• '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    I used quotes because I am referring to the morons working for the national news networks, and not for real investment firms.

    How long have I heard all the doomspeak about the markets being bad.  About how we should divest ourselves of the dollar and run to the Yen or the Euro!

    Well, I decided to run the numbers.  From 2001 to today, in Quicken for my stocks and holdings.

    Gold, considered very conservative investment since it is worth something in every culture: 300% increase in value.  Very nice.
    Oil: 700% increase in value!!!
    Hearing Aids: 1050% increase in value!!!
    Ethanol: 800% increase in value!
    Aluminum/Recycling: 250% increase in value!

    None of my investments have been down for any significant period of time.  Either I am the worlds best investor or maybe the market isn’t as bad as it is being portrayed?  BTW, I am surprised by my hearing aid investment, since I put money in a penny stock and expected to lose it all.  Glad I didnt!  Gold was supposed to be my safety net, but it appears I should have just put that into other things (bummer since a majority of my investments were moved to gold just before the dot.com bust of 2000.)

    What do you like to invest in?  Let’s keep it on investments and not in politics.

    What do you guys think about pawn shops?  hearing aids? Oil?  Gold?  Cars?  Coffee?  tea?  etc?  What is your hot item?  Do you like a specific company?

    For instance, a few of my companies suck.  Johnson and Johnson has been a dog for a while.  Walgreens too.  But in the long run I hope they stabilize the potential losses.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    I should mention, some of those were penny stocks now worth Dollars.  But that’s not really all that relevant.  Some of them were $70 stocks worth more (some less, briefly) too.  Percentage is what i’m looking at.  You don’t buy a mortgage on the $$$ of the loan as much as the % of the loan.


  • I have done very well in the Pacific Rim.

    With China’s continued economic growth (despite the bad toothpaste and lead coated toys), and the fact that their currency is pegged to the dollar keeps those investments pretty stable…  it means that it is only the stock type risk instead of also adding currency exchange fluctuations.

    I have also done well with small and mid caps.  Blue Chips have been pretty flat, and penny stocks tend to be a bit problematic with the large number of “pump and dump” schemes that have been going on in recent years.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    None of my investments are in China.  I have some in Germany and England, but those are mostly mutual funds and I’m not counting those as actual “stocks” because I don’t control what they invest in.

    Anyway, yea, my large cap funds seem to have averaged down 2% but my investments in them are only 10% of my portfolio.  Small caps make up the majority and they’ve been doing fracking awesome since Jan 2001 when I started investing.  A few bad months, but over all, the good have far out weighed the bad.

    I just don’t understand the talking heads saying the economy is in the toilet and we should dump our US holdings and run for China/Europe.  Why?  My worst month I lost $200ish and my best month I made $2k-$3kish.  I just don’t get what they are seeing.  I’ve yet to have any real issues.  Sure, losing $200 sucked, but that was my own fault for being invested in Lowes instead of something not so skittish like McDonald’s or Coca Cola.


  • They are probably just too early in their prediction. Some people change their tune at the drop of a hat - doesn’t mean they are wrong about future circumstances, but maybe over panicky right now? O_o? I know so little about the stock market -_-

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Well, Bean, I might agree with you except that they’ve been “panicky” for over 6 years now with no real evidence to support their panic.

    So one has to wonder if these guys have degrees only, or if they actually know what they are talking about?


  • Canada, East Europe, Ireland . . . .
    Pharma, resource/energy, financial companies.
    Double didget over 12 months as of days after the market correction.
    Oh yeah - real estate - 50% in 3 years.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Woot, go CC!

    I think it’s more a matter of chosing your industries and your companies right now, not just blindly investing in tech sector like it was in the 90s.  That means people have to work to make their money grow and they are not choosing to do the work.  Thus their money is shrinking and thus they are claiming it’s an aweful bear market!

    I know I’ve taken a wash on a few stocks because I screwed up on my homework.  But it was not the market’s fault, it was my fault for believing the wrong set of data.  I’ve also made a killing on some WAG stocks (Wild Assed Guesses).

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