Talking stocks, trading, and investing in general

[patrickBOOTH]

Maybe we should do a running SF list of worthwhile FinTwit follows?

I would offer, for starters:

@reformedbroker
@michaelbatnick
@morganhousel
@MebFaber
@awealthofcs
@patrick_oshag

This is great, thanks!

Small rant:

I really hate how the Fed is "reacting" or making statements one way in December, and now pretty much a mirror image today that the market wanted to hear. I get that the Fed isn't really controlling the market on a pendulum where it's looking at what is too low or too high, but I feel the problem is that now with all the media and news including geo-political issues, so much of the market is overreacting or has no clue what is going on.

It's so funny to hear on the news people were discussing trading on fundamentals, then suddenly the sentiment was that the fundamentals weren't really that strong....and that people need to take into account that corporate America is in for a very modest growth coming years...The amount of heavy swings in the market is just crazy.

Yes.

 

[IChen]

With what comes ahead in 2019, I'm glad I never got into stocks others have been looking into like Goldman Sachs or Gilead or Citigroup or the like. I've liquidated my shares of Mastercard, but will continue to hold Salesforce and Microsoft.

 

[Omega Male]

 

[brokencycle]

 

[IChen]

I feel it's so...."weird" that owning Amazon feels so safe. I don't have to check it. At all. Feels like owning SPY really, and it just continues to push up, up and up.

I have to say, I really respect that Ray Dalio/Bridgewater and Renaissance Tech are able to do so well in 2018. I did well in 2018 thanks to owning TQQQ since 2016 and then selling early September. But wow, I can't imagine managing such large portfolios and just accomplishing 10%+ returns when the market isn't doing hot, or at least so up and down.

 

[stimulacra]

Heard about Bridgewater's Pure Alpha returning 14% for 2018. I am curious what their portfolio allocation consists of.

Looks like you were able to pinpoint the peak with TQQQ.

 

[patrickBOOTH]

To be honest, I'm surprised so many hedge funds did poorly. The market did very well the majority of the year and sunk in the last month and a half. If you're a long only fund, I get it, but a hedge fund doing poorly I think highlights some issues with their strategies.

 

[jbarwick]

According to a the last 13F, a lot of big money in PG&E prior to the wildfire.

 

[patrickBOOTH]

Yeah, I have coworkers that bought into it and it took a another nice dump yesterday.

 

[stimulacra]

Looks like December might have just been a dip…

 

[Omega Male]

Maybe.

This is a good, if dense, read. China has a lot of big structural problems that are poorly understood even inside the country itself. We've seen from Apple and now Samsung recently what happens when Chinese demand wavers. (Headlines just today about declining auto sales) If the lid really comes off the pot of their over-levered financial system it will not be pretty.

https://chinachange.org/2018/12/28/a-great-shift-unseen-over-the-last-forty-years/

 

[Omega Male]

Another good one.

http://fat-pitch.blogspot.com/2019/01/weekly-market-summary_12.html?

 

[Omega Male]

I like Scott, he owns his mistakes.

https://www.l2inc.com/daily-insights/no-mercy-no-malice/2019-predictions

 

[jbarwick]

PG&E bankruptcy...wonder if the HFs were still holding...75% haircut!

 

[patrickBOOTH]

My coworker is still in. He came in today and said "holding stocks from one company is a stupid idea." lol