitor a "sanitation engineer".
 
Mist

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Kirun said:
And Amazon owns about 4x the market share they do, on the ecommerce side.
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Amazon Connect just stole another one of my clients so you don't have to argue with me. Stuff like that could quickly cost me my job. But operating divisions across a bunch of verticals is not a measurement of a monopoly. It's the anticompetitive stuff that they do within verticals that's the problem. Google and Meta are guilty of it too.

I also kinda know a lot about AT&T... basically all the seniormost members of my team worked for AT&T when they were still the only show in town.
 
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I don't think Amazon as a retailer is a monopoly in the traditional sense because they lack the leverage over pricing that traditional monopolies have and they are not so much anti competitive as hyper competitive. Breaking up Amazon would result in higher prices for the consumer not lower since Amazon and Amazon marketplace is often the reason prices are competed down so hard on many items. You could argue that they are a nascent monopoly and their strategy is to eventually put other retailers out of business and gain that pricing power but they are very far away from that. I am surprised the DOJ is moving against them though it could be for practices in their other business units where I am less familiar with how they operate.
 
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Mist

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Creslin said:
because they lack the leverage over pricing that traditional monopolies have
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You have no idea what you're talking about. Price leverage is exactly what they have, and the actual reason they should be broken up. They have more price leverage than anyone has ever had with the exception of maybe Walmart, and Walmart should have gotten the smackdown for the same thing.
 
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C

Creslin

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Mist said:
You have no idea what you're talking about. Price leverage is exactly what they have, and the actual reason they should be broken up. They have more price leverage than anyone has ever had with the exception of maybe Walmart, and Walmart should have gotten the smackdown for the same thing.
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In their retail business I would argue strongly that they do not. They exercise tremendous pressure against their vendor base sure, as does WMT, but they really are in a highly competitive consumer market and don't have much pricing power to the consumer, which is generally what the DOJ cares about in anti trust actions, they have never given a shit before about vendors.
 
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swayze22

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Kirun said:
Amazon has needed tearing down for a LONG time. To act like they aren't essentially a monopoly is ludicrous, especially now that they've expanded into film, TV, etc. They own like 40% of the ecommerce market and almost the same on the cloud side, which is fucking insane in 2023. Back when I worked for Walmart, they outsold Walmart on the ecommerce side 99 to 1 at one point (Walmart has since narrowed that gap a bit, but still).

Then you have the fact that a massive portion of their shipping costs are/were basically subsidized by the USPS, etc.

Fuck Amazon.
Click to expand...
They say timing is everything...
 
Kirun

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Creslin said:
I don't think Amazon as a retailer is a monopoly in the traditional sense because they lack the leverage over pricing that traditional monopolies have and they are not so much anti competitive as hyper competitive.
Click to expand...
Go look up how they ran Diapers.com/Quidsi out of business/forced them to sell. Pricing leverage is EXACTLY how they did it, because Marc Lore turned down their initial offer to sell the company.
 
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