muscleman

Out of curiosity, what ideas have fallen into this net since you switched? How long has it been? No need to give current ideas if you don’t want to share them, older ones are fine. I think the questions you are asking are not even that relevant for people owning 3-4 stocks long term. The results can vary drastically among this kind of concentrated portfolios, and people who outperform spectacularly come out to talk and people who underperform keep silent.

You could switch to a technical analysis based approach like I did, and that saved me a ton of time. You can still invest long term, if you use weekly and monthly charts. I find it far more effective to read the charts to find out what others think of the stock, instead of trying to evaluate myself. I am not that good at doing the fundamental analysis anyway, so why bother wasting that time? Or you can create your own quant model, back test it, and use that to auto pilot your trades. Or you can invest in index funds and forget about it, if you really don't want to spend any time, and have no interest in beating the market. However, one thing I have to point out is that no matter what strategy you pick, it takes years to get good at it, and there will still be periods when the strategy doesn't work well. If you keep switching strategies because of your recent lackluster performance, you'll never get good at anything. I switched to technical analysis only because I spent 9 years getting better at fundamentals, read over 100 books, spent countless hours per week on it, and eventually decided that it is not suitable for me. If you only tried it for 1-2 years, maybe you should not give up this easily.

I just got an iWatch. I wonder if you have any investment related apps that you recommend to put on the watch?

I don't know the answer.... But I think you can have pseudo margin in Fido and IB's IRA accounts, which allows you to buy options and futures in a limited way.

https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/fnma-and-fmcc-preferreds-in-search-of-the-elusive-10-bagger/msg388515/#msg388515 Where my Mr. Muscle? Mr. Muscle is in his muscle training session at the moment. ;) Unbelievable that after I said this was my last post here a while back, you guys still wouldn't let me go. Didn't know you love me that much. ;)

I remember someone here said before that most US public libraries provide free MorningStar access. Have you checked on that?

unfortunately we now have 3 Yep. That's exactly what my joke is. ;D

Most of the contributors have their own micro website/ communities, which cost extra. SA gets a cut from them. I am not saying that it doesn’t make sense to pay $20/ month, but I don’t think it’s a great value given that the quality of the freeware commentators is far below what you can find on other message board, including here. Yeah. Totally agree. VIC is way better in terms of quality. Also articles here, though it is harder to find articles here than in VIC for a lot of names that I am tracking. And if VIC is free, I am not gonna pay for seekingAlpha's lower quality articles. Which is fine and all if your actions are consistent with that. But what you're saying is contrary, that there is something you find on Seeking Alpha that you otherwise don’t seem to be able to find elsewhere(otherwise, why would you need to do this?). And your solution is to try to find a way to take something you seem to think has value, without paying for it. There’s a word for that... I would kind of get it if we were talking about thousands of dollars here, but it’s like $20 a month lol.... All the research costs add up quickly. $20 here and $50 there. It can quickly add up to $300 a month. ::)

We currently have two https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/fnma-and-fmcc-preferreds-in-search-of-the-elusive-10-bagger/ This one turned into a 1427 page discussion https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/is-it-just-me-or-are-there-actually-two-forums-on-this-site/ This one just started, with a different title, but essentially talking about the same thing I remember SHLD used to be the longest thread in this investment board. Now Fannie/Freddie is steadily exceeding the pace, and has two threads instead of one! :o

Now we have two threads on Fannie and Freddie, and we have over 1420 pages.

Most of the contributors have their own micro website/ communities, which cost extra. SA gets a cut from them. I am not saying that it doesn’t make sense to pay $20/ month, but I don’t think it’s a great value given that the quality of the freeware commentators is far below what you can find on other message board, including here. Yeah. Totally agree. VIC is way better in terms of quality. Also articles here, though it is harder to find articles here than in VIC for a lot of names that I am tracking. And if VIC is free, I am not gonna pay for seekingAlpha's lower quality articles.

Ethical issues? Do you mean shorting the GSE preferreds alone side Senator Bob Corker? ::)

Doesn't seem to work anymore. Take this one for example: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4283178-bio-rad-laboratories-poised-long-term-growth The article after being archived is the same content as the page itself.

I used outline for a while but today it seems like outline is no longer working for seekingalpha, after it stopped working for wsj for a few months. Do you have any other suggestions? I find seekingAlpha to be a good place to get started on any name to understand basic story, though I still do a lot of work myself. Or if there is a seekingAlpha alternative, please let me know. I'd really appreciate it!

That's an interesting observation! And applies to me. ;D

This seems like a really emotional blow out. I encourage people here to read the book "Trading in the Zone". It is all about controlling emotions. With that said, this will be my last post here. Don't ever ask how MM thinks, because whenever I see that and respond, I get another round of taunting. I initially felt it is ok because some of you may still find my posts helpful, but then yesterday I found even Chris blocked my personal messages. I thought we were friends? Good luck guys.

Have you spent significant amount of time on other ideas? If you haven’t bc of f&f then it’s costing you opportunities. There’s been some very compelling ideas discussed on here that have already significantly outperformed f&f this year (and last) I have a well developed watchlist and I have found nothing that has been particularly more interesting than SPY. care to name names? Tried to send you a message too but surprised that you blocked my personal message...... ::)

What I meant is exactly what Hardincap just posted. There are many stocks setting up for a major bull run soon, and there are no imminent events for GSEs, so the opportunity cost is very high by continuing to hold the shares.

Your post ignores facts. Usually, I laugh at perma bears with this kind of language too, but am I a perma bear on FNMAS?

Well, I had a hot hand earlier this year (3 trades, 40%, 2%, 35% separately) until a recent trade that cost me a 5% loss, with another round of taunting from people here, and it turned out to be the temporary top. I believe this: No one can make 100% profitable trades, but the moment a hot hand suddenly turned into a cold hand, instead of being upset and cursing, it is important to stay calm and pay attention to what Mr. Market is trying to tell me. We got an amazing court win, and Calabria stating clearly that we are gonna do this, but all we got is a false break out at 14 for FNMAS and then the daily chart had 90% of the days as down days. That's a very bad sign and enough for me to leave this alone and look at other opportunities. With that said, I still believe in the fundamentals, and I think what Mr. Market is telling me is likely that the events for FNMAS will be postponed and a major bull market is starting, so it is time to sell this and actively hunt in other spaces. The alternative is that Mr. market means this FNMAS investment thesis couldn't work, but I think it is more likely to be the prior case.

I am interesting in buying some index ETFs, not the leveraged ones. Could anyone tell me what kind of tax forms I may receive? Or is the reporting just like a normal stock?

Thank you Cigarbutt.

Thank you! Do you recall the title of that thread? I'll try to find it.

Which book are you referring to? Thank you! I just picked up the book. I'll read it. I have a feeling that the fact that they started to publicly talk about their strategies is a hint that their strategies stopped working that well, which seems to be indeed the case for their new institutional equity fund. :)

It seems to me that rates will be very unlikely to go up from here, and could go down again if any slow down is seen in the economy. How do life insurers do in this kind of environment? What about other financial companies like banks?