Who Or What Is A “Nancy Guthrie”?
… and what’s so special about her that she gets days upon days of national news coverage?
Has no one else had horrific crimes committed against them in the past few days?
Is there nothing else more important going on in the nation or world that national column inches must be filled with yet another personal crime?
Does she have damning information on Hillary Clinton?
Are there no people of national prominence that should better receive national column inches of coverage of their arrests and convictions?
Yeah, I know I could look “Nancy Guthrie” up … but why should I bother?
We’ve already lost, doncha know?
Been wondering the same thing my own self. Also, what’s this I keep hearing about some “super” bowl and a mad bunny?
If her daughter wasn’t a high profile NBC/NYC morning show news talking head this would have barely made the local newspaper. It’s nothing but a distraction imo.
silly filler material while the sloppy media dossles about trying to assemble something anti-trump.
enjoy the brief vacay, something new is right around the corner
Stock Market
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Say a person with less than no knowledge about the stock market had between $100 and $1000 to “learn” about it by participating, what would the first 3 steps look like?
Light a match and set the bills on fire. Same effect.
Oh, you’re serious?
$100 is not enough to even think about it – for that matter, neither is $1000. Might as well enjoy a good night out. You will lose while learning. Recall that college costs money to learn a profession before you start earning. Same here. A good grasp of basic statistics helps.
You need a good computer with high-end graphics capability and fast internet – but you probably already have that for your profession. Lots of information coming in real-time.
Most brokerage houses require $2k min; better to start with $5k to open an account (a minimum of $25k opens many doors though). You have to go through a brokerage house and the on-line ones are far cheaper than walking into a broker’s office. Buying and selling overhead costs (aside from the product itself) are fairly inexpensive or free. (personally I would recommend Schwab or TastyTrade). You can let the money sit there while you learn.
You want to use their trading platforms – it’s called”Think or Swim” at Schwab. TastyTrade didn’t really name their platform. Those two are the best analytical platforms available and are accessible for “free” (if you have the money in their account – like a savings or checking account). I use both. Tasty is more flexible on what you can do with less money than Schwab but Schwab has the better analytical platform.
Without spending money, look into their education information before you start. I play options myself more than straight stocks but YMMV.
It takes dedication. Prepare to spend much time in front of a computer screen – you need to study the “flow” of money. I’ve gotten to the point where I can do my other work while having various stock information flowing real-time in front of me. (having multiple monitors helps but not necessary)
Start slow – there will be up days and down. I like oil and pipeline stocks with good dividends myself for investments. (XOM, CVX, VLO, ET, ETP are good. Also MO and others. Do “dividend reinvestment” where available.
If you are really serious and willing to pay for your education, you might want to consider joining TheoTrade – probably the best education outfit around, but it costs something like $1200/year and mostly concentrates on “trading” more than “investing” (difference being length of time holding a position). You can make – or lose – more money faster with options, but options can be cheaper (I can trade 100 shares of something for maybe $20-$100. I’d have to spend thousands to outright buy 100 shares of stock.)
For example, buying stock: Altria Group (MO) (Philip Morris cigarettes) costs $64.40 per share as I write this and pays 6.58% dividend ($4.24/share/year). 100 shares will cost you $6440 to buy and pay $424/year in dividends. In some cases, you can make 50-100% on an options trade (or lose that much – or more).
For example, playing options on MO: I can buy a 100 share “put” for $35. If it goes up $1 by Friday, I’ll lose $25; if it goes down $1, I’ll make $40. If I bought 10 puts, I’d make $400 by Friday. Or lose $250. Options strategies can be simple or get complex. Investing is straight-forward buy and wait.
Neither is quite that simple when this and that is taken into account but that’s the gist of it. Learning this stuff has been compared to drinking from a firehose …
The Investopedia site offers good information but can be confusing at first. It takes money to make money and this game is not as trivial as some make it seem. But the US stock market is the only game in town. Everything else is dependent on it. Yahoo Finance is also a good source for information, not so much for education.
Don’t let anyone tell you it’s not gambling. It is but you’re allowed to count the cards. The house always wins but your chances of “winning” are better than Vegas odds.
I personally think the market is headed for a 10% or more downturn soon but maybe not. Good time to learn before getting your feet too wet – with a coming good time to buy.
It’s the John Wayne method of learning to swim: throw you in the deep end and watch you struggle to learn.
If you want more details, PM me. There may be other readers here better versed in the subject than me.
PS: It’s not “day-trading” although there are techniques for doing so – but not recommended for beginners. Or most anyone else for that matter; same game, different rules.
You need to make this into a big, long post. Or, maybe a series.
That would be the blind leading the blind …
I disagree.
Well that tears that idea. Thanks DT.
What you described seems one sided – meant to lose.
One sided, hopeless.
I gotta at least have hope.
Hope to survive.
So I’ll just keep my stack of legal tenders hiding out under the mattress.
Didn’t mean to make it seem so one-sided; you just have to know what you’re doing. You wouldn’t go to Vegas and play poker without knowing the whys and hows of the game, would you?
The way I look at it is that my cash is losing value from inflation; Bank of Mattress doesn’t pay any interest and inflation is negative interest. The stock market – for all its sins – is the only game in which you might get ahead of inflation.
It is a crooked game; they are out to get you. But that holds true for any financial dealings you undertake – and that includes Bank of Mattress; even worse, bank deposits or 401Ks. You don’t think inflation is accidental, do you?
A good example: I bought 50 shares of Vallero Energy (VLO) in Oct ’24 for $2875. By re-investing dividends, I now hold a bit over 53 shares. VLO has also increased in price and my holdings are now worth just shy of $11,000.
I have also lost money – mostly by not paying attention to what I was doing (one should not bet on filling an inside straight – and one should also know if a straight beats a flush … or is it the other way ’round?)
At this moment, I have a small bet that one of the index funds will fall to its lower standard deviation by Friday. It cost me $30. If it doesn’t reach that point, I lose $30 (or some of it). If it does reach that point, I may gain $300 … though more likely, I’d gain $100. Odds are I lose, but odds also are that I’ll win one of 3. Two loses of $30, one gain of $100 – net +$40.
Don’t use money – just watch via Yahoo Finance or some other financial site. Here are 8 stocks to watch (by symbol), not necessarily buy: AAPL, AMZN, AVGO, GOOGL, META, MSFT, NVDA, TSLA. These are among the biggest of the big boys; their actions have more influence on the overall market than most of the others combined.
I once dipped my toe, briefly, into what you’re describing. I quickly found out that I had stepped into a knowledge pool that was very deep and very wide, and full of sharks, and I was but a wee tot barely into the shallow end kept alive only by random luck and my insufficient floaties.
There is a whole world of knowledge here that I only barely began to understand. To keep from having your financial face ripped off, you need to understand….
To sum up, I learned that I was waaay over my head. I have most of my wealth with a conventional financial planner, who probably has as little knowledge of these things as I do, and charges me handsomely for traditional, conventional financial choices. Those choices prevent me from seeing enormous gains, but they also keep me from my bad ideas.
Yep.
It is a game. The basic moves are simple. Just like chess. Or for that matter, poker. Such a simple set of rules; such deep and intricate ways to have your hat handed to you. But it is the only financial game in town where you have the possibility of winning; less than 50-50 but better than anything in Vegas.
It’s mostly a statistics game these days. Technicals don’t help much anymore, neither do fundamentals. Computer algorithms have taken over which is why we have a handful of companies each worth more than most countries. The game is standard deviation now.
(As an aside, I once lived with a professional poker player in Reno. My education in poker was far cheaper than it could have been. He taught me a lot though. I’m NOT a player; I don’t have the “it” to be a player, never will – it’s something born inside you. I don’t play very much anymore even though I enjoy the game. I won’t play with strangers and I don’t want to be as cut-throat as necessary with friends. Poker is NOT friendly.)
Most of my market mistakes are/were relatively harmless but one time I got way ahead of my skis and it cost me very bigly. On the other hand, my mother had inherited a modest portfolio from her father and I saw what “professional” management was (not) doing … besides collecting their fees. So I bit the bullet and decided to learn this game.
The supposed professionals make mistakes as well; I’d rather cuss myself out for a mistake than some person I’m paying to not make mistakes. I can lose my own money without having to pay someone a fee for the privilege.
So I spent the money for the education, learned what I needed to, and play the game alongside some big boys. Someone with a portfolio margin account plays a far different game even if we make identical trades. But it’s like everyone having Thanksgiving dinner – we all eat together but I sit at the kiddie’s table.
A poker story from years ago….
I’ve got a buddy….Tom….who is a big cheese at an insurance company. The guys in our group were each hosting a night of poker every now and then. No big money….we bought in for $20 each. This all happened at Tom’s house when it was his turn to host.
Most of us were playing “college poker”. Not just Stud or 5 Card Draw, but stupid games that a college guy might think up.
So after a couple of hours of poker and moderate levels of libations, when it came to his turn to deal, one of the fella’s announced a really stupid game…..it was something like “5 Card Draw with Jacks and Red Twos wild”.
I’ll never forget this moment: One of Tom’s work friends sat and thought for a moment and then said, “That game will never work. With this many guys at the table, the conditional probability of us running out of cards is too high.”
Mmyeah, half liquored up, Tom’s friend….a friggin’ actuary, as it turned out….was doing math in his head that I only barely remember from college.
I immediately folded my hand.
These are the same guys who are chewing up Wall Street.
Love your title and agree with all of it. You are generous with your investing dissertation and despite being over my head and wallet, it’s appreciated.
Personally, I don’t know how anyone can stay sane in these skewed times without
Faith in our Creator and His Son. Today happens to be the anniversary of the miraculous appearance of The Mother of God to a French teenager in Lourdes, France.There are plenty of other miracles connected to that one but the most interesting one for skeptics is Our
Lady of Guadalupe. Read about the scientific studies done on the pancho-like garment worn by the lucky man who had the experience. God’s blessings to all of you.
This is, apparently only the third kidnapping in US history. The last one, of course, was Patty Hearst and the one before that, the Lindbergh baby. Don’t be so negative, we only get these kidnapping things once a generation.