Have a question in mind that you think is so dumb you’re embarrassed to ask it? That’s what we’re here for today!
This bonus post was inspired by a reader who wanted to know “where to ask a dumb question” here on Stock Gumshoe… and while his question was not actually stupid, and I’m happy to see questions pop up in our comment threads anywhere on the site, I thought it would be a great idea to open the floor and be more welcoming for the shy, the embarrassed, or, yes, even the uninformed.
So this is a no-judgement zone… smart people do things we’d call “dumb” all the time: Warren Buffett didn’t invest in Google in 2004, Albert Einstein married his cousin, and I just had to go back and double check that I didn’t call him Alfred Einstein (which I’ve done before, in print). So if you have that question that you can’t ask your stockbroker or your brother-in-law or Twitter without feeling like a dummy, let ‘er rip by submitting it below. I’ll be nice… and we might all learn something.
And yes, the SEC is always watching, so I must remind you that I can’t give personal investment advice… but I’ll try to share whatever opinion or answers I can provide to any investment-related question you’ve got, though if we end up with a lot of them it might take me a little while to answer thoughtfully.
So please, let your questions fly using the friendly little comment box below… and thanks for being the best readers in cyberspace!
(I will moderate the discussion just to make sure we don’t get too much profanity or offensive stuff, or personal attacks, but I’ll use a light hand — you can be mean to me if you like, just don’t be mean to any other participants.)
How can we stop all the rubbish that these services sellers keep posting ? If we did everything they said we’d all be trillionaires
Why don’t most people see if the promoters had all these winning “tips” they would simply invest in them ?
Your work is good.
Keep it up please
Thanks
Thanks Graham. I have a feeling I won’t be out of a job anytime soon.
I am holding a large stake in MLP ETF AMZA. It is pretty volatile, but is it stable enough to continue to take the 18% dividend.
That’s a helluva dividend! how long have they kept it up?
How can a stock be “oversold” when you need an equal number of buyers and sellers to make a trade?
Investopedia is a great source for looking up the meaning of technical financial terms. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/oversold.asp
That term is used by folks who follow many different technical indicators, but in plain English, “oversold” usually mostly just means that a stock is trading near the lower end of the average trading range. Doesn’t mean it can’t go lower, or that it is destined to shoot higher every time, but it means that it’s relatively lower in price than the averages would suggest it should be. Often an “oversold” stock can also fall further and “break down” of the trading range, or an “overbought” stock can exceed expectations further and “break out” of that range.
For dividend stocks, is it better to take the cash or directly reinvest it in the company by getting more stocks? Historically what makes you a wealthier investor?
Dividend reinvestment is more likely to compound your portfolio value over time… though mathematically, it shouldn’t make much difference whether you allow automatic reinvestment or take the cash each quarter and reinvest it in your favorite stocks. Taking the dividend in cash and spending it on comic books and candy bars will definitely be a drag on portfolio growth.
Paychologically, automatic dividend reinvestment works better for most folks — you don’t have to make decisions, most brokers do it for free, and you can ignore a holding while it gradually grows.
Aside from Yahoo Finance, what’s the best site for comparing 4 dissimilar stocks one is considering to purchase? I’ve already looked at all the fundamentals on Yahoo, but am looking for more analysis to help me choose one, from SHOP TTD AAXN & ADBE. The one I like the most has the highest insider selling, so I need an out of the box view.
Don’t know about “best”, but these sites might help round out your analyses — and they’re free. You can type all 4 tickers in one shot so you see their ratings differences in one shot.
https://finviz.com/screener
https://navelliergrowth.investorplace.com/portfolio-grader/report-card.html
Many thanks
I don’t like Yahoo Finance much anymore, they no longer collect much useful information outside of the basic fundamentals. Finviz is good too, as bunion132 noted, and you can find lots of contrasting opinions on many of the news sites or blogger/social media platforms (Marketwatch, StockTwits, SeekingAlpha). I like to be able to graph and visualize the fundamentals to compare stocks, which YCharts is great at. And for summarizing analyst opinions and changes over time Briefing.com is pretty hard to beat (Neither Briefing.com nor YCharts is free)
Hello Travis,
Are Cryptocurrentcies completely unregulated like buy in the wild, wild West!
Almost. The connection to the banking system is getting regulated in some places (you have to wire money or use a credit card to buy your cryptocurrencies), and there’s a lot of talk of regulation, but it’s pretty limited right now.
What are your primary sale triggers for equity positions? For example, the book value hits a certain level.
I don’t have one standard.
I sometimes buy a stock or option because of what I think is a temporary price imbalance and sell when that is corrected (assuming I’m right), but more often I’m likely to think of my investments as long-term positions as long as the company continues to perform well and have strong underlying fundamentals that make me comfortable, with a reasonable prospect that they can keep reinvesting their cash flow into growth and continue to build the company.
I do re-examine any stock that hits a stop loss trigger — they don’t all get sold, but they do all get re-analyzed at that point, and I am more likely to sell a falling stock than a rising one.
I do usually have a few important metrics in mind when I buy a stock — whether something as simple as dividend yield, payout ratio, and dividend growth or a few of future top-line growth, and if the trend I see in place when I buy doesn’t play out as I expected, I may also sell there or re-evaluate the stock and my expectations. I also sometimes sell in pieces, just as I buy in pieces — so I sold out of a little more than half of my Facebook position over the past few months because of increased risk, but still do hold a large position… and I sold out of more than half of my CoreSite position a while back because their dividend growth has begun to disappoint and the stock weakened technically… but still hold half of it, and I’m watching next week to see if the dividend is increased again.
Nothing, sadly, is very simple for me.
What is the new biotech that motley fool Canada claims that matsayoshi son is investing in.
Think it’s MMJ related.
Haven’t seen an ad to that effect yet, sorry — feel free to pass it along to ILoveStockSpam@gmail.com and I’ll add it to the pile, or post a link here.
SFTBY…that’s it! When I saw the ticker symbol under Travis’ comment I remembered an article (NOT teaser ad) I read on the company almost exactly one year ago and copy/pasted notes on.
The article was written on May 26, 2017 by Keith Fitz-Gerald of Money Morning. To sum: Masayoshi Son’s company, SoftBank Group Corp closed the company’s venture capital entity named “Vision Fund” with $93 Billion (not a typo) in commitments, with the dollar amount expected to reach $100 Billion by fall of 2017.
Ha this is going to be a GREAT page, I’m retired so I have a lot of free time to ask dumb questions. I’m an active trader and have a tendency to gamble, some of you are asking questions about pot stocks, so let me share my thoughts. I have 2 accounts, one is my regular trading account and the other is in highly speculative stocks (Account I can afford to loose all LOL).
This second account is 90% in pot stocks and the rest in puts and calls. I’ve been lucky as some of my pot stocks are down 10 to 12%, some are up 120 to 150 %
One of the stocks I own Is $CVSI they just reported earnings the following is from TD Ameritrade.
Record Q1 2018 Sales of $8,071,000, an increase of 114% compared to Q1 2017
Record Q1 2018 Gross Profit of $5,562,000, an increase of 129% compared Q1 2017
Record Q1 2018 Cash Flow from Operations of $1,654,000, an improvement of 1,628,000 when compared to Q1 2017
Record Q1 2018 Adjusted EBITDA of $1,822,000, an improvement of $2,012,000 when compared to Q1 2017
Record Sales for Q1 2018 were $8.1 million
So occasionally there is a gem in all that coal. Other stock in that portfolio are $APHQE, $APRI, $BPMX, $CANN, $FFRMF, $KSHB $MJNA, $PHOT, $USMJ, $XXII. Obviously some of these will fade away to 0 but others ?
I have found this site helpful in helping me make decisions on pot stocks. (https://greenmarketreport.com)
The Green Market Report Index is a list of 30 stocks that have been selected based on market capitalization and revenue production, plus high standards of company operation. These companies must be predominantly focused
on the cannabis industry and the list is reviewed on a quarterly basis.
I am not recommending any of these stocks just showing what I have bought. 🙂
Sorry 2 more $ACBFF and a pricy one $GWPH
Hi Martin, For pot stocks, you might want to consider another couple websites that were referred to me by Gumshoe Guests derbydude and Shari in Travis’ April 30,2018 discussion “Casey’s “5 Tiny ‘Pot’ Stocks Set to Soar in 2018 Pot Boom” teased in “Become a Marijuana Millionaire in 2018””; from derbydude “I find Ted Ohashi to be excellent. He also has an excellent free newsletter that mostly covers the Canadian market but cannot help but include some US activities like Sunniva. It includes technical analysis of stock averages and specific company activities. You can sign up for his newsletter by emailing him your name and country at LetsTokeBusiness@gmail.com. Tell him Derbydude sent you. ”
from Shari “https://www.newcannabisventures.com/cannabis-companies/ ”
Irregular roberthebel was a big commenter on that thread too – very informative.
you might also want to consider The Marijuana Index https://marijuanaindex.com/
Thank you for the suggestion of (https://greenmarketreport.com), I’ll check it out.
I too am a small speculative investor, just a month ago $2k each in ACBFF, APHQF, CNTTF, CRON, GWPH, HYYDF, MEDFF, SNNVF, TWMJF, and a bit more $$in each of Travis talked about IIPR and IIPR/PR (Preferred).
I continue looking for US based vertically integrated with a good brand and marketing, like hopefully SNNVF Sunniva with their large new greenhouse in California – companies listed/ticker on US exchange.
Like you, “Obviously some of these will fade away to 0 but others ?” and “I am not recommending any of these stocks just showing what I have bought. ”
Be Well
My wife has done well with Paul Manpilly’s “True Momentum” publication. He now has a new publication titled ” Ten Million Portfolio” I would appreciate your thoughts on Manpilly.
Haven’t heard much about that new service of his yet, but I’ve written about Mampilly teasers several times. All my notes about his stuff should be here: https://www.stockgumshoe.com/tag/paul-mampilly/
Can we expect any coverage of St. Georges Eco Mining (CA:SX) or Gratomic,
CA:GRAT
Don’t know, I’ve never heard of either — what makes you interested?
SX – blockchain plus mineral reserves in Iceland…
GRAT – graphene – specifically tires – they are some very interesting things in their pipeline
Too speculative for my blood — both look like they tried to jump on the blockchain bandwagon and got a price spike that they gave up shortly thereafter. Maybe not a fair assessment, but I don’t dabble much with the sub-$50 million penny stocks if I can help it, there’s so much junk in that space that you have to really kiss a lot of frogs, and there are only so many hours in the day. Good luck with them.
Avanir Migraine Drug approval just announced – any insight / side effects / etc. that can be offered at this time
Now that was a stupid question – my interst is in Aimovig, made by Amgen and Novartis… any insight / side effects that can be offered is appreciated
The result and possible effects on the two companies was written up in Fierce Biotech. Main question: is the price too expensive? Secondary: better for Amgen (challenged by some biosimilars) than Novartis (because of controversy abt that coy); Are there any near term competitors?
Fierce Biotech is a free newsletter.
MSCI new china stocks
Why does this say that there are 232 comments, but I only see about 50?
At the bottom of the page you will see more pages to go to
Other than having to read less, what do irregulars get for the $ ?
An extra commentary every week, called the Friday File — usually following my portfolio and investment decisions.
I highly recommend becoming an Irregular! I have been an Irregular for 11 months now and Travis has saved me $$Thousands from the teaser ads and their subscription services. yes, you can get some of that with the Guest and Daily commentary, but even more so with Irregular.
You get the good feeling that you’re sharing the expense of keeping the site up and running too. Travis has saved me from making impetuous buys, so it seems only fair to me to chip in and help with the cost.
Thanks Catherine!
Can you buy or sell short the S&P 500 outside the futures market? How much does it cost one share of the S&P 500? This is my stupid question.
There is an ETF called SPY S&P 500 ETF and it is trading at $271.33 a share
Plus some inverse ETFs.
If you don’t want to get involved in futures (and I don’t blame you), you can short the S&P 500 using one of the many high-volume ETFs that track that index — SPY is one.
Shorting doesn’t cost anything in terms of immediate cash outlay, but it does give you an obligation (if you sell short, that means you borrow the shares and then sell them, in hopes that you can buy them back at a lower price someday and “cover” that short, keeping whatever cash you got for selling minus what it cost you to buy the stock back). Selling short comes with a theoretically infinite risk, since the stock/ETF can keep going up forever, so your broker will want to know that you have the cash to meet that “buy it back” obligation, and you’ll have to have cash (or margin access for borrowing) set aside in your brokerage account for that, but if you’re right it doesn’t actually cost anything.
Alternatively, there are inverse ETFs that use futures to try to provide the exact opposite of the S&P’s daily move (or other indices, there are a bunch of them). These usually do pretty well on a daily basis, but over time they lose their tracking of the index because of the costs of shorting and the daily focus. You can buy an Inverse ETF on the S&P, and if the S&P goes down the inverse ETF should go up some similar amount… not 100% certain, but they’re pretty good in the short term.
Or, of course, the lowest risk and most popular (and therefore most expensive) way to bet against anything is by buying put options — it’s also constrained by time, so you have to be right about the time frame (a short can stay short forever, though you may have borrowing costs or a margin call if the stock goes up and the broker needs to make sure you have the colllateral to pay for buying the stock back, a put option is only good until the expiration date). Put options are more expensive, but require less cash at risk and have a strict limit on your risk (unlike shorting a stock, where the loss is theoretically infinite, when buying a put option you can only lose 100% of your investment).
Approximately how much are you worth, Travis?
1. What year did you make your first trade or investment in stocks?
2. How much did you start with toward the stocks game?
3. An approximation of your sum of yearly profits you’ve taken to date, stocks?
4. The approximation of the value of your current stocks portfo? In 2 parts if you could: (a.) ~How much is your cost basis for your current stocks portfo?( b.)~What would be your cost basis + your profit if you closed out your entire stocks portfolio at this time?
Questions 3 & 4 seem extremely out of line, and question 2 irrelevant.
You’re a guest, so you may not have read or noticed that Gummies do not use $$ amounts in discussing stocks, we use percentages or a term like “overweight” to express our position in a stock.
Please remember the manners you’d use as a guest anywhere (they probably don’t include asking your host how much he’s worth….)
“they PROBABLY don’t include asking your host how much he’s worth” (antecedent obviously manners).
Now, if you’re not sure what constitutes manners, you’re sure to mess up occasionally.
This could be it.
The questions are very harmless, and meant in every way to learn something very keen to the track.
1. About 1993
2. $5,000
3. Don’t have that number
4. Don’t disclose that
5. My current stock portfolio is sitting on an average gain of about 40%. That’s just the simple average, the cost basis of the current positions and the current price of those positions. Many gains have been taken to build the portfolio to this size, not sure what the relation of the initial capital to the current value would be.
I don’t discuss or disclose that.
Kyle Dennis SNIPER REPORT, SPECIAL TRADE ALERT teasing MASSIVE Cancer Treatment biotech stock will be releasing updated Phase 2b trial results at ASCO conference June 5th, 2018, this Billionaire’s latest stock pick could put you up $76,776.64, $153,553.29, or $383,883.24! What is the stock????
best index mutual fund … best closed end bond funds thx
Please explain “blockchain”.