How many of you play the market?
 

By that I mean that you frequently buy and sell. I am invested in the market but I do not play the market. I have a diversified portfolio and only have two investments that are even moderate risk...the rest are as safe as investments can be...this reduces returns but pretty much avoids any loss of principal.

When I sold all of my business enterprises several years ago I invested the monies in the market. Even when the market took a giant dump (14,000 to 7,000) I did not lose any of my principle investment...though I took a big paper loss. The market has been on its way up ever since and the paper loss is pretty much back to what it was. I do not touch any dividends...as I have more than enough income to live on...they are just rolled over.

I do a lot of swing trading. I use Trade King as my broker.

I don't feel safe owning any equities in the current environment.

- More crashes coming, like 2008 with the little guy getting wiped out.
- HFT's running their super computers like sharks, waiting for a human trader to fleece.
- Massive global and local debt problems, just getting started.
- At least a decade of low/no growth ahead.

I favor currency of countries who aren't deeply in debt and PM's like silver/gold.

Since converting to cash and PM's, for the first time in years I sleep soundly at night.

Say no to the banksters cartel, convert your wealth to real money and drop out of their system. Limit the damage they can do to your hard earned savings.

Im pretty active in the market. Actually I think equities will do quite well but only over the long term. The only solution to these debt problems is to expand the money supply (ie quantitative easing) and this is generally good for many asset classes including equities.

I you wanna go relatively safe, companies like Exxon, Apple, China Mobile etc..... dividend paying blue chips are best, youll get paid to wait for share price recovery in a worst case scenario. Dont forget the gold stocks!

As for precious metals, I completely agree and I think gold is just starting its ascension. However, it is absolutely the worst time to hold cash because interest rates are mostly way below the rate of inflation (negative real interest rates) and thus youre getting burned YOY.

I have played with myself, in Camden market, London - But the police insisted that I leave... :(

The Federal Reserve already tried quantitive easing to combat a liquidity trap, that's what the bank bailouts were in essence. Only instead of financing loans or refinancing mortgages the banks took the money and invested it internationally in commodities, the emerging markets and foreign currencies. Bank of America shouldn't even be able to call itself that, they're selling this country out right from underneath us, and people wonder why there's mass protests going on. These banks are gambling with the fate of hundreds of millions of people here in the US, possibly the entire world.


If you're in Dubai all you have to do is look out your window to see the absurdity of the real estate bubble and the absolute greed it caused. Enormous towers that some idiots thought would be a good idea to build in the middle of a fucking desert, and a very unstable region of the world, sit unfinished. The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia could very well be facing the same fate as Iran in 1979. Get ready for Sharia law.


Maybe i'm being overly pessimistic though, I hope so............

I have 60% of my portfolio invested in shares of EEM, a highly traded emerging market ETF, and 40% in AAPL DITM LEAPS which function much in the same way as straight shares.

I write covered calls on all shares and leap contracts like clockwork on the first monday after the third Friday of every month and get 1.5-2% for the premiums. More towards 2% now that I've put it all in a fund and don't have to worry about the long term vs short term capital gains implications of getting called out. When using that strategy, if a stock stays flat for a year, I still make 20%.

I'll also occasionally buy SPY puts to protect the investments when I anticipate a dip, but don't like to do so very often even though I've been right more than wrong when doing so, but

I don't :pimp

i day traded for about 10 years, the last few years i switched more to buy and hold investing in high dividend paying stocks and setting up up portfolio for dividend reinvestment. when i start to need the money i will just switch it back over to cash dividends, and hopefully by that time my annual dividends will be enough to live on

look for high div companies, which have long history of raising dividends each year, set them to reinvest.... and sleep easy knowing in 20 or 30 years you will get nice income

I agree with the principle of investing in companies with good dividend and record of increasing their dividend but...... overall im not sure about dividend reinvestment.

There's no tax advantage and the dividends are automatically reinvested so youre not able to time your entry on the new purchase. You may aswell collect the cash and then wait for a sell off - plus you have the added advantage of being able to choose what you want to invest the cash into.