2011-12 day trading game part deux

[birdog1960]

volatility much? ANR up over 10% today but now just a little more than when i bought. will watch tomorrow to see if the time seems right for a move into more stability in ETF's for indonesia and chile. it makes me shudder to think that these are becoming havens.

[birdog1960]

selling 136 shares DFIVX - price to be determined at closing today.

[EasternOHBillsFan]

Buying 200 shares of CSCO @ $16.24 = $3,248.00

Buying 12 shares of GOOG @ $534.20 = $6,410.40

 

TOTAL: $9,658.40 in transactions

 

CASH: $9,684.30 - $9,658.40 = $25.90

[birdog1960]

selling 136 shares DFVIX @ 14.55= $1978.8

cash available = $2007.85

Edited September 8, 2011 by birdog1960

[birdog1960]

buying 64 shares of IDX @$31.00

 

cash =$23.85

Edited September 9, 2011 by birdog1960

[EasternOHBillsFan]

Buying 7 shares of MELA @ $3.30 = $23.10

 

TOTAL: $23.10 in transactions

 

CASH: $25.90 - $23.10 = $2.80

Edited September 9, 2011 by BmoreBills

[EasternOHBillsFan]

It is Charcoal Friday... ugh. almost down 400 points.

[erynthered]

Just think another speech on Monday about Jobs and we'll drop another 400.

 

 

Even with that drop the ones I picks are holding steady, as I thought they would.

[EasternOHBillsFan]

Just think another speech on Monday about Jobs and we'll drop another 400.

 

 

Even with that drop the ones I picks are holding steady, as I thought they would.

 

This plunge was based on European fears as stated this morning as it got bad.

[Peace]

I still have my $10,000.

[Magox]

All the German fiscal hawks are abandoning the ECB, I suppose the old inflationary fear mentality is a tough thing to get over if you are a German. If you think about it, the Italians are trying to pull a fast one on everyone. This is what happens, you bail them out by buying their bonds, when no one else wanted them, and now that they've been helped, they are reneging on their promises.

 

Printing money to buy their bonds should only be a temporary stop gap solution, but there seems to be no endgame. I wrote about this on this board about a year ago, that this strategy wouldn't work unless there is an endgame solution. Which means that they need to boot these irresponsible southern european nations from the bloc, and let them try to solve their own problems. Which means let them go back to their old currency and of course means they will try to print their way out of it. Starting with Greece. Or, some sort of real restructuring of debt, but of course no one wants to do that, because that means the main bondholders who would be German banks would have to take huge losses, which would most likely require a bailout from their country and could possibly have cascading effects.

 

Milton Friedman predicted this would happen in 99. His thesis was that it wouldn't work, this whole Euro experiment because there are too many chiefs in the room. With us, we have the dollar, and we make our decisions for ourselves. Over there they have one currency for a number of nations, andthe problem is that each country has their own unique sitution, and sometimes you need easing policies for some of the nations, and not for others (Germans).

 

Now the Germans are in a catch 22. It's a cluster!@#$ over there, and they aren't even remotely close to coming to an endgame solution. I don't even hear it being discussed. The only options I hear are maybe some Eurobond solution, that in my view will once again only buy time. I don't undestand how there are so many "intelligent" people at the helms of all these nations, and someone like me sees what needs to be done, but these jackasses don't. I don't get it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

edit: I was digging through and this is what I had wrote about a year ago:

 

 

We all know that the U.S has a serious $14 Trillion debt problem that appears to have no end in sight, specially now with this rigged Deficit Commission panel that is comprised of ideologues from both ends of the political spectrum. One party wants to raise taxes on those “evil” rich and the other just wants to cut spending, so most likely nothing substantive will come about until the Bond markets force us to take action. But this isn’t the point of this newsletter, what we are seeing now is that it’s not just the U.S that has a bad debt problem but pretty much the rest of the developed world such as Japan and Europe (particularly Southern Europe).

Remember, all the street protests and images coming from Greece, and it appeared that the Euro was in danger of breaking up? Greece was on the verge of defaulting and panic hit all the markets, chaos once again was creeping into the markets. It wasn’t just isolated to Greece, but contagion had hit and all the periphery nations were getting infected as well. Basically any European economy that had a high debt load was being targeted by the Bond vigilantes. What this means is that bond investors that owned these southern European bonds deemed these investments as crap, and essentially were panic selling these bonds, forcing yields to go sharply higher. When yields go higher, that means that the interest paid on their debt goes higher, which means that it makes it very difficult for these countries to repay their debt.

So, the European Union along with the ECB came out with their $1 Trillion bazooka bailout and backstopped these economies. I wrote about this, I stated that this would only buy a certain period of time and that it wouldn’t actually solve the problem. Analysts for the most part agreed, but most analysts believed that it would buy a couple years of time. Hmmm, let’s see here, it has been how long? Yeaah, it’s only been about six months. Not good!

So now we are beginning to see the same thing happen again, Irish bond yields are rising sharply, and even worse yet, Spanish bonds are doing the same. So what was the immediate solution? You got it, another Irish bailout fund that totaled $125 Billion. How long do you think this assuaged the fears of the market? Ready for this? A whopping 24 hours, the markets gave a vote of no confidence.

Right now, there are no real solutions that are being offered. Yes, they are imposing austerity measures, which are intended to reduce their spending and their debt, and yes that is A part of the solution. But this will take more than just austerity to solve these problems. When Austerity measures (which means government cutting of spending) take place, there is a negative effect on growth. Think about it, you cut off the spending, then this does take away money from the economy. Which means that growth gets affected, and tax revenues go down even further.

 

What they really want to avoid is having to bailout Spain. It is estimated that if Spain ends up in the same position, which I believe it eventually will, their total bailout cost will be over $350 Billion. You think the Germans want to continue bailing out these countries? It is a political nightmare for Merkel the PM of Germany. Now some U.S official is talking about allowing US funds from the IMF to help with this possible future bailout. Yeah right! We barely can stand US bank bailouts, can you imagine the outrage here in the U.S if we are bailing out the Greeks , Spaniards and Portuguese? Yeah, I’m gonna say that isn’t going to happen.

The problem for everyone is that we are all interconnected. If you allow these economies to default on their debt payments, then we all take a tumble. What makes it tougher for the Germans for this not to happen is that their private banks are huge investors of these heavily indebted countries through their purchase of bonds. So they can’t have them default because if they do, they will take tremendous losses in the hundreds of billions of dollars and that would create chaos in their economy.

The real solution in my view is a three step process.

1) They have to impose tougher austerity measures

2) They do have to provide more funding to weather this storm

3) Last but not least, which they aren’t addressing as of yet is that they have to restructure the debt of these bonds with these private banks. Meaning that these banks that have been investing in these bonds need to take a hair cut on the value of those bonds. In other words take a certain percentage loss and lower the interest rates that these countries have to pay.

The reason why they aren’t doing this last part is because this would mean that the banks would have to take very large write downs (losses) which of course would affect banking behavior. Lending would go down, and the cost of credit would go higher, which means growth would be affected.

 

So what we can expect for now is that the ECB will ramp up their version of QE, which they adamantly oppose and would refute my characterization of QE, through the purchase of their bonds. Of course our motives are totally different, the U.S is buying bonds to stimulate the economy and boost inflation, where the ECB is buying bonds to support these failing economies. But it’s all the same, money printing is money printing, you say ToMAto, I say TOmato.

Edited September 10, 2011 by Magox

[birdog1960]

geez, i'm glad this is only a game!

[drinkTHEkoolaid]

starting 10,000 $

 

NFG 49 shares @ 61.40 $3008.60

UAL 106 shares @ 18.59 $1970.54

CSX 229 shares @21.85 $5003.65

 

total $9982.79

 

cash on hand $ 17.21

 

sell 106 shares of UAL @ 20.27 = +$2148.62

buy 137 shares of VSMIX @15.57 per share = -$2133.09 ($15.53 added into cash on hand)

 

________________________________

now have 49 shares NFG

229 shares CSX

137 shares VSMIX

$32.74 cash on hand

[John Adams]

Buy 4,464 shares GSS at 2.24.

 

(gold miner)

Edited September 15, 2011 by John Adams

[EasternOHBillsFan]

Thanks to yesterday's Google trading, I have finally fully recovered from Day 1 and over $10,000. Phew....

[Booster4324]

This game is getting depressing. I wish I had cashed out my mutual funds and bought APPL for real.

[sherpa]

5000 shares White Mountain Titanium @1.95. WMTM

 

Might not work out in the six month time frame of this game, but I'm confident it will be fine.

[birdog1960]

holy chit! just like my real portfolio, i can hardly look much less add up my losses. but this may be the major dip to buy in real life. magox, your thoughts here? have to muster some major guts.

[Magox]

I've been wanting to say something for a while now, but didn't really want to influence anyone's opinion regarding their positions, their real life positions that is, considering that the majority of you guys have REAL portfolios. I'd hate to say something, and then have someone ACTUALLY value my opinion and then adjust or tweek their portfolio and then end up having the market reverse.

 

I've been shorting precious metals. Even though I do believe it will reverse itself anywhere from the $1580-$1700 range. TLT probably wouldnt be a bad position considering that 1) the economy is weak so that should provide demand for bonds. 2) Europeans are in a world of hurt, and European bonds are riskier than American bonds and 3) The Fed is gonna buy 6-30 year bonds. Having said that, I don't believe TLT is a good long-term position to have. Once you see the economy pick itself back up, you could probably reverse that TLT and buy a TBT and make a killing.

 

I wouldn't touch Banks or even think about them. Their liabilities are huge unknown. We don't know the extent of all the bad paper they are holding. The economy isn't improving so that limits demand for loans. We don't know how much they will get sued for from both State AG's and from the federal government. Dodd-Frank regulations is expected to take a chunk out of earnings beginning 2012. Basel regulations are getting tougher. And last but not least, especially now with Operation twist, the yield curve is flattening which is a death knell for Banks. In other words there is too much uncertainty. Having said, they have been hit sooo hard, maybe they are actually fairly priced. But with the uncertainty out there, I wouldn't even think about them... That's just me.

 

I might add, I've never have seen an economy do well with the banking sector languishing.

 

Commodity stocks are plunging, in my view the biggest catalyst is the possible slowing down of the Chinese economy. We are gonna have to see how that plays out. If indeed the Chinese economy is slowing down more rapidly than analysts expect, we could possibly see a HUGE correction.

 

What's also troubling apart from the US slowing down, Europe on the verge of chaos and China possibly slowing down, you are now beginning to hear CEO's come out with cautious statements and downward revisions in demand estimates.

 

I just think you gotta be real cautious in what you buy, pick the top company of the sector that you are looking for and wait for the right time.

[TPS]

I've been wanting to say something for a while now, but didn't really want to influence anyone's opinion regarding their positions, their real life positions that is, considering that the majority of you guys have REAL portfolios. I'd hate to say something, and then have someone ACTUALLY value my opinion and then adjust or tweek their portfolio and then end up having the market reverse.

 

I've been shorting precious metals. Even though I do believe it will reverse itself anywhere from the $1580-$1700 range. TLT probably wouldnt be a bad position considering that 1) the economy is weak so that should provide demand for bonds. 2) Europeans are in a world of hurt, and European bonds are riskier than American bonds and 3) The Fed is gonna buy 6-30 year bonds. Having said that, I don't believe TLT is a good long-term position to have. Once you see the economy pick itself back up, you could probably reverse that TLT and buy a TBT and make a killing.

 

I wouldn't touch Banks or even think about them. Their liabilities are huge unknown. We don't know the extent of all the bad paper they are holding. The economy isn't improving so that limits demand for loans. We don't know how much they will get sued for from both State AG's and from the federal government. Dodd-Frank regulations is expected to take a chunk out of earnings beginning 2012. Basel regulations are getting tougher. And last but not least, especially now with Operation twist, the yield curve is flattening which is a death knell for Banks. In other words there is too much uncertainty. Having said, they have been hit sooo hard, maybe they are actually fairly priced. But with the uncertainty out there, I wouldn't even think about them... That's just me.

 

I might add, I've never have seen an economy do well with the banking sector languishing.

 

Commodity stocks are plunging, in my view the biggest catalyst is the possible slowing down of the Chinese economy. We are gonna have to see how that plays out. If indeed the Chinese economy is slowing down more rapidly than analysts expect, we could possibly see a HUGE correction.

 

What's also troubling apart from the US slowing down, Europe on the verge of chaos and China possibly slowing down, you are now beginning to hear CEO's come out with cautious statements and downward revisions in demand estimates.

 

I just think you gotta be real cautious in what you buy, pick the top company of the sector that you are looking for and wait for the right time.

Not that they were over-valued to begin with, or there couldn't have been a bubble, could there?