No problem, just all my whacky opinions, so.. what do I know? Anyway, yea not exactly sure about the recent trading 'action', it is 'legal' technically because either it is participants shuffling naked short positions between themselves which actually surprisingly is allowed by SEC law (no mention of the practice in their ruleset or literature, I guess they know it goes on but they do not disallow it explicitly) OR those are indeed actual real trades (real settled shares for real settled dollars) but trading between brokerages who self clear and do not use the DTCC for clearing/settlement (CNS system). The DTCC can only 'lock' the trading in a security for which those particular trades intend to go through the CNS system, other brokerage houses using their own clearing and settlement systems have nothing to do with the DTCC and so will still trade it; some actually though who do not use DTCC still have made the decision to not even self clear any non-eligible DTC securities, just a personal brokerage to brokerage decision based on following what the geniuses at the DTCC decided.
I dont need faith, I have no faith, not in anything. I accumulate share in companies for which I have conviction that the future will bring earnings growth or for start ups bring actual real revenues. Of course you do have to put some 'trust' in management that they will steer the ship correctly to the promised land of profits but as long as you keep an eye on the company decisions over time, you should see signs that the company is getting closer to being profitable OR exceeding profit expectations by the street. If not, then over time you should ramp out of such an investment. It is that simple. Many traders/investors make investing/trading very confusing, using 'head and shoulders', 'cup in handle', BS bogus 'patterns' or day trading on percieved chart movements when really they are just gambling on really no data. The 'market' has changed over time but 'investing' has not changed. The same age old qualities of patience, knowledge, experience and control of ones own emotions is the key to investing. I would say PATIENCE is the number one factor which has been forgotten by the new market generation. It is very difficult to make an investment little by little over long long periods of time watching and waiting and slowly accumulating shares at low prices because you must be able to handle wild swings in the price, some months the investment is positive and other months it is negative but you must always know that such gains/losses are UNrealized and REALIZED gain/loss is another matter. I think what has happened is the IMPATIENCE of the youthful day trader has flooded this market and so more of them are putting more of their capital into and out of short term trades, trying to short cut time and knowledge by getting lucky and hopefully making a huge return quickly and then keep on doing that with money signs in their eyes. But greed is a dangerous emotion which will consume you over time, making you a weak trader/investor. The strong investor uses time itself to allow the weak to get busted out of the game, all the while, each time they get blown out, using that as a buying opportunity to snap up another small bit of a position at low prices. Just always keep an eye on volume and level II. If you start seeing the dynamics shifting so that it looks like some big player needs to get liquid in the name, that is your moment, but not your moment to buy ALL in, that is impatient, it just means that lower prices than usual will be available for a brief period so patiently snap up a few more shares methodically. Over enough time if you keep doing this eventually the stock will have a huge rally, most do, and if the spike or rally is large enough you can simply shed a small portion of the position to pay back yourself in dollars just exactly what you spent on the original investment so far, whilst still having the max number of shares left that have been completely paid for by others (impatient quick flip traders getting blown out, it happens all the time). I have many portfolios of stocks which I have grouped together wherein each and every single stock had already been paid for years and years ago. I have some of those 'free' portfolios which I saw blow up to pretty high values, did not take profits and then subsequently watched them lose value and hold only some of their value over time, but also I have others which went up over time and still have their increased value, while I have others which are somewhere in between. I think many look at the game differently and they would see my portfolios and just start grabbing at the ripe fruits hand over fist, liquidating most of them to 'lock in' the 'profits', but that is never how I have invested. I look at it as I do trading on ebay. I taught another many years ago this long term value type of investing and actually the first project I had him do was to take a totally valueless piece of crap in his home and put it up on ebay for sale at any price. I think he sold an old leather wallet or something that he was going to throw in the trash. He got a few bucks for it, and I told him to use that money to purchase something else being sold on ebay then once he got it I told him from now on use craigslist to simply set up trades to go drop in the mail that something to trade for something else, but each trade needs to net you in your own mind a more valueable thing. In the beginning of course he complained that the shipping costs were making him go negative but I told him to be patient. I forgot all of the myriad trades he made, but probably after about 40 trades and 1.5 months of doing it, he basically had about $190 in shipping costs but owned a near brand new Playstation 3 with games. I then told him to go to game stop and sell it to get the cash. He came back with $400 and it made him realize that just starting with a few bucks he got from an old leather wallet he was able to cash in about $200 after a month and a half. Indeed, a LOT of work over a lengthy time period just to make a measly $200 BUT it was the point of the lesson that got through to him. He began trading in his own brokerage account a month later and needless to say, his REALIZED gains after about 3 months were incredible. The whole point to it is that you must keep trying to make small trades (shares for cash, cash for shares, but really over time shares for shares) so that each time more REALIZED gain is accrued in the portfolio, you use that to get more leverage (margin) to buy more cheaply priced stock, etc. Of course, it can go haywire in a market like this one where everything is down every single day, but really if you always manage the portfolio size properly versus your net worth, even a market crash should not blow you out of the game. Basically, it is being stubborn to the nth degree, never sell if you have an UNrealized loss UNLESS the fundamentals have changed, otherwise all the gyrations are just mumblings of an insane market randomly making the patient money and the impatient broke. :D
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