Anyone have experience trading forex or stocks? - Page 2

On February 18 2014 13:20 devon06atX wrote: I was really enjoying this conversation until cariadon started to throw out immature insults. Anyways, thanks guys. I like reading peoples thoughts that are much more informed than mine. As an aside, you can't use Buffett as an example. He can buy a big chunk of stock, it will hit the news that he's investing in it, then everyone will jump on the bandwagon - thus driving the value of it up. He has enough leverage to do things no single 'person with half a brain' can possibly dream of. It sounds to me that puffer is quite knowledgeable in this topic, why don't you listen to what he's saying instead of trying to argue every point?

You can jump on the train. Or under it, take your pick.

On February 18 2014 13:00 auffenpuffer wrote: Show nested quote + I wouldn't call 1bb/100 in NL50 beating much of anything, maybe your own free time. You are throwing random statements out there about nobody winning but if you think about it someone has to be winning all the time. There are two parts to a transaction so minus fees for every transaction there is a losing and a winning side. You should meditate on that for a while before throwing random statements about nobody beating the market. Warren Buffett is to investing what Tom Dwan is to poker and then some. Grahams and later Buffetts investment strategy is legit and it works. Auffenpuffer you are ignorant. The valuable lesson learned from efficient market hypothesis is not to trade your positions back and forth too much because (depending on your bankroll) you get killed by fees. In PLO50 your edge has to be bigger to overcome the mad rake, parallels can be drawn with investing. It's interesting how all the content in this post could have been expressed by "I disagree". You make no arguments whatsoever, you simply state negations of what my post said (and of course add one personal insult). Or yeah, you did have the original argument that "in any transaction someone loses". Now the fundamental difference between finance (or more generally economics) and gambling (for example) is that gambling is a zero sum game, whereas investing is not. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/z/zero-sumgame.asp So whatever if you are interested in this kinda thing you can start reading with the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis, I'm done with this discussion.

You are overly negative and giving OP the wrong impression. Nobody wants to hear your discouraging bulshit.
It is admirable to be knowledgeable about and manage your own money. The decision he makes, be it index fund, stocks or some other instrument (or not participating) should be made with consideration of worthy information.


Hey thanks for shooting yourself in the foot with the zero sum concept. The economy is growing, if you are invested you get a piece of that growth.

Thanks for showing your worthless ass out of this discussion.

On February 18 2014 14:12 Highcard wrote: Show nested quote + On February 18 2014 13:07 julep wrote: i trade bonds as a job. barrier to entry in s quite high unlike poker. there is alot to learn about everything really. and it is usually hard to get a start at a firm let alone be around good traders who are willing to take you under their wings. So, why would someone want to trade bonds compared to say, all other forms of trading. What are the advantages?

the reason i trade the bonds is the 2 guys who taught me trade the bonds. there isnt an advantage or disadvantage. different markets have different styles(trading the equities is usually more fast paced and has a bit more action, the bonds are generally a bit slower - just depends on the day)

i like the bonds because you can play the game so many different ways, directional, spread trading along the yield curve, or spreading between different markets.

but then there is the whole bond option game aswell which i dont get involved in

but one of the guys at work trades forex. well pretty much only yen/usd

everyone knows japan is devaluing their currency through ridic monetary policy, so his overall strategy is looking for places to sell the yen/usd

I don't know what point you're trying to make here cariadon. It's obviously possible to beat the market by picking individual stocks and doing your own due diligence, but the point of the thread was for passive income. Unless you have a different definition of passive income, I'm thinking of something that takes little time/effort on the front end that will yield a decent return. Index funds are probably the best bet in terms of passive investing, and when you are dealing with ER's of 0.2% and no transaction fees, I don't see how active investing comes close.

On February 18 2014 12:50 cariadon wrote: I don't get the point you are making with higher risk and return. Was there supposed to be one? I'd love investment opportunities with zero risk. There are many value creators and each company is different. You can't take one model apply it everywhere and expect a profit. The term value stock is overused. Graham and Buffetts strategies are available in written word, explained in examples and concepts. Applying them randomly won't get you anywhere, you have to use your brain. You can make better than market returns picking your own stocks. It is highly improbable someone who doesn't know the rules of poker can beat 50nl. However, with keen learning, effort and discipline it is possible for some (not most). Same can be said about stocks.

yea its possible but pretty damn near close to impossible.

its a bit absurd though to encourage poeple to pick stocks/investments while investment, asset, wealth management companies equiped with thousand dollar computer infrastructure with software thousands of times more complicated than hem. analysts are given industries and even within those industries are given responsibility to understand/memorize 10-20 stocks at a time. i've read/gone over thousands of 10k's but still dont think it helps all that much.

saying "You can make better than market returns picking your own stocks."

is like saying you can make more money with 72o. it might work in the short term but i seriously doubt there are even 100 people in the world who have beat the market over a 20 year span while actively trading stocks that isn't a professional.

On February 18 2014 13:20 devon06atX wrote: I was really enjoying this conversation until cariadon started to throw out immature insults. Anyways, thanks guys. I like reading peoples thoughts that are much more informed than mine. As an aside, you can't use Buffett as an example. He can buy a big chunk of stock, it will hit the news that he's investing in it, then everyone will jump on the bandwagon - thus driving the value of it up. He has enough leverage to do things no single 'person with half a brain' can possibly dream of. It sounds to me that puffer is quite knowledgeable in this topic, why don't you listen to what he's saying instead of trying to argue every point?

this is called "monetizing" your bet.

On February 18 2014 14:12 Highcard wrote: Show nested quote + On February 18 2014 13:07 julep wrote: i trade bonds as a job. barrier to entry in s quite high unlike poker. there is alot to learn about everything really. and it is usually hard to get a start at a firm let alone be around good traders who are willing to take you under their wings. So, why would someone want to trade bonds compared to say, all other forms of trading. What are the advantages?

this is all from talking to a bond trader like 2-3 months ago but i feel as though there are more strategies to implement and it's more dynamic. i brought up the point though that there are more fish who play stocks (or holdem) than there are poeple who play bonds (PLO) and that most of the population wouldn't even know where to buy its first bond.

i also got the impression that there are a TON of niches in bond trading. believe it or not a lot of insurance providers such as State Farm have huge assets in bonds to cover yearly payouts (hence the name fixed income).

On February 18 2014 19:18 Bigbobm wrote: I don't know what point you're trying to make here cariadon. It's obviously possible to beat the market by picking individual stocks and doing your own due diligence, but the point of the thread was for passive income. Unless you have a different definition of passive income, I'm thinking of something that takes little time/effort on the front end that will yield a decent return. Index funds are probably the best bet in terms of passive investing, and when you are dealing with ER's of 0.2% and no transaction fees, I don't see how active investing comes close.

If the goal is to "beat the market" then buying Vanguard/Fidelity indexes is basically doing what most are. Which is more than fine. I believe there is a correlation between how much work you put into it and what you get out of it. MNJ and auffenpuffers arguments make the stocks (or other instruments) look evil, which they are not. They are not evil, investing/trading does not have to be unimaginably complicated like they make it out to be.

All i am saying is it is perfectly fine to manage your own money and is an option to consider. It is not my goal to educate on investing. I'm just trying to act as voice of reason and suggest questioning the validity of negative arguments being made.

I don't think we own different views on active investing. Active and passive is relative to how we perceive it. Let's say you pick stocks with good fundamentals you can be sufficiently confident nothing game changing that will bankrupt you is going to happen overnight. You can just buy the stocks and sit on them for a long time. You know. It's all good man. Do whatever. Don't come here spitting out cereal how the game is rigged and being moderately profitable is impossible.

--- Nuked ---

I don't believe in the "efficient market" hypothesis at all, the market is lunacy. But why spend tons of time & effort to get a tiny little edge on a small capital when you can just autopilot, put in 0 effort, pay minimal rake and spend your time learning something useful instead.

I do think it makes sense to study the tax situation where you are. If you get some tax benefit or your employer is matching your contributions to your 401k or whatever that can make a very big difference. They may not offer you the option to buy a good index fund in which case you should just pick stocks and hold them forever.

it's not completely unheard of to have a bad result over 20 years but it's been pretty damn rare. On the other hand I think people who say your EV is 8-10% per year citing historical data are pretty optimistic.

Finally, you do have to remember to actually be passive because a lot of people start out with that intention but pretty soon the media announces a new armageddon and then they immediately start paying massive taxes to dance in and out of their index fund. Whenever you start hallucinating that you can reliably predict the future, STOP IT. People talk about 8-10% per year historical returns but that comparison means nothing if you occasionally panic-sell off all of your stocks in a media tornado. If you're going to be a blissfully ignorant passive investor, just lock yourself in to never reacting to anything and stick to it no matter what.

waiting on the inevitable crash so I can go buy up some stocks on the cheap...

Also lots of speculation about a potential housing bubble part 2 here in some parts of the US...anyone got any insight on this subject matter?

Will be looking to buy a house within next couple years so I could potentially reap some big benefits during this crazy period in our world history lol

You are probably gonna have to wait for another 5-10 years on another crash. There's most likely gonna be small 1-5% corrections, maybe a 10% one down the road and that's it I would bet.