AssemblyBoard

   Considering all the information I have processed these past 45 years very little seems worthwhile. (Wasted hours blogging?) Sorry,  I really can't remember a whole lot of what  the "leading brothers" expounded to me concerning the vision of Jeremiah.  It just doesn't seem to have any real application in the real world. However, one recent discovery has brought great joy and enthusiasm. THE STOCK MARKET!!!   How did I live so long unaware of the fact that a great number of people in our society do not work (in the laboring sense) for a living????  Instead they let others do it for them. At very little risk, with a stop loss in place, I have easily made money for doing nothing. A few months ago I bought MA (Mastercard) at $45 a share. So far I have pulled in a grand!!!! Wow!!! Twenty years ago if someone would have said to me, "You should really look into the stock market." that would have been good advise!!! Now I am sure someone might use this thread to write a good "All going to Burn" sermon. However, Paul did not say, ..."money is the root of all evi.." but rather he said, "...the LOVE of money..."  Teaching someone how to make their life easier or more effective is a good healthy thing. In fact many of the people on this BB have "confessed" their use of the stock market. So I pass this good advise on to you.

 As Kiyosaki points out David, the difference between the rich and the poor and middle class is that the rich know how to acquire assets, while the rest of us spend our lives acquiring liabilities.
If I knew at twenty what I know now I would have been an extremely dangerous man.   :)
Wealthy folks teach their kids the things about money that you and I have had to learn on our own the hard way.
I also discovered stocks not too long ago and have been trading with Scottrade quite profitably.
Did you notice that unbelievable four for one split of HANS recently on top of a 300 per cent stock dividend??!!
It is my humble opinion that some hard work to educate oneself, and about 100K of capital, you would have to work in this country only if you really wanted to.
For Christians I guess it could well qualify as "sweat of the brow" when you consider how volatile the market can get nowadays.   :)
What other positions are you holding?
I am in a Russian oil company called TNT (interestingly enough) that I think is going to explode upward soon... :)
Getting ready to explore some LEAP options...

Verne

Dave,

What you say about stocks is true.  It is not, however, the whole truth.

Being a teacher, you have interacted with many people who own stocks and other investment instruments.  It is a common lunchroom topic.

I remember a young teacher named Frank.  He and his wife, who were in a childless, two-income marriage, were doing quite well financially.  Great house, great cars, great vacations, and so on.

Then the "high tech" bubble broke in the late 80's.  Frank was in shock!  He told me, "I have lost over $200,000 dollars!"  :o  Not a happy time for Frank and Company.

Fortunately for Frank, and a whole lot of other folks, our resiliant capitalist economy was able to absorb the shock and return to a growth mode.  I hope it continues for a long time.

But I think that we should think about these things holistically.  Our prosperity is fueled by the exploitation of energy, much of which flows from the Middle East.  We keep it flowing by paying big bucks for it, by supporting corrupt petty dictators like the goat herder "kings" of Saudi Arabia, and by using, (or threatening to use), our military power to keep the area stable.

This, of course, is why so many countries joined the USA in the first Gulf War.  If Saddam had been able to control all the oil from Iraq and Kuwait, plus dominate Saudi Arabia, Quatar and the other little gulf states, he would have had the economy of the entire world subject to his whims.  So, over 20 countries participated in throwing him out of Kuwait.

Our current concern with Iran as a potential nuclear power is just a continuation of the same concerns....with the added concern that they just might supply a bomb to Hezbollah or some other terrorist group.  If Iran can dominate the Middle East by nuclear blackmail, they will then have the world economy right where our old friend Saddam wanted to have it.

As Hillary Clinton said in a recent speech, "A nuclear armed Iran is unthinkable."

Stay tuned...we will either stop them by peaceful means, or we will bomb them the way we did Serbia.

This is also the reason that almost all the Democrats and Republicans in Congress voted to invade Iraq the second time.  Real world issues drove that decision, and all the rhetoric about it since then is just politics.

The next time you get a nice dividend check from your stocks, take a moment to thank the folks who were, and are, willing to take the criticism and rage of their political enemies to pursue this policy.  You also might want to remember the folks who put their lives on the line so you can cash those checks.

Blessings,

Thomas Maddux

Hi Dave!

  I can tell you from personal experience it is very, very difficult to make "a living" trading stocks, futures, options, etc. 

    Why  ???

 1.) "A Living" means that you can count on a monthly stream of income that can be reliably counted on throughout the year.

  Unless you are a multi-millionaire, and can put your money into interest or dividend bearing investments your other alternative will bring no assurance that the stocks you pick will go up every month--- it just doesn't work that way. 

  Also, your present stock profits are paper profits only until you actually sell them and take profits.  Once you sell them you have to find another stock to go up in order to keep the income stream coming in.

 2.) Professional traders are wrong about 75% of the time in trying to pick the profitable direction of a trade.  They make money only because they cut their losers quickly and let their good trades run.   

   The only way to do this is to sit in front of your computer all day long and monitor your positions.  It also takes incredible planning and discipline to make a go of this.  Few people have the dedication, patience, and quite frankly, the big bucks to make this work (I'm not just talking about day trading positions either).

  3.) After about 12 years of "trading" I have made a whole bunch and lost a whole bunch and as a consequence am about even.  After about 4 years of "investing" I have about doubled my original equity, but this is not needed money for living, rather it is for retirement. 

   To be successful at trading you need an enormous amount of cash (something I did not have, and consequently I had no staying power; putting too much of my account at risk on any one trade.)  If you don't have the cash you have to trade on margin and that can clean you out quick! (boy could I share with you some horror stories  :o)

  Investing is different in that all the pressures of trading that I mentioned above are not there.  You diversify your portfolio, hedge your bets, etc.  You might have some Tech., Oil, gold, retail, medical, drug, big cap., small cap, etc. and when one stock gets hammered for a short time some of the others do okay. You may have good weeks and bad weeks, but you keep adding to your savings and after years of this you will be surprised at how much your account has grown.  This is the way to really "make" money with stocks if one is a small investor who also has a day job.

   I prefer "value investing", for the most part, in stocks, but I still take minor speculative positions as well.  I still have my futures trading account; but this is primarily for fun and as a personal challenge.  My last trade was in Live Cattle where my $600 trade got up to $2,200 (on paper) but reversed on me and I ended up losing $200.  Try to live on that kind of work and it might get a tad difficult to make the house payment!

                       Good luck and God Bless,  Mark C. 
   

Why didn't you use a trailing stop once your position was in the money Mark?
Le me guess... :)
Verne

Hi Verne!

  Why didn't I use a stop on the Cattle trade?  Maybe I should start a new thread and call it, "Wounded Traders!" :-[ ;)

   Without getting too elaborate with an explanation, and boring all to tears, the trade was a put option spread where I was long a Aug. $82.00 put and short a $76.00 put; this is called a bear spread.  You can't place stops for a spread, or even use them on non-spread options like you would with a futures contract.

  I was on vacation and not watching the trade when It really started to move against me and by the time I got back and could do something most of the money was lost.  The moral of this story: Don't go on vacation with a trade like this open!

   The Cattle market has usually traded consistent with it's fundamentals, and these fundamentals pointed to further decline into August, but big trading funds have had a big influence in moving the market the way they want it to go this year.  These are long-only big time commodity funds that have recently sprung up since everybody wants into the big commodity bull market ( no pun intended).

  In the long run, the fundamentals will control the value of the commodity, but it takes big bucks to stay in and wait it all out. 

  BTW, what was your guess Verne?

                                                                God Bless,  Mark C.
   

Strangely enough, I was thinking that a savvy trader like you might have hedged your bets...I guess it is hard to close your positions if you are not watching the action...!
Thanks for the advice Mark; I intend to follow it!  :)
Verne

Hi Verne!

  Well, I guess I ain't so savvy after all :-[!  However, the reason that I like that kind of spread is that it includes a hedge built in, so to speak, because the option that I sold guarantees that at expiration I will at least keep the premium I was paid, which was $360.00 (minus commission).  The one I owned upon expiration out of the money is worthless.

  Very, very few can make money trading (contrary to the above subject line) though it can be fun to give it a try. 8)

                                                God bless,  Mark C.