Where is your money invested?

[Tenacity]

I would be careful of the banks. Looks like we're on the brink of a global economic collapse. Most people might not notice this but many major banks in Europe such as Monte Dei Paschi and Deutsche Bank are hanging on by a thread. Deutsche Bank just issued more shares onto the market and their stock dipped another 5-10% in a span of a week. They issued more shares to raise more capital to stay afloat but no news channel will tell you anything is wrong. All of our US banks and global banks have exposure to these banks so it will be a cascading effect when either one fails. When one goes down, they all go down. This time, I don't think there will be bail outs. I'm starting to keep as little in my bank as possible.

I've already pulled my 401k as well. Bought physical gold/silver, bitcoins, and cash. I would consider a credit union but my credit unions are so inconvenient.

You pulled all of your money out of banks and your 401k (which includes taxes and penalties) to put it in gold and bitcoin? Two unstable investments?

Everybody makes these chicken little forecasts, I just see the next 20 - 30 years as being slow/little growth in terms of markets. But I don't see the sky falling.

 

[PrettyBoyAJ]

I really wouldn't bother using an app to trade...day traders and impulse buyers /sellers get slaughtered for the most part.

If you focus on value investing (which as a young guy you really should be) then there won't really be a need for quick transactions.

Value investing?

Are you referring in investing in blue chip stocks?

Also, how are your properties doing? Making a good consistent profit monthly?

Passively I want to invest in a 500 but I want to wait until the market takes a little dip. The vanguard stock was $170 in February and now it's up to $215. Could have easily made a quick 40$ per share per stock I owned if I purchased two months ago.

Would it be that easy or am I missing something.


Actively investing I want to definitely start some type of business with luxury cars. Nothing too much now because I'm focused on my healthcare IT career. But if I was able to buy a Porsche or Maserati and be able to rent it out and net a couple hundred dollars a month and drive the car for free then that would be real nice.

Also actively, I want to expand my Healthcare IT business. Right now I do independent consulting through consulting firms. I want to upgrade my knowledge and be able to create the consulting firm. But I must be able to figure out what it takes to network with these big shot C level execs at hospitals and learn how to sell my services to them and at the same time build a trustworthy team that can build and support an electronic medical record system.

I think my problem with everything is I talk too much. I started making 6 figures at a young age and now I'm talking about going to the next level but I'm not taking action doing it.

 

[AAAgent]

You pulled all of your money out of banks and your 401k (which includes taxes and penalties) to put it in gold and bitcoin? Two unstable investments?

Everybody makes these chicken little forecasts, I just see the next 20 - 30 years as being slow/little growth in terms of markets. But I don't see the sky falling.

I guess you haven't noticed that we're $20 trillion in debt? That all our toxic assets are held by our own government when they bailed out the banks last time in 08 and we took these toxic assets off the banks balance sheets. We've instilled quantitative easing in the form of printing massive amounts of money in one of the slowest "recoveries" in the history of recoveries all while we still have extremely low money velocity. The money printing pretty much only benefited the wealthy since the banks received this money so they could lend the money to the public at low interest rates which the wealthy scooped up to buy property to lease and rent to the poor. We've had interest rates lower than 1% for over 10 years which is destroying pensioners which their pension funds are also starting to collapse now. Stock market at all time highs, housing prices back to peak levels, M&A at all time highs, auto delinquencies rising 30% over same period last year. Rent and housing prices at all time highs together (does that make sense) again when money velocity at all time low. Americans are not buying a majority of the houses. It's foreigners and corporations that are renting to a majority of poor Americans. We need to raise rates so people can start earning money off their savings and investments again but if we raise rates, we won't be able to pay off our 20 trillion in debt interest payments. It's a lose lose scenario we're in.

This doesn't even include japan and europe with negative interest rates and EU countries exiting the European union. Japan is bursting at the seams with population decline. It needs to expand outside of it's countries to grow but it can't. Maybe war with China will be in the cards but China isn't a pushover like it was last time. Japan also just passed a law that it's "police force" which is as well equipped as the top military's are in the world, is now allowed to leave japan into foreign soil/territory. They are now in Africa for what I assume is training for the future war it plans to wage most likely against China (we see the testing of both sides in the South China Sea). America is at it's weakest it's been in the last 50 years, and the petro dollar is being challenged by Russia and China. China just opened it own exchange to value and trade gold outside of the comex in china to challenge the west and China/Russia also has agreed to trade in gold backed currencies between each other. China is dumping our debt out the wazoo and is no largest US debt holder. Don't blame them, who would want to hold debt obligations of the largest debtor nation in the world that is losing it's stranglehold on it's competitors.

If we're in such good shape why is money exchanging hands at the slowest rate in over 60 years? Used cars are flooding into the market which is a result of records amount of leases, that are not being purchased on the used car market (not only were we leasing cars and not buying them, we're not even buying used cars now). Not only are we not buying houses now, we can't even afford used cars.

I don't even need to go into detail regarding nationalism on the rise and people like Trump, Le Pen, Nigel Farage, building large movements off the back of nationalism which often leads to war.

Have you even tried to take out large sums of cash from your bank? You can't. I've tried to close out one of my bank accounts and take out all my cash and they refused to give me the cash except 10%. The fractional reserve lending system is what is destroying our economy. There's only 1 trillion physical USD in circulation, there's $10 trillion USD in digital fiat but we're $20 trillion in debt. If everyone tried to withdraw their money from the bank, there isn't enough cash to go around. What do you think will happen in a panic here? There's already been run on the banks and bank lines that have happened in the last 5 years.

The USD dollar used to be back by Gold. Every dollar used to be convertible into x oz's of gold until nixon came along and created the petrol dollar and unpegged the dollar from gold. So yes, nobody can predict the future but i'm not a blind idiot with all these fundamentals issues looming right above us. All these peak bubbles and rosy pictures on the horizon, I'll be taking my money where I can control it and will atleast preserve it's value. With the Petrol dollar being threatened and instability festering in all parts of the world, tell me where you'd rather put your hard earned money?

But sure, go ahead and buy your CDs, bonds (bonds are the worst bubble), and stocks. You can hold your dollars that might be the softest tissue paper on the block, but in the end, that tissue paper is still tissue paper that will end up scrubbing your a$$hole. Collect your digital tissue paper that's backed by the declining faith of the US government. I'll keep enough of the fiat currency to pay my monthly bills. If it makes you feel better, I'm almost positive in the next 6 months, we're probably going to announce another round of QE and government will print more fake money to throw into our pockets. That will for sure increase faith in our economy.

 

[Tenacity]

I guess you haven't noticed that we're $20 trillion in debt? That all our toxic assets are held by our own government when they bailed out the banks last time in 08 and we took these toxic assets off the banks balance sheets. We've instilled quantitative easing in the form of printing massive amounts of money in one of the slowest "recoveries" in the history of recoveries all while we still have extremely low money velocity. The money printing pretty much only benefited the wealthy since the banks received this money so they could lend the money to the public at low interest rates which the wealthy scooped up to buy property to lease and rent to the poor. We've had interest rates lower than 1% for over 10 years which is destroying pensioners which their pension funds are also starting to collapse now. Stock market at all time highs, housing prices back to peak levels, M&A at all time highs, auto delinquencies rising 30% over same period last year. Rent and housing prices at all time highs together (does that make sense) again when money velocity at all time low. Americans are not buying a majority of the houses. It's foreigners and corporations that are renting to a majority of poor Americans. We need to raise rates so people can start earning money off their savings and investments again but if we raise rates, we won't be able to pay off our 20 trillion in debt interest payments. It's a lose lose scenario we're in.

This doesn't even include japan and europe with negative interest rates and EU countries exiting the European union. Japan is bursting at the seams with population decline. It needs to expand outside of it's countries to grow but it can't. Maybe war with China will be in the cards but China isn't a pushover like it was last time. Japan also just passed a law that it's "police force" which is as well equipped as the top military's are in the world, is now allowed to leave japan into foreign soil/territory. They are now in Africa for what I assume is training for the future war it plans to wage most likely against China (we see the testing of both sides in the South China Sea). America is at it's weakest it's been in the last 50 years, and the petro dollar is being challenged by Russia and China. China just opened it own exchange to value and trade gold outside of the comex in china to challenge the west and China/Russia also has agreed to trade in gold backed currencies between each other. China is dumping our debt out the wazoo and is no largest US debt holder. Don't blame them, who would want to hold debt obligations of the largest debtor nation in the world that is losing it's stranglehold on it's competitors.

If we're in such good shape why is money exchanging hands at the slowest rate in over 60 years? Used cars are flooding into the market which is a result of records amount of leases, that are not being purchased on the used car market (not only were we leasing cars and not buying them, we're not even buying used cars now). Not only are we not buying houses now, we can't even afford used cars.

I don't even need to go into detail regarding nationalism on the rise and people like Trump, Le Pen, Nigel Farage, building large movements off the back of nationalism which often leads to war.

Have you even tried to take out large sums of cash from your bank? You can't. I've tried to close out one of my bank accounts and take out all my cash and they refused to give me the cash except 10%. The fractional reserve lending system is what is destroying our economy. There's only 1 trillion physical USD in circulation, there's $10 trillion USD in digital fiat but we're $20 trillion in debt. If everyone tried to withdraw their money from the bank, there isn't enough cash to go around. What do you think will happen in a panic here? There's already been run on the banks and bank lines that have happened in the last 5 years.

The USD dollar used to be back by Gold. Every dollar used to be convertible into x oz's of gold until nixon came along and created the petrol dollar and unpegged the dollar from gold. So yes, nobody can predict the future but i'm not a blind idiot with all these fundamentals issues looming right above us. All these peak bubbles and rosy pictures on the horizon, I'll be taking my money where I can control it and will atleast preserve it's value. With the Petrol dollar being threatened and instability festering in all parts of the world, tell me where you'd rather put your hard earned money?

But sure, go ahead and buy your CDs, bonds (bonds are the worst bubble), and stocks. You can hold your dollars that might be the softest tissue paper on the block, but in the end, that tissue paper is still tissue paper that will end up scrubbing your a$$hole. Collect your digital tissue paper that's backed by the declining faith of the US government. I'll keep enough of the fiat currency to pay my monthly bills. If it makes you feel better, I'm almost positive in the next 6 months, we're probably going to announce another round of QE and government will print more fake money to throw into our pockets. That will for sure increase faith in our economy.

I agree with many of your points but again, is the sky falling?

- I do not see the next 20 - 30 years of having strong market growth nor do I see rates EVER going back to where they were prior. What I estimate is a continual slow, low, growth period.

- I don't understand why you are having issues taking your money out of any sound financial institution either.

- Do I think the stock and bond markets have been weakened by Fed actions? Of course. But your alternatives of moving everything out of stocks, bonds, and fixed income....to put into gold, bitcoin, and cash, is making your investments worse off, not better.

- Gold should be used as a hedge against inflation and a hedge against the dollar (cash) becoming worthless. But seeing as though you are heavily invested in cash as well, I'm not sure what the purpose of having the Gold is? And Bitcoin is completely unstable.

- The Fed has indeed fvcked up the stock and bond markets, but the sky isn't falling, they just aren't going to do as much major growth over the next 20 - 30 years as they did in prior times. The US as a whole I don't see growing as much as it did in prior times, but it will still be a major superpower during our lifetime as well as, during our retirement age.

 

[synergy1]

I just see the next 20 - 30 years as being slow/little growth in terms of markets.

Agreed.

My concern is that the equity markets will see an outflow of money from the retiring classes if and when a correction occurs. If money isn't going into the markets, asset prices might not enjoy the same growth rates we have seen in the past 2-3 decades. Again, I don't have research on this, its more of just a speculation on my part - for example institutions are the guys that move markets due to their size, so it really depends what their clients want. If a large demographic decides they want fixed income products, you could see bond yields contract and/or the generation of brand new fixed income. I just don't want to see a stagnant market like what japan has had.

Passively I want to invest in a 500 but I want to wait until the market takes a little dip.

Someone wise said time in the market is more important that market timing. For example, had one thought the markets were "overpriced" and sold during the drawdowns in 2015 or 2016, they would have missed the returns to the tune of 20% for that time. Even if there is a 20% draw, had you been in the market, you'd be even without having to try to do the macro thing ( which honestly you need to dedicate full time to even have a chance to do correctly).

The USD dollar used to be back by Gold.

right. look since 1973 since we fully debased our currency from the gold standard, and the explosion of debt since that time. Gold too doesn't hold any actual value as I believe as far as a commodity is worth something like 50 dollars per oz. Its value is mostly intrinsic as people now use it as a hedge against currency destruction. I think a better hedge against currency devaluation is long commodities since they provide economic value ( on the long term). Short terms, you'll have the expected supply and demand issues like we have with crude oil - but at least as it stands today, we will always need refined crude oil to run our economy so it will have real value in one way or another.

Rent and housing prices at all time highs together (does that make sense) again when money velocity at all time low.

Housing where I live is appreciating as quickly as the stock market. Again, easy access to debt markets allow speculation which artificially boost asset prices. As long as people can afford the cost of capital, they'll keep dumping money into it. Of course if rates go up, or people get to the point where they can't buy - you'll see demand go down ( lets face it, wages for the rest of us are stagnant) . As it is now, we have low supply, coupled with people's fear of rising interest rates which is causing people to rush into housing. Its pushing prices up.

 

[AAAgent]

The point of insurance is to buy into it before something bad happens such as the sky falling. No one will sell you insurance when the sky does fall so your logic of not buying into precious metals now makes no sense.

Also, the banks don't have enough cash in the bank to stay liquid if i withdrew all my money (it's not alot, but a large unscheduled transaction ontop of their daily transactions they expect might be all their cash at that branch). They are on a fractional reserve lending system and as I stated earlier, there's only 1 trillion USD in physical existence but 10 trillion USD in digital sitting in our online bank accounts. When and if shtf, and people are rushing to the bank to grab cash, which happened in India 6 months ago when the two largest cash denominations were banned, there were bank lines for months and cash withdrawal limits. Atleast I won't have to deal with that.

I'm still in the banking system, it just doesn't make sense to have everything stored in there outside of my immediate control. I have a decent amount to in my account to have no fees and pay all my bills.

--

Gold doesn't hold any value to americans. Most americans are ignorant because we've grown up in the most powerful country in the world where our fiat dollar. Go outside of the USA and people value precious metals alot more significantly. China, India, and Russia are hoarding it. Our dollar is just a piece of paper backed by the faith of the US government. This faith is dwindling day after day. For the next year or so, we're probably still good. Europe is falling apart and Japan has not been able to pull itself out of a 10+ year continuous recession. China looks like it's facing tough times. Everyone will probably keep moving their money into dollars. For a short period this will be a safe buy to have USD. This will change when everybody is a recession or depression, global trade will drop and our dollar will crash along with everything else. Our government will try to print more money to cover our debts and keep people happy and the dollar will crash as well. I doubt it will recover from there since next time we're back on our feet I think China will be the next world power.

 

[logicallefty]

Bought physical gold/silver, bitcoins, and cash. .

I am trying to learn more about bitcoin as sometimes it comes into play in the scope of the work I do. But I know so little about it. I always thought you had to buy it thru Tor/The Dark Web but I understand that that isn't the case? Is it trustworthy?

 

[AAAgent]

Bitcoin is regulated now in the US, China is regulating it as we speak. From what I know they are now taxing you on gains which means it's tracked. I use coinbase, the largest bitcoin brokerage in the US. So far so good. I've bought and sold and had money deposited into my account. As long as the brokerage isn't hacked, then you're fine. I've been buying my bitcoin on major dips and selling into strength while maintaining a strong core position. Made decent money off of it. I plan to take my bitcoin offline when I start to see a stock market crash. I'll probably close out my stock brokerage account as well or leave minimal in it. In case banks bail-in or brokerages fail because of a market crash.

Margin debt is astronomically high right now so I don't feel safe leaving my money in a brokerage account and who knows about bitcoin brokerages, if they really hold you're bitcoin. Good thing about bitcoin is you can take your bitcoin code offline and you own all of it.

 

[EyeBRollin]

I guess you haven't noticed that we're $20 trillion in debt?

No. No. No. No. No.

I'm going to cut your rant short. You've been duped, buddy. Federal debt is a savings vehicle issued when the government spends more than it takes in, which is exactly why fiat governments must run a deficit for the monetary system to expand. Government debt is not analogous to credit card debt. The dollar has value because of tthe laws governing this country. You can whine and wail about conspiracies all day, but the only way the U.S. Dollar fails is through extreme political instability (like dumb ass tea party politicians defaulting on the debt ceiling for political gain) or a world war to the scale at which the U.S. Becomes conquered and must owe war debt to other countries (see Germany Weimar Republic).

Enjoy gold and bitcoin. They are useless investments sold to gullible conspiracy theorists. The best investments are tangible businesses and property - real estate and stocks. Stocks are ownership of a company. It's the speculative value that gets dicey, not the physical ownership. If the dollar crashes tomorrow or is replaced, you'd still own X properties, and Y shares in said companies.

 

[AAAgent]

No no no no no!

I don't have too much time to educate you, but you do you and maintain stupidity. Here's a bit of free knowledge for you since you obviously need it. No fiat currency has survived indefinitely, let alone the length of time our currency has. Also, the USD has already devalued over over 99% since inception. Just look at what has happened to gold and bitcoin since I made my last post. Gold has shot up 3%, bitcoin up 10%, and dollar has gone down. Our dollar is being announced that it will be devalued by Trump because it's too strong (more manipulation). We have war in Syria and potentially Russia. We have potential nuclear war with North korea and China amassing troops near North Korea. Not only do we have potential war with North Korea, we have potential war in East Asia if there is war in North Korea.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiatmoney.asp
"Because fiat money is not linked to physical reserves, it risks becoming worthless due to hyperinflation. If people lose faith in a nation's paper currency, like the U.S. dollar bill, the money will no longer hold any value. This differs from gold, which, historically, has been used in jewelry and decoration and has many modern economic uses including its use in the manufacture of electronic devices, computers and aerospace vehicles."
--
I do agree that real estate and business (real business, not paper stocks) are great investments but not right now in this inflated market when they are at peak levels again. Educate yourself a little more on the markets, economics, and business before you make recommendations and brash statements. We do not have a free market economy. Our interest rates are manipulated, our money supply (fiat dollars) is manipulated, our stock market is manipulated, and when everything is manipulated to the upside and we're topping off in bubbles, don't buy high and put yourself at risk.

Haven't you learned investing 101? Buy low and sell high. Not buy high and get raped during a crash and sell low and go bankrupt. That's what happened when idiots like you bought into the housing market during the last peak. Buy depressed assets (that are being depressed because of bad policies) that are severely low and sell when a crash comes as they go up. Take that money and buy back the same investments like housing and businesses that people will dump because of stupidity at record low prices.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/10/upshot/popping-the-housing-bubbles-in-the-american-mind.html
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/loca...te-Market-Drops-in-2016-Report-408408555.html
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox...falling_in_new_york_city_is_this_a_crash.html

Supply and demand should have rents up and real estate value down or real estate up and rent down, but in this economy both are astronomically high.

Like I stated earlier, do you. Hold your shares of the stock market (i actually thought you meant owning your own business but you didn't). Own paper shares of a company that have been increased to absurb levels and have been driven up not by prosperity and growth, but by manipulation. The majority of the stock market increases have come from share repurchase programs meant to drive the price of the stock up because growth has either stagnated or worse, declined. The record low interest rates only fuel these share buyback programs because these large corporates can borrow at such lows interest rates because they borrow in such large quantities, and use this cashflow to buy back their own stock. So if the company isn't attractive from a financial perspective, atleast the stock is.

http://fortune.com/2016/08/30/us-stock-buybacks/
"Buybacks, which cancel shares and thus increase per-share earnings, have played a crucial role in supporting the stock market since the financial crisis, flattering earnings even for companies with static or falling revenues."

http://fortune.com/2016/04/25/buybacks-stock-market/
"Corporate repurchases are the main source of net demand for US stocks," a team of Goldman Sachs analysts led by David Kostin noted in report out on Friday. Demand stemming from stock buybacks will help push up share prices—boosting the S&P 500 to a flat return of 2100 by the end of 2016 as the markets contend with weak growth and a messy earnings outlook, according to the Goldman analysts.

Once again, no no no no.

 

[synergy1]

Buybacks, which cancel shares and thus increase per-share earnings, have played a crucial role in supporting the stock market since the financial crisis, flattering earnings even for companies with static or falling revenues."

One would think that share buybacks are a quick way to manipulate earnings on the fly and boost a stocks price. This does not occur as often as one might think. Smart CEOs usually do buybacks when the stock price is depressed. Look at companies like General Dynamics, Teledyne, or TCI where there was a change in the CEO positions, the stocks price share was depressed and the company decided that it would be best to buy them at a bargain. Many of these companies bought back shares and never re-issued them and rather used the debt markets to fund smart acquisitions. These stocks were not financially manipulated because in the long term, they were able to achieve organic bottom line growth from meaningful business segments.

Now many of the fears your elucidate on aren't new, and I am not saying I even disagree with them. But had you used the argument that share buybacks are financial engineering back in the 70s or 80s for the stocks listed above, you could have made easy purchases and enjoyed a very real appreciation of invested capital. The end result of investing in a company for 10 years with a strong growth base, high return on invested capital, and solid management would have allowed you to purchase a house, for example. (these stocks enjoyed many multiples of share growth). Had you maintained the attitude that it was all going to end, after those 10 years you might still be right about the fundamentals of fiat currency, but be out of being able to buy a house, start a business, or the like.

Corporate repurchases are the main source of net demand for US stocks," a team of Goldman Sachs analysts led by David Kostin noted in report out on Friday. Demand stemming from stock buybacks will help push up share prices—boosting the S&P 500 to a flat return of 2100 by the end of 2016 as the markets contend with weak growth and a messy earnings outlook, according to the Goldman analysts.

Share buybacks on their own will not boost prices, as one could simply enlist the help of a screener to only purchase shares which a company engaged in buyback programs. In all actuality, it is difficult to know what boost share prices. According to this logic, Tesla motors should have had their price go down as they issued shares recently only to enjoy a healthy 5-10% share price appreciation. Whats going on there? What about snapchat? (their float is admittedly quite low). The actors in the market will behave in irrational ways and will often BUY when prices are higher and SELL when prices are lower. Conversely, most well run companies BUY shares when prices are lower, and ISSUE when prices are higher ( tesla is doing just this.

The dollar has value because of tthe laws governing this country.

The dollars value , from what I understand is based on our ability to tax. Thus the implicit driver of value appears to be our GDP, and what kind of rates one can get by purchasing dollar denominated bonds. I suppose too that the value is tied to the US's ability to service treasuries. However I watch forex and see that new bits can move the dollar ( or any currency) significantly, so there is a speculative component as well. This leads me to believe that there is a component of 'faith' built into the quantitative value of the US dollar, or all currencies. I don't see this breaking down anytime soon, but than again what is to say things can't go south like they are in venezuala?

 

[AAAgent]

Synergy, your points still don't protect your method of investing from the fact that anyone buying into this market is clearly not buying at good prices. If anything, you're buying at a high price if not, the peak for the market, the housing market, etc. I can just as usually pull charts for gold back in 2000 when it was $300 an oz. It's currently $1300 an ounce and as high as $1900 an ounce back in 2011. Precious metals do not evaporate in a crash while many of the companies you mentioned 10 years ago can just as easily have gone bankrupt like back in 2000 and 2008. Not a good example imo.

Share buybacks alone do exactly what you disagree with. They boost up stock prices. Market caps might not change immediately but share prices go up once shares are removed from the market.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sharerepurchase.asp

"Benefits of a Share Repurchase
The share repurchase reduces the number of existing shares, making each worth a greater percentage of the corporation. The stock’s earnings per share (EPS) increase while the price-earnings ratio (P/E) decreases or the stock price increases.

Tesla's valuation is based off hype or consumer sentiment. This is nothing new with stocks in the technology sector. It's clearly overvalued even more so than other stocks on the market. Which further justifies why we should stay out of this ridiculous market. If you're a trader, it's like taking candy from a baby right now because swings can make you so much so fast but if you're looking to protect/grow your wealth, the market is just to unstable a place right now whose valuations aren't justified by the fundamentals. Sales down, GDP down, retail still down even with amazon growing, auto sales down, oil down, housing coming down, and many more. This doesn't include that the FED is dumping those toxic real estate assets back onto the market!

Do I expect the market to move higher short term....yes. Do I want to be caught with my pants down in the market when it starts to dive. no. Look into the fundamentals of the stock market, supply demand, fundamentals of corporations and businesses, look into historical cycles of depression/recessions, war cycles, etc. If you keep your eyes narrowed in on the stock market, you won't notice the other indicators surrounding the market flashing red. The stock market that you trust so much is not in a vacuum. It is tied to everything else in the world and the world is not in good shape. Japan,China, USA, Europe, South America, and many more are in a recession or depression. We're hiding it well with media manipulation but this doesn't change anything. Look at whats going on in Venezuala because of socialism. Europe is not far away. Japan has had 0% interest rates since 1999. Sure if it was one or two of these countries, it wouldn't be a problem but it's not. It's now all of these countries. I've tried to label countries that you probably wouldn't expect since you know about China, US, Europe, etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/...tml?rref=collection/timestopic/Venezuela&_r=0
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/...urt.html?rref=collection/timestopic/Venezuela
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-economy-gdp-idUSKBN16E1EL
http://www.economist.com/news/finan...argely-shrug-negative-rates-many-smaller-ones

 

[BeTheChange]

Value investing?

Are you referring in investing in blue chip stocks?

Also, how are your properties doing? Making a good consistent profit monthly?

Passively I want to invest in a 500 but I want to wait until the market takes a little dip. The vanguard stock was $170 in February and now it's up to $215. Could have easily made a quick 40$ per share per stock I owned if I purchased two months ago.

Would it be that easy or am I missing something.


Actively investing I want to definitely start some type of business with luxury cars. Nothing too much now because I'm focused on my healthcare IT career. But if I was able to buy a Porsche or Maserati and be able to rent it out and net a couple hundred dollars a month and drive the car for free then that would be real nice.

Also actively, I want to expand my Healthcare IT business. Right now I do independent consulting through consulting firms. I want to upgrade my knowledge and be able to create the consulting firm. But I must be able to figure out what it takes to network with these big shot C level execs at hospitals and learn how to sell my services to them and at the same time build a trustworthy team that can build and support an electronic medical record system.

I think my problem with everything is I talk too much. I started making 6 figures at a young age and now I'm talking about going to the next level but I'm not taking action doing it.

Value investing refers to investing based on fundamentals and understanding that short term fluctuations in the market may not reflect that.

My properties are doing well.

I sold my most first property purchase at a break even price a few months back as there were some problems and I wanted to free up the cash for further investments which proved positive.

Since then I've bought Property A for $150k in December.

Spent c. $20k on refurb and significant internal and structural changes, mortgage interest and legal and surveying fees. Utilised expertise of a non equity partner with a history of real estate development. We are in the final stages. Property is expected to be valued at c. $210k. A similar property on the same road sold for $220k after only being listed for a month.

So expected profit of c. $40k. Not bad for four months work. I may in fact just get a secured loan of $40k on the increased equity as the rental potential for property A is spectacular.

Have around $60k put aside for a second property purchase (regardless of whether I intend to sell the current property), which at 75% LTV will allow for a similar project to property A. Buy and use the remaining cash as a refurb followed by a sell or hold for rental yields.

The rest I'm looking to allocate to bonds, equities and gold (although I currently have funds in none of these).

Positive about the outlook for 2017 and beyond.

 

[Tenacity]

Synergy, your points still don't protect your method of investing from the fact that anyone buying into this market is clearly not buying at good prices. If anything, you're buying at a high price if not, the peak for the market, the housing market, etc. I can just as usually pull charts for gold back in 2000 when it was $300 an oz. It's currently $1300 an ounce and as high as $1900 an ounce back in 2011. Precious metals do not evaporate in a crash while many of the companies you mentioned 10 years ago can just as easily have gone bankrupt like back in 2000 and 2008. Not a good example imo.

Share buybacks alone do exactly what you disagree with. They boost up stock prices. Market caps might not change immediately but share prices go up once shares are removed from the market.

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/sharerepurchase.asp

"Benefits of a Share Repurchase
The share repurchase reduces the number of existing shares, making each worth a greater percentage of the corporation. The stock’s earnings per share (EPS) increase while the price-earnings ratio (P/E) decreases or the stock price increases.

Tesla's valuation is based off hype or consumer sentiment. This is nothing new with stocks in the technology sector. It's clearly overvalued even more so than other stocks on the market. Which further justifies why we should stay out of this ridiculous market. If you're a trader, it's like taking candy from a baby right now because swings can make you so much so fast but if you're looking to protect/grow your wealth, the market is just to unstable a place right now whose valuations aren't justified by the fundamentals. Sales down, GDP down, retail still down even with amazon growing, auto sales down, oil down, housing coming down, and many more. This doesn't include that the FED is dumping those toxic real estate assets back onto the market!

Do I expect the market to move higher short term....yes. Do I want to be caught with my pants down in the market when it starts to dive. no. Look into the fundamentals of the stock market, supply demand, fundamentals of corporations and businesses, look into historical cycles of depression/recessions, war cycles, etc. If you keep your eyes narrowed in on the stock market, you won't notice the other indicators surrounding the market flashing red. The stock market that you trust so much is not in a vacuum. It is tied to everything else in the world and the world is not in good shape. Japan,China, USA, Europe, South America, and many more are in a recession or depression. We're hiding it well with media manipulation but this doesn't change anything. Look at whats going on in Venezuala because of socialism. Europe is not far away. Japan has had 0% interest rates since 1999. Sure if it was one or two of these countries, it wouldn't be a problem but it's not. It's now all of these countries. I've tried to label countries that you probably wouldn't expect since you know about China, US, Europe, etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/can-the-world-help-venezuela-save-itself.html?rref=collection/timestopic/Venezuela&_r=0
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-protests-supreme-court.html?rref=collection/timestopic/Venezuela
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-economy-gdp-idUSKBN16E1EL
http://www.economist.com/news/finan...argely-shrug-negative-rates-many-smaller-ones

I'm not disagreeing with most of your analysis, it's why I believe the Stock and Bond markets will GROW over the next 20 - 30 years, but no where near like they have in the pass.

I just don't know what other type of passive investment is going to beat even this lower level of growth over the next 20 - 30 years? Can you tell me?? I know for sure Bitcoin and Gold won't do it, and leaving everything in CASH makes no sense either.

What are some reasonable alternatives? I would love to hear your opinion on those.......but remember, keep it to passive investments, not active. Everybody is aware that active investments out perform passive ones because there's an active management of 20 - 40 hours (or more) per week involved with said investment.

With my diversifed passive portfolio of the Vanguard S&P Index Fund, Vanguard Total Bond Index Fund, and Long Term CDs, all you have to do is SLAP the money in there and there's nothing else to do.

 

[AAAgent]

I don't think now is the time to think of passive investments. It's a bit late for that if you don't have any. We're close to experiencing the largest financial economic collapse in the last 100 years. It's not just isolated to a handful of countries anymore. It will be the entire planet that feels this collapse. China is fighting its recession by devaluing it's currency. It's devalued it multiple times in the past couple of years and that is what is driving large amounts of chinese (small compared to their population size but large for normal countries) into bitcoin. Every currency devaluation in China, they flood to bitcoin because china is clamping down out capital outflows and chinese don't have any other way of protecting their wealth. Stock market has crashed once and its clear government is propping up their market. Real Estate crazy over valued. Governments freeze assets if you try to take money out of country illegally now so people are flooding to bitcoin.

If i could find a reasonable passive income outside of gold & bitcoin like a house or stock, i'd buy it. I can't. Nothing that im comfortable with that won't or can't evaporate if i wake up one morning.

What i'm doing is planning for this market reversal to the downside. Buying bitcoin, precious metals, and gold miners. Since i'm heavily hedged against global prosperity at the moment, barring the discovery of the philosophers stone or we become immortal, my passive investments will continue to net me positive gains that i'm comfortable with. When things get worse (barring a collapse), my investments will sky rocket. Gold goes up during economic and geo-political crisis which is all over right now. Bitcoin goes up when government release economic policy that devalues their currency. Russia and Japan have already publicly announced they are working to adopt the acceptance of bitcoin. If a crash starts to happen, gold funds will go up for a short period of time as well but will ultimately crash with the market (should recover after). I plan on selling before then or around crash and cashing out if possible and wait to buy physical assets when they devalue.

I'm not trying to really time this market so I will buy and hold and slowly cash out small amounts and move it into hard physical precious metals or cash.

I seriously expect there to be bail-ins going forward. So take out cash you can spare and leave what you must in accounts.

 

[Tenacity]

I don't think now is the time to think of passive investments. It's a bit late for that if you don't have any. We're close to experiencing the largest financial economic collapse in the last 100 years. It's not just isolated to a handful of countries anymore. It will be the entire planet that feels this collapse. China is fighting its recession by devaluing it's currency. It's devalued it multiple times in the past couple of years and that is what is driving large amounts of chinese (small compared to their population size but large for normal countries) into bitcoin. Every currency devaluation in China, they flood to bitcoin because china is clamping down out capital outflows and chinese don't have any other way of protecting their wealth. Stock market has crashed once and its clear government is propping up their market. Real Estate crazy over valued. Governments freeze assets if you try to take money out of country illegally now so people are flooding to bitcoin.

If i could find a reasonable passive income outside of gold & bitcoin like a house or stock, i'd buy it. I can't. Nothing that im comfortable with that won't or can't evaporate if i wake up one morning.

What i'm doing is planning for this market reversal to the downside. Buying bitcoin, precious metals, and gold miners. Since i'm heavily hedged against global prosperity at the moment, barring the discovery of the philosophers stone or we become immortal, my passive investments will continue to net me positive gains that i'm comfortable with. When things get worse (barring a collapse), my investments will sky rocket. Gold goes up during economic and geo-political crisis which is all over right now. Bitcoin goes up when government release economic policy that devalues their currency. Russia and Japan have already publicly announced they are working to adopt the acceptance of bitcoin. If a crash starts to happen, gold funds will go up for a short period of time as well but will ultimately crash with the market (should recover after). I plan on selling before then or around crash and cashing out if possible and wait to buy physical assets when they devalue.

I'm not trying to really time this market so I will buy and hold and slowly cash out small amounts and move it into hard physical precious metals or cash.

I seriously expect there to be bail-ins going forward. So take out cash you can spare and leave what you must in accounts.

- So for confirmation: You have the vast majority of your assets tied up in either active investments, gold, or bitcoin? You have nothing (or very little) in stocks, bonds, CDs, savings accounts, checking accounts, or real estate?

- Also for further confirmation: You have implemented this strategy because you believe the entire world is about to crash? So you really don't have an investment strategy per say, you have a hedging strategy?

- Questions: You do realize that if what you're saying comes to pass, there's going to be much bigger issues across the board, not just with the "returns" on investments like stocks, bonds, etc.? I mean if what you are saying comes to pass, we would be in something that's probably WORSE than the Great Depression, it would be something similar to a Global Great Depression. I mean that would be damn near "the world" coming to an end. You realize that? If the world is coming to an end, what would be the point of ANY STRATEGY? Wouldn't we all be seriously fvcked up eventually anyway?

 

[AAAgent]

That's exactly what im predicting but i could be wrong. Most non idiotic economists are expecting major loss of life especially since population is way past what we can sustain at the moment and our war cycles are significantly overdue for major scale loss of life war.

Sh1t im not houdini nor do i have the philosophers stone. I will probably be in the same situation as everyone else except I will have more precious metals that the average joe. I'll have more food, cash, and digital bitcoin that won't collapse when the dollar collapse (if it collapses). hopefully I can convert my fiat dollars fast enough out of the market into profits and cash that out before banks collapse or my brokerage collapse. If not, I already have my safety net that I'm happy with. I'm in shape, relatively strong, and intelligent. I do own guns and have trained in shooting and mma. I'm in sales, and I hustle for a living so I think I have the right skill set and preparation to survive given luck.

Those are all worst case scenarios. If we just go through a massive depression and there aren't riots and people dying all over then I should make out very well. I've left New York 1.5 years ago because major cities are not an area to be when shtf. Rioting all that stuff will not be good. I'm obviously living my life as well but i've prepared insurance for all worst case scenarios within reason. I'm also supposed to be expecting my Tesla Model 3 sometime next year. Who knows what will happen with that.

 

[Tenacity]

That's exactly what im predicting but i could be wrong. Most non idiotic economists are expecting major loss of life especially since population is way past what we can sustain at the moment and our war cycles are significantly overdue for major scale loss of life war.

Sh1t im not houdini nor do i have the philosophers stone. I will probably be in the same situation as everyone else except I will have more precious metals that the average joe. I'll have more food, cash, and digital bitcoin that won't collapse when the dollar collapse (if it collapses). hopefully I can convert my fiat dollars fast enough out of the market into profits and cash that out before banks collapse or my brokerage collapse. If not, I already have my safety net that I'm happy with. I'm in shape, relatively strong, and intelligent. I do own guns and have trained in shooting and mma. I'm in sales, and I hustle for a living so I think I have the right skill set and preparation to survive given luck.

Those are all worst case scenarios. If we just go through a massive depression and there aren't riots and people dying all over then I should make out very well. I've left New York 1.5 years ago because major cities are not an area to be when shtf. Rioting all that stuff will not be good. I'm obviously living my life as well but i've prepared insurance for all worst case scenarios within reason. I'm also supposed to be expecting my Tesla Model 3 sometime next year. Who knows what will happen with that.

So if you believe most of the world is coming to an end, why aren't you already packing up and moving to the part of the world that you predict will be safe?

 

[speed dawg]

That's exactly what im predicting but i could be wrong. Most non idiotic economists are expecting major loss of life especially since population is way past what we can sustain at the moment and our war cycles are significantly overdue for major scale loss of life war.

Sh1t im not houdini nor do i have the philosophers stone. I will probably be in the same situation as everyone else except I will have more precious metals that the average joe. I'll have more food, cash, and digital bitcoin that won't collapse when the dollar collapse (if it collapses). hopefully I can convert my fiat dollars fast enough out of the market into profits and cash that out before banks collapse or my brokerage collapse. If not, I already have my safety net that I'm happy with. I'm in shape, relatively strong, and intelligent. I do own guns and have trained in shooting and mma. I'm in sales, and I hustle for a living so I think I have the right skill set and preparation to survive given luck.

Those are all worst case scenarios. If we just go through a massive depression and there aren't riots and people dying all over then I should make out very well. I've left New York 1.5 years ago because major cities are not an area to be when shtf. Rioting all that stuff will not be good. I'm obviously living my life as well but i've prepared insurance for all worst case scenarios within reason. I'm also supposed to be expecting my Tesla Model 3 sometime next year. Who knows what will happen with that.

Bro, a number of countries could end the world now if they wanted. Nukes ARE the end of the earth. There is no speculating what the next war will consist of, we already know it. If it happens, 99% of the world will be dead. Who cares?

 

[synergy1]

Synergy, your points still don't protect your method of investing from the fact that anyone buying into this market is clearly not buying at good prices. If anything, you're buying at a high price if not, the peak for the market, the housing market, etc. I can just as usually pull charts for gold back in 2000 when it was $300 an oz. It's currently $1300 an ounce and as high as $1900 an ounce back in 2011. Precious metals do not evaporate in a crash while many of the companies you mentioned 10 years ago can just as easily have gone bankrupt like back in 2000 and 2008. Not a good example imo.

Share buybacks alone do exactly what you disagree with. They boost up stock prices. Market caps might not change immediately but share prices go up once shares are removed from the market.

It doesn't boost earnings, it boosts the residual earnings each share of common is entitled too. Some companies elect to pay it out as a dividend, most growth companies will reinvest into their working capital, creating inventory or the like. This won't automatically boost the underlying share price. The market sentiment is what matters. Tesla is a good example because it does not EARN money, so changing the residual current earnings per share are meaningless. Its priced at a forward 140X P/E. On the opposite side of the coin, an unfavorable company like Transocean which is currently priced at 11.72 per share trading at a 6 P/E - if the sentiment of the offshore drilling industry was the same as Future outlook at Tesla motors, Transocean would be priced at 273 dollars. Note that not a penny of theoretical EPS has changed, yet we see an order of magnitude difference in price. Will eps reconcile with reality? eventually, but maybe never. Buybacks are great...I love them. But they aren't the financial engineering voodoo some folks claim which are boosting our economy up. There are other factors.

So you are right, a share buyback instantly benifits shareholders. But this won't automatically increase the stock price. The view of the future is very important as evidenced by my very contrived , but real example.

And also note I am not even disagreeing on the sentiment that fiat currency is weak, and our debt fueled growth is risky. it is. But I can't time these things, and hardly understand them. I put my best on the market, and into industrys I feel will be around for a while. As long as those markets are traded in dollars an do business in dollars, my ownership stake of the company will be tied to the company's performance.

Also note that precious metals are only as valuable as people view them. If you are in the middle of a desert and have 1 day to live - a liter of water has more value than 10 ox of gold. Not saying that will happen, but it could. I have come to accept that human's value in things is faith based, and this can change. Now it has happened for currencies over and over - look at China's monetary history. How many times did their currencies default? A lot. So I guess I take a risk assuming our faith that the dollar will hold value, and this is a risk I am willing to accept.