Money Monster

I recently saw this movie.  I give it a 6 out of 10.  It was a decent movie but I was disappointed with how simple the storyline was.  The previews tell you everything.  Random guy loses money on a stock and holds a tv host hostage.  That's about it.  The only thing that was slightly interesting about the story was how you slowly figure out who the "bad guy" is.  There were several neat details placed in the movie but the pic below is around 85% of what you will see.

White House Spokesman Made Foolish Market Prediction

Back on March 18, 2014, someone made a horrible prediction of the Russian stock market. 
“I wouldn’t, if I were you, invest in Russian equities right now—unless you’re going short,”
President Barack Obama’s chief spokesman, Jay Carney.  Obama was being pressured by Putin and I guess "unofficially" it was ok for anyone to say bad things about Russia's future just because our leader was generally-kinda-negative-ish towards Putin.  Groupthink?  Maybe.....probably.

Stupid prediction!

First of all, you can't predict stuff and you should not give investment advice if that is not even your role.  This dude did both.  When he made that comment, Russia's MICEX market index was almost 35% off its previous high after the 2008 recession.  Sounds like a time to buy to me.  I start buying around 30% off.  That's when things are on sale.  Their market was fairly volatile for a few years leading up to that point.  Price was bouncing around in a pretty flat but wide channel.  So I would have strongly disagreed with Jay Carney at the time.  Then to make him look really bad, MICEX never went lower and eventually reached all new highs as of this week.  That would have been a nice 2 year trade for me.  I would have bought around 1300, sold around 1800.  Today, MICEX is at 1977 and its knockin on resistance.

The Nice Port

Imagine this: 

There is a country which will not be able to pay its debts and his hoping for a bailout from a larger country or a bankruptcy type of restructuring to spread things out.

fiscal management is considered a disaster

the country is small and is being compared to Detroit.

a politician from this country now authorizes a budget which takes money away from things such as education and not only overfunds public pensions (to pay your friends) but gives the President's wife a $2.5 million incidental allowance so she can 'get by' and pay for 'necessities'?

Surprise!  Its all true.  Puerto Rico is the winner....yay....

Class of 2016-18 - Earning an MBA is never a bad idea :)

Great Advice

Most investing advice that is available is either too elementary or pointless/random.  The Motley Fool has some people who really know how to trade.  They tend to profess what i already do:

It's common knowledge that the point of investing is to buy low and sell high, but selling because your stocks went down is the exact opposite of that. Of course, if your stocks go down because of any of the reasons listed here, such as a fundamental change in the business, by all means go ahead and sell. However, if the price drop has little to do with the company itself, a price drop should be looked at as a buying opportunity, not a reason to panic.

Nintendo

So a bunch of people bought Nintendo stock since they heard that Pokemon Go had become very popular around the world.  Now those same people are learning that Nintendo does not even own the game.  People thought Pokemon Go would make Nintendo suddenly take over the gaming world or something along those lines.  Somehow they thought this would happen just from one popular game people play on their phones.  Nintendo only receives a sliver of the profit due to licensing fees.  The stock price exploded, then crashed.  The thing is, it crashed due to people being so excited they didn't realize who owned the game.  Normally a crash would be because popularity ended.  Interesting.
The stock price was around 18, then it shot up to around 38, then it crashed and is currently around 27.  It is still popular and may get even more popular.  If people weren't so ignorant and impulsive, the stock price would have quickly bumped up to the 20-22 range.

This is kind of funny.  People look stupid when they are wandering around together looking for pokemon with their phones.  It makes sense for people to look stupid for attempting to 'invest' in Pokémon.  From what I see, people are having fun looking for the pokemon but no one is actually playing the game where you make your pocket monsters fight each other.  That will probably describe the wane of popularity overall when it happens.

What now?

The sp500 is floating around 2162.  It is just sitting there.  There wont be a selloff until there is fear of losing money.  There is nothing to talk about in the news other than terrorism and shootings.   People are not worried about their money.  The wealthy are sitting tight for now.  The middle class is riding high with few worries.  What happens next?

Sp500 new high

And just like that, the market gaps up to new highs.  Trading is fairly quiet during the day. Price is giving soft love taps to 2155.  Lately its calm all day but then price gaps up in the morning.  The stair stepping thing. 

If all the action is in the open, then there might be people making longer term trades.  Who knows.  My 401k is at a new high total, thats cool.  Is the market pushing up before dropping down like in the brexit vote?  All i know is people are buying at all time highs.  How dumb is that?  That is like buying clothes after they raise the price instead of having a sale.  As King Louie said in Jungle Book... "cur-aaaz-eh"

History in the making

The sp 500 is making all time highs as we speak.  That should create excitement and coerce people to make trades. 

It was pushing up very slowly after the opening.  It would probably keep rising for a while.

As i type this it is hitting 2138.  It is an interesting time because i know there could be a record high breakout to the upside or there could be a major selloff falling down to 1300.

What i do like is how my oil stock is not correlated with the market day.  For a little while they were moving together. 

S & P 500

So, im seeing this index sitting right at all time highs.  It is at 2120 this very moment.  Brexit was a major event in the news but very minor to the US in reality.  It still cared a lot of people into making trades.  Now we know people are listening to economic news.  Maybe that was the wake up call.  Maybe the big fall is being set up.  You cant have a market decline if the market participants arent reading economic news.  If bad economic news will now catch the eye of many people, then a major event that is actually major to the US in reality can cause a market selloff.  It is interesting trying to figure out what would cause a decline but in the end, predicting is impossible unless u actually have super powers.  What i do know is that we are vulnerable to a selloff.  I have no clue what will or could cause it.  When a selloff happens, it is because enough people decided to sell at the same time and more join in as it gets worse. Then vultures like me start circling.

British Sterling

After looking at an etf named FXB, I wish I could buy GBP currency too.  Regardless of how you could execute the trade, buying GBP sounds like what I love the most.  It is basically going into its own little recession, possibly depression and now its on clearance.  I wish I could buy that in my 401k.  Excluding short sellers, to be selling GBP now would be proof that you are a horrible investor.  Selling low is horrible and the opposite of what you are supposed to do.  Now is the time to buy, not sell.  It is the time to buy because so many others have sold.  Most of them do not know what they are doing.  I'm sure a few would rather stay in but have to get out for whatever reason or maybe they really do have a quicker/better opportunity to put their money in.  But in the end, chances are most of the people responsible for pushing prices down really are wrong/clueless whether they admit it or not.  But I am glad they are like that because I can take advantage of it.  Or, I would take advantage of it if I could.

Ahhh, so many opportunities.  So many depressed assets to buy.  Life is too short.  I know, I will live to be 100 so i can die with a huge trading account :) 

Greece

I was checking out GREK which is a solid representation of the Greek stock market.  I would buy it.  It peaked at 25 back in 2014 and has been bouncing around between 10 and 5 lately.    Within a few years i can see it back up to 15.  It would be a pretty solid trade in my opinion.  The EU is being forced to move toward stricter economic rules for member countries.  Once they get over the accountability hurdle, things will look good again.  The EU economy may never catch up to the US economy but thats another story.  GREECE looks like a good buy to me.

My book

Im wanting to finish my book soon.  I would rather publish something this year than work on it forever until it is a masterpiece.  The problem is i am not sure of what the point of the book should be. I wanted it to be focused on me learning how to trade and easing into it.  Economic events would be mentioned as they happened.  I would include my own observations.  I feel like just talking about myself could be boring.  Maybe what i have is good and i can just add more about world events.  Then the book could be about someone learning how to trade and the economy during that time.  I would rather be a reporter of events than an egotistical hopefully-a-future-success type of author.  My own trading could be in the background with events in the foreground. It would be the opposite of what i first intended. Yeah, that sounds good.  I like it.

People Do Not Care About Principles

People of the world definitely do not care about principles, they only care about what they already know.

When there was a shooting in Paris, 'the world cried', 'jes suis paris' and all that solidarity stuff.  When ten times as many people were being slaughtered or enslaved in africa at the same time hardly anyone said a word about it.

Recently there was a shooting at a homosexual night club in Orlando, Florida on 'latin night'.  It was in the news a lot for a couple weeks.  Just now a shooting at an airport in Turkey resulted in almost triple the amount of dead/wounded but with little coverage.  It was significantly worse than what happened in Orlando.  Orlando has a good reputation, its fun.  They even opened up the airport the next day.  Just a busy day for police, paramedics and custodians, back to work!

People don't care about violence so much, only violence that is near them or near something they consider special.

Many people do not check their 401k's that often but lately they have been because Brexit was in the news.  Many people made trades to change their portfolios when the market only went down a percent or so.  People were scared, but hardly anything happened.  It has only been a few trading days since and market averages are almost back to where they were.  But people were scared just because it was in the news.  They were scared because they consider the United Kingdom a special place.  If Denmark or Estonia or Poland left the EU, noone would say much because they dont have nice reputations like the UK.  In the UK there is a royal family and old clock towers and bridges.  James Bond, Elton John, The Beatles, Adelle, Rolls Royce, Bentley, Jaguar, Land Rover, Triumph, Robin Hood, Winston Churchill, fish n chips, chef Gordon Ramsey and the list goes on.  The UK has a reputation where they have stuff and its a 'good' country.  These ignorant investors I share breathable air with may not be able to  locate Britain on a map or tell me why leaving the EU is a good or bad thing, but they were scared.

Of course I did nothing.  I am in long term trades so one hiccup in the markets does not matter.  Even if I was in short term trades, I would have let them run there course or at the most, avoided trading going into the vote.  I am just so great it hurts.  Humility is for the runner up.

I just feel like everyone is confirming for the millionth time that they are clueless about what is happening in the stock market and their retirement accounts.  But now I am wondering, what changes did people make?  Apparently nothing too drastic.  The market has gone back to where it was.  The gap down from brexit has almost filled as of now.  I am still buying Dfemx, still buying China.  Speaking of China, Hong Kong is in a recession.  That island's economy has been touch and go for a while. 

Well, at least Brexit happened.  That is something.  It is really boring when there is nothing going on.  You can always count on the British to try things.  They do stuff when they are bored.  I think they have too much knowledge and expertise for there own good.  It has to get real boring being an island on the west side of Europe.  Someone should let the British run Europe instead of Europe running Britain.

Is this it?

Brexit caused a big down day in equities.  2 trillion $  in value is now gone. It looks like an all time high was reached the night before, then americans woke up to a big gap down as the votes were counted in merry old england.  The s & p was down over 3%.  Im liking it.  Maybe this is the first step in the equity selloff.  Of course, i would prefer a non-energy sell off rather than an all out equity sell off.  I dont have control over that.  China cant go much lower so my china trade may push up as the west goes down.  My oil trade is still thinking but i know eventually it will disconnect with the rest of the market.  Soon it may be considered a safe haven.

We'll see.

The British Exit

So British citizens voted to completely leave the EU by a small margin.  I think actual sentiment barely leaned toward remaining inside the EU but those people were not as diligent about getting out to vote.  It is the aspect of voting people forget about and polls don't really show it.  There is not too much action going on outside of some reshuffling between currencies, stocks and the like.  There are fake rumors about layoffs and relocating.

The exit itself doesn't mean much other than some technical changes will occur, mostly British will govern themselves.  For now it probably is better that they leave the EU.  When you become a state of a larger entity, it should be because it is mutually beneficial.  The state should be above average compared to the existing states, which Britain was.  The larger entity overall should be better than the state overall which it is not.  And that is the problem.  It really wont be worth it for Britain or any developed nation to join the EU until the EU has uniform policies like a real nation.  Right now its just a big bag of mixed treaties and recommended fiscal policies.  There is little accountability and in the end Germany is the real beneficiary.  The financial crisis of 2008 left several countries with a much smaller economy, strike one.  The migrant crisis  has caused violence, vandalism, no-go zones and has pissed off taxpayers, strike two.  I guess they will trudge along until they fail at another crisis, which would be strike three.

The most important thing I got out of this whole European bureacratic squabbling is that the former mayor of London who helped the Brexit campaign has really cool hair.  A big, randomly combed, mop of hair.

Financial Farmer

Lately I have been thinking about how I like to enter fairly long trades which may last a few years or so.  To me it is like growing trees.  I plant a seed or branch and wait.  I may water and nourish it for a while to get it going but at some point it will look like it is growing well.  This is like the period when Im buying low.  Eventually i may dig it up and sell the whole tree but if I have several trees growing they will be sold at different times.  This is like me having several trades going.  That is basically my diversification and it would create a fairly stable capital gain income. I want to plant a row of trees and eventually I will expect to sell a different one each year.  Right now I only have two trades going but I may enter a third trade next year depending on if China starts moving up.  If China does go up overall, then I will stop buying DFEMX and just wait to sell it.  At that time I could buy something else that is down.  I have heard of a trader comparing their style to being a farmer.  I am not sure if it exactly how I am looking at it.  Over time I will look forward to adding more and more trades.  I should get to the point where I am always about to enter something new and exit something old.  I am not there yet.  I am still just buying more and more of one thing until I am forced to buy something else.  That probably won't happen again.  I have two trees on my farm.  My choice of seeds are limited but I may look into opening a Traditional IRA if it would let me buy a better variety of seeds/industries.  I will worry about that a little later.  It will be a nice problem to have.

Brexit vote on June 23

By William James, Freya Berry and Patrick Graham

LONDON (Reuters) - The world's biggest banks including Citi and Goldman Sachs will draft in senior traders to work through the night following Britain's referendum on EU membership, set to be among the most volatile 24 hours for markets in a quarter of a century.

A vote to leave the European Union on June 23 would spook investors by undermining post-World War Two attempts at European integration and placing a question mark over the future of the United Kingdom and its $2.9 trillion economy.

Its the superbowl of british financial assets.  One day people poll to remain, then a week later it goes the other way.

It is a big deal because people want to be ready to move in the right direction.  They are not sure what will happen.  Some might be stressing out over it.  I would think positive.  There are very few potential outcomes in price movement.  Up, down, and nowhere.  Brexit wont have a big impact on me but even if it did , all i would do to prepare is the usual. In My longer term trades, brexit wont change final outcomes but it could change short term movement.  Short term movement means very little to me. 

Auto Sales

Financing for the average new car is longer than ever.  The avg cost is over 30k which is high.

Today i saw a guy in a new small BMW.  He used to drive a small Infiniti which was possibly 5 years old.  I guess it was getting too old and worn out for him.  He could be leasing a new $35k car every few years or buying one every several years.  Either way he is getting a bad deal.  Maybe he is having tons of fun driving through traffic, you never know.  Im assuming he would say that he loves his new little BMW.  He probably used to love the Infiniti.  If you really love a car you would keep it for 15 or 20 years and occasionally fix what breaks.  I would not pay about $700 a month for something i dont plan to keep for a long time. 

People seem vulnerable to a downturn.  Average folks are riding high.  Nothing to worry about.

Miami

Another Bubble Has Burst: The Miami Luxury Condo Market Is A “Ticking Timebomb”
Tyler Durden
Last year we warned that the luxury condo market in Miami was cooling down, and we also noted that one of the mail culprits was the fact that foreign buyers (especially Brazilians) were seeing their buying power crushed by the appreciating dollar.

Today, the bubble has officially burst and the Miami luxury condo market is a complete trainwreck. There are 3,397 condominiums available in the downtown Miami area, and at current prices it is estimated that it would take 29 months to sell those. A strong US Dollar has continued to force South American investors to unload recently built condos, adding inventory to an area where 8,000 units are under construction and nine towers have already been completed since 2013.

There was a similar real estate downturn in Florida prior to the 1929 equity crash. The wealthy are getting pinched.  Price per square foot doubled over the past few years but now the party is over.  Half of those gains could dissapear in a few months time.  Hmmmm, interesting.