Overlords Investment Conclave [OIC] Recruitment Thread

[LordMortis]

No more buying. Looking for opportunities to sell and doing covered calls. Anytime I sell, it's currently going into short term CDs. I'm still waiting over a year later for the last corporate payment in to my 401k. At that time, I'm going to convert the whole thing into an IRA that I have full control of. It will pretty much be one big SPY account, maybe with some sectors, and some equal weight, likely, where I also put out crazy high covered calls.

[Pyperkub]

Need to figure the least risky investments in my annuity as it's dropped 13K since the before times.

S&P 500 No Load index?

[LordMortis]

So I checked in on my Inflation protected treasuries from when inflation was at 11%.

1) They changed the site and it wouldn't accept my old password, but now you finally copy and paste/type a password instead of using their keyboard click PITA
2) They are currently down to 3.38%. I think all of my bonds will have passed the 2 year mark in January. (They might have even done so this past January. I can't tell the passage of time any more). I'm wondering if it's time to take the early withdraw hit and put the money somewhere else, or if I should just let this ride until I see a need it.

By contrast, most of non savings/checking cash is sitting in short term CDs at 5.5% right now. I haven't put any new money in securities in a year and regret not pulling some of it out in that time as a few of my investments tanked because markets are fickle and big fish feed that way they do.

Also, they've finally cleared up my 401k, so I can start moving it to a fully controlled by me IRA but I've been lazy about it because the first time I tried TD Ameritrade tried to put onus of Electronic Transfer on 401k company but without providing me with account deposit for the 401k company, the 401k company would have had to mail a paper check to my employer, who would then have to mail a paper check TD. It was all very archaic and suggested upwards of 20 day turnaround if everything went smoothly with no transparency. My employer cancelled at transaction at my prompt when it all went weird, right out of the gate.

I'll have some big decisions to make when I control my retirement, hopefully in the coming weeks. Even as I won't take anything from it for another 7 years, I will have to temper myself to keep it safe and learn to maintain both a safety level I am comfortable with and a diversity.

[Pyperkub]

Need to figure the least risky investments in my annuity as it's dropped 13K since the before times.

S&P 500 No Load index?

This is concerning - Buffet and Burry shorting the S&P 500 index...

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/16/investin ... index.html

Securities and Exchange Commission filings out Monday showed that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA) sold almost $8 billion more in shares than it bought in the second quarter of 2023. That’s not too much by his standards, but a significant move when the market is up.

Michael Burry, the “Big Short” investor who became famous for correctly predicting the epic collapse of the housing market in 2008, also made a gigantic bet last quarter on a Wall Street crash. Burry’s fund, Scion Asset Management, bought $866 million in put options (that’s the right to sell an asset at a particular price) against a fund that tracks the S&P 500, and $739 million in put options against a fund that tracks the Nasdaq 100.

Most fund managers seem to be less bearish on equities than they have been in the recent past.

IMHO, tho, it's still the best long term retirement savings option tho. For decades, the US Gov't has shown that it will bail out the S&P 500 as necessary. Which, given GOP chicanery with US bonds makes it, in my mind, a safer investment.

[Carpet_pissr]

And unless I’m misreading, BRKA is not shorting the S&P, just selling. Huge difference.

[LawBeefaroni]

Burry could be hedging or just betting on a moderate decline. A drop of 10% in the S&P would make him decent money.

The headlines thst he's betting on a "market crash" are sensationalist.

Buffett/BRK is moving $8B into to cash. That's like me selling a dozen shares of DUK.



It's been a decent run, no surprise to see some profit taking and downside protection.

[Pyperkub]

And unless I’m misreading, BRKA is not shorting the S&P, just selling. Huge difference.

Yeah, as indicated, I've been underwater for days. Saw the story last night briefly, and as I've been putting out fires for days, it was all too easy to see it as another fire. Hopefully it's not, I don't want to have to change my retirement investment strategy, or even have to worry about it. The '08 crash was so tied into fraud that most couldn't see, including me, that I do tend to freak out about signs of another fraud-initiated bubble crash. for as transparent as these markets are supposed to be, they aren't.

[Carpet_pissr]

And unless I’m misreading, BRKA is not shorting the S&P, just selling. Huge difference.

Yeah, as indicated, I've been underwater for days. Saw the story last night briefly, and as I've been putting out fires for days, it was all too easy to see it as another fire. Hopefully it's not, I don't want to have to change my retirement investment strategy, or even have to worry about it. The '08 crash was so tied into fraud that most couldn't see, including me, that I do tend to freak out about signs of another fraud-initiated bubble crash. for as transparent as these markets are supposed to be, they aren't.

Balanced portfolio of funds, 5-6, maybe and you don’t have to worry about it! Buffett himself said something to that effect as advice for retail investors.

[malchior]

The financial press has gotten ridiculous this year. Many outlets spent the entire 1st half of the year telling us about a 100% chance of a recession. They ran off to quote people who've been right accidentally like Jeremy Grantham or any they can tout as 'calling the last crash'. Which means it is safe to ignore most of this noise because a broken clock is right twice a day. There is just so much content being generated purely for clicks. It's an information wasteland now.

That said I don't think looking at what the big players are doing is all that useful. They have totally different approaches to investing. Driven by a major and fundamentally different risk exposure than any of us as retail investors. The advice in the post above is the right thing to do unless you can get someone to manage your portfolio...and even then it's almost certainly better to just follow the post above.

[Carpet_pissr]

The financial press has gotten ridiculous this year. Many outlets spent the entire 1st half of the year telling us about a 100% chance of a recession. They ran off to quote people who've been right accidentally like Jeremy Grantham or any they can tout as 'calling the last crash'. Which means it is safe to ignore most of this noise because a broken clock is right twice a day. There is just so much content being generated purely for clicks. It's an information wasteland now.

That said I don't think looking at what the big players are doing is all that useful. They have totally different approaches to investing. Driven by a major and fundamentally different risk exposure than any of us as retail investors. The advice in the post above is the right thing to do unless you can get someone to manage your portfolio...and even then it's almost certainly better to just follow the post above.

I am FINALLY just now seeing peeps and outlets and articles here and there hinting at "where's that recession?" and "starting to wonder about the recession"....etc. I guess it's too much to expect a full throated "we completely missed the call on this one, sorry!"

[Isgrimnur]

I’m running 50%. I called 2008, but missed on a pandemic-induced recession.

[Pyperkub]

I’m running 50%. I called 2008, but missed on a pandemic-induced recession.

I called 2008 too, but I thought the banks, as usual, would come out smelling like a rose, foreclosing on properties, riding it out and making a killing.

So I bought BofA.

Instead, all the CDS fraud, and risk rating fraud, on top of the lending fraud crushed everything, and while BofA has done FAR better than most other banks, even they are only about where they were before the crash.

I'm still kind of stunned Countrywide and WaMu are dead. I did not see that coming at all.

It was much more than anything I had thought I would ever see.

Pandemic recession, didn't see, but the inflationary policy of all the bailouts and the Ryan tax cut and the pandemic spending was easy.

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

[LordMortis]

I’m running 50%. I called 2008, but missed on a pandemic-induced recession.

I called it but was advised against repositioning. I lost 70% of my wealth from that advice and it took a decade to bring it back when everyone else was getting all that free money. I rode the pandemic boom too long and got nailed in late 2022. I was just breaking even until this last month, even by pre-inflation standards, that is. The messaging from the financial world is interesting right now. As I grow my cash alternatives in these more normalized interest environments, talking heads are suddenly unified in "no one ever builds wealth by holding cash. You can't build wealth at 4 or 5%." Two years ago, it was all TINA. I guess I am becoming a contrarian and protecting my money when I'm told that protecting it is over-rated becomes more a me thing to do. Of course, my cash is still light. Maybe 7% of my total worth but it's I haven't DRIPed or bought a new position in over a year, look for good opportunities to exit non ETFs positions, and regret not having taken opportunities as bad news hit individual equities 1 by 1 and then they don't recover. CVS yesterday being the latest for me. I was going to let it go at 84, it slid to 75 when I didn't and yesterday is was 64 and is not likely to recover.

[Punisher]

1st off, even before my medical adventure I wasn't at the mental level you guys are at in this thread.
Nowadays I can barely follow along.
I'm also not a big stock person or even a little stock person but I recently bought my first stocks on my own.
Only 2 stocks because I don't have a lot of money.
I read an article about Hawian Electric being sued for the wildfires and saw their stocks drop from around 40 i think to around 12. And picked up a little over 2 shares by spending 25. I'm not gonna get rich, just trying to stretch my mind.
My thinking is that even with the lawsuit they will bounce back at some point since they still need electricity there and worst case would be a government buy out or another company buyung them out.
My thinking is that this will make the stocks go back up to what they were if not higher.
It's only 25 do not a huge loss or a huge win. Even if the stocks triple thats less than 100.
I'm curious if my thinking is correct or just another side effect of my brain badmage.
Opinions?

[Carpet_pissr]

1st off, even before my medical adventure I wasn't at the mental level you guys are at in this thread.
Nowadays I can barely follow along.
I'm also not a big stock person or even a little stock person but I recently bought my first stocks on my own.
Only 2 stocks because I don't have a lot of money.
I read an article about Hawian Electric being sued for the wildfires and saw their stocks drop from around 40 i think to around 12. And picked up a little over 2 shares by spending 25. I'm not gonna get rich, just trying to stretch my mind.
My thinking is that even with the lawsuit they will bounce back at some point since they still need electricity there and worst case would be a government buy out or another company buyung them out.
My thinking is that this will make the stocks go back up to what they were if not higher.
It's only 25 do not a huge loss or a huge win. Even if the stocks triple thats less than 100.
I'm curious if my thinking is correct or just another side effect of my brain badmage.
Opinions?

Welp, they just paid out a nice fat dividend, and went up 15% just on Friday. I would make a huge guess and say it's probably oversold (market often overeacts to events like this initially, then corrects in later days). BUT: law suits, could lower or kill dividend, or what would scare me the most personally, is just multiple years of just lagging performance...as the lawsuits or the fate of the utility are pondered. If I wasn't so heavily in so many risky stocks right now, I would throw some into this just to play along with you. Some of my VERY surface level research shows the analysts that have the best records predicting targets for this stock, are either NEUTRAL or BUY currently (and those are as of Friday).

ISS-EVA had them at BUY before it tanked, and they have years worth of a track record making the right calls on this.

Hmmm, might throw some at this after all...

[Punisher]

To be clear, the only research I did was to see whete they were a year ago and beyond.
The lawsuit seems to be the driving force that brought it down.
Beyond that, it's my gut feeling that people need electricity and the company should bounce back at some point, somehow.
But again, I don't do this. I use robunhoid have have a little bit of money spread out in some different things like amaxon and Netflix and such. Maybe 100 total investments because I just dont have the money to do heavy investments and I dont have the knowledge or processing power to make big jumps.
It's mistly fire and forget and hope that in the future i find a surprise 100 in my investments to pay a bill or buy a game or something.

[Carpet_pissr]

Well, it's $25, so...hopefully that won't wreck you financially if they do go to zero (and if it would, why in the world are you investing it in a risky stock you know nothing about?! That's crazy, might as well buy a lottery ticket! )

[Punisher]

Yep 25 isn't going to break us and if it does i can fall back on making brain damaged decisions.
We do play the lottery too though. Just the big ones.
I figure it will probably be months before I see any change with the he atocks though. The rest just sit there for the long term.

[LordMortis]

To be clear, the only research I did was to see whete they were a year ago and beyond.
The lawsuit seems to be the driving force that brought it down.
Beyond that, it's my gut feeling that people need electricity and the company should bounce back at some point, somehow.
But again, I don't do this. I use robunhoid have have a little bit of money spread out in some different things like amaxon and Netflix and such. Maybe 100 total investments because I just dont have the money to do heavy investments and I dont have the knowledge or processing power to make big jumps.
It's mistly fire and forget and hope that in the future i find a surprise 100 in my investments to pay a bill or buy a game or something.

I'm not the guy to listen to but I'll blather anyway. I made money when everyone was making money and then I gave it all back faster than everyone else did. Still if you want to invest and not become educated large ETFs with low costs seem to be the way to go. SPY and VTI specifically. If you are just looking to play with a small amounts of money, like $25, you do you. It's how you learn. If/when you start move up, you want to be more concerned with where individual companies are going then where they are coming from. Look at things like their debt, their cashflow, and their outlook for the future (growth and retention). And be warned surprises move stocks up and down and you'll never be the one who knows this stuff ahead of time. Those movements are what make and break you in individual securities. Lead in wires. A regional bank leveraging itself into oblivion. California changing its preferred prescription provider and on and on and on. I've never touched Robinhood, so I don't know what resources you have available to you, but TD give you balance sheets to look at. If you have a good sense to measure over reactions vs long term disruptions then bully for you. I... do not...

[Punisher]

Nope. I've got no real sense for stocks at all. Most of my previous stocks have been with companies I worked for giving free stocks.
I think I've "invested" about $100 total in Robinhood. I just don't have as much disposable income as I did before my medical adventure and that adventure has also impacted how I process mist things.
This hawian electric thing was just a gut feeling when i saw an article about the lawsuit and stock prices dropping. I don't have a lot of money to risk whoch is why i figured 25 is something i could lose without too much trouble. I'm not gonna get rich off it either. Even if the stock jumped to 100 a share thats only 200. I nice little bonus for me but its nor gonna fo much.

[Carpet_pissr]

Nope. I've got no real sense for stocks at all. Most of my previous stocks have been with companies I worked for giving free stocks.
I think I've "invested" about $100 total in Robinhood. I just don't have as much disposable income as I did before my medical adventure and that adventure has also impacted how I process mist things.
This hawian electric thing was just a gut feeling when i saw an article about the lawsuit and stock prices dropping. I don't have a lot of money to risk whoch is why i figured 25 is something i could lose without too much trouble. I'm not gonna get rich off it either. Even if the stock jumped to 100 a share thats only 200. I nice little bonus for me but its nor gonna fo much.

Plus the dividend, minus the taxes (assuming it's just in a normal brokerage account and not a retirement account or something).

[Pyperkub]

PG&E in CA is a bit of a precursor to judge by, but PG&E has orders of magnitude more exposure due to CA population density.

I don't think Hawaii will be the same category, but PG&E had very similar numbers before their agreement with CA (after massive wildfire liability issues).

Plus, Hawaii power may have been lacking in maintenence, but, has nowhere near to volume of lines to catch up on as PG&E did, and does.

It's very likely that the initial market reaction was a knee jerk, "this is PG&E again", when the baseline is far different.

But I do expect them to need a similar bailout as they are going to get sued to the bejeezus for Lahaina, as it certainly appears as if they are liable.

Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

[Carpet_pissr]

FINALLY a good day for my three caanabis stocks.

All up more than 20% on the following news:

"The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote to the Drug Enforcement Agency asking for cannabis to be classified as a Schedule III drug, as opposed to its current Schedule I, according to a letter dated Tuesday viewed by Bloomberg News. "

Thankfully, the head of the DEA was appointed by Biden, so this SHOULD be easy.

[Isgrimnur]

Examples of Schedule III drugs include Tylenol with Codeine, Suboxone, Ketamine, and Anabolic steroid drugs.

[Carpet_pissr]

Downgrade! (Or upgrade, depending on how you view it). In any case, it’s positive movement away from ‘Prohibition’:

Some examples of substances listed in Schedule I are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), peyote, methaqualone, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine ("Ecstasy").

[Isgrimnur]

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

"heroin" - sure
"lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)" - This one needs to be downgraded.
"peyote" - ditto
"methaqualone" [Quaalude] - Class II for the UN and Canadia
"Ecstasy" - "In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration is currently evaluating the drug for clinical use."

Well, gee. Sure seems like Schedule I should be a lot less populated.

[Pyperkub]

They are all schedule 1 because of the war on hippies in the 60s by Nixon, Hoover, et al, not for medical reasons.

Though yeah, Heroin needs to be there



Sent from my SM-S908U1 using Tapatalk

[Carpet_pissr]

Up big again today if anyone else is playing. Trulieve Cannabis up 60% in 2 days.

Lest anyone think I’m getting a big head, I will remind the board (and myself) that even with that 60% gain, I’m down 80% overall (over a few years). So yeah.

[LawBeefaroni]

Wow, hadnt realozed how far these had fallen.

CGC is all the way up to $0.56. In 2021 it was $56. CRON is $2 ($14 in 2021).

Had CRON at one point.

[Carpet_pissr]

Wow, hadnt realozed how far these had fallen.

CGC is all the way up to $0.56. In 2021 it was $56. CRON is $2 ($14 in 2021).

Had CRON at one point.

Yep, the hype was out of control but a few short years ago. My basket of ‘drug’ stocks (including LSD and psilocybin) I cobbled together has been absolutely hammered.

When you are shut out of the financial system due to lack of the SAFE Act being passed, it’s hard out there bein’ a pimp (and only able to use cash!).

[stessier]

For all you high rollers - Secure 2.0 Act change pushed to 2026.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/28/irs-del ... tions.html

[Pyperkub]

For anyone invested in cryptocurrencies - if you used LastPass to store them, update your seed phrases!!!

Monahan said virtually all of the victims she has assisted were longtime cryptocurrency investors, and security-minded individuals. Importantly, none appeared to have suffered the sorts of attacks that typically preface a high-dollar crypto heist, such as the compromise of one’s email and/or mobile phone accounts.

“The victim profile remains the most striking thing,” Monahan wrote. “They truly all are reasonably secure. They are also deeply integrated into this ecosystem, [including] employees of reputable crypto orgs, VCs [venture capitalists], people who built DeFi protocols, deploy contracts, run full nodes.”

Monahan has been documenting the crypto thefts via Twitter/X since March 2023, frequently expressing frustration in the search for a common cause among the victims. Then on Aug. 28, Monahan said she’d concluded that the common thread among nearly every victim was that they’d previously used LastPass to store their “seed phrase,” the private key needed to unlock access to their cryptocurrency investments.

[Carpet_pissr]

Wow, hadnt realozed how far these had fallen.

Yep. Worst kind of "bad" investment, IMO, the slow boiling frog kind. So many are concerned with sharp drops, but maybe even more nefarious are the slow, constant burns...losing a mere .2% a day or something, over 3 years. Harder to spot, and more soul-crushing IMO.

[LordMortis]

Any TD users get a notification about migration to Schwab? I just got one, and I'm wondering what's all going to change. When Scottrade moved to TD the UI was noticeably better and while I don't use it, everyone loved thinkorswim. I'm wondering what the new UI will be like and how that will change the features I currently get with TD. I also know that since Schwab bought TD, there are no more TD offices around here anymore and the Schwab offices masking themselves as TD don't actually know anything about TD. Like literally nothing. If you talk to them, they put you on a call to a remote TD support system, which you could have done from home, cutting out the middle man.

[stessier]

I was transitioned in May. I only log in to check my balance (I'm a buy and hold type of guy), so I really can't comment much on functionality. It has all the familiar transaction types and such although it takes a bit to become familiar with it. If there is something special you are trying to do, let me know and I can see how hard it is.

[LordMortis]

I was transitioned in May. I only log in to check my balance (I'm a buy and hold type of guy), so I really can't comment much on functionality. It has all the familiar transaction types and such although it takes a bit to become familiar with it. If there is something special you are trying to do, let me know and I can see how hard it is.

I do covered calls, check cost basis, and buy CDs on a regular basis as well as reading news and events among other odds and ends like check taxes, track dividend schedules, jumping back and forth between linked accounts, etc... TD makes all of these things easy. I also am buy and hold as the primary function of my accounts but TD made all of these other things so easily doable that I just migrated to doing them.

[Carpet_pissr]

Any TD users get a notification about migration to Schwab? I just got one, and I'm wondering what's all going to change. When Scottrade moved to TD the UI was noticeably better and while I don't use it, everyone loved thinkorswim. I'm wondering what the new UI will be like and how that will change the features I currently get with TD. I also know that since Schwab bought TD, there are no more TD offices around here anymore and the Schwab offices masking themselves as TD don't actually know anything about TD. Like literally nothing. If you talk to them, they put you on a call to a remote TD support system, which you could have done from home, cutting out the middle man.

Wow, they are just now notifying you? I gues they are doing a staggered transition (unless you missed all the previous notifications, which, if they were like mine, would have been impossible to miss).

I really liked the TDA platform, the app, and even all the data, analyst ratings, and historical data that I could easily get to. Sad to see them get bought TBH. But I took the opportunity to try and consolidate my brokerage platforms into fewer, so moved both my 401K, my primary retirement IRA account, my daughter's Coverdell (pending), and my mother's IRA to Fidelity (where I already had some existing accounts). I was actually going to use TDA as The One, before I saw they were bought by Schwab, so that made my choice for me. Now I just need to move some of my Mom's stuff from T Rowe Price to Fidelity, and I will be down to a handful instead of WAYYY too many.

I have not really explored the Schwab platform yet, so I can't comment. If they offer something unique that my others don't have, I might keep one account there just for that.

The only thing I would have missed from TDA is access to the Credit Suisse individual stock reports (which at least a few years ago, were some of the most accurate ones that we mortal retail investors could access, and very $$$ if you were to buy yoursefl) but I think they stopped offering those some time (a year maybe?) ago. Hell, maybe CS stopped doing them, no idea.

[LordMortis]

Wow, they are just now notifying you? I gues they are doing a staggered transition (unless you missed all the previous notifications, which, if they were like mine, would have been impossible to miss).

I got a notification in 2022 that Schwab bought TD but that things were going to be the same and they'd contact me about migration later. Now is later and migration is soon.

[LawBeefaroni]

Wow, they are just now notifying you? I gues they are doing a staggered transition (unless you missed all the previous notifications, which, if they were like mine, would have been impossible to miss).

I got a notification in 2022 that Schwab bought TD but that things were going to be the same and they'd contact me about migration later. Now is later and migration is soon.

They've done migration twice already. I assume one day ToS suddenly won't work.

[em2nought]

Finally was around my bank near enough to the maturity date on my IRA CD to get it out of the .01% or whatever it was and into 4.5%.