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Post by Handy on Aug 26, 2020 14:21:13 GMT -5
It is worth reading about "Tulip Mania" as an example how some forms of speculation can hurt people very bad or is the proper word badly?
I only bought 1 new car in my life and wrote a a check for the full amount. I did buy a 1 yr old car once for $1,500 with a 5% 2 year loan (total interest on the loan document was $150). The total interest was $150 for the 2 yr loan but according to the bank I had to pay off the loan because I was moving to another state so I paid off the loan in 6 months and the bank charged me $130 interest. According to a loan payment spread sheet, my 5% loan was actually a 30% loan all because I paid it off early.
The idea of "let the buyer beware" is very good advice.
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Post by mirrororchid on Aug 27, 2020 5:47:02 GMT -5
That brings up another concern of mine. As a result of large $$ donations by corporations, some individuals and lobbyists, how exactly does the individual fit in? If the banks could "PRINT GOLD" we would be on the gold standard. Some countries did have a silver back currency. I don't know what is happening now with those governments.
None back their currency with gold. The best the gold enthusiasts have is marking which country has the most gold and therefore how much each note would be worth if divided evenly. This is a silly exercise, and not at all equivalent. Inasmuch as a paper currency can buy gold on the free market, national treasuries can "print gold". As long as the currency has value (bestowed upon it by the threat of property seizure[taxes), a national treasury can produce it's own "gold". The fed needs no taxes, as long as states and counties stand at the ready to take your stuff if you don't fork over some of those "worthless" dollars. The fed still charges taxes for appearances' sake. I see big money (lobbyists) as waves in an ocean (the economy). I exist as a jellyfish. If I stay afloat, the waves move me in the general direction the ocean flows. And the ocean always wants to grow/prosper. I don't concern myself much with what flavor of the month they are into. I try to predict what they will support eventually. This is value investing. I am convinced that stocks with a healthy payout ratio (yield/earnings) and low debt will eventually be sought after by the powers that be. So far so good. Sometimes I like a product enough to ignore the numbers: BeyondMeat, Taser, Tesla, Moller Air (don't google that last one. You'll lose all respect for me. It wasn't much money, though.) |
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Post by Handy on Aug 27, 2020 10:37:38 GMT -5
Mirrororchid
I exist as a jellyfish. If I stay afloat, the waves move me in the general direction the ocean flows. And the ocean always wants to grow/prosper. I try to predict what they will support eventually. This is value investing. That sounds decent to me. Learning how to adapt to what is is a lot stressful than bucking large trends. Moller Air?  ? I found moller.com/ Then I remembered an old joke. Fifty years ago, Futurists predicted we would all have personal air transportation because of advances in technology and learning. What happened? No sky cars but we have warnings on Tide pods to not eat the Tide Pods. Sky Cars? Maybe for some cities taxi service and a few rich people. I don't know! The demonstrated ability of drones to fly in groups and not collide is interesting. Collision avoidance devices on everyday vehicles has improved recently, so there is hope in that area. Electric airplanes, yes. I watched several videos of some already flying SHORT distances powered with batteries. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraftBeyondMeat BYND Tesla TSLA Taser Moller Air I didn't find their respective ticker.
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Post by mirrororchid on Aug 28, 2020 6:20:27 GMT -5
Mirrororchid
I exist as a jellyfish. If I stay afloat, the waves move me in the general direction the ocean flows. And the ocean always wants to grow/prosper. I try to predict what they will support eventually. This is value investing. That sounds decent to me. Learning how to adapt to what is is a lot stressful than bucking large trends. Moller Air? ? I found moller.com/ Then I remembered an old joke. Fifty years ago, Futurists predicted we would all have personal air transportation because of advances in technology and learning. What happened? No sky cars but we have warnings on Tide pods to not eat the Tide Pods. Sky Cars? Maybe for some cities taxi service and a few rich people. I don't know! The demonstrated ability of drones to fly in groups and not collide is interesting. Collision avoidance devices on everyday vehicles has improved recently, so there is hope in that area. Electric airplanes, yes. I watched several videos of some already flying SHORT distances powered with batteries. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraftBeyondMea BYND Tesla TSLA Taser Moller Air I didn't find their respective ticker. I told you not to look!!!!!  MLER and AAXN Taser rebranded as Axon, maybe since they diversified into police body cams (hooboy did that make the stock jump when Ferguson hit the news) Transport drones appear to be in early use in Dubai. LOTS of money sloshing around there. I've got 5% in cash now. The lack of concern about the masses still being unemployed and scrabbling for limited hobs driving labor wages down. Congress seems unaware of the need to prepare for a severe drop in demand and thus possible layoffs. A crash may be coming. Mass evictions may drive up rent choking off disposable income. Bad times ahead if Congress stays as frugal as it is. (Deliberate sabotage of the economy right before November? I'm not saying "No", tin foil hat or not) |
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Post by Handy on Aug 28, 2020 11:18:35 GMT -5
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Post by Handy on Aug 28, 2020 16:58:03 GMT -5
Mirrororchid MLER Currently MLER shares are trading around a penny, I don't do penny stocks and there is mot much information on MLER. AAXN www.finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=aaxn losing $ this year but next year looks good, 5 yr growth@30% is excellent, current price @$84 with the future price maybe $102.50 is good, forward P/E @ 59.7=too much speculation for me, Quick & current ratios & beta are very good. No dividend and dividends are my income so that doesn't fly for now. I remember when Radio Shack, Kmart, Sears, Avon, Rexall Drug, IBM and Xerox stocks were the hot, can't fail stocks. Well some failed or failed for a while so there is no sure thing when the company isn't making a decent profit. I become more conservative as I age. I still have faith in IBM. Xerox, well I had a run in with them with several customers paying Xerox way too much money for supplies and service. I am not a fan of governments printing money like they do or some derivatives. Make me dictator and watch me balance the budget and really put the USA in a deep depression.  OK, I admit I would make it tough for the current generation. The way we are going is dumping our current problems on some future generations. |
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Post by mirrororchid on Aug 31, 2020 6:33:55 GMT -5
Mirrororchid MLER Currently MLER shares are trading around a penny, I don't do penny stocks and there is mot much information on MLER. AAXN www.finviz.com/quote.ashx?t=aaxn losing $ this year but next year looks good, 5 yr growth@30% is excellent, current price @$84 with the future price maybe $102.50 is good, forward P/E @ 59.7=too much speculation for me, Quick & current ratios & beta are very good. No dividend and dividends are my income so that doesn't fly for now. I remember when Radio Shack, Kmart, Sears, Avon, Rexall Drug, IBM and Xerox stocks were the hot, can't fail stocks. Well some failed or failed for a while so there is no sure thing when the company isn't making a decent profit. I become more conservative as I age. I still have faith in IBM. Xerox, well I had a run in with them with several customers paying Xerox way too much money for supplies and service. I am not a fan of governments printing money like they do or some derivatives. Make me dictator and watch me balance the budget and really put the USA in a deep depression. OK, I admit I would make it tough for the current generation. The way we are going is dumping our current problems on some future generations. I have a dollar of MLER. Started as $100. That's my kind of penny stock investment. AAXN is one of my picks where I didn't care much what the numbers said. I wanted some of it. Same reason I plunked down a small stake in WRTC. I acknowledge it may go to zero. I bought TSLA for that reason. That worked too. PE of nearly a thousand. AAXN looks downright conservative. Radio Shack wasn't a good buy but the makers of their Tandy computers, Texas Instruments has done shockingly well for me over the years. Crazy high fees for Xerox customers are the kind of thing that produce outsize profits. You may not want to e a customer, but maybe an investor. I sold AMZN thinking the inflated prices with "free shipping" were such an obvious con they'd piss off the customers. I should have remembered PT Barnum's famous admonishment. I'm a big fan of printing money (within reason.) As for dumping the problems on the next generation? Maybe you're referring to the debt? Nah. That's what quantitative easing is for. Recall Bill Clinton's budget surplus in the late 90's? I had thought that was a good thing until I studied sovereign debt. I find it possible that Clinton knew government surpluses are removing money from an economy. He left the economy in a state that was on the verge of collapse just as Bush the younger took command. A strategic master stroke even if it made millions suffer. In 2003 Bush and the Republican Congress relented and engaged in a MASSIVE debt exercise to repair the damage of the budget surplus (trap) under Clinton. Medicare Drug Prescriptions, Tax cuts and TWO wars got us out of the recession and pumped money into the economy.....which went into real estate to set up Bush's second recession. Every time Republicans have a chance to balance the budget, they don't. That's not incompetence. That's good horse sense that takes over turning resolve into lip service. I don't think most Congressmen understand quantitative easing. They just know THEY don't want to collapse the economy on their watch. Doesn't matter. The result is the same, steady economic performance with minor recessions now and then. Democrats don't understand it either. They just have faith that since the debt hasn't been a problem that it won't be. They're right, but they don't understand why. Funny though. Bush the younger used those stimulus efforts in 2003 and 2008/2009, racking up debt to save the sputtering economy, but as soon as a Democrat comes in, they scream about tightening the belt! Cut the deficit! Cut debt! Some Republicans DO understand Keynesian economics and try to weaponize it. Make a Democratic president cut the budget and watch the economy tank then blame him for it. Smart strategy. Evil, but smart. |
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Post by Handy on Aug 31, 2020 13:13:43 GMT -5
AAXN (Tazers) I like the idea of non-lethal devices. One problem seems to be some people use the most powerful weapon they carry if they get excited, which is usually a pistol. It looks as if one or two shots is never enough with the police shooting videos I watched. Then there is the problem of well armed criminals. I don’t understand the user’s situation enough so I won’t be investing in AAXN AMZN Today this is not the company I remember as a start-up. It is much more complicated than I ever expected it to become. Free shipping, well I buy repair parts on eBay and some that get delivered to me actually came from Amazon mainly because the shipping cost more than the product I bought MLER Something that I associate with military drones some day, then maybe later other uses. TSLA With so many other electric vehicles being developed, I would place a “stop loss” price on the stock. Where I live, owning a Tesla is doable only if I drive locally or east or west. If I go on a north or south trip more than 100 miles in the wintertime, I am screwed unless I want to stop at an RV park for ~8 hours to recharge the batteries so I can get back home. TXN good company but a little pricey at today’s price. WRTC Decisions, decisions, do I as a police person use a BoloWrap, a tazer, or my service revoler? XRX When Canon and Sharp parts and supplies were ½ the cost of Xerox parts and supplies that influenced my opinions about Xerox very negatively. BTW many $20-$30 ink cartridges only have .25 cents worth of ink in them. A rip-off but who am I? I feel the same way about MO Altria Group. They are selling products that cause deaths. NO THANKS. What interests me is the idea of Government Pension Fund of Norway. Read the Ethics area. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_NorwayPrinting money, I understand why it is done and like you said, the powers don't want the economy to go bad on their watch. This sounds similar to an oil company that is making a profit but not enough profit to cover the dividends, so the company sells assets and borrows money to maintain a dividend from a time when profits were high. |
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Post by mirrororchid on Sept 1, 2020 3:51:41 GMT -5
Printing money, I understand why it is done and like you said, the powers don't want the economy to go bad on their watch. This sounds similar to an oil company that is making a profit but not enough profit to cover the dividends, so the company sells assets and borrows money to maintain a dividend from a time when profits were high. I had bought TXN long ago when the numbers were much more favorable (value investing) BTW, since you started the thread, I think you can change the title to include some idea what this new topic is. Macroeconomics and Finance? I buy almost exclusively dividend stocks but the Payout ratio tends to be low and the company must have more cash than debt. It's no favor to me for you to borrow money and hand it to me. That strikes me as a failing business model trying to tempt me with a scam. Sometimes my companies get bought up by vulture capital firms, saddle them with enormous debt, then allow them to decay and die. How the hell this is legal baffles me. It's a complicated form of embezzlement as far as I can tell. |
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Post by Handy on Sept 1, 2020 15:05:03 GMT -5
Mirrororchid
Sometimes my companies get bought up by vulture capital firms, saddle them with enormous debt, then allow them to decay and die.
I recently bought a stock, CNXM, that was earning a profit. I think CNXM a division of CNX and CNX was losing money but CNX wants to merge CNXM into CNX. I then got a notice from some law group stating the move was a fiduciary violation. This is the first time I encountered this type of process.
I buy almost exclusively dividend stocks but the Payout ratio tends to be low and the company must have more cash than debt. It's no favor to me for you to borrow money and hand it to me.
XOM is the company I was referring to that was paying out more then the company earned. BP is doing something similar. Both companies said they were considered "Dividend aristocrats." XOM has paid out more than it earned before so I am hoping they can do it again. Like you I do not agree with selling assets or borrowing money to pay out dividends. It has to be paid back some how in the future.
I try to invest in dividend issues. Lots of little baskets with each basket with a few eggs. A state wide electric utility went bust twice almost the same company but using a different company name). I talked with employees that lost over $100K in retirement funds. That convinced me that I needed to do the little baskets with a few eggs in each basket. It is more work but that is how things go.
Many of the high dividend stocks have a risky reason the dividend is high. I followed an uncle's advice. He set type for the financial page of a local news paper. He never earned much money from working but had a good memory and a substantial retirement fund. His advice about dividends is "don't be greedy." He died a long time ago but his wisdom still is valid.
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Post by mirrororchid on Sept 2, 2020 19:01:37 GMT -5
...I try to invest in dividend issues. Lots of little baskets with each basket with a few eggs. ... Many of the high dividend stocks have a risky reason the dividend is high.... The payout ratio is the dividend divided by the earnings. How much of their earnings are they handing out. Mine tend to be 50% or lower. Some shoot over 100% which is absurd. Higher than 50% and they seem to lack ideas how to grown and innovate. As for little baskets? My strategy is to buy $500 of a stock and sell $500 worth when it reaches $650. There's a little more to it, but that used to be my plan and it's left me with small bites of maybe 150 stocks. Some of those $150 pieces grew to thousands. Some stayed at 150. A few went under, but it's been a while since I picked a dud like that, though some are gasping at a dollar or two. They'll vanish one day. |
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Post by mirrororchid on Sept 2, 2020 19:06:00 GMT -5
I had to pay off the loan because I was moving to another state so I paid off the loan in 6 months and the bank charged me $130 interest. According to a loan payment spread sheet, my 5% loan was actually a 30% loan all because I paid it off early.
The idea of "let the buyer beware" is very good advice.
I was warned about those caveats so when I had a home equity loan, I paid off just enough so the remaining payments would last through the minimum "hold time" past which you were allowed to pay it off without penalty. That is I owed 10k Monthly payments were 200. I had to hold it two years. After one year I paid off everything but 2401 dollars. The 12 payments of 200 left me with 1 buck of debt past the payoff date. Lucky I don't need to borrow often. I'd get the stink-eye from every loan officer in town. |
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Post by Handy on Sept 2, 2020 20:00:54 GMT -5
Mirrororchid
My strategy is to buy $500 of a stock and sell $500 worth when it reaches $650.That is an interesting concept. My biggest screw-up was buying a utility company($4.50/share) with an AA rating and hanging on to it until it was .07/a share. It paid over 5% dividend. I didn't know the utility was operating like Enron, hiding its dud sub companies. The thing that really pissed me off was the CEO types got a really big bonus the state legal dogs approved.
When I look at a stock, I pass it up if the payout is over 70%. Maybe I need to lower my threshold to 50% but with Covid-19 the screening criteria is out of wack compared to normal times. I have come to realize it isn't what I know about a company I might consider investing in but WHAT I DON"T KNOW that makes a good or bad investment. I am not much of a speculator but I am more like "If I had the money would I buy the whole company" type investor, then just go for what I can afford.
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Post by lessingham on Sept 3, 2020 4:17:11 GMT -5
I used to run a death and divide club at work! Everybody paid a monthly sum. Two weeks before Christmas you got your money back. The interest went to 3 prize draws. If anybody died, the family got the lot. A very olde Victorian life insurance idea, a great hoot.
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Post by Handy on Sept 3, 2020 9:48:32 GMT -5
The idea of a death and divide club is new to me. I can see why it was an alternative to life insurance. WTG!
I passed the state life insurance exam so I wanted to know the history of life insurance. I never sold a policy because I learned the company I might go to work for only paid 39% of the money they collected. Give me a dollar and I will give you 50 cents was a better deal than an individual life insurance policy.
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? I found 
