Gosh, went to sleep local time, and woke up California time - it seems like it might have been more ideal to do the opposite to try and more quickly get adjusted to the time zone change?




Guess travel can be fun but also a bit exhausting ... anytime there's that change to routine, and we're doing more stuff than usual, and seeing different things, and all that. May just laze around in bed all day, and then watch Ryan Seacrest or Anderson Cooper drop the ball on tv tonight - will have to go out and get some groceries at some point, but don't seem to have the energy to do too much more than that this year ...


Would be great to spend the afternoon looking over stocks for next year. Should maybe also look for tips on how to short-sell, if am going to give shorting Sears a try?

May also spend some time e-shopping at Amazon - asked for Oprah's new book for Christmas, and instead got a gift certificate ... so will be able to buy that book and a couple more There was another Amazon Books store at the Westfield Century City mall we went to the other day, and they had a couple of neat displays with book recommendations - one display had both Oprah and Tim Ferriss' book ...

That orange book isn't a title would usually be drawn to, but it had a section on dealing with setbacks that looked amazing - will maybe be interesting to read some of the customer reviews to hear more about what everybody liked about the book?

And then there was also this display that gives recommendations for anybody who liked Tim Ferriss' last book - didn't have a chance to look through these books, so guess today should have more of a chance to check them out online ...

Our Uber driver from the valley the other day was finding it inconceivable how people could basically live in a freezer for +6 months of the year Guess the snow and cold feels just fine if that's what one is used to - it feels really nice to be home

Although guess the iphone photography opportunities will be in short supply for the next several months - have one more pic from the plane yesterday, although it only turned out so so, with the window limitations lol

Too bad the Winter series isn't running today on Stars - it may have been nice to play a mini-stakes tournament this afternoon while doing my other stuff on my laptop.
It looks like they'll be running again tomorrow, so will have a chance to give one of the Micro tourneys a try then ... although $2.20 is higher than my usual stake?

Okay, climbing back under the covers now ...

May turn in soon lol


Will have to try to do a little year-end review tomorrow, and try to come up with a couple of new projects for the new year. Anybody have any interesting resolutions?


Happy 2018 everybody!!

Haven't made much progress on my year-end review just yet Am also playing some Winter Series tourneys on Stars though, and headed out for a little bit for a coffee, etc.

Guess milestone days are kind of good to have every once in a while - as kind of a chance to look back and re-assess, to better make plans moving forward? Guess taking stock of life is maybe a little more heavy than my usual living in the moment with time spent on silly stuff though


Have been seeing a bunch of interesting little articles with life tips and inspirational quotes and what have you being posted today at the start of the new year - many of them have been pretty interesting to look over, so guess that's been taking up some time as well?

Also, am still looking over stock stuff for the new year ...


Hey, looks like was just given a huge gift in my $2.20 bounty tourney - wow, am so lucky!

Got caught bluffing, which shifted my table image from $2.20 fish to $2.20 bluffer, and wasn't able to recover



Good thing the next tourney in the Micro bracket for the Winter Series is only $1.10 - fitting that it'll be a move down stakes

Oh well - poker's still good fun ... lots of nice people playing, with today being a holiday and stuff ...

Had a little time tonight to catch up on the latest over at PokerNews for the first time in a while - they had an article about Dnegs' year-end blog, where he talks about being break-even/losing for two years in a row, so that was kind of an interesting one.

Was also able to catch up on that weekly collection of Instagram photos and twitter comments, called 'Off The Felt' - there's always lots of pics of people having fun surrounded by the most gorgeous scenery, so those are always fun to see. And there was this funny tweet

Gosh, have been feeling so low self-esteem about making investing picks for this year. Guess there's not a ton that can be done in the here and now to make up for a lack of experience - my go-to thing to compensate for any lack of experience would usually be to try and read everything available of every possible option, so at least will have tried my best. But with there being something like over 9000 US stocks on the market, there's no way that was going to be possible - and that's not even including stuff like ETFs and foreign stocks!

Yesterday the situation had me feeling little better prepared to make picks than the proverbial monkey with the dartboard, what with this being a potentially trickier year to make picks if the market winds up staying more flat as some people are expected? Funny thing though - looks like today everybody came out of the gate looking to invest all their fresh deposits to their tax free accounts ... and look where everbody chose to put their money. Wonder if maybe it's a decent indicator of what everybody else sees doing well in the coming year?

Because of my low confidence, was just going to try to stick mostly to the same safe picks that served me so well last year - but now that they're so overvalued, guess it shouldn't have come as such a surprise that they only did so-so today?

Compared to the big stocks in China that was eyeing, but was too afraid to follow through with? So many of them had such a great day today ...

And then one of the other areas that was eyeing but didn't follow through with was Canadian pot - and here's how they did today:

Even gold did way better than my FANG stocks today!

On the other hand my robotics ETF and some of the other stocks was watching from the Investing section contest only did so-so today. And it looks like many of the emerging market ETFs only did okay, including the China one?

Although - maybe it's too soon to read too much into how these stocks may fare the rest of the year, based just on what happened today? Managed to short some Sears ...

And even that wound up going up over 5% today - so am really hoping today isn't a sign of things to come for the rest of the year, as far as my short goes lol

Some of those China stocks look like they're hugely overvalued, but am not sure. Guess will maybe avoid those, but may try some of the others?

Oh yeah - also WTW went up something like 7% today ... am hoping Oprah will be my angel and help make me rich this year!


Feel like there's a lesson in all of this - that it's important to have faith in oneself, and that chosing the safe route can oftentimes be costly in life. That was going to be the theme of my year-end post as one of the things had learned this year - but guess learning to take that lesson to heart may still very much be a work in progress, if lack of confidence is still holding me back from being my best self?

Guess it's a work in progress, much like that year-end review - a couple of years ago it took me 29 days to finalize my year-end review ... am for sure hoping to have it done sometime before 2019!


Anyways - so there's the SHLD short to sweat. And have been looking at stocks and enjoying the Winter Series, as well as getting settled into my new job. The new job's super great so far, sample size of a day Everything's super chill because there's not a lot of competition, and my aunt's my boss But really want to do the best job possible because it's a family business, and everybody's counting on me - so will be spending time trying to learn the routine, and then there may be a chance to explore new stuff like customer outreach and promos. Should still wind up being more $ for less work though, so that's going to be pretty sweet

More stocks and Winter Series tomorrow

Wasn't happy with my FANG portfolio, so did a bunch of juggling around of stuff today and was able to add some of those other picks that was looking at - and now my list of stocks is quite long! Guess it's maybe something of an 'everything but the kitchen sink' approach? Have tried to pick a bunch of things that show promise - and hopefully the bulk of them wind up doing okay??

Wanted to add how little my portfolio is actually up so far, because it's taken me a couple of days just to figure out what to try - and then it's taken some time to transer funds between accounts and have the money be free and available to re-invest, and stuff ...


Those Canadian marijuana stocks could be the bitcoin of 2018 - the charts have all gone parabolic ahead of legalization on July 1! Not sure if maybe this is too large an amount, but decided to try putting about half of my money into pot this year?

The only thing is that these stocks seem to have the same huge swings that bitcoin sometimes has - a couple of days ago, they apparently had to stop trading on a couple of them because they were down over 10% in a matter of minutes. But now a couple of them are up over 40% in just 2 days! May have jumped from the fire to the frying pan ... or is the other way around?

(Looks like Sam once again bought at all-time highs, pardon the pun. May have to be prepared for prices to drop a ways before they go up again? )

Also, 16 stocks will be a lot to follow! Will have to try really hard not to get distracted, and stay up to date with things!! Would be so me to be caught flat-footed giggling over grumpy cat comics while some new pot legislation gets passed and my stocks all start tanking, or something like that


Anyways, will just try my best and see how things go - GL to all of us with our investing!! Pretty fun to be able to make money from a hobby, from the comfort of home

Am still up lounging around in my jammies reading headlines

Wonder if this person may be onto something?

Guess was hoping my stock picks would hopefully grow, even if the market overall winds up staying kind of flat - but maybe there may be better choices if the market starts taking a downturn?

Not sure how high the chances of a downturn might be - guess it wouldn't hurt to look around for some stuff that might possibly do better when things aren't doing so great with the market overall? Like maybe some of those volatility indexes, or something like that maybe - would they do well during a downturn ... not sure so will have to investigate?


Tomorrow, should maybe try to start making a little list of investing things that might be nice to take a closer look at this year - haven't officially started to make up a list yet, and it already feels like it's gotten quite long!


Guess that's it for tonight

My pot stocks all dropped 10% today - should have maybe stuck with crypto Or play money - my play money portfolio is doing a gazillion times better than my real one

Hopefully in Canada it was just variance - some of the pot stocks in the US dropped something like 35% after a Senator said he was going to repeal some Obama regulations or something like that?

Speaking of crypto, wound up selling my ripple before the holidays around $1.15, because the graphs didn't look so great ... and then it wound up going up to $2 Then was going to maybe buy some again if it dropped back down to around $1 ... and instead it rose up to $3

Guess do people maybe especially like ethereum and ripple because of their corporate partnerships? Also maybe is XRP's price is also going up because there's been some of those rumours of it maybe getting added to Coinbase sometime soon? Don't seem to have the greatest feel for crypto But maybe those are two solid reasons to maybe consider getting back into it, for maybe a little bit? If the price of ripple would just drop back down to $2.50 ...


Feeling kind of low energy - it's been super cold out all week, so have spent most of my time indoors and the seasonal affective disorder's really been kicking in. Will be nice to have the weekend to relax and catch up on some reading ... also the Winter Series Main Event is on Sunday ...

May turn in early

Price spikes of a coin you hold is better than coffee in the morning.

Congrats on the ethereum HUMBLE.!! Looks like you've been handsomely rewarded with some super nice gains, for hodling since like ... $300, $350?


Looks like one of my three limit orders got filled today - last night, put in some orders for ETH, ETC, and XRP ... and it looks like the price of ripple must have dropped back down to $2.50 sometime today? So am back on the crypto train as well - am looking forward to experiencing a coffee-like wake-up one of these mornings, thanks to my ripple holdings Need all the help can get in the morning, as am usually quite a sleepy one at the beginning of the day ...




Such great weather in sunny So Cal - hope you have a nice weekend HUMBLE.!!

Some of those sites like Yahoo and Seeking Alpha have set up a feature so everybody can put together a list stocks they would like to hear more about, and then the site will show all of recent articles and stuff for all the picks?


Here's the top of the page on Yahoo for my picks this year:

And underneath the list of stocks all the articles show up:

The one on Seeking Alpha has a bunch of articles they've put together themselves, and they had this one the other day about one of my marijuana stocks ...

Oh dear, that really doesn't sound good at all The market got off to such a white-hot start, didn't really have time to do a ton (or any) research on anything - yikes!

Guess unlike with crypto, the markets thankfully take the weekend off - guess that will give me the time to do the research should have probably done last weekend? Hopefully better late than never?


It's so cold out, guess it's the perfect weather to stay indoors and catch up on reading - will get started tomorrow

Oh look, today is #caturday!!1!

So lovely


Am playing the Winter Series, and was looking at cats - so should start looking at my stocks sometime soon

Was looking at the Canadian marijuana stocks a little this morning and they all look super overvalued - yikes! So will definitely start off with them ...


Hope everybody has a nice day!

Happy Cat-urday Sam, love the piano video seems like that cat is really getting into the performance!

I was shopping at the grocery store passing by the section where they have balloons and low and behold there was Grumpy Cat with his own really cool snarky balloon. Didn't take a picture but here is a fun one from Imgur displaying the iconic status "Tardar Sauce" has attained.



Caught a neat "Planet Money" podcast covering lost bitocoins that was well done, some poor British guy featured lost a staggering sum and was reduced to combing a landfill in hopes of finding a discarded hard drive. It seems the biggest losers appear to have been folks who got on board early when the price was low then forgot about the holdings until prices shot up.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2...bitcoin-losers

They also touched on the HODLER, always fun to learn a new acronym!
Does your research into pot stocks include sampling the different products, if so that could be interesting!

Sorry to hear about your pot stocks Sam!
Iv been putting money into weed myself for a few years now and have generally been happy with the returns iv gotten.
We may have been looking at things from different angles tho

Didn't get as much done today with the stock research as had hoped - it wasn't for lack of trying, but am sometimes not so great with organizational stuff, and stuff like that? So trying to learn more about 20 stocks all at the same time, with the info spread out all over the internet has turned out to be something of a challenge it seems Not sure how else to describe it, but can't seem to set up a workable collection system for the info have been finding, so can actually start looking at all of it in an organized way?




Some of it might be because some of the stock tickers are kind of similar for similar products, like ACB and APH, not sure? Anyways, just tried setting up a google doc online for each stock, with little bits of info have collected ...

... so will continue with that tomorrow, and see if that starts to help. And if not, will have to try something else


Tomorrow's the Main Event for the Winter Series -

Guess technically there's $25k of overlay for each of the tourneys, with the Micro $2.20 one only having a $50k guarantee to begin with. But having never won a tourney with that high an entry (lol ), guess am not feeling super excited about the extra prize to be won - am probably more excited about the Winter Olympics starting in a couple of weeks

Canada seems to do well in a couple of other sports besides hockey, so it looks like we may have a chance to win some medals in some of those X-Games sports ...

Okay, guess that's it for today - more stock research and poker on the agenda for tomorrow ...

Grumpy!! Grumpy's my favorite - such a star ... and a marketing genius to boot!!

There's a video of a cat with a piano that's even more fun because the cat plays a duet with people ... and she's in tune too, and everything! The vid's gotten over 10 million views on youtube!

Thanks so much for the new bitcoin podcast Hank!! NPR's so high quality - look forward to listening to it


haha - not sure if there's any investing samples for that different kind of 'return' besides just profits lol! The stocks have already been so popular - have a feeling if they started giving out bonuses to investors, the price would go through the roof?

For some reason, never really got into pot - guess Sam gets high on life Even in school where pot was really popular, just never seemd to have the urge to do pot - and then wound up with the nickname Snow White for a little bit ... guess because pot was so popular that not being into it was that rare?

Spoiler:

Also, 'Hi, how are you? Have an nice day!' etc lol

If there's any samples, Hank and marke. guess you have first dibs Fun posts - hope you're both having a great weekend!!

The Winter Series Main Event's only been running for 8 minutes, and have already managed to lose about 20% of my stack - and that's with me registering late ... and there's 4 sitters at my table!

Oh dear, oh dear lol ...


Playing's fun while it lasts - so hopefully will be able to last for a decent while to at least have a little fun this afternoon


GL to anybody playing this afternoon!!

Somehow managed to last another something like 6hrs in that ME Kind of wish had wound up busting early after all, because was having one of those days where just couldn't seem to do anything right and wound up feeling like a total heehaw ... like even more than usual


Oh well - didn't get much done with my stock research while the tournament was on, but have since. Great news - it looks like the google docs have helped with the organization, and was able to make a little progress. After grinding gears and going nowhere for several days, am super thrilled to have found something that seems to be helping

It looks like maybe Aphria may be the best priced of the 4 Canadian marijuana companies that was able to find that trade on the TSX ... and may even be one of the ones in better shape? A couple of them don't seem to be turning a profit just yet?

Have some more articles to look through - maybe they'll help explain why ACB.TO is doing so much better than the others?

Can Anything Deflate Cannabis Stocks Before Legalization?
Marijuana Stocks: Is Now the Time for Investors to Take the Profit?

So thrilled to have made some progress - because after looking through the marijuana stocks, will have to start looking more closely at my stocks from China - decided to sell my China ETFs and just buy stocks of Tencent (TCEHY), JD (JD), and Weibo (WB), but some of them looked like they were overvalued as well?


Going to do more reading now

Oprah's getting some special award on the Golden Globes - she looks a bit thin-ner than before ... and everybody loves her!

Hope my WTW stock gets a boost tomorrow?

Am really regretting not being more diligent over the weekend with my stock research - am practically falling asleep in front of the computer now




Did finally get around to reading two strategy pieces tonight that were written very recently about how to maybe approach investing in Canadian marijuana right now, since the market has gotten so hot.


The first one is from Motley Fool - that site kind of seems like it might have a bit of a smaller budget, and maybe don't have the resources to fully sift through all the little details, or something? Like a couple of years ago, there was a writer there who was really gung-ho about Amaya, and would write buy pieces at least once a month So guess have mostly been looking at their articles for any fresh info - and then when it comes to their tips, will usually look around to make sure there are other sites giving similar advice?

Here was their advice for how to invest in marijuana right now:

And then, was able to find another advice piece written on Seeking Alpha - it seemed to agree with many of the observations from the Motley Fool piece, but did a full valuation of Canopy Growth (WEED.TO) which was super interesting to see! And then came up with a different strategy approach ...

This article was so good - may post the entire thing tomorrow, even though it's about 8 screens long. It seems like it may be helpful to be able to refer to this person's valuation and be able to see all the pieces of info that are important to look at before investing in a stock?

Guess the analyst was basically saying that this is a rare chance to buy into a new market in it's early stages, where there's already a large established demand that's merely going from black market to legal because of legalization. But because valuations are so high, it's maybe better to hope there's some sort of bad news that sends prices down temporarily, and wait to buy then?


Gosh, should maybe re-read it again tomorrow when am more awake But maybe having half my roll in pot right now may be a bit too risky, if there's a decent chance of a downturn - so maybe to sell and hope for the downturn and buy then instead?


Guess so much of investing is just reading and reading to make sure to have read everything that there is to read, so every angle has been covered? Will do more reading tomorrow

Wasn't able to get my password to work before all the spots in the PCA Anagram Freeroll were gone - boo!

There's another investing contest happening in the Investing section:

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrianTheMick2

Tooth is finally going to open a real money account. We have a bet that he can't get it from a $1k deposit to $5k by the end of 2018.

I'm starting to doubt whether he can actually open an account.

Have always wondered what sorts of returns are possible with investing and trading - so was pretty excited to see the investing contest am participating in pop up this year, as a chance to see what sorts of returns may be common?

And then now there's this second contest with options - was quite astounded to see the amount of return they settled on! For 500% to be within the realm of possibility, wonder what sort of returns may generally be achievable in any given year - 50%, 100% ... 200%?


Have been trying to learn more about options so will be able to follow the thread, but they're a bit in the weeds and my head's gotten a bit dizzy a couple of times lol

Did manage to find this little big picture article from CNBC - they said when there's earnings surprises, it's possible to make really huge returns - and the rest of the time more often than not it should still be possible to wind up in the plus on average, so buying options around earnings season may not even be super high risk?

Had no idea these sorts of returns were even possible - gosh, didn't even realize 30% returns were possible just from buying FB and forgetting about it for years on end. There's so much misinformation out there about the optimal line for investing being ETFs that track the Dow, with their 8% annual return - guess maybe that's the optimal line for many people, but for the poker/chess types guess so much more is likely possible?

Although ... Sam is a poker/chess type, albeit maybe right on the line of like poker/chess type and fish? As in like, probably those elite level performances may not be possible for me, with my attentional issues, and leaky head, and what have you


Guess finding out more about what's achievable with investing by others will be one thing - and then will have to try things out on my own and see what's achievable for me lol Super important for everybody to try and achieve one's best possible return though, since investing seems to be one of those areas where playing it safe can maybe be super costly, with compound interest and all that?


Like here's how much a 10 year term deposit with a 3% return would be worth for someone with $100k to start ...

And then, it's amazing because someone who only has half that amount in the present day, that's free to invest in the market can surpass someone with twice the wealth so fast with different asset allocation ...

For a shark, maybe it might be possible to surpass the person who started out with more money after only 2 years?

Or if a 50% rate of return is possible, guess it would take 3 years to surpass a more conservative investment of twice the starting cash?

30% seems like it may be doable most years, if there's several stocks who have had 30% returns year after year, like FB? Guess that would take 4 years?

Gosh, not sure if options may be a bit too in the weeds for me Could maybe see if am able to find some that are super cheap, so if they get screwed up it won't be super costly?

Didn't have very great experiences with shorting last year - and my Sears short got off to a super rocky start this year as well, going 5% the wrong way right off the bat. But now things seem to be going so well, even tried to short more shares today. My broker didn't have any left to lend out, but am pretty happy to have shorting going much better than last year.


So that's what am working on right now - am trying to learn more about buying calls. Will see how that goes??

Have a mid-day update with the options - placed an order for a JPM option last night before going to bed. And it went so well, wound up buying two more this morning - one more as an experiment ... and one for real!

The gains on these options is astounding!

The earnings for JPM and PNC get released tomorrow morning, so guess that's why they may be especially active today?

Guess if this were a real amount of $ instead of just $155.24, could maybe sell and lock in the gains instead of risking the price going down tomorrow morning? But have been following the CNBC guidelines from the article above, and they make it sound like it's more EV in the net to wait for the earnings reports and hope for a big payoff?


Anyways, so guess there's a mini-sweat with these options - will have to see if the price keeps going up this afternoon, and will have to see if it might have been better to sell and take the sure thing, or if it was better to wait for the earnings report and hopefully will be up even more by tomorrow?

Anyone else shocked to see double digit gains on options? Had no idea such gains were possible ...

Here's my real order - the earnings for Citigroup aren't until next Tuesday, so will be interesting to see how high this one goes with there still being a couple of more days to go before earnings ...

Maybe should be buying even more??

The Different Ways of Investing in the Stock Market


Was lurking in the trading thread in the investment section, when it kind of dawned on me that there's maybe a bunch of different ways to try and make money in a market?

1. Long-Term Growth Stocks
   • 30% per year possible?
   • Warren Buffett stocks of quality companies that grow steadily over time
   • low maintenance - can buy and hold and forget about them for years on end
    
2. Value Picks
   • >30% per year possible perhaps, not sure??
   • beaten down stocks of companies who have faced setbacks, that are starting to turn things around
   • maintenance - do these tend to be shorter-term holdings, not sure? Maybe only because the gains taper off, so people move on to try to find other stocks with better growth potential??
    
3. Short-Selling
   • >30% per year possible?
   • long-term: companies with no hope of a turnaround?
   • short-term: also possible
   • maintenance - varies?
    
4. Options
   • see below
    
5. Day-Trading Bubble Stocks
   • see below

Some Observations about Investing

1. Bubble Stocks - price has decoupled from underlying value

Guess it didn't really occur to me before, but guess the prices of all the other investing ways will tend to be a reflection of the valuation of the company/asset. So anything that's bubble-prone will tend to be more of a gamble?

2. Options - price is a derivative of the underlying stocks, so gains and losses seem to tend to get magnified?

Buying options before earnings basically seems to be like sports-betting on a company meeting their earnings expectations? So if they hit there's a payoff, and if they miss you can pretty much lose all your money?

Some Portfolio Updates

Marijuana Stock Update

Sold all my marijuana stocks the other day, and was going to wait for the price to drop to try and buy low. Unfortunately impatient Sam's idea of buying low turned out to still be a high

Was looking at the technical indicators, and could see that it would have been better to wait for the rsi to go down below 60 on the 1yr timeframe ...

Wound up buying around $35 while the rsi was still around 70, and now the price is something like $32.50. Guess am hoping the price will go all the way up to at least $44, since there's an analyst who feels that's a reasonable price for the stock?

So ... not sure if maybe marijuana stocks might be too risky, especially for someone like me who doesn't really excel at self-discipline to say the least? Or if it'll hopefully turn out to be okay, so long as am willing to weather the downswings in the short-term?

Options Update

Also have a update on my options - wow, are these things ever swingy! To put things in perspective, here's one of my FANG stocks which have held since the beginning of the year ...

And here's a couple of options have only held for a couple of days - so guess have been able to make more with less, in a shorter amount of time, with options?

Still have no idea if these gains are normal?? Not sure if maybe should be pocketing the Morgan Stanley gains, in case this is the best they do?


The Citigroup returns are disappointing, because the stock's currently trading at $36.50, way above the strike price. Have a membership to Kindle Unlimited, so have been able to look up help in various books, and there was one that was saying that sometimes these options sell at such a high premium that it's possible that the stock moves exactly as expected and one can still wind up losing money?

The Citigroup options were actually down a lot before they turned around, so guess maybe paid too high of a price for the options to begin with? Will have to see if am able to find out how to make sure to get better prices in the future?

Am so tempted to sell those Morgan Stanley options and just pocket the profits - but maybe that'd be a super fish move? Will they maybe be worth much more by next Wednesday??

This investing is still reminding me a lot of poker - where oftentimes find myself wondering if am making any progress? And anytime am in the plus, am never sure if it's just run-good or if things are going okay??

Have been trying to use good bankroll management - so will see how things go with all these little experiements?