Discussion ***Official*** 2024 Stock Market Thread 💰

[AdamK47]

RK posts dog Pic and Chewy stock flies.

In case you didn't know Cohen founded Chewy and runs GME.

Can you imagine a merger? Convert stores to pet shops.

There isn't much need to have B&M video game stores anymore. That was true years ago before the meme frenzy.

 

[Charmonium]

Just say NO to meme stocks

A few months ago I got 4 individual stocks PFE, VPC, GOLD and DTCR. VPC and DTCR are ETFs.

PFE and GOLD have barely moved. Down 40 an up the same, respectively.

I'm a little surprised by Barrick. It seems that the market doesn't really believe that gold has any staying power at these levels. I guess that's not too much of a surprise given that in October it was under 1700. But I think as more people get burned with crypto, there will continue to be a steady migration into gold. There's also lingering uncertainty about the market generally what with the still inverted yield curve. I think we need to see that flatten a bit before the fed cuts.

I think VPC is doing well but at the moment Schwab isn't showing my cost basis. When I bought this back in March, about 2 weeks later I got almost 5 shares in reinvested dividends. They tend to keep their share price pretty level so unless you reinvest you don't see any growth.

DTCR is the only real winner of the group with an increase of about $200. But that's not a complete surprise given the AI frenzy.

 

[FelixDeCat]

I used to be interested in gold and silver until the pandemic. The spread to buy / sell physical ounces was only $50 before April 2020.

Afterwards and to this day its usually about $100 to 150 per ounce of gold to buy and $100 to $150 to sell. So you could lose up to $300 in dealer charges PER OUNCE before you see a dime in profit.

Over the years prior to 2020 I traded about 40 ounces of gold and 200 ounces of silver, buying cheap on Ebay and dumping locally. It was scary getting $10,000 packages in regular mail.

As far as trading things like the GLD / SLV ETF's in the market, because they are actually trusts, they are treated as "cost basis not reported" transactions by the IRS. That means you have to report each buy and sell on Form 8949, which sucks. That includes options on the trusts. Not worth the hassle.

 

[FelixDeCat]

There isn't much need to have B&M video game stores anymore. That was true years ago before the meme frenzy.

And that is why I mentioned pet stores not game stores. Not sure who still goes there other than flea market types.

 

[Charmonium]

It was scary getting $10,000 packages in regular mail.

Haha, yeah - even half that. My restrictions on the receiver were that they had show ID, sign and submit to a body cavity search.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I used to be interested in gold and silver until the pandemic. The spread to buy / sell physical ounces was only $50 before April 2020.

Afterwards and to this day its usually about $100 to 150 per ounce of gold to buy and $100 to $150 to sell. So you could lose up to $300 in dealer charges PER OUNCE before you see a dime in profit.

Over the years prior to 2020 I traded about 40 ounces of gold and 200 ounces of silver, buying cheap on Ebay and dumping locally. It was scary getting $10,000 packages in regular mail.

As far as trading things like the GLD / SLV ETF's in the market, because they are actually trusts, they are treated as "cost basis not reported" transactions by the IRS. That means you have to report each buy and sell on Form 8949, which sucks. That includes options on the trusts. Not worth the hassle.

I like silver/gold since it's something you hold physically, and it physically itself has value. It's probably not the highest performance investment but it's something that is almost guaranteed to at least hold it's value and maybe even keep up with inflation. I have a little over 100 oz of silver but been a while since I bought. At some point I want to buy gold too but not really in a position to buy much of anything I don't actually need right now. Recently spent a little over 10k on clearing my off grid land so need to focus on paying that off. Already had 10k on credit line due to getting new furnace and water heater. So yeah really need to focus on debt. Not much money left over by the time all the bills come out of the pay cheque.

 

[dullard]

That means you have to report each buy and sell on Form 8949, which sucks.

Note: I'm not a CPA. But I am 90% confident that as long as they are in the same year, that you can just write "Various" under the lines like Date Acquired and Date Sold. Then lump these all into one line on Form 8949. Yes, you have to add up how much you spent and how much you sold it for, but your finances should be done in something like Excel that makes math like that simple.

For example, see here:

Instructions for Form 8949 (2024) | Internal Revenue Service

www.irs.gov

Stock acquired on various dates.
If you sold a block of stock (or similar property) that you acquired through several different purchases, you may report the sale on one row and enter “VARIOUS” in column (b). However, you must still report the short-term gain (or loss) on the sale on Part I and the long-term gain (or loss) on Part II.

 

[dullard]

It's probably not the highest performance investment but it's something that is almost guaranteed to at least hold it's value and maybe even keep up with inflation.

That is the myth of gold that I just never understand. Gold is doing quite well right now. But, historically it does NOT always hold value or keep up with inflation. Gold did terribly in the 1920s, 1940s/1950s/1960s, 1980s/1990s, and early 2010s. During those fairly long periods, it did not hold its value or keep up with inflation. Here is an inflation adjusted price chart:

https://www.macrotrends.net/1333/historical-gold-prices-100-year-chart

Gold has its place in an investment portfolio. But, why do these myths that are so easily disproven stick around?

 

[Brainonska511]

Gold has its place in an investment portfolio. But, why do these myths that are so easily disproven stick around?

Delusional dreams of societal collapse and living in a Mad Max-esque world?

 

[K1052]

Buying physical precious metals as a hedge is only marginally up from buying firearms and not something that should be done unless your income/wealth is in the "Why not? It's only one less trip on the jet to Zurich." bracket. In fact if everything actually did somehow go to shit the guns would be way more useful.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The thing is the metals have an actual purpose in manufacturing. If they go down it's always temporary. Stocks on the other hand can crash, and that's that. They don't really have any real useful value. It's a miracle the system even works at all and I wonder if at one point, it won't. I wouldn't dump everything into metals but it's not a bad idea to have a bit.

 

[Brainonska511]

Precious metals have a use in manufacturing, but their value is not predominantly from that. It comes predominantly from the collective idea that they are valuable like fist money. Gold and silver are just like fist money in that people **believe** that they can trade those rocks for goods and services.

 

[dullard]

The thing is the metals have an actual purpose in manufacturing. If they go down it's always temporary.

Stocks on the other hand can crash, and that's that. They don't really have any real useful value.

I just posted a inflation adjusted graph with a 36 year gold crash (40 years to return to the peak) and 21 year gold crash (still hasn't quite returned to the peak 44 years later). Technically those crashes were temporary. But if that happened when you need the money, waiting 40+ years just to return to your starting price is an awful thing to consider.

While gold has some actual use in manufacturing, many stocks ARE actual manufacturing companies.

 

[IronWing]

Silver is even worse than gold for an inflation hedge.


You'd be much better off with an index fund than holding silver.

 

[FelixDeCat]

NNE creeping back up. Long 200 shares at 20.

Also bought one Chewy 25 call for next week on a whim.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I just posted a inflation adjusted graph with a 36 year gold crash (40 years to return to the peak) and 21 year gold crash (still hasn't quite returned to the peak 44 years later). Technically those crashes were temporary. But if that happened when you need the money, waiting 40+ years just to return to your starting price is an awful thing to consider.

While gold has some actual use in manufacturing, many stocks ARE actual manufacturing companies.

Inflation in itself is a huge issue, it basically means the dollar is being devalued more and more every year. It used to be backed by gold back in the day and inflation was not as bad, but now it's backed by nothing and they just keep printing as much as they want. Every time they do that it's devalued.

TBH I would have figured silver would be going up more in past few years with EVs and solar being more popular but I guess they don't necessarily use that much of it.

Either way it's always good to diversify between virtual assets and physical. I have a bit of silver, cash, stocks, index funds, bank managed savings, pension plan at work, ESP etc. Not everything is necessarily an investment and simply savings. That's how I see the silver, it's more of a way to save money securely long term with the chance that it could go up by then. The cash is more for shorter term emergency. It's value goes down every year so not really good to have too much of it.

 

[dullard]

Inflation in itself is a huge issue, it basically means the dollar is being devalued more and more every year. It used to be backed by gold back in the day and inflation was not as bad, but now it's backed by nothing and they just keep printing as much as they want. Every time they do that it's devalued.

The US's highest inflation rate was 1917 when we were fully gold backed.

The gold standard doesn't prevent the US from spending or printing money. Just the opposite. The gold standard just forces the US government to value their gold stash at a price related to the size of the economy.

 

[AdamK47]

What's with the downturn?

Are people repositioning at the end of the month/quarter?

 

[Charmonium]

I look at gold as mainly being a sentiment asset in that it depends much more on investor psychology than most assets like stocks. Also it tends to fluctuate more with the value of the dollar since that's how it's traded.

I bought almost all of my gold and platinum in the 2001 to 2007 period when I considered it cheap. I won't touch the stuff now since it really isn't clear that it can hold its value at these levels.

I personally think it will which why l like the miners but I could easily be wrong.

 

[repoman0]

Gold is fun to hold and look at like a goblin and that’s about it. I’m a long time coin collector and love those 1oz golden eagles. I sold mine off though a while back and put it all in those 5% 10 year treasury bonds that we could get for a couple months. That will be a far better investment.

 

[Charmonium]

For those of you mostly familiar with street jargon, CNBC's Fast Money is a pretty good recap of the day's market moves. If you're not, just have investopedia in one of your tabs. It doesn't take long to get acclimated.

It's widely watched show I would imagine so I'm not sure you want to invest based on any comments they make. But . . . it's a very good source to get a feel for current trends.

If you're retired and consider yourself 'hard core.' Bloomberg is really still the best place to tune in.

 

[FelixDeCat]

For those who still like to pick their own stocks (small bets) vs going all in on index funds:

 

[jpiniero]

What's with the downturn?

Are people repositioning at the end of the month/quarter?

Stuff happens on Fridays because of options.

 

[AdamK47]

Oh yes, options expiring. Forgot about it. I don't get into that.

 

[FelixDeCat]

NNE creeping back up. Long 200 shares at 20.

Also bought one Chewy 25 call for next week on a whim.

Sold NNE too soon at 26, current price 30, but they are pre revenue so whatever.

Dumped the Chewy call at the open for almost a double.