The Stock Trading and Shitposting thread.

So did a hypothetical exercise with Grok today.... Turned out better than I thought it would. Might use this strategy for next years stock picker contest. heh I present to you :

"Texas Top 25 ETF"​

Limited to the 25 largest (by current market cap) publicly traded Fortune 1000 companies headquartered in Texas. This is a cap-weighted basket using today's market caps for weighting (standard ETF approach), with fixed constituents for the backtest ("as-if" today's holdings held over the period). All are confirmed Fortune 1000 with HQ in Texas (primarily Houston, Dallas, Austin, Irving, Spring, etc.).List of the 25 Companies (Ranked by Current Market Cap)

1. Tesla (TSLA) — Austin
2. Exxon Mobil (XOM) — Spring
3. Oracle (ORCL) — Austin
4. Caterpillar (CAT) — Irving
5. Chevron (CVX) — Houston
6. Texas Instruments (TXN) — Dallas
7. Dell Technologies (DELL) — Round Rock
8. AT&T (T) — Dallas
9. Charles Schwab (SCHW) — Westlake
10. ConocoPhillips (COP) — Houston
11. Quanta Services (PWR) — Houston
12. McKesson (MCK) — Irving
13. Waste Management (WM) — Houston
14. Schlumberger (SLB) — Houston
15. Enterprise Products Partners (EPD) — Houston
16. Valero Energy (VLO) — San Antonio
17. Phillips 66 (PSX) — Houston
18. EOG Resources (EOG) — Houston
19. Kinder Morgan (KMI) — Houston
20. Energy Transfer (ET) — Dallas
21. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) — Spring
22. Baker Hughes (BKR) — Houston
23. Targa Resources (TRGP) — Houston
24. Occidental Petroleum (OXY) — Houston
25. Diamondback Energy (FANG) — Midland

Total market cap of the basket: ~$5.57 trillion (as of latest data). Top holdings dominate (~26% Tesla, ~11% each Exxon/Oracle, etc.). This is heavily tilted toward energy (~40-45% combined weight), tech/hardware (~20%+ from TSLA/DELL/ORCL/TXN/HPE), and industrials/financials.5-Year Performance (June 8, 2021 – June 8, 2026)Backtested price return (split-adjusted closes; no dividends reinvested; no rebalancing or fees):

• Hypothetical Texas Top 25 ETF: +158.32% cumulative (~2.58x initial investment).
  Annualized: ~20.9%.
  Key drivers: Massive gains from TSLA (+103%), ORCL (+150%), CAT (+281%), DELL (+661%), PWR (+634%), TRGP (+460%), energy names like VLO (+210%), XOM (+144%), and resilient performers like MCK (+299%). Offsets included drags like AT&T (-22%).
• S&P 500 (via SPY proxy for price return): +75.05% cumulative.
  Annualized: ~11.9%.

The Texas Top 25 would have outperformed the S&P 500 by a wide margin (+83 percentage points cumulative). This reflects Texas' energy cycle recovery, tech/AI/auto boom (Tesla, Oracle, Dell, etc.), and strong industrials/infrastructure exposure. (Note: A real ETF would have slightly lower returns after ~0.2-0.5% expenses; dividends — especially high from energy/pipelines — would boost total returns significantly for both, but more for the Texas basket.)Caveats (same as before): Hypothetical/backtested using today's constituents and weights; actual Fortune 1000 list evolves yearly; ignores transaction costs, taxes, or liquidity; higher volatility/concentration risk than broad-market ETFs due to energy/tech tilt. Past performance ≠ future.If you want equal-weighting instead, a full holdings table with exact weights/individual returns, dividend-adjusted total returns, sector breakdown, or a forward-looking projection, just say the word! This would be a high-conviction, Texas-pure play ETF.

So... Alan Greenspan died at age 100. I hear some people are irrationally exuberant.

I do wonder if now having three exchanges in Texas (NYSE Texas, Nasdaq Texas, and now TXSE) if/when we'll start to see longer training hours. I also wonder how this will work for the NYSE and Nasdaq Texas branches in relation to what trades in NY v. Texas.

Stupid URL parsing...

Cad threw a post over in, of all places, the middle east politics thread about how the market has been doing well, which made me do a quick "What's my performance YTD" Interesting highlights...

• Crypto -- Down almost 30%, harvested some losses, fuck ETH, moved everything to BTC to see if I can do what bears so in the winter and just sleep through this. Smallest of the 4 puddles of capital I have, so not horrible....
• Personal directed stock - Up a touch over 23% YTD
• 401k at former company (left two weeks ago) - Up around 27%.
• Stock I have in my former company? Up.. a bit... where bit == ~111% up YTD , largest single holding, and yes I am working with a financial advisor to properly divest and diversify, just doing out best to avoid loss to taxes.

Overall, portfolio up 61% for the year.

Figures this qualifies as shitposting.....

Cad said:

Technically I think I responded to a post that said the market was doing poorly.

I'm up about 17% total this year between VTI/VGT. 61% would be nice but I've been an index-rider for a long time, not seeing much reason to change now.

Click to expand...

Make no mistake... most of that is that company I recently left and their stock. Meaning it's mostly that as it was vesting and piling up I was lazy/hadn't thought about it until just recently, but then the company stock has just gone fucking nuts this year so I guess so far (assuming I get divested before a crash/correction) it's a "Lucky Stupid Mistake". I literally got the "Here's how we want to help you divest that some and diversify" official plan from my financial advisor last week.

All my personal stuff is four ETFs, moderately balanced. XLK (Tech), SFY (SoFi 500), URNM (I still believe in nuclear), and HDV (Your grandma's ETF) Needing a tiny balance as XLK has outperformed and it's not like 20/20/20/40 instead of equally balanced.

401k has been sitting in a "mid cap growth blend", and that will get reallocated when I roll it into the new company's 401 next month.

The crypto... fuck ETH.. fuck alts.. fuck them all in their dirty little fuck holes.... I still have long term belief in BTC, so I moved everything to that and figured I will just let it eventually erase those losses so I don't feel as angry.

Cad said:

Wife had a bunch of her company's stock in her 401k too. At one point like 20 years ago, 70% of her 401k was in her company's stock. When I looked 1/2 her 401k contributions were set to go to the company's stock purchase plan by default (and the stock had grown well so it was taking up more space in her portfolio). Tricksy little hobbittses.

I got her in a good large-cap index fund offered by their shitty provider back then, and the company's stock has been flat for 10+ years now. Those company stock plans are awesome when working out, complete fucking disaster if it doesn't.

Click to expand...

Yeah, my former company has had what I'd call one really lackluster year in the last 5, and I was also in the ESPP, but not through the 401k. My company didn't offer their ESPP as a 401K option. Instead they just did two buys a year at the lowest price from either the first or last day, then subtract 15% so it was a nicely lucrative ESPP. I will miss that from the company. But the stock has done so well this year with some planning and diversification it put me in a position where I could say "I wanna take one more wild ass shot at something I haven't done and build a program from the ground up at a series A startup".

If it goes completely sideways? I can just comfortably start retirement early, if not the target the company has is to get acquired in around 4-5 years, and if we hit that point it's a payday and then I retire. Also I'm getting to go back to working with a couple people I absolutely love and have had great success with, including possibly my closest friend I'm not married to.