For those too lazy to look.....here is their 2020.....QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF INVESTOR BEHAVIOR. https://wealthwatchadvisors.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/QAIB_PremiumEdition2020_WWA.pdf Forty two pages.......of gold for investors.....if you can being yourself to learn the lessons that they document. "The goal of QAIB is to improve performance of both independent investors and financial advisors by managing behaviors that cause investors to act imprudently. QAIB offers guidance on how and where investor behaviors can be improved." In the opening page of the 42 page report Dalbar states: "The best financial professionals double as behavioral finance coaches of their clients. When markets are down or even volatile, questions will arise from concerned clients and perspective will be needed. The QAIB report and materials give advisors the tools to tell a story, put things into perspective, and deliver the calming messages that are needed to mitigate return-destroying behavior. Such messages include: The prudence of a long-term, buy and hold approach The folly of measuring investment success against statistical benchmarks Awareness of common behavioral influences Lessons from past markets The importance of investing assets as early as possible."
Not you , it was me , I was quoting Gtrudeau88 and got confused I can't even blame it on the coolaid !! Well Micron was my one shining star in a sea of red , and now it's red too !! Time for some coolaid
Yea that’s definitely some DEEP analysis on market behavior. I will just add the simple fact that everyone always seems to avoid - invest in a good business and you will have no regrets. It’s just like buying any good brand - it will last the LONGEST. I get that we all want THE BEST return on a company, and finding that one unicorn, but to me that’s just pure greed. I’m comfortable with a 7-15% annual return any day. That’s my goal with the stock market - get a nice return for my cash. I’m at a point where I’m concentrating my investments into 4-5 such companies annually, I don’t need more than that, and if other companies made more money this year that’s fine, I’m not competing with anyone, I’m just here to make modest gains for my cash. Once I meet those annual gains I MAY consider upping the ante and look to MAXIMIZE profits but based on what I see I’m not looking to trade one company for another on a regular basis to achieve that goal. I feel like people forget about that one fundamental rule when they see others make more money than them and that’s the beginning of the end. Some have less tolerance to volatility and if they see another person make more money than them, all along while they are owning a GOOD company/ies, they will get into that “trade mode” and at that point they are already becoming inconsistent and plunging into the depths of traders volatility. Pick a few companies you like that have performed well in the past and are doing well now. Plenty to chose from. Just don’t get greedy.
Don't ask me what I think of FA's I wanted to buy $XX,XXX of QQQ on March 8th He talked me into only investing half that , saying the futures didn't warrant it , april puts .......... blah blah blah as of today he cost me $X,XXX Chalk one up to "lessons learned" and another check mark in "trust your gut" Words to invest by: Pick a few companies you like that have performed well in the past and are doing well now. Plenty to chose from. Just don’t get greedy.
To be fair, if the 100-hour weeks claim is real, the pay isn't all that good. And assuming 2 weeks off every year, weekends, 7 hours of sleep a day, a 30-minute commute each way you are looking at an average of approximately 2.5 hours per day total not devoted to sleeping, work, or traveling to/from work. Getting rid of the commute turns that into an average of approximately 2.7 hours per day total not devoted to sleeping or work. For 2.5 (or even 2.7) hours of free time per day, I'd want a salary high enough that I can afford an at home chef and a maid. Now, I don't necessarily believe 100 hour weeks, just going off the claim in the article. And, living in an east coast city, I can say pretty confidently that a commute under 30 minutes each way is not entirely impossible but borders on unlikely. My commute is about 45 minutes but if I leave for/from work at the perfect time I can get that number down to about 35 minutes.
Got killed today. Down almost 2%. Only EQT in the green and not by much. Huge loss lead by KLIC (-6.80%) and NVDA (-3.10%). ALK, MSFT, GOOGLE down but less than the S&P. Gonna sign off now and go look for the aspirin bottle.
Just a sea of red .................. Overall Down .94% , worst acct DN 1.44% And the one green on my page, my daughters stock , Brookfield BEP
Like most people I was red today. But....I did beat the SP500 by 0.29%. My ONLY green stock.....Costco. Nothing goes straight up all the time. I am very happy with the recent markets.
Here we go....yet another DOOM&GLOOM scenario. This one based on student loan debt.........voluntary loans.......for which payments have been paused for over TWO YEARS now. Student loans: Borrowers are 'facing a financial cliff that could be disastrous,' advocate says https://finance.yahoo.com/news/student-loan-payment-pause-borrowers-202713371.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "The pandemic payment pause for federally-backed student loans is set to expire on May 1, and one observer of the space is warning that many borrowers are not prepared. “Our own surveys show that 90% of student loan borrowers are not ready to resume payments,” Student Debt Crisis Center Executive Director Cody Hounanian told Yahoo Finance Live (video above).“No matter how you look at it, a large majority of people with student loan debt in America... still feel financially insecure." Student loan payments and interest on federally-held debt have been suspended since March 2020, meaning that an estimated 37 million borrowers did not have to pay on their loans. Another roughly 10 million borrowers who hold private or Family Federal Education Loan (FFEL) loans owned by commercial banks did not benefit from the payment pause. “The economic recovery really hasn't reached” middle-class working families, Hounanian said. “For these student loan borrowers, if payments resume… they're going to be facing a financial cliff that could be disastrous.” 'Recipe for a political disaster' President Joe Biden backed the forgiveness of $10,000 in student loan debt on the campaign trail in 2020. During his administration, prominent Democrats have repeatedly urged a seemingly skeptical President Biden to enact broad-based cancellation of up to $50,000 via executive action (as opposed to legislation passed by Congress). An erasure of $10,000 for all of those borrowers would cost roughly $371 billion and erase the total debt of roughly 36% of all borrowers with federally-backed loans. If the payment pause ends in May, 7.8 million borrowers — roughly one in three student debtors — are at "high risk" of struggling to repay their loans, according to a recent analysis from the California Policy Lab and the Student Loan Law Initiative. A recent study by the New York Fed looked at the 10 million borrowers who did not benefit from the payment pause and concluded that "difficulties faced by these borrowers in managing their student loans and other debts suggest that Direct borrowers [of federally-backed loans] will face rising delinquencies once forbearance ends and payments resume." For these borrowers, many of whom were in delinquency prior to the pandemic, “the pause on student loan payments worked," Professor Dalié Jiménez, director of the Student Loan Law Initiative at UC Irvine Law, said in a press release. A separate Student Loan Hero survey of 1,050 borrowers found that 72% of debtors with federal loans are not ready to resume monthly payments. More than half of respondents who benefited from the interest-free payment pause said that they had reallocated the savings towards expenses such as housing or groceries. Some had even used it to pay off other debt. “If they do not extend the payment pause, I think that's a recipe for a political disaster,” Hounanian said, “because then you're going to have tens of millions of Americans who have their finances really undercut by poor policy decision.” Many progressive voters who consider student loan cancellation a core issue “may change their voting habits,” he added. “They may not even vote because of student loan, cancellation policies.” In any case, Hounanian echoed other voices in calling for clarity. “As it stands now, borrowers do not know what's gonna happen in just 32 days. We need clarity,” he said. “We need an announcement related to extending the pause and we need this information as soon as possible so that families can really start to prepare without it. There's confusion, there's anxiety. There's a lot of frustration. And we just don't have answers right now.”" MY COMMENT YES......I hate to be mean. BUT.....somehow all the generations in the past managed to pay their student loans. I know that I did.......and my loans from the 1970's.....which took ten years to pay off.......were about the same as the average student debt in today's dollars......$6000 back than equal to about about $30,000. WOW.....student loan borrowers are not prepared to start paying again. Well YEAH......who wants to have to start to pay off debt if you dont have to. But wait the article points out: "An erasure of $10,000 for all of those borrowers would cost roughly $371 billion and erase the total debt of roughly 36% of all borrowers with federally-backed loans." So........36% of these borrowers have debt of ten thousand or less. That does not seem like much of a burden. Definitely not the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the media horror stories tell us about all the time. The bottom line.....BUCK UP.....pay your debt. YES.....it is not fun to make loan payments when you could be using that money on yourself. BUT....why should I.......the taxpayer......have to be on the hook for YOUR student loans by giving you FREE MONEY in the form of a bailout?
I wonder how many shares I am going to get in the TESLA stock split later in the year? I did see one item today that might be a clue. First it was pointed out that TESLA has enough authorized shares to pay out a 2 for 1 split. So the reasoning was that this split is being put up for shareholder approval because the split will be at the minimum 3 for 1 or more........AND....... it is going to require a vote of shareholders.......to increase the number of authorized shares.
WELL....it was too good to be true. A few days ago the number of homes for sale in my little neighborhood of 4200 homes jumped up to the 15-16 range. BUT........bummer......over the past four days the number has dropped to EIGHT homes for sale. Looks like house hunters snatched up about half the active listings in just a few days.
Ya, "W" , I was looking at those numbers too. 36% have less than $10,000 ? that's less than a used car, and is going to give them returns for the rest of their lives. I hate to say it but "Suck it up Buttercup" welcome to the real world
YEP......the more discussion and the more participation.....the BETTER for everyone.......lurkers and posters. For those that read but never post. Take the plunge....there are no requirements necessary to post.
Oh yes......the markets......they are actually open today. BUT....lingering and going nowhere at the moment so not much to see there. We have a long time to go today to see how we end up......so somebody buy something.
Posting this for discussion......although.....my views on this issue are OBVIOUS. This "stuff" is a huge danger for investors and business. Stakeholder Capitalism: Neither Capitalism Nor For Stakeholders https://www.realclearmarkets.com/ar...r_capitalism_nor_for_stakeholders_824608.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Long ago Voltaire noted that the Holy Roman Empire, decaying into ruin in the middle of Europe, was neither Holy nor Roman, nor an Empire. Most of my generation ran across the line, if they did, in a Cawfee Tawk skit on Saturday Night Live in one of those rare (and now extinct) epochs of genuine SNL humor. Both Voltaire’s broader insight (about high-flown mendacity, not the medieval relic) and the gals’ demand that we talk amongst ourselves about its implications drive today’s proposition: So-called “stakeholder capitalism” is neither pursued for the benefit of stakeholders nor is it any kind of capitalism at all. The term has floated around for half a century, since its invention by Klaus Schwab, the Dr. No-style figure stroking a white cat at World Economic Forum (WEF) headquarters in Davos, Switzerland. It came to broad national attention in 2019 when the Business Roundtable (BRT) – a luncheon club for self-adulatory American CEOs, one with no formal authority at all – pretended to “redefine” the purpose of the American corporation. Before the BRT’s grandiloquence, the purpose of U.S. corporations, and the duty of their executive-suite managers, was to maximize the objectively established long-term value of those corporations, for the direct benefit of shareholders. This purpose of the corporation necessarily also provided benefits to relevant stakeholders, by ensuring high-quality products or services at competitive prices for consumers and ongoing employment for workers, among other things. After the BRT pronouncement the purpose and duty of U.S. corporations remained exactly the same. Luncheon clubs, no matter how steeped in the delicate bouquet of its members’ collective smugness, can’t change the law by fiat. But it suited the BRT to pretend that it had redefined the corporate purpose to one of stakeholder capitalism. It asserted that this stakeholder capitalism both allowed and required companies to change their focus from the long-term interests of the company and therefore of the shareholders, and instead to look out for the interests of all stakeholders, including, as nearly an afterthought, the shareholders. And it defined “stakeholder” to mean pretty much everyone and everything – including inanimate things, like the environment. A problem arises, though. After just a few moments’ thought, the notion of stakeholder capitalism dissolves into nonsense, a knowing deception as bold – and perhaps of similar world-historical import – as the one Voltaire noted. Each of the words of the phrase is a lie. Corporate executives can’t possibly run their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders for the simple reason that all stakeholders don’t want the same things. At the simplest level, customers want lower prices while workers want higher wages. But even within stakeholder groups, desires diverge. Hard-working, high-skilled workers will want wages that track productivity, while others will look to equality of outcome (e.g., wage parity, regardless of productivity). If stakeholder capitalism really were serving the interests of all stakeholders, it would have to respond to all of these interests, but this is impossible. Because everyone’s preferences cannot be honored in the running of a corporation, as stakeholder capitalism pretends, the only other “neutral” way for it to work would be for corporate executives to poll all stakeholders – which means, in essence, everyone – and then do what the majority demands. But this, even if it were possible, is not what companies do. The closest proxy to what “everyone” wants is more-or-less how the nation votes, but this proxy demonstrates how far proponents are from achieving real stakeholder representation. The loudest cheerleaders for stakeholder capitalism are the CEOs propelling their companies furthest away from centrism and toward the embrace of hard-left policy goals, such as the new racism and sexism of “equity” and the financial disaster of carbon elimination on political schedules unsupported by financial or technological reality. It is, then, impossible to serve all stakeholders, and no one is making any effort to achieve the second-best alternative. Instead, when CEOs pretend to act on behalf of stakeholders, they merely enact their own personal policy preferences at company and shareholder expense, in violation of their fiduciary duties. BlackRock’s Larry Fink as much as admitted this (however accidentally) in his most recent “Letter to CEOs.” There he acknowledged that: "[d]elivering on the competing interests of a company’s many divergent stakeholders is not easy. As a CEO, I know this firsthand. In this polarized world, CEOs will invariably have one set of stakeholders demanding that we do one thing, while another set of stakeholders demand that we do just the opposite." Fink failed to explain how he resolves these dilemmas in ways that show fidelity to all stakeholders – because, of course, that’s not how he resolves them. Instead he went on to talk about BlackRock’s research efforts, as though he had developed some secret codex by which “true stakeholder interests,” whatever they may be, could be divined. He hasn’t. BlackRock’s research is both incomplete and biased in ways that reflect Fink’s (and, not incidentally, the WEF’s) policy preferences. As the coders say, garbage in, garbage out. Fink’s pronouncements seldom rely on specific research anyway, because then the flaws in that research could be demonstrated comprehensively. And he is not alone; this is how stakeholder capitalism works everywhere, except where it’s an empty marketing ploy. So what’s billed as stakeholder capitalism isn’t, in that it fulfills not the will of all stakeholders, but the personal policy preferences of CEOs themselves. And because of this, it isn’t capitalism either. In publicly traded companies, the capitalists are not the CEOs and the rest of the c-suite. Those guys and gals are simply managers. The capitalists are the owners – the shareholders. And more, they are the ultimate beneficial shareholders, the people whose money, whose capital, flows into the ETFs and the mutual funds, and who have worked to earn the final interest in pension funds. The managers of these investment vehicles (and their bosses, again all the way up to the c-suite) are legally and under any coherent definition of capitalism bound to do the will of the underlying capitalists – not their own. When CEOs, boards of directors and investment- and pension-fund managers act in their own personal policy interests instead of the interests of ultimate shareholders (i.e., capitalists), then, they have committed insurrection against those capitalists, seizing the power of that capital to do their personal will. That’s not capitalism. It’s managerial socialism, just from c-suites rather than the pale green offices of official bureaucracy, and often in fact from both working in tandem, when government offices are held by those whose politics the c-suite insurgents favor. Rather than “stakeholder capitalism,” then: “executive-insurrection socialism.” Certainly not so appealing when identified properly. Would that it were soon cast beside its Mitteleuropa ancestor-in-deceit onto the ash heap of history." MY COMMENT This is a true danger to the business world and society.......not to mention.....investors. I agree completely with this little article. It is NOT the function of PRIVATE BUSINESS to push for societal goals based on some CEO or board that is focused on goals other than the MAXIMUM success of the company in business. If you want to invest your money pushing various social or charitable goals....find some way to do that outside of the business world. Companies exist to do business and make money. The point of investing is for the investors to profit from the money making ability of companies. Nothing more....nothing less. This sort of BALONEY truly is......."MANAGERIAL SOCIALISM". It is the next logical step beyond the......celebrity CEO. AND....we all know from human nature....no matter how wonderful all the goals and aspirations sound......the real goal is POWER....as usual. This model is exactly how we end up in a corporate system or powerful OLIGARCHS using business to further their OWN goals at the expense of the poor shareholders that are really funding the whole process. The more extreme this stuff gets.....the more we will see shareholders BAIL on business.
Here are the economic stories of the day.....which no one will care about....other than the short term traders. Jobless claims: Weekly claims rise to 202,000 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/weekly-jobless-claims-week-ended-march-26-2022-192349945.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Initial unemployment claims rose modestly after reaching a 50-year low as employers continue to show reluctance in reducing their workforces in the current competitive labor market. The Labor Department released its latest weekly jobless claims report Thursday at 8:30 a.m. ET. Here were the main metrics from the print, compared to consensus estimates compiled by Bloomberg: Initial jobless claims, week ended March 26: 202,000 vs. 196,000 expected and a revised 188,000 during prior week Continuing claims, week ended March 19: 1.307 million vs.1.340 million expected and a revised 1.342 million during prior week Weekly unemployment claims edged higher for the first time in three weeks but rose only marginally from multi-decade lows set just last week. At 188,000, last week's tally for new jobless claims marked the lowest level since September 1969. And continuing claims, which track the total number of individuals claiming ongoing benefits on regular state programs, have also fallen precipitously and reached just over 1.3 million in mid-March. The last time it reached that level was in December 1969. While the weekly jobless claims data have been volatile, the reports over the past several months have shown a clear decrease in the number of individuals newly rendered out of work. While the quits rate has been elevated — and last rose by 0.1 percentage points to reach 2.9% in February — movement between jobs has also been high, with workers largely confident in their abilities to find new roles after leaving their previous positions. However, the relatively low numbers of new jobless claims belies the strain still facing employers, who have still largely struggled to find enough labor to meet demand. However, some of this deficit has started to be filled, especially as jobs have grown for 14 consecutive months, based on the Labor Department's monthly non-farm payrolls data. Job growth is expected to extend that streak in March in the forthcoming monthly jobs report due out Friday. Consensus economists are looking for non-farm payrolls to rise by 490,000 in March, based on Bloomberg data. While this would slow compared to February's increase of 678,000, it would still represent a monthly gain well above pre-pandemic trends. And the unemployment rate is likely to dip to 3.7%, improving to the lowest level since February 2020. "On-pace jobs growth in March would put the labor market on track to return to pre-pandemic employment levels this June," Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor senior economist, wrote in an email Wednesday. "The prime-age employment population ratio is on a similar trajectory, only 1 percentage point below pre-pandemic levels." During the survey week for the March jobs report, or the week including the 12th of the month, jobless claims dipped to just over 200,000, hovering at about the same level as the weekly average from 2019 before the pandemic. Other recent reports have also offered hints at another solid month of job growth in March. On Wednesday, ADP reported that private payrolls rose by 455,000 over the past month, coming in a hair above consensus expectations. That also marked a fourth consecutive month of private sector employment growth above 400,000." MY COMMENT The jobs and employment situation is one massive game of musical chairs with hundreds of thousands of chairs and people playing. People sit down in a chair for a while and than get back up and rejoin the game. It is all great fun and people are excited about the benefits of the game in term of wages, benefits, and the ability to have some power as an employee as well as choices. Unfortunately......the game is going to......slowly......end and in the end many people are going to find out that they should have remained sitting in that chair that they gave up. It is going to take a while.....but....in a year or year and a half things will sort out in the labor and employment world. Hopefully what we are going through in trying to get the employment system and economy back up and running will PREVENT any future economic shut downs. The disruptions and distortions to the economy and the country from the pandemic economic shut down are HUGE and will take a long time to resolve. The worst thing......they really did not achieve anything at all....other than PUNISH small business.
