The 2023 Stock Market Thread

[XtremeJ]

You are correct of course. My answer for most of your questions would have to be No. I like to think I am very good at picking buying opportunities. In the past this has been enough because I have had the mindset of accumulating good stocks at great prices. But now I need to rethink that. I'm at a point where the 2 IRA portfolios I am managing cannot be added to so I need to start selling to free up cash for buying. I've always sold based on positions being in good gains and watching a couple technicals (which I know very little of). When the stock is above the 50, 100, and 200 SMA and the RSI is capped, I sell some.

Would love to hear how you come up with targets to sell. Keep in mind, I want targets that make sense from an investor pov, rather than a trader. Thanks.

IF the experts (Dalio, Ackman, Woods, etc) struggle to pick winners, that should be a clue to the rest of us, just how difficult this investing can be. For every AAPL or TSLA there are thousands of companies that went bust and investors lost it all.

Are your limits in the IRA's age related? Not sure why you are capped at adding to those?

If I have some time over the holidays I will find the previous write up I did describing the very basics of technicals and setting price targets. Or write a new one.

I invest in very few stocks. AAPL, TSLA, BA, AMD, AMZN, CRWD, RACE, WM, MSFT, among others and also SPY, QQQ's.
These are buy and hold and never sell. Setup DRIP's on all these stocks
I sell covered calls on all positions that have more than 100 shares or multiples of. This generates cash inflow, and can even be done in IRA accounts (if you can manage the account yourself)

I swing trade stocks mostly FANG or those hitting the FinTwit headlines. Anywhere from a week to a few months.

I day trade too but very limited on the instruments, QQQ's TSLA, ES or SPX. Rarely I might trade the stock of the day on Fintwit, rarely though.

For ALL 3 types of trading I do (let's not mention I trade options for now, both swing and day) BEFORE I take the trade I determine

• Current Price action
• Trend
• 3 price targets higher
• Stop out price which leads to
• risk reward, I aim for 3:1 ideally

When I buy I immediately set
- sell order at determined Level - for day trading and swing trading, this will be actual technical level(s) derived from chart study
For investing my stop losses are usually just a %, or a mix between tech levels and %. I will never take more than a 10% loss on an equity I consider an investment. You need a plan for this when you start out so you avoid stopping out of stocks that are just moving within their normal range. Once you have been in that stock for a while I use the Dollar Cost Average as my guide.
Once the trade goes green

• take 50 or 75% of the position off at Target1, set stop order above entry and wait
• take off another 25% of the trade at Target 2 , adjust stop order or set trailing stop order (either by $ amount or percentage)
• let your runners work

If the trade fails I am out a max of 5% or 10% on that position, no position should risk more than 1% of your total account.

In the meantime IF you have questions please post up. Even stocks you are interested in, give me a symbol and goals

Example- I am interested in TSLA long, at the current price, $251.50 and intend holding for <time period> 6 weeks, what are possible targets? What is my stop limit?

Quick look at TSLA daily for the past year, and my targets would be 264, 275 then 299 and breakout to ATH. Very tight stop at 240, ideal stop at 228. Use your own max permitted loss to then determine the size of your position. 251.50 - 228 = 23.50 max loss to stop limit. My max loss per position (usually as a % of your total portfolio / number of positions) is $500 per trade on a $50K account = 1% loss.
On a $50K account / 10 positions (typically 3 or 4 of those positions is "cash") each position works out to about $5K so you can take a 10% loss on a position while only affecting your account by 1%
My max allowed loss per day per position is $500 / $23.50 loss on TSLA, so I would be able to afford about 20 TSLA shares
Should TSLA sell off to my stop at 228, I will have incurred my max allowable loss of $500
Should TSLA continue upwards, I may take a small profit at 264 - about 5% gain
then some more around 275 - 10%, and let the runners take you to 300. Once over 262 I would likely put in hard sell orders above your buy price (never let a green trade go red) OR a trailing stop loss (needs to be larger than the daily range either in $$ or %)

HTH

 

[XtremeJ]

budget76

If you are putting 90% into index funds you are doing better than almost all "investors"

so for CCL
Weak Charts, stock is same price it was 20 years ago, ATH just pre covid
on a 5 year chart, been in a range 8 - 30 since Covid
Basing the past 18 months, Cup and Handle (a bullish pattern) forming, needs to clear $20, and retest before I would be interested
Over 20 and first target is the 24 area (20% return on 20 purchase price) then 26.50 then 30
Currently retesting July highs, needs to breakout above with volume, then retest before buying / adding

$30 is a reasonable goal for CCL in the next 24 months (economy dependent) but $40 MAY be stretch, last it was over 40 was just before Covid hit, and while passenger numbers are getting close to pre-Covid, costs have risen dramatically, and profits are down.

Not a fan of the Cruise sector in general, if you are going to speculate (using your non-index fund money) I think tech, chips and cyber security stocks are likely to offer a better return in the next couple years. Another hint of a scamdemic and the cruise and airlines will take hits again. Both sectors weak despite strong demand.

Do you need any write off's before year end?
Sell CCL take the small loss, and appropriate write off, and then you have cash for new trades in the new year.
Or sit on the position and it likely will go green for you, but you will have to be patient. The next earnings reports from the cruise lines include Thanksgiving and Xmas holiday bookings, do you think they will be stellar? average? less than average?
Airline pricing coming down, demand is relatively high still, profits ?? Does that translate to the cruise lines as well?

I have some renowned bag holding stories so if you plan on just riding it out that is also cool. Just dont sell at the lows when the stock is in a free fall.

 

[[memphis]]

Seeing recent posts I have a few questions

Before you buy stock XYZ

• do you have targets for the stocks you are buying?
• are you taking partial profits when you reach your targets?
• do you have max loss stops?
• are you using stop loss orders?
• how are you determining those?

Just from my perspective there seems to be "investing" going on with zero plan on taking profits or exiting losing positions. Hope is not an investment strategy.

If you are unable to answer yes to the above, you are likely to improve your situation by dollar cost averaging into index funds rather than relying on tips from Reddit / some dude at work / your brother in laws pool boy / IBB for financial advice

No stop losses but I look daily. There has been several times where I should have sold my Enbridge position and netted $2500 profit but I didn’t because I am working on a dividend portfolio and then going after more growth stocks .

Buying and holding has definitely been effective in my situation to dig me out of the hole but I’ve also subjected myself to stupid gambling or trying to catch a falling knife averaging down the on meme stocks.

Made a tiny sliver with GME, got burned on AMC because I got greedy

20% gains and I’ll cash out now on certain positions. I am nearly that threshold with Snap-On but it’s been good to me and I don’t want to sell it off.

Once I get to $1000/month in dividends I’ll focus on growth stocks since I’ll be playing with house money.

VFV.TO is on my radar for set it and forget it inside my TFSA account.

As dumb as it sounds I also want to add some Costco to my RRSP account. Even in a recession that place is still going to be booming
O’reillys Auto Parts is another bullish play for me

 

[budget76]

thank you, appreciate the thoughts, really. I fully agree tech type stuff probably has a higher return potential and is more promising, but honestly, I'm ignorant in that world and could never go pick out a promising stock versus a dying one. I can at least understand travel and had a theory on why it wasn't the dumbest idea, but I'm not savvy in this world by any means. and the mindset was a 2ish year hold to get that hopefully 20-50-100% return for all my purchases (excluding RTX, only looking for 15-20% shorter term)

I also tend to look at my single-stock "wins" as play money for the truck project or similar, versus important to retirement or something.

since others have interest in CCL, I'll keep talking it a little more and my position on it. Again, balls to double down at $6.50 when I knew it was a good idea would have made it a much better story. Very good point on their costs, I definitely thought about customer return when I bought and not the potential for 20-50% inflation to their costs (whatever that number is). Glad you mentioned that, agree on the lower target

I'm not sure selling CCL at a loss would give me any write off benefit TBH, it'd only be a $1700 write off and that's (fortunately) just noise compared to me+wife salary + rental income. I appreciate the thought though, I did consider it at one point.

because it doesn't hurt, my holding:

oh, and some of the riskier stuff (like BTC a while back) I have sold off enough to cover the initial investment and let the remainder ride. Not often, but that's not the worst play

 

[gunracer1]

i do lots of gambling now a days, since i owner financed a piece of property. that has pretty much guaranteed my retirement. so now i just jump in and out for the quick hit. all based on bullshit. i missed 20k the other day pulling out to quick. but i was happy with what i had made. i was in and out today in about an hour on AMC. i was happy with .07 a share. i will see what next week brings.

 

[[memphis]]

i do lots of gambling now a days, since i owner financed a piece of property. that has pretty much guaranteed my retirement. so now i just jump in and out for the quick hit. all based on bullshit. i missed 20k the other day pulling out to quick. but i was happy with what i had made. i was in and out today in about an hour on AMC. i was happy with .07 a share. i will see what next week brings.

Red rum red rum next week 😆

 

[Provience]

Seeing recent posts I have a few questions

Before you buy stock XYZ

• do you have targets for the stocks you are buying?
• are you taking partial profits when you reach your targets?
• do you have max loss stops?
• are you using stop loss orders?
• how are you determining those?

Just from my perspective there seems to be "investing" going on with zero plan on taking profits or exiting losing positions. Hope is not an investment strategy.

If you are unable to answer yes to the above, you are likely to improve your situation by dollar cost averaging into index funds rather than relying on tips from Reddit / some dude at work / your brother in laws pool boy / IBB for financial advice

I use this as my notebook and try to post when I have a decent loss as well as gain because it think it adds to the reality of it isn't all rainbows, which much online posting can come across as.

As far as do I have targets? Yes, most of the time.

Taking partial profits? Usually, sometimes on the way back down, sometimes not.l up or down if i can't think of anything better to do, am still confident in my target being reached again and don't see the floor as too deep

stop losses? No, I did put a 10% stop loss on coinbase the other day, because I'm late, was talking to a guy at the water cooler to get him to start looking at things with a small dollar value investment and had enough free cash that it might as well lose $20 rather than sit there. Should i? Absolutely! it's tougher to do for options contracts trading when I could have a 50% swing in a day

Max loss? Nope, if it all goes to zero I've got bigger problems than "cash"


As I've maintained since the beginning of these threads and many years prior, it's all made up. Investments aren't forward looking, fundamentals don't really mean anything. Chart and pattern recognition are just applying human behilavior to markets, that's all it is. It's about as real as the "cash" I "invest"

We simply have wildly different strategies, but it counts as investment regardless, even if it is below the professional level.

There are always people smarter than you, even if they are few. There are far more people who want you to believe they are smarter than you and even more who pretend or think they are smarter than you. I'm just here for the entertainment.

When I started out I did decent but I was also being overly tight with my buys and sell limits. I didn't think I'd have such miserable computer access this year, but spent the vast majority of it away from a computer and a bunch with terrible cell service, I'm glad I didn't have any stops or I'd have missed out on substantial rebound for both of my account peaks.

Suburban propane for example is something that was far too risky a couple years back when we talked about it, a year or two ago I figured it would stay around $15-20 range, paying 8%div the whole time. Welp, that's about what it's done. No reason to sell it until I need the cash.

USB has no real reason to not hit $50 and/stabilize around there. I'll be satisfied with it then.


Overall, I'm ahead of inflation, finally have the indexes beat, if only for the day, and have likely outperformed every ETF.

Hope is just as valid as charts