NA: Who is buying Facebook stock today?

rpadula said:
When 80% of mutual funds can't beat the index they're judged against, yeah, I'd say Henning has a point.
Click to expand...
So we return full circle to where we were many posts ago - either invest and reap the consequences or don't invest at all, the point is no one is holding a gun to your head to invest in anything. Invest in an alligator farm if this is your fancy or invest with Allen Stanford's guaranteed 250% return offshore banking.
 
General rule of thumb, if you don't know what you are doing, get help from someone who does.

If you know exactly richard about stocks and investing, either get help from someone who does know about it or stay away from stocks.
 
Anthony said:
So what stocks are in your pension fund or 401K/IRA?
Click to expand...

In most people's, heavily loaded mutual funds. :)

At least in the 401K world, the option to self-direct is usually not an option. It's growing and starting to become available slowly as folks complain to HR departments, but not that common yet.

I've got one that allows it, and one that doesn't. In the one that does, you have to pull funds into a separate brokerage account inside the 401k, and once they're there, they can't return to the traditional mutual fund pool.

In the other, mostly medium load mutuals from a group of mediocre investment companies. Zero choices there.

Best method is an IRA for self-directed investing, for most folk.

Many mega-oil-company individual stocks did well this year. They realized folks would pay $5/gal and are enjoying the mathematical multiplication benefits of higher oil prices. Refiners did okay depending on unit problems.

The big darlings of tech did okay, especially if you've scaled out and are playing only with your previous profits and watching for a crash of their bubbles which don't seem to be popping quite yet.

Some blue chips are paying unreasonable dividends they can't sustain, but are wooing the dividend investors in with. The stocks seem to be flat or trying to be cyclical but the big cycle is logjammed with tax issues worrying people.

Generally the overall stock market is slowly beating inflation but in huge fits and starts. It shakes a lot of people out and then back in, and out. And you don't want to be trapped in anything the computer traders are playing in unless you enjoy volatility. They dork with things to unreasonable numbers, both directions. Facebook falls into that category along with no one knowing what exactly their product really is. Total speculation there.

Big retail brands haven't fared well. Big food brands, doing pretty good other than the McDonald's "miss". Somewhat out of character for them, but they have a lot of loss-leaders going on in their menu and folks took advantage of it. Still better run than their competitors.

What else? I dunno. A lot of sitting and waiting going on with a Presidential election less than a month away. Seems to be a general theme this year. Stuff floats up and down on news about EU crises and oil prices, but hasn't taken a hard direction. A lot of the "slow growth" in the free financial press (you get what you pay for there) is really just tracking inflation and COGS.

Yawn... Time for lunch. What are we having today? :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top