What’s Everyone Doing with Stock Portfolios?

[Cranky]

I screwed up on GE. When the crash of 08 showed up I was holding Thousands of shares of it at around 50 a share, I can't remember, but that sounds about right. It went to 35, bought a load, went to 28, bought a load, bought at 22, 19, 16, and finally somewhere around 11. I wanted out and was cost averaging to get out. When my cost average got to 19 and some change and it got up to just over that I jumped out as fast as I could. I have never looked at GE again and never chased a stock to the bottom ever again.

Was doing that with GM years back until the writing was on the wall about what was to take place. Freaking BS ***********!

 

[YY1]

I got screwed by Frontier.

Bought them when they were paying 9.5%.

Value fell in almost direct proportion to the payout.
Every quarter the value drop was the same as the dividend I got.

I sold just below the break even point.

This was before they bought verizon.

My wife had some and never sold.

Today they are 26 cents.
(they were $150 in 2011)

I told her NEVER sell.

That's the beginnings of one of those "I has $50 in stock and 30 years later it was 200 MILLION".

They are an awfully big company to have penny stock prices.

 

[Chargered]

Theres a lot of blood in the street regarding financial losses due to this viral outbreak. Many of the experts are saying to hold on and weather the storm. What do you guys think - have you held your positions or bit the bullet and sold for safer pastures? I’ve always been a hold guy but admit this time it feels different.... What are you all doing?

Two months from now this virus thing will be over and life will be back to normal. There will be a lingering economic impact but a year from now it will all be history and the markets will be likely back to where they were, so no point in selling now and taking a loss. That would be very foolish. Hang in there and forget about it.

 

[Chargered]

Personal finance rule number 1. Don't mess around with buying individual stocks. Unless you work as a mutual fund manager or work on Wall Street, you really have no clue what is going on and by the time you get the news on a company the professionals have already traded on it. Stick to no-load mutual funds and even better yet, buy the broader market with an index fund such as the S&P 500 index or total stock market index. DON'T waste your time and money on individual stocks, unless you just want to do some gambling.

 

[44070dart]

^^ Agree, got rid of my last stocks some years ago. Have diversified mutual funds accounts and they have been less worrisome, I don't have to look weekly or daily. Of course there getting kicked in the *** now also.

 

[SteveSS]

I put everything into cash reserves 2 weeks ago. I'll buy back when I think it's going up for real.

 

[Dennis H]

I put everything into cash reserves 2 weeks ago. I'll buy back when I think it's going up for real.

Then the train will have left the station. Moving large amounts contributes to volatility and delays recovery.

 

[YY1]

Personal finance rule number 1. Don't mess around with buying individual stocks.......... unless you just want to do some gambling.

I'll spare the red X but I disagree.

I've had very little loss and I've had three triples (including that 4.5x on ford) and five doubles in almost exactly 20 years.
Not to mention my average income on those holdings was 7.5% before the tank.

NAIC (national investor's club) says you should expect a double every ten years and maybe one triple in your lifetime.

I don't short sell, I don't margin, I don't day trade and I don't option.

Any investment in stocks, mutual funds or otherwise is gambling.

 

[GetX'd]

Today as Trump declared a national emergency and laid out federal plans the market bounced 2000 points. Thank God for that.. I was beginning to think we were going to zero. A well done press conference with all the leaders there - private and federal. We needed some bounce up and hopefully we’ve seen the lows ....

 

[Cranky]

Woohoo, my account is up 4% today.....better than going down another 4%. Now I'm only down 36%

 

[jason79]

Holding. The market will rebound. On a side note I just refinanced my new home that we had finished in December. Dropped from 4.125% to 3.125%. On a 30year mortgage. Saved me 82 grand in interest. Made 2 payments and refinanced. There are some upsides to this hype virus.

 

[Darius]

Wish I had money to be buying stocks right now.

I sure as hell wish I had some sidelined cash right now, yesterday actually.

 

[bearman]

I'll bet lift and Uber having tough times.

 

[Bee1971]

Great Advice

 

[GetX'd]

I'll bet lift and Uber having tough times.

You wouldn’t think so if you were getting one at LAX - we flew in Sunday night and caught an Uber home. There were hundreds of people lined up to catch one of them. It was an absolute zoo. What I did discover was that Uber was 30% cheaper from lax than Lyft. I always thought it was the other way around.

 

[bearman]

Now business cut throating to keep it rolling. Small business going to be hurting in 30 days as profit levels drop there is more to this than a virus.

 

[GetX'd]

Small caps must be getting crushed. Any new money should be going into big caps. At least you know there won’t be large scale bankruptcies in those. I pity the small business owner. They probably don’t have what is needed to weather this storm in many cases. We haven’t seen the last of the bottom yet...

 

[Cranky]

Would not care to be a taxi driver right now. My dad did that back around 1960 and I'd go with him on weekends and 'help' the ladies open and close the doors and load anything into the trunk if needed. They loved it....and of course I wasn't sharing the tip lol. Thought about maybe getting into driving but not too sure I'd care to do that these days.

 

[Wojo68]

Don’t even want to look

 

[Under Pressure]

Yesterday I bought, lots of financially strong industries to chose from that I feel are “on sale”

Under Pressure but staying optimistic