Thanks for creating this thread. Last time, you recommended Facebook. Do you still favor this company?
ya i still like it at 20 and i have bought and sold it on that advice now a few times since i recommended it on this forum it has given me a 40+% ROI.
i currently dont own it because i sold it when the earnings came out and it shot up and ive been waiting for it to come back down.. But its about at my buy price. since it has dipped as low as 18$ i think it can easily go that low again (if you want to wait and maximize) though i will buy at 19 because its to volatile and i dont want to miss out on gains. Zuckerberg can make a silly statement and shoots this stock up 20%.
think blue - bought it monday and im already selling it again after today. add another 15%.
So ive got a question to maximize my returns.
Does anyone know about selling short? are small investors allowed to sell short? how does financing a short sell go? surely they wont give just anyone credit? anyone know?
Hopefully, I’ll be able to put my 401k into IRA/401k that focuses on EM/BRIC, gold, etc. I could cash it in (from my old company) and buy gold, but I would take a 25% hit.
Question:
Any decent gold standard theorists have an opinion on whether someone should (today or in the relative near future) buy one ounce of gold (at today’s market price of 1724.90$ usd) or buy52.81 ounces of silver (silver’s market price is at 32.66$ usd). Why or why not?
*This concept of buying silver or gold would be based on the assumption that the USD will crash.
Myknee jerk reaction is obviously to buy the gold. However gold is unreasonably high (in terms of pocket change/walking around money), so one would have to pay to convert it into silver.
**This question is also making the assumption that the people will choose GOLD as money with an undetermined outcome of what role will silver play. Also opinions on the use of copper providing help in the monetary system (Copper market price: 3.45$ usd)
****(I am still looking for the best place of where to buyphysical gold or silver)
I’m curious about what information do you guys use to invest and speculate? I know what Doug Casey stated several times about how the coming years will be a “speculators delight”. Namely i shorting Govt bonds.
How ever investing in stocks and speculatio is something I’m not to keen on as of yet. What books and websites do you guys read to understand the real technical sides of these things?
I kind of feel like I’m loosing out on a lot by understanding Austrian economics and anticipating market news and crisis before they actually happen without profiting from it lol.
Aiser, the speculation that goes on in this thread is nothing more than gambling. You may as well walk into a casino and put that money on a roullette wheel. In the very short term, there is nothing you can look at to make an “educated” speculation, because the short term movement in a stock price are completely random.
Austrian econ. may provide us with a longer term picture of what to do with our money, but that is all. Specifically timing the market is impossible. Sometimes you get lucky sometimes you don’t. This thread certainly needs a new name, as “Investor’s Corner” is the antithesis of what this is.
all investments are gambles. If it was a sure thing then there wouldnt be any profits or gains in it. You are suggesting that you can remove risk out of an investment which is impossible.
Maybe it is because i used to play poker for a living that i understand/prone to invest where there is more volatility and variance.
I cant think of a single great investor who does not understand the idea of investing when there is ‘blood on the streets’ or ‘invest where the money is scared’. Yes it is a risk. It is always a risk.
*and this thread was created to suggest any investments. So if you have any ideas on investment, tools for investing, where you suggest putting savings, or anything other than you might was well visit your local casino it would be appreciated. This thread is to educate.
Grant,
I didn’t say anything about risk. Aiser asked what to read in order to speculate and “anticipate market news.” I answered by saying, using different words, that there is nothing. Just like when I asked you a few months ago why you targeted $14 (or whatever it was) for Facebook, you couldn’t respond. It was just something you came up, some random number. You admitted as much. My point is, if you want to invest for the long term, understanding AE can serve at best as a guide. But to speculate in the near term is gambling.
14 was what i targeted at the bottom (i think. but i know 14-15 was around my bottom price). and im pretty sure i did respond because a couple people mentioned it and it was purely an opinion/guess/risk. but i argued for a 20$ price and i mentioned that there is still a strong risk that it falls to 15$.
i made a defense on fundamentals for a 7-10 valuation. it was just my opinion that the market wouldnt allow it to go that low and i felt 20$ was the highest probabilityofthe low market price. if you look at the history of the price since i made the arguement you will see that my pricing was virtually perfect (though now im closer to 19$). If anyone had taken my advice (advice that i myself have acted on) and bought and sold on that price you would of received 70% ROI since AUGUST.
To conclude: we are pretty much on the same page on opinions. I agree that there is really nothing without being the actual person making decisions that can anticipate market news. I agree that i virtually picked a random number (though as an investor everyone has to random pick a number to invest at.). I agree AE is more of a guide in your investing choices. I agree short term speculation is a gamble. (in defense of my facebook buying, by no means do i think facebook is a short term investment. i think its a long term and history will prove it. Money is scared on how facebook will make money, i personally cant see how a company cant capitalize on a billion customers half of which use your business daily. and i think connectivity is the wave of the future and facebook is the leader and is the only company whose vision of the future is connectivity)
I’ll make just a quick generalization about tech stocks. If you believe that the collapse of the dollar is imminent, and most Austrians that I read do, then you must consider where you want your assets when this collapse occurs. When it does collapse, would you say your investments will be safest in a company that makes iPads and iPhones? How about a social network site? Are the masses going to rush to play Farmville and Tweet? Remember, we are talking about a freaking collapse here!
I want my assets to be in physical precious metals, energy, farmland and farm machinery, ammunition and guns, etc..
If anything, with Obama’s re-election it is possible that the corporation tax will go up which will further damage stock earnings. I would say the US is a terrible place to invest long-term right now. Maybe if you’re a skilled technical trader short term gains can be realised but that isn’t investment so much as trading.
To follow up on this thought from ZeroHedge:
From Bloomberg:
- China needs to add to its gold reserves to ensure national economic and financial safety, promote yuan globalization and as a hedge against foreign- reserve risks, Gao Wei, an official from the Department of International Economic Affairs of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, writes in a commentary in the China Securities Journal today.
- While gold prices are currently near record highs, China can build its reserves by buying low and selling high amid the short-term volatility, Gao writes in newspaper
- China’s gold reserve is “too small”, Gao says
And there it is: while many have speculated that China, which has not given an update of its official holdings in nearly 4 years, is quietly building up its gold reserve holdings behind the scenes, there was no reason to worry. The time to worry would be when China was starting to give indications it is prepared to tell the world what its true gold holdings are (by now certainly well over 1000 tonnes). And the above piece from Wei is just that: because in saying very little, the Chinese official with a key political post has just given the first hint that China is preparing to give its official gold far greater focus. And from there, the time until China releases an IMF update on its official reserve holdings will be measured in days if not hours. Because all the gold will have long been accumulated.
And once that happens it will be too late to buy any incremental gold. Or tungsten.
So, now is the time to buy gold, yuans, or both?
certainly is a scary thought of its potential.
and…tungsten? whats up with tungsten?
The tungsten comment is joke at ZeroHedge because there are more and more cases of what are supposed to be gold bars in fact turning up to be tungsten bars that are just coated in gold. Many believe that is in fact what fills Fort Knox.
shackle - its really impossible to say. how long will you be holding onto it because gold prices are certainly able to be manipulated in the short run. I’m feeling that the US gov has plenty of spies in china and will be attempting to undermine whatever the chinese are doing which in the long run ultimately wont matter it, but could effect the price of gold greatly within the next 5-10 years. (and the US could be doing it right now raising the price of gold to force the chinese and anyone else to buy at a higher price. though i havent seen any evidence of it)
yuans are even harder to say because it would depend on what the chinese real intentions are. the chinese can even attempt to make their currency attractive for the foreign buyer by under valuation (which they are almost undoubtly doing) then just ditch the yuan on foreign investor hedging against the losses of their USD debt. While swapping yuans for a new commodity back currency domestically. personally i would stay out of yuans all together.
prime - wow. so no one has a clue where, when or who did this?
I agree that A.E is certainly a kind of guide or template of choices on investing or speculation. But A.E when it focuses on real growth, I don’t see how FaceBook would pass a litmus test on investment. Even thought I am inexperienced when dealing with stocks and ect, I remember when Groupon first went public the stock price IMO was over priced and plummeted on day one. And I actually anticipated this on my spare time .FB did go throught a similar episode. If we look at it from A.E then I think we would have to focus on something tangible backing such stock picks and shorts? (Gold, Led, Silver, Chickens, Broccolli, Apples, IPads and so on). While connectivity is great I don’t see how FB can be a long-tern investment without something of real monetary value?
IMO at some point FB will go dead much like how MiGente and MySpace pretty much went, but that is my own bias. 
Grant, this turned up in Manhattan.
As to your theory of the U.S. keeping gold prices high to screw the Chinese, many feel it is in fact the exact opposite. It is more likely the U.S. is suppressing the price of gold. The U.S. owes China a trillion dollars which we could never repay. Perhaps if the boys at J.P Morgan and Goldman can keep the price artificially low, then China can load up and not worry so much about getting screwed out of that trillion.