Investing in the stock market - Discussion

[nuckin_futz]

1 minute ago, Shift-4 said:

Got a link like that which is specific to Canada?

Top right hand corner. You can select which country.

[Shift-4]

3 minutes ago, nuckin_futz said:

Top right hand corner. You can select which country.

Thanks

I only tried 'Exchange' in top left corner and gave up 

 

Edit:  Damn, wish I had this link a year ago!

 

Edited March 12, 2020 by Shift-4

[Warhippy]

28 minutes ago, nuckin_futz said:

Hip I'm a short term trader. My mentality is short term. I find short term traders make poor investors and investors make poor traders. Long term I like real estate.

 

Look for industries that have been unfairly beaten up in all this. I am reminded of the HMO's when the market was scared Obamacare was going to put them out of business. Things like Cigna ticker CI went from $55 to below $10. A few weeks ago before this mess it was $255.

 

Airlines are not going to go out of business. I'd maybe look there. Especially with jet fuel prices taking a nose dive.

 

If you want to search stocks paying good dividends I suggest this free stock screener. With it you can search for just about anything.

 

https://finviz.com/screener.ashx

I've scraped up almost $13,000 I can safely burn in some sort of investment or another.

 

So I'm looking both short and long term.  I know there's definitely some short term bank to be made from companies who will rise based on the fear of this virus such as medical/cleaning etc.

 

Gotta get in while the getting is good

[Shift-4]

needless to say I haven't bothered opening my stock portfolio today   

[nuckin_futz]

1 hour ago, Warhippy said:

Who or whom is large enough or not liquid enough to need half a trillion in cash?

If anyone is interested in a little lite reading on what can happen when a major market participant blows up. Like what appears to be happening now this is a good refresher.....

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management

[nuckin_futz]

Dow crashed 10% in one day, 4th worst loss in history. Canada down 12%, worst since 1940

 

[Warhippy]

5 minutes ago, nuckin_futz said:

Dow crashed 10% in one day, 4th worst loss in history. Canada down 12%, worst since 1940

 

If you think that's bad wait until Monday

[nuckin_futz]

Bank of Canada announces term repo operations

Thu 12 Mar 2020 20:25:10 GMT

 

Similar moves to the Fed

• Announces expansion of bond buyback programs
• Announces expansion of term repo operations
• Measures aimed at supporting functioning of markets
• Buybacks will be conducted weekly
• Will add 6-month and 12-month repos
• Operations will occur bi-weekly starting March 17

This is similar to what the Fed announced today, only it's for 6-12 months rather than 3 months. The declines in Canadian banks over the past week have been extremely worrisome.

 

**********************

 

Bank Of Canada announcing major repo operations. Putting in a backstop. Cough Cough Socialism Cough

[Warhippy]

2 hours ago, nuckin_futz said:

Bank of Canada announces term repo operations

Thu 12 Mar 2020 20:25:10 GMT

 

Similar moves to the Fed

• Announces expansion of bond buyback programs
• Announces expansion of term repo operations
• Measures aimed at supporting functioning of markets
• Buybacks will be conducted weekly
• Will add 6-month and 12-month repos
• Operations will occur bi-weekly starting March 17

This is similar to what the Fed announced today, only it's for 6-12 months rather than 3 months. The declines in Canadian banks over the past week have been extremely worrisome.

 

**********************

 

Bank Of Canada announcing major repo operations. Putting in a backstop. Cough Cough Socialism Cough

Wtf did you just say!

 

That's "Free Market Socialism" to you

 

[nuckin_futz]

13 minutes ago, Warhippy said:

Wtf did you just say!

 

That's "Free Market Socialism" to you

 

That's the best kind.

 

"Let me tell you how it will be
There's one for you, nineteen for me"

[I.Am.Ironman]

3 hours ago, nuckin_futz said:

Bank of Canada announces term repo operations

Thu 12 Mar 2020 20:25:10 GMT

 

Similar moves to the Fed

• Announces expansion of bond buyback programs
• Announces expansion of term repo operations
• Measures aimed at supporting functioning of markets
• Buybacks will be conducted weekly
• Will add 6-month and 12-month repos
• Operations will occur bi-weekly starting March 17

This is similar to what the Fed announced today, only it's for 6-12 months rather than 3 months. The declines in Canadian banks over the past week have been extremely worrisome.

 

**********************

 

Bank Of Canada announcing major repo operations. Putting in a backstop. Cough Cough Socialism Cough

What are the implications of this on canadian banks? How does this ultimately benefit the market/stop the bleeding? How can the little guy (ie. us) use this to his advantage?

[TGokou]

8 hours ago, Shift-4 said:

needless to say I haven't bothered opening my stock portfolio today   

I finally started dipping my toe in today. I don't necessarily think it's the bottom yet but I figure I'll dollar cost average down if need be. Only picked up some of the best names like TD, BNS, BCE, and even RSI..mainly for the yield. Still have lots of powder to use.

[Boudrias]

8 hours ago, Warhippy said:

If you think that's bad wait until Monday

What happened to Friday?

[AV's Coin]

I thought it was curious Gold was down today then I found this article which does not necessarily explain why but that is worrisome in and of itself.

 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/investment-ideas/article-something-weird-is-happening-on-wall-street-and-not-just-the-stock/

 

Something weird is happening on Wall Street, and not just the stock sell-off

 

NEIL IRWIN

THE NEW YORK TIMES

PUBLISHED 8 HOURS AGOUPDATED MARCH 12, 2020

68 COMMENTS

SHARE

 

 

Wednesday was an unsettling day on global financial markets, and not just because the stock market fell sharply enough to bring a decade-plus bull market to an end.

Underneath the headline numbers were a series of movements that don’t really make sense when lined up against one another. They amount to signs — not definitive, but worrying — that something is breaking down in the workings of the financial system, even if it’s not totally clear what that is just yet.

Bond prices and stock prices were moving together, not in opposite directions as they usually do. On a day when major economic disruptions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic appeared to become likelier — which might be expected to make typical market safe havens more popular — many of them fell instead. That included bonds of all sorts and gold.

And there were reports from trading desks that many assets that are normally liquid — easy to buy and sell — were freezing up, with securities not trading widely. This was true of the bonds issued by municipalities and major corporations but, more curiously, also of Treasury bonds, normally the bedrock of the global financial system.

People, it is fair to say, are worried about bond market liquidity.

 

Any one of these moves on its own wouldn’t really matter. Markets can move for all kinds of reasons, most of which affect only the investors and traders involved. But these types of swings give experienced financial market watchers a sinking feeling, the kind last felt widely during the global financial crisis when all kinds of obscure financial markets went haywire.

 

Suppose you looked at the score of a football game, and it was a 31-3 blowout.

You would have a pretty good guess about what had happened. The winning team’s offense must have gained huge amounts of yardage, enabling it to score all those points, while its defense was tough and prevented the opposing team from gaining much yardage.

That guess would usually be correct, but once in a while, when you look deeper into the statistics you might see that the opposite happened — for example, a winning team that scored lots of points despite not gaining much yardage, with an opponent that did the reverse. It would tell you that a deeply strange game had been played.

The global financial markets this week, and especially Wednesday, have been that very weird game of football. At some point, the weirdness can be as important as the final score in terms of understanding what is likely to happen in the future.

 

STORY CONTINUES BELOW ADVERTISEMENT

 

Consider the most basic two types of assets: stocks and bonds. Normally, especially in times of financial stress, these move in opposite directions. When there is good news and the outlook is bright, it is known as a “risk-on” day, meaning people are comfortable buying risky assets like stocks, driving up their price, while driving down the price of safer assets like bonds.

A “risk-off” day is the reverse — a day that investors plow money into safe assets out of fear of what will happen next. It reflects a flight to safety and a reasonable expectation that if conditions worsen, the Federal Reserve is more likely to lower interest rates, which as a matter of arithmetic justifies higher bond prices.

That has been an extremely powerful relationship through most of this year and, indeed, most of the 12 years since the global financial crisis. That’s why it was odd that Tuesday and Wednesday, as the S&P 500 was down nearly 5%, the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond yield rose by 0.06 percentage points.

There has also been a wide gap between the prices of certain “exchange traded funds,” which are easily traded, and the securities on which those funds are based. This is irrational, in theory — the equivalent of a 12-pack of soda selling for more than the price of 12 individual sodas. It suggests two things: sellers desperate to raise cash and an absence of big banks or hedge funds in position to exploit the mispricing.

Gold futures have been falling, despite gold’s historical role as a place for safety during tumultuous economic times. Its price has fallen to $1,610 on Thursday from $1,675 an ounce at Monday’s close.

All this suggests that major financial players are experiencing a cash crunch and are selling whatever they can as a result. That would help explain the seeming contradiction of assets that should go up in value in a time of economic peril instead falling in value.

 

As the 2008 experience shows, it’s also a type of problem that the Federal Reserve is relatively well positioned to understand and respond to. In its role as lender of last resort, the central bank’s job is to try to prevent a cash crunch in the economy, even if it has to take unusual means to do that.

In the global financial crisis, that meant an alphabet soup of complex programs with names like “Term Securities Lending Facility” and “Primary Dealer Credit Facility.” The programs were meant to pump liquidity into various corners of the financial system. Fed officials are probably spending their days and nights trying to sort out exactly what is going wrong in the current episode and what approach is best for bringing markets toward normal.

The volatility in markets in the last few weeks reflects the deep uncertainty about the near future of the world economy. But for now it is being compounded by something strange happening just beneath the surface, creating ripples like the ones that were evident Wednesday.

[nuckin_futz]

5 hours ago, I.Am.Ironman said:

What are the implications of this on canadian banks? How does this ultimately benefit the market/stop the bleeding? How can the little guy (ie. us) use this to his advantage?

The Federal Reserve and the Bank Of Canada is coming to the rescue. It appears the market ran into a situation of insufficient liquidity. The banking authorities will step in and provide that liquidity.

 

I have no idea of your experience level. My advice would be to consult an investment professional. Hopefully one who knows what they are doing. That would usually be someone with a few grey hairs.

[nuckin_futz]

59 minutes ago, AV's Coin said:

I thought it was curious Gold was down today then I found this article which does not necessarily explain why but that is worrisome in and of itself.

Almost all retail investors invest in a cash account vs a margin account. That is if you have $1000 to invest you can only invest $1000. A margin account lets you borrow money to invest with.

 

Professionals (those who know what they're doing and also those who do not) mainly use margin. Sometimes lots of margin. like x3, x5, x10, x30. When the market moves 1%. A retail guy's account moves 1%. If you're using margin and the market moves 1% your gains are magnified x3 = 3%, x10 = 10% and so on. Now you can see how quickly you can get wealthy and conversely how quickly you can make a mess and blow up.

 

When the market does nothing but go up all the damn time people get lazy. And the unwinding of levered positions can get very messy. This is what we have seen. Over levered people blowing up right and left. The selling feeds on itself.

 

My guess is someone huge blew up to the extent that unwinding their positions created such market stress that liquidity became an issue. Just like in 1998 when Long Term Capital blew up (provided a link to that story a page back) and the Fed and several major banks had to step in to provide liquidity.

 

When the Fed announced their repo operation and what is basically QE the market rallied huge today then gave it all up and even closed at it's low. IMO that's because the market knew someone was in trouble and wasn't about to pay up for their assets. The market wanted them on the cheap. That's why the "market on close" orders were all huge sells. The market puts the boots to the entity in trouble. It looks to me that that problem is out of the way and I believe we can rally from here. Unless of course there are more similar issues lurking around.

 

As for the poor performance of gold. If it were as easy as market down = gold up any schmuck could make a living in markets. When you're blowing up and getting margin calls you sell anything you can to create cash to meet the margin calls. Gold makes for an excellent source of funds in that case.

Edited March 13, 2020 by nuckin_futz

[HI5]

Lost a good chunk on a stupid gamble with Vermillion and just doubled another sell on Lattice Biologics..back at zero. Is it too early to purchase energy indexes?

[Warhippy]

Let the bipolar nonsense continue

 

https://liveindex.org/americas/

 

Everyone looking to make a buck to close the week.  But we know what is coming

[Boudrias]

10 hours ago, nuckin_futz said:

Almost all retail investors invest in a cash account vs a margin account. That is if you have $1000 to invest you can only invest $1000. A margin account lets you borrow money to invest with.

 

Professionals (those who know what they're doing and also those who do not) mainly use margin. Sometimes lots of margin. like x3, x5, x10, x30. When the market moves 1%. A retail guy's account moves 1%. If you're using margin and the market moves 1% your gains are magnified x3 = 3%, x10 = 10% and so on. Now you can see how quickly you can get wealthy and conversely how quickly you can make a mess and blow up.

 

When the market does nothing but go up all the damn time people get lazy. And the unwinding of levered positions can get very messy. This is what we have seen. Over levered people blowing up right and left. The selling feeds on itself.

 

My guess is someone huge blew up to the extent that unwinding their positions created such market stress that liquidity became an issue. Just like in 1998 when Long Term Capital blew up (provided a link to that story a page back) and the Fed and several major banks had to step in to provide liquidity.

 

When the Fed announced their repo operation and what is basically QE the market rallied huge today then gave it all up and even closed at it's low. IMO that's because the market knew someone was in trouble and wasn't about to pay up for their assets. The market wanted them on the cheap. That's why the "market on close" orders were all huge sells. The market puts the boots to the entity in trouble. It looks to me that that problem is out of the way and I believe we can rally from here. Unless of course there are more similar issues lurking around.

 

As for the poor performance of gold. If it were as easy as market down = gold up any schmuck could make a living in markets. When you're blowing up and getting margin calls you sell anything you can to create cash to meet the margin calls. Gold makes for an excellent source of funds in that case.

Seriously nice job! Steady voice of reason and info. Thanks.

[Boudrias]

2 hours ago, HI5 said:

Lost a good chunk on a stupid gamble with Vermillion and just doubled another sell on Lattice Biologics..back at zero. Is it too early to purchase energy indexes?

If you are at zero you are ahead of the game!