Thoughts on These Individual Stocks?

[james.hendrickson]

Okay, so I'm holding the following individual stocks:

GOOG
AAPL
KO
COP
COST
XOM
FB
KR
NKE
PYPL
TGT
TWTR

Also, I'm looking at increasing my position in APO - Apollo Global Management.

Does anyone have a viewpoint on these?

[msomnipotent]

I'm kicking myself for not buying XOM in March. I decided to wait to buy after we settled the darn coin controversy and now I have to wait for a dip. I looked at COST but I never buy anything at or near a 5 yr high. WMT looks more attractive to me compared to COST and TGT.

[james.hendrickson]

I looked into WalMart.

I think their management makes poor decisions.

A while back they were controversial in the news for spying on their employees to prevent them from forming unions.

That seemed rather mean and stupid to me. I don't know about you, but being under surveillance is a great way to communicate mistrust and lack of respect for your workforce. In short, its mean. They could have easily prevented unions by improving benefits and working conditions.

Its also a silly business decision to me. How is their workforce supposed to innovate or provide superior customer service if Joe and Jane WalMart worker need to look over their shoulder? Its a self imposed handicap which hurts them strategically, especially when a leaner better competition like Amazon comes around.

[rennigade]

I hope they all do well considering im holding some of these in my diversified index fund.

[msomnipotent]

I looked into WalMart.

I think their management makes poor decisions.

A while back they were controversial in the news for spying on their employees to prevent them from forming unions.

That seemed rather mean and stupid to me. I don't know about you, but being under surveillance is a great way to communicate mistrust and lack of respect for your workforce. In short, its mean. They could have easily prevented unions by improving benefits and working conditions.

Its also a silly business decision to me. How is their workforce supposed to innovate or provide superior customer service if Joe and Jane WalMart worker need to look over their shoulder? Its a self imposed handicap which hurts them strategically, especially when a leaner better competition like Amazon comes around.

You won't buy WMT because of "spying" but you want to buy Facebook?

[james.hendrickson]

You won't buy WMT because of "spying" but you want to buy Facebook?

Touche.

[disneysteve]

You won't buy WMT because of "spying" but you want to buy Facebook?

I will admit that I haven't followed the news in any detail but I have yet to hear what Facebook did that was so terrible. I totally expect my data to be sold when I do anything online. I have zero expectation of privacy. I know that marketers will use my personal information to target me for advertising. Can someone please explain to me what Facebook did that went beyond that?

As for the individual stocks, I am not buying any stocks at this point. Every now and then I get the itch to do some trading but it's rare, maybe once every couple of years. Everything else goes into mutual funds.

[msomnipotent]

I will admit that I haven't followed the news in any detail but I have yet to hear what Facebook did that was so terrible. I totally expect my data to be sold when I do anything online. I have zero expectation of privacy. I know that marketers will use my personal information to target me for advertising. Can someone please explain to me what Facebook did that went beyond that?

They collect data on non-users. Their stupid reason is so you have the right friend requests when you first sign up, as if that is a good enough reason to collect data. Then to ask them to stop collecting your data because you are not a user, you have to create an account, which means that you have to agree to let them access your data. They have also repeatedly said that the user is in control of their own data, and they obviously are not. They said that they don't sell your data, but most, if not all, 3rd party apps that you log in on from Facebook has access to your FB data and sells it. FB knows this and didn't disclose it or try to stop it.

[Tabs]

Unlike other types of social media, Facebook pushes for data that is linked to your real life information. For example, savingadvice.com is also social media, but I am using an alias, and only my IP address is exposed. Not all social media pushes for real life information, but FB does. When a social media asks for and uses your real life data, I think that data should be handled with the utmost care, and I will illustrate why I don't think they do.

The very design of Facebook is to connect people. While that is understandable, this often times collide with privacy concerns, and when push comes to shove, the call is generally made to focus on connection over privacy risks. Not all social media platforms have done this (Google+ to Reddit). For example, I have seen old exes show up on friends of friends, as they will post at least the profile picture. If you are able to get a friend request approved over a fake account, which is how most stalkers do it, then you are generally in to access quite a bit more. Even if not, you can still see snippets if your privacy settings are not set correctly.

I don't know if they are still like this, but once you are friended, your information is not set to private by default (whereas other platforms are). In fact, at one time, there used to not be any privacy settings at all, and I was able to just look up a bunch of people once, on everything that they have posted, even ones I was not friended with.

Perhaps this is not surprising considering Mark Zuckerberg's flippant attitude towards other people's data. Yes, at one time, he actually volunteered to share people's data with a friend of his, all the while calling them "dumb ****s".

But OK, maybe you're saying, "Well that was a long time ago. I am sure he is much more responsible now." Perhaps. However, the implementation of any privacy features that we take for granted now wasn't actually put in place until something like 2009 to 2010? That's nearly six years after its inception; a long time in the internet world. During this time, plenty of other social medias have popped up, and save for Twitter, no one else was making huge privacy errors in both design and practice the way they were doing it.

But I am sure that we have put all this privacy concerns behind us, right? Well, let's not forget that kerfuffle with Cambridge Analytica that happened just last year. Even if Facebook scrubs your data from their own servers, it doesn't stop any other 3rd party from hanging on to your information and do as they please. To be fair, Facebook prohibits the mishandling of data, but they don't check, nor did Mark Zuckerberg admit to any fault to it initially. He has since changed his mind and issued an apology, but the problem still remains that once your data is out of their hands, it's really out there, and who knows what will happen to it.

Now, you may also say, "Well, even if there were mistakes made, at least they've made amends now, right?" Well yes and no. Facebook indeed has had more than its share of missteps, there are still aspects of it, that as far as I know, hasn't changed yet. For example, from what I understand, Facebook can still collect data even after you have closed its tab. The only reason the case was thrown out was because there was no reasonable expectation of privacy when you agree to their terms of use. However, that doesn't mean this is still not a privacy issue.

Oh, I almost forgot, one of my personal favorites is people having their own photos used in Facebook Singles without their permission. Yes, you can say that is also something you've agreed to when you sign up with Facebook, and now, you can also manually change your settings so that it can not happen, but the thing is, this is how flippant Facebook's attitude is. It's kind of like an abusive partner abusing you, and then saying it's your fault because this is what you signed up for. You just didn't read all the fine print. Maybe so, but once again, why is Facebook the only ones doing this, but nobody else is?

They also collect data on non-users, but since it's already mentioned, I won't elaborate on that much. Needless to say, this is really bad IMO.

Even if I was OK with all of this data (mis)handling, which I sort of don't mind because really I have nothing to hide, Facebook is still far from elegant in terms of design and coding. And because of the situation with Cambridge Analytica, even more things have been broken. Messenger doesn't fare that much better IMO.

In the end, perhaps you can call this a breach of trust. I just... simply do not trust Facebook to either have enough care or competence to handle my real life data. Yes, I am sharing it out into the public, but I think it goes a bit too far if I have to wonder about whether it's going to be targeted by Russian bots, advertisers that are completely outside of Facebook but can still scrape my data, or some of my exes whom I explicitly would not want them to be able to snoop on me and yet somehow can.

In moments like this, I wish I bookmarked all the articles and information over the course of many years I've read regarding Facebook's mishandlings. At one point, I just stopped using Facebook, and as such, I didn't see the need to keep any records on it. I kind of wish I did though, because I think the case against them is a bit stronger than what I am presenting here.

[Gailete]

I will admit that I haven't followed the news in any detail but I have yet to hear what Facebook did that was so terrible. I totally expect my data to be sold when I do anything online. I have zero expectation of privacy. I know that marketers will use my personal information to target me for advertising. Can someone please explain to me what Facebook did that went beyond that?

As for the individual stocks, I am not buying any stocks at this point. Every now and then I get the itch to do some trading but it's rare, maybe once every couple of years. Everything else goes into mutual funds.

I must have done something stupid on line a couple of days ago. I had gotten to hadly any junk mail and then the last couple of days it is just flowing in. I opened a couple inside my junk mail and didn't see any 'unsubscribe' links either. Noth that I trust them to unsubscribe me, but somehow they got my name and it wouldn't even be so bad except it is the same messages over and over or even sent at the same time.

While I like social media for some things, I don't want email telling me the best way to remove skin tags. Lost track of how many of those I have gotten in the last 2-3 days!

I didn't have a clue what was going on with FB and didn't actually want to know. After a while I just get tired of all these lawsuits for things that are after the fact. Like why just because someone did or said something 20-40 years ago are they getting flack about it NOW! Doesn't make sense to me.

[JBinKC]

With that list you might as well look at an index that contains many of those names.

Of the larger cap names KHC and TAP has perked my interest though. Both names have traded down to book value and off quite a bit. The related sectors has been suffering from inflation creep in their business but the dollar index is showing indications of strengthening again which should help fundamentals in a quarter or two.

[Gailete]

Okay, so I'm holding the following individual stocks:

GOOG
AAPL
KO
COP
COST
XOM
FB
KR
NKE
PYPL
TGT
TWTR

Also, I'm looking at increasing my position in APO - Apollo Global Management.

Does anyone have a viewpoint on these?

If I am reading the codes for names right, it looks like you are heavily into internet technology. Have you done a breakdown of what sectors you are invested in? Google, Twitter and Facebook on top of Paypal? Did I miss one?

Do you have a plan for yourself that you have developed to guide you in making investing decisions? I had some rules set up for my investing, taking into account some basic investing advice. The one stock that I bought that didn't go by the rules, I ended up selling it two years later and lost $33. So I had a stock that each year I paid income tax on the dividends, and even with those dividends reinvested, I still walked away with less money than I had invested.

I knew I wouldn't have a lot of money to invest so I only buy stocks that pay-out dividends. I only buy stocks that I 'know' the company as in use its products, etc. - this was the rule I tripped on for the stock I lost on. I like my bank and have for years. I like the way that they treated us when getting loans, etc. So for the financial sector I invested in my bank and it has been worthwhile. Also my phone company, my candy company, a local manufacturing plant, and a soft drink company. I'm trying to spread things out and it has been working out well. Oh yeah a growth mutual fund for my Roth IRA.

I'm not asking for advice, just trying to explain, that you have to have a plan of somekind otherwise it is like exploring a cave without a source of light. You want to make another couple of investments. What is your favorite restaurant, food maker, are you getting good service from your utiltity company and would like to get back some of what you pay them? Make a list of their names and then study them to see if they fit your investment plan, is it a good time to buy or not, all those things.

Just some ideas. I would never tell someone any particular stock to purchase because unless we have been talking for several hours and I know it would fit in with your plan, my suggestion would be looked on about as well as when someone hears I have RA and immediately tells me of some wonder cure that my doc is hiding from me - yeah sure.