market speculation for October

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Now if only I was smart enough to dump my XLF, expecting the banks to make some headway

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Wow. . .it's up to $1.13 as of close today. . .I can't beleive it - this is a record for me - a 28% gain in one day on a single stock.

[JBinKC]

Wow. . .it's up to $1.13 as of close today. . .I can't beleive it - this is a record for me - a 28% gain in one day on a single stock.

Scanner- My guess is your mysterious silver junior buy was ECU silver on the TSX .Congratulations. BTW the company has decent grades for the size of the project.

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Yes, that was my speculative play - ECU - it's up another 12% today.

Well, my first speculation - Atari was a miserable failure.

So far, this has been fun to say the least.

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It's interesting to watch this stuff on a daily basis. I tend to do that when I make a major new investmetn decision and then sooner or later, I remember I am an investor, not a trader and then just let it sit and make decisions on a quarterly basis.

Anyway, it's daily high today was $1.44 - it was practically doubled from where I bought it but then it dropped (with the price of silver) to $1.16 - the swings are certainly wild and fulfilling my speculative desires.

So, it's only up about 3% on the day total.

I guess my genius ran out . I just thought it was going to gain 28% per day forever

[gambler2075]

It's interesting to watch this stuff on a daily basis. I tend to do that when I make a major new investmetn decision and then sooner or later, I remember I am an investor, not a trader and then just let it sit and make decisions on a quarterly basis.

Anyway, it's daily high today was $1.44 - it was practically doubled from where I bought it but then it dropped (with the price of silver) to $1.16 - the swings are certainly wild and fulfilling my speculative desires.

So, it's only up about 3% on the day total.

I guess my genius ran out . I just thought it was going to gain 28% per day forever

I think you shouldn't limit yourself to zombie buy 'n hold when it comes to your speculative part of your portfolio. Sure, it is hard to think differently (i.e. that you CAN trade your speculative portfolio) but what the heck, it is speculative for a reason, right? Doesn't mean that you have to trade your main portfolio.

Anyway, here is a quick article I found about the precious metals trade.

With QE2, Fed Creates Parabolic Move In Gold, Silver | Markets | Minyanville.com

g
p.s. SLV recovered quite nicely AH...

p.p.s. Possible explanation for SLV selloff today:
Precious Metals Watch: Can You Say 'Margin Calls'? - MarketBeat - WSJ

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Oh, I really don't buy and hold (one extreme) any more nor do I day trade (the other extreme) either.

I learned my lesson on "buying and holding" back before the crash. I like to tell this story and I swear I am not pointing fingers at anyone else but me but I came on here - at the time, my Janus Overseas fund (a favorite of mine - emerging markets/China) was up like 80% (before the bubble crash). I posted here, "I don't know how much more this can go up guys. Maybe I should jump off, ya know?"

Well, the underlying philosophy here is "Buy and Hold" (or rebalance 1x/year). Well, needless to say, I lost 60% of my paper worth in a span of about 1 months after the bubble. Honestly, I am only showing the limits of this forum, not pointing fingers.

Now, I tend to use ETF's vs. mutual funds and lock in gains.

That being said. . .back to waht I said. ..I am not a trader, I am an investor. I am not going to want to sit on cash in my Roth for too long.

As an investor, I will lock in gains (or jump out when losses are extreme) but I want to hopefully profit with the company(s), not on trading them in the market. That is, I want to grow with them.

So now, I kind of have this more moderate position of portfolio management (yes, even on the speculative part) between 100% Active (like you) and 100% passive/indexed (perhaps like DisneySteve).

Pros and cons to being Conservative, Liberal and Moderate.

[gambler2075]

My gut is telling me msft will be $29 a share after oct 28 earnings, and reach the earlier high this year of $31.50 by december.

Well, it is mid november, and I was wondering if you still think what you wrote above?

g
p.s. it's ok to jump in the trader pool... the water's just fine

[gambler2075]

Oh, I really don't buy and hold (one extreme) any more nor do I day trade (the other extreme) either.

I learned my lesson on "buying and holding" back before the crash.

I actually am not a 100% daytrader. I would say I am about 25% daytrader and 75% swing trader (say up to 6 week positions). I think that that is my favorite timeframe. When I stray from my plan I tend to get punished severely. This year I managed to take a 1/4 million$ loss on a bio stock that I tried to 'invest' in, (in the span of 4 months). Worse yet, it made me miss other opportunities that would have made me more money.

The interesting thing about the markets is that it tends to punish those who go into it halfway. I mean, you can be an investor, and buy and hold forever, and you will not be tempted to sell low and buy high. Or you can be a trader, focusing on short-term movements. However, those people that sort of half-heartedly try to time the market (which I think is absolutely futile for a non-trader), tend to get punished as they sell out of panic and buy during greedy situations. And the funny thing is that they tend to buy at the worst time and not only did they sell low, then miss the move up, then they buy back high and it goes back down... double whammy

Here is an interesting article:

is-the-rally-over: Personal Finance News from Yahoo! Finance

g

[KTP]

Well, it is mid november, and I was wondering if you still think what you wrote above?

g
p.s. it's ok to jump in the trader pool... the water's just fine

Well, I guess I was about as correct as you were about AFFY

Seriously, though, there were a couple of unforseen problems.

1) Balmer selling 13% of his stock holdings over just a 3 day period. Bill spreads out his sells over years, so it does not have such a negative effect on the market. Without his selling, the stock would have hit $28 before this Ireland mess.

2) The whole market is down. Apple, Google, Netflix, etc. etc. are well off their recent highs. It will be hard to impossible for Microsoft to reach $30 until the market gets back into the mid 11,000s.

But anyway, I got out of my options several days ago, and although tempted to jump back in, have not yet. I also got out of all of the little bit of AFFY stock I had. I am sitting on a pretty large amount of cash both in my IRA and my taxable account because I now think we will see DOW 10,500 before we see DOW 12,000. What do you think?

[gambler2075]

Well, I guess I was about as correct as you were about AFFY

Hehe... who said anything about my closing out my AFFY position yet?

So it remains to be seen if I will be right or wrong... AFFY has been incredibly reliable about giving up all of it's gains like 1 day later, so I don't really expect anything different here, lol.

I have no idea about the Dow 12K vs 10.5K... but I do think it is funny that people tend to sell out of their IRAs in panic and then buy back just as they think they are missing the boat, and then that is at practically the absolute top...

Whereas if they would have just not tried to time the market, they would have done much better.

g

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I know we are drifting away from speculation right now but I read an interesting article in Smart Money that stated some of the "averages" in the S&P 500 after a bear market and we have seen 2 bear markets in the span of 1 decade (2001 and 2008). . .the underlying message is. . .stocks are due for a run-up.

I am glad this article was written because I was pretty peeved years ago becuase my ex-wife's Roth (then part of my portfolio) was in T. Rowe Price Blue Chip and it had basically done nothing, zilch for a whole decade.

I mean, how patient is an investor supposed to be?

When the rally will happen (as per options) is of course impossible to predict but I could see the DOW closing in on 20,000 by 2016 as we throw Obama a going away party singing, "For he's a jolly good fellow. . ."

DISCLOSUE: I have a significant holding in SPY

[disneysteve]

Looks like whoever is still holding AFFY had a good day. I did own this in the past and made some money on it but folks probably made a killing today.

[gambler2075]

Looks like whoever is still holding AFFY had a good day. I did own this in the past and made some money on it but folks probably made a killing today.

I'm still holding my 82,000 shares so I'm up about 100K over the past week or so... we'll see where it goes. Prolly gives it's gains back, lol...

g

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AFter 1 exciting week, my ECU is just sitting there around $1.14, moving a few pennies up or down.

I'd like to see what it does after it reports it's 4rth quarter earnings.