I had promised that I was going to start my own thread regarding stock investments and the markets. So many things have happened since last time I was here and I really do not feel like sharing my knowledge. But a promise is a promise and there have been few people that have emailed me and supported me.

This thread will deal with investing in the stock markets. I will not discuss individual stocks but discuss ETFs like SPY, DIA, IWM and QQQQ. The one good thing about trading ETFs compared to individual stocks is the the ETFs provide instant diversification among similar companies within the same sector.

I will post more as we go along, regarding entry-price, profit-target and stop-losses. I do not think that any ETF is good or bad. It is good only if I'm making money and bad if I'm losig money.

If you have not been in the market so far, please read this as an information piece only rather than my recommendations. There is risk involved and you should know how much risk to take on any position.

Any suggestations, comments and criticisms are welcome as long as it is market related. If this thread gets out of hand and we start discussing off-topics, I'll stop posting.

Have a happy new year!!!! May 2007 bring you and your family lots of joys and riches.

Somebody post it in google yesterday ...make me Laugh ...

"A day in the life of a Day Trader..."

Taking a decent hit here. Will stay out for now.

Dead hit today.

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something tells me we're gonna have a BIG dive here. The bears simply aren't giving up on the selling.

When all seems hopeless then its time to buy. That said we are no where near a bottom. I see another 7-8% downside (maybe a few more) then its time to break all hell loose.. It should not be that long. Have patience and cash ready. Sorry I couldn't post the data that I was talking about. My scanner wouldn't work but nonetheless I did warn you guys

Captain: That seems like a glitch. You can look at the A shares and they are still $130,000+. 1 A share is approx. equal to 30 B shares.

We are in a bear market now. I'm not sure how low this will go. I will be playing the short side only.

 

 

Hey Eminitrader -

Yeah, for a brief moment I wondered  if Buffet had boarded one of those Cessnas that seem to keep colliding in mid-air and perished. Jokes aside, I wonder how the stock will fare when that eventuality happens.

Have a good one.

Captain: Buffet's demise will certainly have a negative impact to the stock at least in the short term. It happens to any company that loses its main person. In the long run things will deviate towards its value. If the investors have reason to believe that the new management will follow the same principles, it should still do well. Berkshire owns many homebuilding and furnishing companies. If we fall into a recession, they will take a hit too like any other company.

This seems like 97-98, when there was a mini-crash. The Fed came and started cutting interest rates and a tech bubble was created, I'm not sure if we will have the same reaction this time around. These sort of things happen every 5-10 years, helps to get rid of excesses.

The only thing I'll buy here is QID. I'll look to short any rallies here.

 

They cut the rates by 75 basis points. The market is off of its low right now. A lot depends on where we close today. If we close near the high, I'll look to buy but if we close near the low, I'll look to short. Right now it's pretty volatile.

I really don't think the fed rate cut is going to salvage the economy and as it always

is the govt relief package will be "after the fact" no matter how much noise

they make about the urgency of such a package.. Yes, I understand that it is virtually

impossible to predict the day to day stock market action, but I expect the market to

be pretty much steady throughout the day but sell off in the last couple of hour..

I wish I had a margin account, I would have shorted the whole financials a month ago

but it seems like there is the light at the end of tunnel for these group now.. I would be

looking to buy them (mind you Banks not Borkerages) after the dust settles. Balance

sheets are improving and very cheap valuation. Any thoughts?

The volatility so far has been unbelievable!!  Lot of action going on and I feel there's more to come in days to follow.

Emini, timetraveller and the others, do you know of any "good/low commision" trading platform that encompasses all different instruments: FX, Stocks, Commodities in one platform?  Any market makers in the US doing that?  This would be for an individual account (and not an Independent Broker or Manager).  Man, This constant shuffling around between platforms and the fact that I'm splitting my funds between these platforms is really inefficient.  BTW, I've been recommended Interactive Brokers by the peeps I work with but I need to know if anyone else knows of other houses out there.  Lemme know.  Thx

 

uufff samsara... quit acting like u know anything about markets and money.. u the same guy that hangs out in the indian grocery stores chewing pan parag... i cant believe u would understand about stocks, and investments...

im even surprised you know whats happening in the US economy right now honestly.

uuff samsara u pan parag chewing gadha who lives at jackson heights... puhlease stop acting like u some finance guru... IT guru... recruiter, E-gangsta... etc..  just be yourself..

hahaha  shit breath latoboy...And YOU KNOW WHATs GOING ON IN THE ECONOMY?  Damn, fuggin lato like you only (as per your name) know how to clean the toilets after I take a dump there....hahaha  Waht a fuggin moron.  hahahahha

BTW, some village was shown on CNN today....They said it was missing it's idiot.  Seems to me that the idiot/lato is here in the US mopping toilets.  LMAO

Guys I think you should take ur crap somewhere else.. btw.. Wow.. what a freakin

breath taking rally.. didn't see that coming!!

It seems that this correction has ended. There is reason to believe that we are in a bear market, but markets seldom go up or down in a straight line. In the bull market of 2003-2007, there were several corrections of 8-10%. I think this market will try to re-test 1460 in S&P. If we fail to break above 1460-1480, that would confirm a bear market.

I was impressed with today's rally, so I'm buying here. As always I will always lighten up after a true selling day.

Samsara, I use Interactive Brokers and have been using them for 5 years. You can trade foreign markets too. The have a web-based and a stand alone version. It is pretty reliable for the price that you pay.

 

 

 

Damn, the past 2 days have been seen the greatest rallies I've witnessed so far...I completely missed out on the entire US equity market move.  Lets hope for more good days to come after next week's FOMC minutes.

BTW, the support peeps @ Interactive Brokers seemed helpful and earlier today subscribed to the demo to feel and get used to their web-based platform...I may end up using them.  Thanks man!!

Samsara: To be honest IB's support is okay especially when you need them, it is suited for people that know what they are doing. There is quite a bit of system outage issues too. The web-version does not have access to charts but you can put bracket orders. The stand alone version is pretty good and user friendly. The charts suck most of the time, so if you are trading intraday using charts, you need to get some other charting software too. I usually don't trade by looking at the charts. When I trade intraday, I'll identify the daily trend and buy at support.

For example, this is my plan for tomorrow. I think today's action suggested that we might have seen a short-term bottom so tomorrow I'll look for opportunities to go long only. At 9.30 est, I'll look at the overnight high and I'll wait for the price to go above that, then I'll wait for a reaction that is at least 25% of the move of the overnight range. I'll wait for a break of the previous reaction low or a test of the reaction low, then once it goes higher by 2 points from the new reaction low, I'll buy with a stop 2 point below the reaction low. Not sure if this makes sense but I can try to explain that in a chart during the weekend. I use this strategy to day-trade futures only. For swing trading stocks, I'll just buy in the morning.

Good Luck.

 

Hey thanx emini...I will check out IBs demo platform starting tomorrow and am hoping its as good as the hype that surrounds the firm.  Also, for the charting tools, I'd have to look elsewhere.  I've come across a few free ones on the web but the good ones all cost an arm and a leg.  Know any free/cheap and good websites which have access all the technical charting tools out there?