Investing megathread extravaganza

[DaFace]

A place to talk about investing stuff.

[Discuss Thrower]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Hedging with commodities in a down turn. It’s not if but when investors move money to them when stocks go down. Looking to close option for profit, never owning shares though.

If it gets to that point the world as we know it is over anyway.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Hedging with commodities in a down turn. It’s not if but when investors move money to them when stocks go down. Looking to close option for profit, never owning shares though.

You don’t own shares of a commodity, you own a contract. Like a deliverable production contract. It’s not. But that’s what you’re doing. Looks like silver is 5000 ounces. But there are minis available.

As a dude that’s lost a mountain of money hedging, but if you’re certain that investors will move their money there within 4 months, just buy the damn contract. It won’t crater bad enough for your margin calls to get out of hand. Thing is if you’re right, you’ll get in the neighborhood of half the money. If it is indeed an “when not if” thing in the next 4 months, just do it dude. Options suck.

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

You don’t own shares of a commodity, you own a contract. Like a deliverable production contract. It’s not. But that’s what you’re doing. Looks like silver is 5000 ounces. But there are minis available.

As a dude that’s lost a mountain of money hedging, but if you’re certain that investors will move their money there within 4 months, just buy the damn contract. It won’t crater bad enough for your margin calls to get out of hand. Thing is if you’re right, you’ll get in the neighborhood of half the money. If it is indeed an “when not if” thing in the next 4 months, just do it dude. Options suck.

Small hedge. Basically only play I want to make until market stabilizes.

I know what owning a contract is.

I disagree. Im looking to profit without having to expense large positions of capital to do so. I’m not greedy with my call options. I look for a spike and sell to close position for profit. Just did it with SLV in early February for a $250 profit in a few weeks.

I’ve closed 80% of the calls I buy for profit as I don’t buy tons of really short term calls and buy many close to in the money. I’ll pay the premium for increased duration and close them on spikes

[Fat Elvis]

Originally Posted by TwistedChief

I am no expert in equity space, but I very much think the situation is going to get meaningfully worse and feel there's better than a coin flip's chance that there's a major panic in the US (read: store shelves empty, etc) over the next few months. I'm hardly a 'Chicken Little' in these situations, but I think the cat is out of the bag in terms of global containment. And the asymptomatic nature of transmission is just a really dangerous feature that makes it tricky for governments to navigate.

I also think it's possible/likely this lingers over the balance of the year and is a major factor in the election. That isn't good for Trump and probably would play into the hands of a candidate like Sanders who is advocating for universal health care at a time when a lot of people are sick and worried about the cost of coverage. And that wouldn't be good for equity markets either.

I very much hope that I'm wrong. Feel free to bump in a year when Trump is president, the virus has been forgotten, and SPX is 4000.

EDIT: Just wanted to add that markets have already done a lot of work in this direction. My speciality is fixed income and today we briefly reached the lowest 10y Treasury yield in history. Relatedly, the near-term (say, 3-6m) Fed rate path is priced aggressively but probably pretty fairly given the risks I laid out above. So it’s entirely possible that the market has spent the last two days waking up to this situation and now can find some time to consolidate and see if the worst fears actually realize.

CDC came out today and said to expect this to be "bad."

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Small hedge. Basically only play I want to make until market stabilizes.

I know what owning a contract is.

I disagree. Im looking to profit without having to expense large positions of capital to do so. I’m not greedy with my call options. I look for a spike and sell to close position for profit. Just did it with SLV in early February for a $250 profit in a few weeks.

I’ve closed 80% of the calls I buy for profit as I don’t buy tons of really short term calls and buy many close to in the money. I’ll pay the premium for increased duration and close them on spikes

If they’re close to the money they’re expensive. And they’re still on contract sized options, right?

But if it really is a when not if thing and your timeframe is 4 months, there shouldn’t be a ton of capital outlay. You can buy positions on margin. That’s why it’s called a margin call when you’re on it.

[scho63]

My Apple CALL options are rotting on the coronavirus tree

[lewdog]

Originally Posted by scho63

My Apple CALL options are rotting on the coronavirus tree

Buehler should have given you advice like he is me.

Never buy call options he says.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Buehler should have given you advice like he is me.

Never buy call options he says.

I've never bought options on stock. But I've bought a TON on commodities. If you're hitting at 80% you need to operate in contracts.

[Discuss Thrower]

Originally Posted by lewdog

Buehler should have given you advice like he is me.

Never buy call options he says.

In theory, anyone who doesn't have an economic need for options shouldn't bother with them.

But if you've got a few hundred bucks laying around there are worse outlets for your money that don't provide for nearly the same upside a well timed & placed call option contract.

It's just not very likely without sizing up inordinately to capitalize on a small spike in the underlying or being super duper right about a how big or how close a spike will be.

[Strongside]

Just getting dragged out here the past few days. The money I have in the market is disposable, so I’m not sick if I drop too much. Actually even bought a few aggressive dips today. I know that if I hold these discounts I’ll eventually see returns, but this thing just keeps looking more and more grim as we go here. Those returns may take a while. That’s assuming I don’t become a 70 year old chain smoker and die from the “slightly more inconvenient common cold” that is the coronavirus.

[Iczer]

401k dumb question of the day. I'm 34 and have my 401k 100% into a target date fund. Should I transfer this into large cap since I'm young and have time to ride it out?

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Iczer

401k dumb question of the day. I'm 34 and have my 401k 100% into a target date fund. Should I transfer this into large cap since I'm young and have time to ride it out?

The whole idea of target date funds is that you don't have to touch them. You can consider making moves to have more control if you want, but I wouldn't do it in reaction to a short term downturn.

[Iczer]

Originally Posted by DaFace

The whole idea of target date funds is that you don't have to touch them. You can consider making moves to have more control if you want, but I wouldn't do it in reaction to a short term downturn.

I'm not really reacting to the downturn, just thinking more long term. It seems that i'd stand to gain more in large cap over the years compared to target date. However now that I'm reading more, target dates are a bit more steady in big downturns.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Iczer

I'm not really reacting to the downturn, just thinking more long term. It seems that i'd stand to gain more in large cap over the years compared to target date. However now that I'm reading more, target dates are a bit more steady in big downturns.

Target date funds are diversified for you, so they'll naturally be more stable than going fully into stocks. That said, they can also be more conservative than some people need, so there are reasons not to use them. It's probably worth digging into the allocation of yours and comparing that to how aggressive you want to be.

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Iczer

I'm not really reacting to the downturn, just thinking more long term. It seems that i'd stand to gain more in large cap over the years compared to target date. However now that I'm reading more, target dates are a bit more steady in big downturns.

Target date funds are going to be more aggressive if you're younger, and that's the key more than being in any particular size or sector. Maybe a large cap will do better or maybe it won't, but at your age you should be investing in aggressive vehicles, and a target date fund will do that for you.

My personal opinion is that target date funds will get too conservative as you get older (age 55+), but that's really a factor of the amount you have saved. If you think you're not able to weather a downturn, then stay in the target date fund. But I think something that gets overlooked is that a person who is 60 still has 25 years of investing ahead of him. If you go too conservative at age 60, then it'll hurt you when you're in your 80s.