PRIVATE PORTFOLIO HELP

oh btw, if you were a professional investment manager, couldnt u just follow some "guru", look up whatever stocks he picked last quarter and lost money, and pick those stocks now. you will immediately become the better guru.

So this is where the term "dumb money" comes from.

EIther you are very funny, or very, very fucking stupid. If this post is a joke, awesome work. If this is real, you should spend the $2K on an elephant gun and shoot yourself in the face. You are an idiot. I have never read a post so filled with flawed logic. So, so bad.

um..what?

aha. thats why the test into business school (gmat) has the same content as sat. and a 7th grader could do well sat. i did better than 98% on mcat.

apparently all your money went into MCAT prep classes, hence the 2000 dollars of investible assets.

i think this is my favorite.. "like right now im passing by stocks that have potential to double or triple when recession is over but i feel that's a terrible return. because if it takes 3yrs to earn $2k, it is really pathetic. so im investing in some of the more riskier stocks."

hey man the last job i had i made those $2k. i wrote original questions for kaplan. i self-studied for mcat. i was going to go interview for a job for tomorrow, to teach mcat. but now i feel it's too much of a hassle. i havent slept much lately. and i was going to go for that "audition". but there is no way i'll wake up for 10am tomorrow. and i am going tomorrow with a girl to myrtle beach and to florida. dont want to fall asleep at the wheel. and she wants to see washington d.c. before it's dark. and i dont know if i'd get hired. so it's too much work. and if u get hired, it takes time before u get to teach. and then u only get paid like 5hrs/wk. and im quitting in the spring to go on vacation anyway. so i'd like to get some job so i could make another $2k, like in 1 month, but i cant think of any jobs... im healthy, so i could u know help people move. they, movers, can pull $200/day. but even that requires time to gather a good clientele.. so no money for me. i welcome any suggestions.

i guess im investing just to piss off my parents. my father said i should invest in roth ira lol. i know he lost a lot of money in his mutual funds this yr. so whether i make $1 or $1000 it's about proving a point. i mean even a 1000% return doesnt make much money with this investment. but it would earn respect. also i forgot why i started writing this but i think i could pwwn u in my investments. what do they teach u in finance that gives you a better insight into a quarterly report of a company?

btw i used to have an investment book, i think by bondi? i remember it had a bunch of info on all those ratios but i never read it. i was going to look it up now but i suspect my parents threw it out. i really wonder if there is any insight in these textbooks that goes beyond some model that you can find online.

wxon, you're probably one of those smart people who read countless textbooks just so they could "invest" in a cd, or even worse a mutual fund. and then when u manage a mutual fund, you cant even think of copying some successful guru like Warren Buffet. As i explained above, it is not difficult to choose some of the stocks that he picked last quarter and that are in even better position now. yet most fund managers do terribly. i have yet to go to my med school interview. maybe they will like me. i dont even know if i want it. learning about physiology is better than some bullshit "science" like finance. but it's still a lame job. i am just thinking that if i had $2m now instead of $2k i could invest it so i would never have to work again.

b333bHey, so i am in the process of opening one. It takes a few days to verify my bank account using ach. so ive been researching stocks a lot lately. and it seems to me that any high school kid could do as well as the most seasoned investor. i mean you can read the companies' financial statements on finance.yahoo.com, there are even links to quarterly reports. and u can use gurufocus to get graphs of whatever data or ratio you want. and u can even play with different models like motley fool and 'value investment' and 'peter lynch', theyre all available online. but even if they werent, it's not like a high school kid couldnt come up with some "model" on how to pick stocks. i mean most of those ratios are quiete useless(except for picking up some red flags). so other than a lot of reading and compiling all that data, it's not like you need any skills. i have only 2k so im not going to get rich off this investment(and it's not often that you can invest when dow has nowhere to go but up), but i seek your input about this hobby or profession.
like why is it so hard to get a job as an investment manager? i mean there are people like warren buffet who have done well for many years, but most investment managers dont have an experience of having started from a 10k portfolio and grown to a million. instead they have worked as someone's bitch at a bank. i bet some 16yo could easily beat them. i mean if they were any good they would quit working after theyve saved $100-200k 2yrs out of college and started investing on their own.

oh and im applying to med schools with little success. have an interview coming up but feel kind of defeated. i wonder whether i get into med school or end up with some blue collar job (military officer), could i work some way to investing professionally? i mean dow hadnt advanced at all from 1961 to 1980. so if you initally have a $2k portfolio and u do twice as well as dow(something most investment managers would be proud of) you're not guaranteed to become rich. but if you are already rich, it is so fucking easy. like right now im passing by stocks that have potential to double or triple when recession is over but i feel that's a terrible return. because if it takes 3yrs to earn $2k, it is really pathetic. so im investing in some of the more riskier stocks.

oh btw i realize it was different back when there was no internet. but now any idiot can go on a site like gurufocus and invest in any large cap stock that warren buffet invested in and lost 50%+. i am not doing that because i feel the return would be too small.

b333b, would you mind if I ask your age? If you do, pardon my question, please.

-R-

this is obviously a joke. he's just yanking your chain.

agreed. clearly a joke. nobody's this dumb (well, ok, some people are...but this just sounds funny)

Read his other posts, I wouldn't be so sure this isn't for real. Besides, some of the people on this board...

"my father said i should invest in roth ira lol"

A Roth IRA is basically your own tax-free investment vehicle. Why you would put your 2k anywhere else is beyond me. You could invest in whatever stocks you like from there. As far as the Dow having nowhere to go but up, your probably wrong. The fundamentals for the vast majority of companies look pretty grim right now. When the craziness in the market subsides, stocks will probably slide to reflect the decreased earnings economy-wide. On the other hand, market timing is pointless for most people so if your willing to sit tight, your stocks, if picked carefully, could eventually recover significantly.

At this point you seem to simply have no idea what you are talking about, so I would suggest reading the Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham for starters.

btw, very few people have consistently beaten the market over long periods of time and the number of people making money this year is pretty dismal.

goodbread, roth ira is bad because u have to keep money in it untill your retirement. for all i know usa might go bankrupt before i am 55 or i might get aids before i am 55. and zecco charges you for roth ira accounts. ive decided to read a textbook on investments. im actually reading both Levy and Bodie. i'll get more in depth later. but without further research i can only invest in 1 company so far because it has a low beta and im afraid it might start to recover already. many other companies that im watching have had a rally recently(i couldnt buy them earlier because didnt open the account yet) and they have betas >2 and since i believe that dji will continue to go 8k, i think i can wait with those.

anyway, i wanted to ask what online newspaper or something i can read to learn about leading and lagging economic strands? i would like to know how deep we are into this recession. i would like to make all of my investments before there are indicators of getting out of the recession. especially if we have another sharp decline before that happens.

i believe Ben Graham's strategies are covered in Bodie's book over about 50-100pages. And they also cover some other strategies, more systematically.

USA might go bankrupt? That's retarded, and if they do we'll get taxed to crap.

Elliot wave analysis and technicals point towards another downtrend before the next bull market as stock prices reflect deteriorating fundamentals. Timing the bottom is impossible but look for a rally in commodities. Finally, don't buy one stock just because of low beta. Buy a dozen cheaply valued stocks with sound fundamentals. Diversification is clutch to a point and your low beta stock could very well severely underperform the market when things turn around.

hey i read the intro investment chapters by bodie. so i now know a thing or 2 about valuation. but i see i need to pick up some book by Graham or maybe Fisher or Seth Klarman to better form my strategies. but anyway, i see that it doesnt take much knowledge to see that a lot of companies are undervalued now and will easily produce 100%+ returns over the next yr or 2. but that money is nothing for a 2k investment. hopefully the market will not have fully recovered by next summer when i have more money to invest(but it will suck to see solid stocks that had been several times cheaper on Nov20,2009). so i initially planned to bet on the penny stocks. but the more i learn the more i feel that it's a bad deal. hopefully the market will not have fully recovered by next summer when i have more money to invest(but it will suck to see solid stocks that had been several times cheaper on Nov20,2009). maybe penny stem cells might be worth it. but the penny stocks that have the most money thrown at them (energy storage and solar power)- they are completely unpredictable. i doubt i would invest in those companies untill i see that they can distinguish themselves but by then they will not be penny stocks any more.

so far i have bought: cmed at 18.50. though i have to read more, i feel comfortable about it as a longterm investment, though it obviously will not be worth 100 any time soon, maybe never. sohu at 42.3. not confident, have to read more. kbx at .61--bad decision have to sell it. egi at .85--bad decision have to sell it.

tried to buy tck or hwd at 4 but failed. will continue trying. other stocks that i really want are vip and nov and some kind of retail stock (i.e. m, aro, bare, or aapl). but considering these are all pretty much long-term investments, i dont want to have more than 4 of this stocks to make up >80% of my portfolio. and leave 20% for penny stock speculation.

btw why do u think there will be another downtrend? usually market goes up in early january. all it needs is some good news. or else i wouldve waited for M, TCK, or HWD to drop to their nov20 lows.