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Started by Shadow.97, August 06, 2016, 11:39 AM

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akaubee

Quote from: scarface on January 01, 2020, 01:25 AM


Thanks mate, Happy new year to everyone.
Have a blessed day

humbert

Quote from: Vasudev on December 30, 2019, 10:08 AM
I think most of them celebrate now if not cakes and special sweets will be consumed by many. I studied in a Catholic School so Christmas, Good Friday, Easter etc.. were celebrated in grand!

I could have sworn you once told me you were Hindu. In fact, you even told me what caste you belong to (I wrote it down and lost the note  :( ) I don't know how closely you follow any religion, but I do know that Hinduism and Catholicism are as different as night and day. I'm curious. Tell me more.

scarface

Hi,

Yesterday when I noticed the forum was down with the message "This account has been suspended due to unpaid invoices.", I was thinking..."should I say It was good knowing you all?" (a quote from aa1234779)
Good to see it's back. Money is always a problem. As Stendhel said "When we want to live with one's time, we die with one's time".

scarface

#234
I hope you listened to my advice and sold your stocks. In late April I was hinting at the valuation of the US stock markets in this message, the video of Howard Marks speaks for itself: http://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=3226.msg35050#msg35050

The stock markets are expensive indeed and due to the coronavirus we are going to see some profits warnings in the weeks to come. Humbert would say that for the moment, this virus only caused a few thousand deaths, but the outbreak is currently spreading despite the fact that many factories and shops are closing in China. Note that the number of cases will probably increase in Europe and in other parts of the world since the incubation period of this virus could reach 30 days. At least where there are many tourists. In Syria, in Palestine, there is a low risk and these countries are certainly lacking bold tourists. But in Egypt, in Italy or in France, the virus is already here.

The s&p 500 keeps heading lower and I expect it to go to 3100 points or below pretty soon. Note that the coronavirus is also a good argument in favour of selling equities since they were pretty overvalued, notably in the US.
Fundamentally, I think that the s&p 500 could be trading a much lower valuations, maybe around 2000 points, should we value the markets with standard PER.
Actually, I don't expect the markets to go below 2800 points on the short term, except if the coronavirus became a pandemy, which is still possible.

Many US stocks reached sky high valuation with a pretty straightforward mechanism (besides stock buybacks). Earnings are not really going up, but the market was going up, and so were the price earnings.
To illustrate this, imagine humbert, Maher and Vasudev trading at Wall Street.
Humbert is buying the stocks of Vasudev, he knows maher will buy them for a higher price.
Maher is buying because he knows that Vasudev will buy them for a higher price.
And Vasudev is buying because he knows that humbert will buy them for a higher price.
This can be an infinite circle. But one day, stock are 40% too expensive. Humbert has doubts. Maybe Maher won't buy them: he doesn't buy the stocks of Vasudev. Maher doesn't want the stocks either, they are too expensive.
To cope with losses, Vasudev has to sell all his stocks 40% lower. This type of mechanism triggered the crisis of 1929.
This is also what propelled the markets higher recently, besides the stock buybacks.


Note that the new version of windows 7 x64 is ready. It's big (5Gb) since nothing was removed. Every update was installed. psp9 is not installing during the process, I will try to correct that later. It is being uploaded.

I will put new videos on the forum soon.

humbert

How many of you on the forum have the money to invest in the stock market? Of those of you that do, do you have money tied up in stocks? If so, can you give us an idea of how much?

I continue to believe the stock market is a racket. The rich get richer, the rest of us get screwed.

scarface

#236
Quote from: humbert on February 26, 2020, 05:11 AM
How many of you on the forum have the money to invest in the stock market? Of those of you that do, do you have money tied up in stocks? If so, can you give us an idea of how much?

I continue to believe the stock market is a racket. The rich get richer, the rest of us get screwed.
Once again humbert made an interesting remark and I'm sure some users will try to answer too.

I think you are right: The rich (those who are investing at least) get richer when the stock market is going up. But they can get poorer than the average person when it’s going down. All of this is virtual. If for whatever reason there is a serious recession, all this is over. For instance, Arnault lost 15 billion â,¬ since the beginning of the year, while the stock price of LVMH was plumetting. And maybe it’s not over. I didn’t lose as much money and you probably didn’t lose so much money either.

As far as the amount of money one’s puts in the markets, I think what matters is the part of stocks you have in your portfolio. If you have 20kâ,¬ in stocks and if it represents 10% of your assets, you are not taking a lot of risks. I currently have a few tens of thousands of euros on a share savings plan (known as PEA). But I’m not gambling this money since I don’t usually buy stocks but ETF. The problem with stocks is you can’t really forecast what is going to happen. Look at Renault. It was at 100â,¬ early 2018. Mid November 2019 it was trading at...45â,¬ (see graphic below). I was thinking the stock looks pretty cheap. But I stayed on my first conviction: to short the US markets. Actually the stock wasn’t that cheap since there is a downturn in the sector of carmakers. Besides Tesla, the stocks price of all the carmakers are hit. Bmw stock hit a new low a few days ago on the Dax 30. And today, Renaut is trading at...29â,¬. It kept losing 30% after a first profit warning came in October 2019 (see here : https://www.reuters.com/article/us-renault-results/renault-shares-plunge-as-profit-warning-deepens-its-problems-idUSKBN1WX0O6)

But the strategy of the ETF is dangerous too. And it requires to be cold-blooded. In November when I saw that the US market was going to the sky I began buying a short ETF. The s&p 500 kept going up for two months. I kept buying short ETF, gradually. On the first position I was losing 20% last week. On the last position I was at the market price. It’s a very risky strategy to do that because you can be ruined. But I was pretty confident that the market would eventually fall. I had the possibility to wait because the leverage was pretty low (x2).
What’s more the clues of a bubble were pretty obvious when I was listening to the “strategists” on CNBC. At least those who were bull on stocks. They were never talking of valuations (high) or dividends (low or non existent). They were just talking about a favorable environment for stocks. That was true though.
Btw, I didn’t understand the statements of Dalio. He seemed bearish in October (when he was betting 1.5 billion on a fall of the markets) and bullish at Davos when he was saying that stocks were the ultimate thing to buy. I’m pretty sure he’s losing money.
Early February the s&p 500 was already at 3350 points, above the targets of most strategists.
But when you were looking at the PER of many stocks, they were just growing. For Microsoft, at 190â,¬ the PER was standing at 45 for example. I don’t even speak of Amazon. No wonder Bezos and Gates have more than 100 billion $ when their company is worth their weight in gold. And look at this interview of Cathie Wood, the biggest bull of Tesla: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhW1VJE-DyU
According to some “model”, the stock could go to 4000$ (the target was suddenly at a whopping 15 000$ per share a few days later). But what’s in this model? We don’t know. Who wants to buy Tesla, a company that still has never made money for 600 Billion or one trillion $ besides Cathie Wood? At the same time, Renault is just trading at 8 billionâ,¬...and it’s still earning money.
I began selling some Short positions yesterday and actually I earnt money on these positions. I sold practically half of the positions and recouped 8000â,¬ in a week. I keep thinking that the S&P 500 could go below 3000 since valuations are still pretty high. Btw, Microsoft announced a profit warning tonight, due to the coronavirus.
At the moment I still have approximately 40 000 invested on a short ETF on the s&p 500. Of course when you are investing significant sums, it's important to have exit plans. If you are losing 10 000â,¬, what are you doing? For example, at 3400 points, I wasn't selling. But I was wondering what I would do, should the s&p 500 go to 3700 points.
And this is when you need to be as cold-blooded as a crocodile. If you are selling you have no more losses. If you are reinforcing your positions you can increase your losses in case the market is not going in the right direction. Sometimes it's better to just wait.
What's interesting with a short ETF is the fact that you can "only" lose your invested capital. And not more. That's not the case if you are short selling some stocks (I'm sure some Tesla short sellers are broke since they probably lost more than their original selling price if they sold at 200$ and bought back at 800$). When a strategy seems less obvious, you can do a "straddle". You take two opposite position. You are normally sure to win on one position. Then you can decide what to do with the other (sell or reinforce).

Note: You probably know that my computer is now pretty old. I keep it since it’s still working pretty well, but sometimes I'm browsing the website of the Fnac (one of the main shops selling computers in France) to see if there is something new (this is never the case, the law of Moore is dead) and lately I noticed there is no more MSI laptops (a Korean brand) on the website of the Fnac. I’m practially sure it’s due to the coronavirus.

Shadow.97

Thought I'd post a small update on whats going on for me in my life.

Currently I'm looking for a new place to live. The house share I currently live in is 1600â,¬ + bills every month.
It's a 3 bedroom house, with 1 kitchen, and a livingroom.

The other people in the houseshare are moving out, which is causing me to have to look for other options, as 1600 +bills alone is not something that is sustainable in the slightest.
At the moment I've been having 540 as rent and bills included, but due to how the contract is shaped I will take other the other peoples rents if they move out. I would love to get other people to move in here, but the landlord(House owner) required strong references which are almost impossible to get for the people that I know here.
That means, that in slightly more than a month I need to have found a new place, otherwise it's the streets(Bnb/Hotel) for me.
I could in theory get by paying 1600+bills per month. I earn about 1000â,¬ more than that after tax each month. I'd rather find a new place than paying that though. It's not easy to find a new place to live at though. Especially due to the type of person I am.
A type of person that really does not do much social activities, and can be seen as a bit nosey(Asking too many questions).
I'm a person who rather has too much stuff than not enough. Today for example I got a free keyboard from my now ex housemate, a high quality MK 85 from Qpad. Red Cherry switches. I could not pass it by, it retails at around 100â,¬. It's a great keyboard with good stabilizers but was in need of some TLC because it was n a s t y.
My plan is to probably retire my keyboard at work. That also has red cherry switches, but it is of lower grade I feel like. They are not pleasant to type on.
I've also recently gotten RSI, repetetive stress injury. Likely from playing too many PC games, holding my hands flat instead of vertical. My solution? Stop sleeping on the side and buy an Xbox one x and play xbox instead.

I've been a hardcore PC gamer since forever. This has lately stated to switch though, just because games on the PC online being so competetive instead of focusing on the social aspect. The first day on the Xbox I probably met more friendly people than the last months on pc.

Workwise I've gotten a lot of responsibility, sometimes I believe it's almost too much. I got a lot of power. As it is security related I would never be allowed to share any deep details to anyone outside of contract. Even within work sharing details with anyone in UK, or outside of EU legislation is strictly prohibited. However, I can inform you that the type of work I do has done a lot to reassure me of Swedens stance on trying to actually do their best and put pressure on thirdparties abroad to follow rules and such.
If you're curious about what specific things I do I can take that in PM. However I will not post it publicly here.


I've considered for a long time to upload a lot of pictures to the forum, maybe some selfies. I'm pretty sure some of you remember the video long ago of my house tour. Perhaps you dont? I wouldn't know :)
At Christmas when I was visiting my family in Sweden my brother decided to gift me his old camera. It's not the best, especially not for my usage which is basically it being connected to the PC livestreaming a feed.
It's really nice for taking detailed pictures with though. Even if I'm a complete amatuer.


I've saved up a good chunk with my current job. My plan was originally to only work here for a year and then move back. But due to me getting promotions over and over I decided to stay for a bit until I feel like i've stagnated, and then find a new position in marketing of some sort.
Marketing yourself and products is a fantastic thing to know how to do properly as it will benefit you both privately during negotiations and potentially if you own a company or just need to do a sales pitch for any reason at all.
My current goals here are to save enough to move in with my parents in sweden, to find a job locally, then buy a house or appartment hopefully loan-free or just a small loan.
I don't really use money for other things than games, basic food, transport and rent.
I'm guessing that the non-critical things like games+food are around 150â,¬ a month. Phone/Pc parts/Perhiprials excluded, but would probably be around 100â,¬ per month on average because I buy them so rarely but more expensive.

Been looking to buy a new mouse as well, due to my current having the scrollwheel seized up slightly by some type of glue that attaches the soft plastic of the wheel and the hard one. My other mouse has the famous Omron double-click issue.

I've been taking a lot of looks at Scar's financial posts, trying to understand what I should even do with my money. I do enjoy having it stacking up, because I do not like risks. I usually rather take a slight decline than spit in more money into my papers.
When I was younger my grandma had put in the rough equal of 1kâ,¬ on a paper for me, and it's increased quite a bit, it's almost at 4500â,¬.

My current portfolios are worth approximately 60~% of what I have in terms of money.


Anyways.
Not sure what to say, so thought I'd make a messy post to show I'm actually alive!

Shadow.97

Anyone else having had issues on the forum lately?

Not being able to press the "reply" buttons, logging in, going to profiles. Navigating works, but actions seem to be broken at times. Logout, did however work.

Tried from both my pcs.

Worked today, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to log in to post :)


humbert

Shadow,

I informed Maher of the problem with the forum. Using trial-and-error he put the old theme back and the problem seemed to disappear. It seems there's a glitch in the new theme somewhere. Be that as it may, it appears the problem is fixed, at least for now.

Where exactly are you living? Based on what you wrote it doesn't appear you're in Växjö. For starters, you're quoting rent prices in Euros instead of Swedish Krona.

You're not in college or something like that, at least part time?

You've explained you can't divulge details of your job. Can you at least give us an idea of what you're doing? For example: software developer.