Stock Club

[HonkaPonka]

Hey,

We basically started a little stock club in school. We have to get CAS hours in the IB program, CAS is basically volunteering. It stands for Creativity, Action & Service.

I was wondering if anyone here was into stocks and had any good tips as i'm currently 600 dollars in minus because I was experimenting yesterday. And due to the fact that there is a 20 dollar transaction fee.

But essentially what I wanted to ask if anyone was into stocks and had any good tips or something?

[XtrmJosh]

Hey,

We basically started a little stock club in school. We have to get CAS hours in the IB program, CAS is basically volunteering. It stands for Creativity, Action & Service.

I was wondering if anyone here was into stocks and had any good tips as i'm currently 600 dollars in minus because I was experimenting yesterday. And due to the fact that there is a 20 dollar transaction fee.

But essentially what I wanted to ask if anyone was into stocks and had any good tips or something?

Transaction fees only have an impact with small investments, which are generally best avoided. Looking at the market right now, it doesn't seem to have recovered at all from the end of the holidays. Depending on how long you're doing this over, you should turn a decent profit if you invest in something fairly stable now (maybe IBM or BHP) and pull out in a few months (4-5 minimum). My expectation is that oil is going to come back up very sharp in the next 2-3 months, and there will be some huge margins to be made there, but that's speculation based on what's happened before (I think in 2010 we had a similar issue, prices hit around $45 a barrel then jumped right up to $70 in a few weeks). If that happens again, it'll likely be a bigger shift than last time and much more profitable. Aside from that, gold is still low (gold is notoriously stable, historically), and liable to come back up. I've got a decent chunk in Randgold Resources right now although so far it's lost me about $900, I still expect to turn a profit when their new venture is finalised.

All of this is entirely my speculation, and I've got money over the board. I wouldn't recommend going all in on any of the above, possibly excluding IBM/BHP as they are famously stable, but if you're working with real cash and any less than $5k, you're liable to make consistent losses since trading less than $1k at a time is just a waste, and only having 5 investments is risky play in itself.

For the record, I've been trading for 3 years and have profited overall by somewhere around the $1.5k area. That's a not a bad profit, given my initial investment was only about 10 times that, but I've been very lucky on occasion, and without that luck I'd probably just about break even. Toss in the fact that I'm a newbie with no real knowledge (only speculation and "common sense"), it's actually remarkable that I haven't lost every penny of it.

[Brute]

Right now is a historic moment for the oil market. I believe a barrel was around 105-110 about a yr ago. Now it's about to break below the $30 threshold. OPEC does not want North America in the oil industry and has taken a 500 billion dollar loss in revenue by maintaining production at the current low 30's a barrel. OPEC could have been more successful by limiting supply and maintaining a higher price. North America has been much more persistent about staying in the industry than OPEC forecasted, they have killed a few of the smaller less liquid companies and I believe they are holding out until they take down atleast one of the giants. It was published today that there is some level of speculation that some companies are nearing the bankruptcy level if oil does not rebound. Pick a company that seems too large to fail, the schlumberger, Halliburton, Shell etc. the Saudis can't hold out forever, if they maintain the 2015 strategy through 2016 it will be a trillion dollar loss in revenue. The AMM did publish a striking article with information provided by Baker and the amount of rigs drilling in the US was down from ~1700 to ~800 and Canada is in even worse shape with only roughly ~80 rigs running currently.

just my two cents, just don't pick the giant the Saudis drive into bankruptcy

[viser14]

you might get some tips here, maybe, but i'd highly recommend searching elsewhere for information (see : google) there is plenty of information available for traders just starting out. If you don't want to do the research then you're better off in a savings account. As for precious metals I'd say silver is looking better than gold since it's closer to it's historical lows. Anyways unless you're wary of where you get your information and advice you're going to lose money, people will do/say anything for money. If you choose to ignore this advice I have some pretty hot up and coming penny stocks that might peak your interest....kkkk

[iMike]

What are your speculations if I risk it and invest 1K in Shell now that oil has been unstable af (from what I've been reading on different sites and now in this thread too).

I'm a complete noob in this stuff but I'm just wondering

@XtrmJosh

[HonkaPonka]

I guess I forgot to mention that this is a stock simulator based on the actual american stock market.

I found a couple of stable investments which I made my money back with Chipotle stocks rose a lot same with CS VS 2xVIX ST 30 has also been a really good stock as of late.

[XtrmJosh]

What are your speculations if I risk it and invest 1K in Shell now that oil has been unstable af (from what I've been reading on different sites and now in this thread too).

I'm a complete noob in this stuff but I'm just wondering

@XtrmJosh

My speculation is that in a few months you'll have 1.6k at worst, 3k at best. If you get too greedy, though, you'll be sat with < 1k. There is no trick to knowing when to pull out, it's mostly luck. Obviously watching the market you'll see a pattern, and in my experience that pattern will be a sudden huge rise (possibly, as suggested, triggered by the collapse of one company), followed by a gentle curving off, at that point the market will stabilize for a while, then something else will happen and everything will drop again. The "while" mentioned could be minutes or years, in reality, and my best estimate says it's likely to be between 2 weeks and 3 months... If your money has gone up, retained its value for more than 2-3 weeks, I would suggest pulling out since it expresses uncertainty (people don't know whether or not to invest). Uncertainty leads to stampedes of people selling at the same time, naturally decreasing the value - people aren't sure about the investment and some news like changing board members or opening a new well etc will inevitably make a handful edgy enough to withdraw their investment. Once they withdraw, the stampede begins.

[DarkstaR]

Buy mutual funds. Unless you do this shit for a living and have a lot of experience, you're gonna suck at it. You may get lucky a few times, but mostly you'll suck at it. Mutual funds, on the other hand, are large collections of stocks from many companies in similar industries. This allows you to invest in the leaders in an industry, say, biotechnology, with less risk, because if any single biotech company in the fund goes under, it wont have a major effect on the fund as a whole, since there's a hundred or a thousand other companies that it invests in. So, you can pick an industry that you think will be successful, buy a stocks in a mutual fund, and be assured that your money is being managed by professionals and is at far less risk than if you went out trying to find unicorns. Although, you do have the drawback of not having the 1 in a bajillion shot to invest in a unicorn.

(actually, there are also mutual funds that invest in companies across many different industries and are managed by the best people at large banks. you can buy one of these and have a very, very diverse portfolio [in a sense, as the fund itself is diverse])

Typically I see >10% profit on my money every year (15~20% on some of the higher risk funds, 3~8% on the safer ones).

[djnacht]

I'm going to second Darkstar on this one.

If you are serious about making consistent money then Mutual Funds are much safer and require no effort.

Stocks are exciting, but I swear everyone I know has gotten owned by them because they thought they had it all figured out and "couldn't lose". If you are serious about going down the stocks path then I suggest you do a lot of reading, and maybe sign up to some stock forums. There are a few good ones, I'm Canadian and I found http://www.canadianmoneyforum.com/ to be excellent for advice.

[kimse]

Short IBM $115 by April 01

No joke