Lurker > red sox 777

Maybe he loses a little bit of evangelical support, but I don't think they have anywhere else to go. Hillary is a complete non-starter, but Biden isn't far behind.

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September 1, 2003; November 4, 2007; September 2, 2013
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So um, if a stock has gone up 20% already on the day you are thinking about buying, DON'T buy it. Just don't.

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Bernie hasn't gotten any of his ideas passed through his whole career in Congress. This would have been a once-in-a-lifetime chance to actually get a lot of his ideas passed.

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UltimaterializerX posted...

Trumps biggest mistake was not naming Bernie his VP.

That ticket would have won in a true landslide.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

I dont understand how all of these politicians that align themselves with Trump dont realize that hell throw them under the bus the second its convenient. Kemp was a huge Trumper, and now hes dead to them for the grave sin of not being willing to literally steal an election for him (and it looks like Pence is gonna have the same thing happen to him tomorrow!)

Of course he'll turn on them, but if they had opposed him they would already have lost their positions, or never acquired them to start with.

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This has always felt like the biggest loophole in the US system (that legislatures are the judges of their own returns). Feels like lifting up oneself by one's own bootstraps (the legislature judges the returns, but the returns empower the legislators).

Well, at least we don't have the problem England had for the Long Parliament, where Parliament kept on voting to extend its own term without further elections (ended up going for 20 years).

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NGamer, we actually have the breakdown by vote type for the November election from the GA secretary of state's website though, and they show much bigger disparities based on vote type than your projected numbers based on race:

https://results.enr.clarityelections.com/GA/105369/web.264614/#/detail/5000

Mail Absentee:

Trump 451,157
Biden 849,729

Early In Person:

Trump 1,419,161
Biden 1,250,509

Election Day:

Trump 587,697
Biden 367,205

There were also about 11k provisional votes, which Biden won by about 3k.

Not sure if this would change your analysis in a meaningful way as far as predicting the overall result goes.

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Yeah calls are going to be way more profitable if you can time it well. Too stressful and life-consuming for me though.

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I also got in on QuantumScape. Didn't get up early enough to buy in at the bottom at the open, got my shares in at +9% for the day.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Oh yeah, Perdue and Loeffler are cowardly joining the other seditionists in objecting to the EC certification (so theyre explicitly trying to disenfranchise Georgians).

Sedition? We got rid of that hundreds of years ago.

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Plus Pence is still VP and the tiebreaking vote.

Edit: That doesn't matter. Even if both seats were vacant, it would be 50-48 for the GOP.

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Oh hmm, I'm reading that Purdue's seat is in fact vacant as of yesterday. If I'm understanding this right, Governor Kemp can appoint someone to fill that seat until tomorrow's election is certified, which probably won't be for a few days at least.

Now, the constitution says that a senator must be a resident of the state he represents at the time of his election, but this is an appointment, not an election. So, Governor Kemp, I propose that you nominate.......Donald J. Trump! to be Georgia's senator until the winner of tomorrow's election can be determined. Then Trump can personally argue his case in the Senate on Wednesday.

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Jakyl25 posted...

I still dont get how that doesnt invalidate THEIR elections

Purdue was elected in 2014 and Loeffler was appointed. Neither of them are in the Senate by virtue of winning an election in 2020. Actually, I'm not sure how Purdue is still a senator - would have thought his term ended yesterday. I guess the governor sent him back as an interim appointment until his seat can be filled by election?

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Pence telling Georgia voters that Congress will hear the evidence on voter fraud on Wednesday.

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CoolCly posted...

Thanks! This is good to know. I wouldn't expect a guarantee since you can't really be sure what everyone would do when choice is involved, since some people just might see it's in the money whatsoever and exercise it, while some wouldn't, but it's good to know that's not quite the general practice.

My broker says that if your option is in the money at expiry it will just go ahead and exercise it for you, so I'm assuming that most if not all brokers do the same thing. So if it's in the money at expiry I would expect it to be exercised. But that's very different from expecting it to be exercised any time it gets above the strike price. After all, even if I don't expect AMD to go to $95 by January 15th, and it's not there the day it expires, there is a much more decent chance it spikes there temporarily and then comes back down. If it's not there for a decent period, especially if it's not above it by a decent margin, then I think I wouldn't expect the option to be exercised. This means the likelihood your stock is actually taken lower, as an even higher and sustained increase in the stock would need to happen.

This makes selling covered calls very appealing, I think.

As usual, thanks for your insight.

The reason it's rare for someone to exercise it early is that if they want to close the position before expiry, they can just sell the call rather than exercising it. Until expiry, the market price of the call will usually be higher than the exercise value because some people may think there is still some time value to it (i.e. it could become more valuable). On the other hand, if you don't think the call will rise farther, you can exercise it, so no one will think the call is worth less than the exercise value.

I think where it does get exercised early, usually that's when the market price of the call and the exercise value are the same or almost the same - i.e. when the options market feels there is basically no remaining time value to the call and all the value is in the exercise value.

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Quite a bloodbath in the market today. AU and ZM are carrying me.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Thats exactly what is meant by a systematic polling error. Those are typically 3-4 points in the average election.

The margin of error on a given poll, in contrast, is a sampling error. Averaging these over a ton of polls makes them very small, and if those were all that existed then polling averages would only ever get very close races wrong.

4 points of error is outrageously bad. You can literally just predict Dems +2 in every election and do better than that.

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A British court has ruled against extraditing Julian Assange to the US. Good decision. President Trump, it's time for a pardon - along with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. We know Biden won't do it so it's up to you!

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Punnyz posted...

If the Nazgul can't be killed how did that one chick kill the Witch King?

.......or was that "no man? a woman then lol" thing an actual technicality instead of just girl power?

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Witch King heard a prophecy that he would not be killed by man, so he felt invincible fighting against men. So he let down his guard.

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If Ossoff wins I'm ready to declare Trafalgar the gold standard of polling.

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It should be illegal to record the President of the United States without his consent. Now, if it was say, a secretary of state......where are the emails?

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Does Georgia law control? Where was Trump when he made the call? I would think it would matter what that state's law says as well, or maybe federal law.

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Jakyl25 posted...

Isnt this only a thing because Tolkien accidentally used the same name for an Elf character from two different eras <_<

I don't think so. One of the main themes of Tolkien's work is the idea of the "gift of men," which is the ability to truly leave the world, which is impossible for an elf. How long an elf must wait in the Halls of Mandos (I guess in spiritual form only?) before reincarnation depends in large part on how virtuous they were in life.

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Elves can be reborn with their memories intact. Actually I don't know if reborn is the right term, as I think they come back as adults.

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Vote away!

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I have a little bit of Bitcoin. Should have bought more!

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

it relates to that post because you were bothered by a mod claiming that you implied that democrats are insane. i was saying "well, you've said similar things in the past, so i'm not sure why you're that bothered by a mod putting those words in your mouth."

oh, come the fuck on. are we really going to turn this into semantic nonsense? no, you didn't literally use the word "idiots" but you were saying liberals "don't speak from the brain" (unlike conservatives). if someone tells me i'm not using my brain, it's very fucking clear to me that i'm being called an idiot.

No, one can be intelligent and not use that intelligence with respect to particular things. There's a vast infinity of issues that I haven't put thought to, for instance. That's different from not having the intelligence.

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Normally I'd feel pretty confident in the Republicans given the polling is so close and polling tends to be biased toward Democrats, BUT Trafalgar had a recent poll showing Ossoff winning by 3 points. And the polls actually were pretty accurate in Georgia in November. And Loeffler is kind of an awful candidate. So I'm not very confident.

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Mr Lasastryke posted...

i prefer having principles.

LOTM has principles, they are just um....... he actually wants all the neoliberal stuff. It's not a matter of compromising, it's what he actually wants. It took me a long time to figure this out.

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Long live Mitch McConnell!

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Assuming the Republicans win control of the Senate at the upcoming Georgia elections, it seems that there is little point in them staying in Washington for the next 2 years, as the House will be controlled by Democrats and the President will be a Democrat. If everything they propose is dead on arrival in the Senate, it seems like a waste of resources for the Senate to bother meeting at all. Should they just maintain pro forma sessions sufficient to block any recess appointments by President Biden while going on a 2-year long taxpayer funded vacation?

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Should we honor our greatest Senate leader ever with a grand program of monument construction?

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I wouldn't worry about it. It sucks that you'll need to pay tax on the gain when the overall position is down, but that happens sometimes. Sometimes it works the other way.

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I don't think I understand what's going on. What's your realized gain/loss? Zero?

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Once you've sold shares it should get taken out of the average cost basis of what's left. Unless you fall within the wash sale rule, then they do some weird magic to raise the cost basis of what's left so that what's been sold doesn't realize a loss.

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The only leverage they had was Trump's veto. Once he signed the bill, the $2,000 checks were not going to happen.

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Kicking myself for not selling more ABNB at $171. And then not selling when it got back to $163. And then not selling when it got back to $153. Down to $148 now. Happy with rest of portfolio but I was thinking ABNB would probably hit a top for now for a few days now and was greedy hoping it would get back to where it was so I could sell, so I have some regret on this. Should have sold if I thought it was going down, even if it was a bit below where it was.

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Vote away!

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LordoftheMorons posted...

He is truly an inspiration; if someone with zero redeeming characteristics can become President of the United States, then maybe you, too, can accomplish anything through a combination of bullying and whining!

I think he unquestionably deserves Person of the Decade.

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Nanis23 posted...

What is ARKG? is it ARKK but leveraged x3?

I think ARKG focuses on genomics, while ARKK is their general fund. In general, levered ETFs are usually a bad idea because they tend to lose ground over time compared to the underlying non-leveraged thing they are tracking. This year SPY is up 14% while SPXL, which is supposed to do 3x SPY, is up.....4%. This year was kind of extreme for chaos, which hurts leveraged ETFs, but still, it's pretty illustrative of the problem.


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Sunroof posted...

Whats up with ARKG?

After the run it's been on, a pullback is normal.

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Trump signed the stimulus bill. Good, I didn't want to see a big decline just yet.

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Corrik is right. Trump wanted a bigger package than this for months. He never agreed to only 900B (350B in new money).

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Biden worked hard for credit card companies for decades, why would he suddenly want to help debtors? He expressly campaigned on not canceling more than 10k of student debt.

If you want a President who's friendly to debtors, you should have voted for Trump. Who has already deferred student loans nearly a year with no interest or payments!

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Note that you should only expect to get a risk premium advantage if you are actually taking on someone else's risk. I don't think you should expect such an advantage from using margin, or buying options, because you aren't relieving a counterparty's risk, even though those things can be very risky to you.

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Loosely responding/commenting on some of the points in CoolCly's very detailed and informative post:

I absolutely agree that it's a good idea to have someone else manage a portion of your assets. This is a form of diversification, where even the asset manager is diversified. It avoids the very serious risk of oneself making one or more major mistakes, and not realizing it until after a large percentage of the portfolio has been lost.

Regarding discounted cash flow analyses, I do think that in theory, the value of a stock should equal its discounted future cash flows. The trouble is that a DCF analysis has a lot of unknown parameters, so it can't really be calculated with any great degree of accuracy. The biggest unknown is the future growth or decline of the company - and a DCF analysis requires you to make predictions about these events, which lie in the future and therefore can't possibly be known.

In practice, the problem with doing DCF analyses myself is that I don't think I can do it better than the analysts at Wall Street banks and hedge funds doing the same thing as their job. In fact, I'd probably do it worse than them, and wind up making worse investments for relying on subpar DCF analyses. I have no advantage, and I probably would have a disadvantage if I tried to do this.

Which leads into what I am looking for in a stock, which is an advantage. A reason I believe that I have an edge over other market participants with regard to that trade. Usually, the only consistent advantage that can be found is willingness to take on riskier positions. This is because people are risk averse, so they are willing to pay a premium to avoid risk. And there are market participants such as pension funds that are highly risk averse, and are willing to give up a lot of risk premium to avoid that risk. This is why stocks usually have better average returns than bonds - they are more risky. And why growth stocks have better average returns than stalwarts - they are more risky.

I am of the opinion that you can use the risk premium concept as a guide to timing individual stocks as well. Warren Buffett says to buy when people are fearful, and sell when they are greedy, and I believe this is why. When people are fearful, they are willing to pay more in risk premium. When they are greedy, they are willing to pay less in risk premium.

Looking at the other side of this trade illustrates it well. Suppose we have a fearful trader who has done a very thorough analysis of ABC corporation and believes its stock should be worth $25, based on a 50% chance of going bankrupt and a 50% chance of being worth $50 if the company survives. The stock is trading at $20 so he buys it. Unfortunately shortly after buying, the stock craters to $15. Fearful trader is so fearful of losing all his money that he sells a stock for $15 that he thinks should fairly be valued at $25. You want to be on the opposite side of the trade. Fearful trader is paying you $10 a share to take on the risk of this trade. That $10 is above the fair value of the company, and, provided it's a small enough portion of your portfolio that you can handle the risk, it's basically pure profit to you. That is your "advantage."

And this is also why trading based on fear will get you worse results on average than choosing stocks randomly.

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I'll preface this by saying that probably no one can time the market, and the following is just my feelings. But, be that as it may, I am feeling a (probably temporary) market top soonish. Probably after New Year's, as positive emotions are riding high before Christmas, and people aren't paying attention to the stock market during the week between Christmas and New Year's. After New Year's, people will return to the reality that the world has not changed, and that it will still be months before the vaccine has enough coverage to really reopen society back to how it was. And it will still be winter, cold, and with little daylight.

I'm trying to unload stocks that I feel are tied to the market/pandemic situation. Actually, I've already largely shifted out of these since the vaccine news came out last month and now it's only 27% of my portfolio that's still in this category. The trouble is that for what's left, I'm long term bullish. Also, all but one of them are in the green and would trigger more taxes if I sold, and the one that's in the red is in the red by only $16. I guess I could buy a burger at McDonald's with the tax savings from selling that.

I was thinking about selling some of my position in AirBNB around $172 yesterday and by the time I made up my mind to do it, it had fallen off of that. I set a limit order at $173 but that never hit and now it's at $160. I think I may end up selling half my position today anyways.

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Nanis23 posted...

I know
This is hopeless

I know the feeling. Not from trading stocks, but from other contexts. You can't trade well because you are paralyzed with fear. It affects your decisionmaking, and affects it badly. Fortunately, you haven't actually lost money, being at breakeven. Since it's very hard to overcome fear, I think the easy way out is to let someone else manage the money.

So, if I were you I'd take out enough cash to feel comfortable that you will have no short-term financial difficulties, then wait for the next dip in the market, and when that happens split the remaining funds between SPY, QQQ, ARKK, and BRKB. This gives you two passive index funds, and two actively managed funds (Berkshire is basically a fund) with very different strategies and a history of success. Then do not sell unless something substantive has changed to make one of these investments no longer good. A decline in value of even 50% is not a reason to sell by itself. Buying more when you can add more money is fine, but don't sell.

If one of the 4 outperforms the others significantly, sell some of that one and buy the other ones until you are back to close to balance. One big reason for rebalancing like this is to avoid making the overall portfolio risky enough to make you fearful. Because if you have an outsize amount in one thing (say if ARKK replicated this year and ended up at 50% of the portfolio instead of 25%), it's easier to feel fear if you see big daily losses.

If you get to the point where you don't feel paralyzing fear when thinking about stocks, you can think about going back to actively managing trading yourself and if that's something you want to do.

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Nanis, you need a major mindset change about this. You seem to believe your evaluations of stocks are so good it is unjust for the market to move differently, yet when asked, you also admit you have no reasoning behind your stock decisions at all besides fear (either fear of missing out or fear of losing money). And fear is worse than useless at stock investing or trading.

There are some contradictions here.

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Cathie Wood and ARK are outstanding. It's like a mutual fund or hedge fund, except publicly traded so anyone can buy in. Most ETFs are passive meaning they just buy all the stocks in a sector, while the ARK funds are actively managed to select the stocks they think will deliver the best returns.

I only found out about them very recently, but the core concept is they invest in innovation, which is a strategy I agree with. I'm definitely interested in allocating funds to them.

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