Kyle - why not trade options if you're looking at short term swings?

I bought and sold a property in the last 10 days. I think I can move to NZ, I only need to do 2 of these a year to get by and we're coming up on 2 in the first month of trying.

Tru, sorry I don't know anything about NB Power, Canada.

Nick, did you buy and sell the same property in 10 days? If so, that's unbelievable! I'd like to start investing in property, but I'm just a bit scared to have that much debt.

90% of the stock trades I do are long-term investments, so I'm not actually looking at the short term for myself. I was just pointing out the short-term fluctuations in my last post (was pretty close to dead on with Apple - it's just about back to $548 again) for people who might be interested in getting in and out. I did get out of Zynga quickly because I don't think it's a great long term investment. If I wanted actually start trading instead of investing, I'll read more about options trading.

On a separate note, last week I was arguing with my boss about how it'd be a good investment to pick up some iPad 3s to re-sell on eBay because based on the previous two models, they are sold out in days and prices spike on eBay as shipping times gets pushed back. On Friday morning I decided to pre-order two Black 16gb WiFi iPad 3s. The shipping time was still 3/16 for that model but a couple of other models had already been pushed back to 3/19. By the end of the work day Friday, all models had been pushed back to 3/19. I just logged into Apple.com and FUCK YES, all models now show 2-3 weeks. I got my pre-orders in just in time to get them shipped to me on the day they actually come out. This Friday 3/16. I'm also going to wait in line Friday morning to pick up a 32gb iPad Black Wifi for myself and maybe one more to re-sell. I'm hoping for $200 - $300 profit per iPad, but I'll be watching the market this week to see how high prices are going. In addition if on Friday, all units are sold out across the country, that's going to make it even more worthwhile.

I love supply and demand.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/251629/apple_already_out_of_new_ipads_for_debut.html

UPDATED: I decided that forgoing eBay and Paypal fees, plus the hassle of shipping it, I'll take a $150 profit instead of $200. So I turned to Craigslist to post an ad.
http://austin.craigslist.org/ele/2897492894.html

This guy has a boner for Apple too.

In one week I'm up another 50% (see last week - I said I was up 490%). As of now, in a little over 3 years, at the current after-hours price of $592.65 I am up 540%. This is unsustainable without a hefty correction. I think we will bounce off $600 and people will start locking in profits. 

You know, I might just start playing a little with options. I really want to know what I'm doing before getting into options, and I need to see if I need to upgrade my Zecco account to allow me to trade options.

I bet you have that poster on your closet door.

He stole it from Mosh; I gave it to him his last time through here ...

Well, in addition to getting the two tomorrow that I pre-ordered right before shipping times got pushed back two weeks, I waited in line an hour at Walmart tonight and got a 32GB White Wifi iPad (3rd generation) at 12:21am and have it right now. I have been sending e-mails to people who posted on CL and a couple of guys said they flipped theirs for $1000. We'll see. Total cost for the 32GB + tax = $648. Total cost of my time waiting = $200/hour.

I almost sold my "ticket" to this couple who came in and wanted my model. Walmart only had 16 units total and there were 12 of us in line already and no more 32 GB Wifi Whites. I would have my ticket for $120 but the Walmart employees were all uptight already, so I decided not to try and sell my spot in line.

Update: I'm swapping the white out with a black tomorrow and getting $25 for purely the color swap out from a guy. I told him I'm writing down his license plate number, had him send me a photo of his receipt and his phone number, because I don't want to go home and find an iPad box filled with sand, rocks, or a brick.

+$25 without even selling anything yet. Score.

because I don't want to go home and find an iPad box filled with sand, rocks, or a brick.

...or you could, you know, check inside the box?

He stole it from Mosh; I gave it to him his last time through here ...

Since when did I become an Apple fanboy nerd? It's Commodore, or it's nothing.

Good luck with that on your future endeavors ...

http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_Home.aspx

Good luck with that on your future endeavors ...

http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_Home.aspx

Good luck with that on your future endeavors ...

http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_Home.aspx

Good luck with that on your future endeavors ...

Those Commodores are really sweet, I would love to have one. But the good version is 2k, a little to much when a typical self build windows tower able to run all the newest games can be had for $500 or less. 

Agreed ...

New pick: Lions Gate Entertainment. I scooped up 200 shares this morning. Will hold long-term. Hunger Games is quickly growing out of it's "indie" style franchise, and the Hunger Games trilogy will be so huge it's going to turn Lions Gate into a major studio powerhouse. The writing is on the wall. It is the most commercially successful independent film and television distribution company in North America, already. They also bought out Summit in January, who of course, produced and distributed the Twilight films. There's one more Twilight film coming out. Lions Gate also does Mad Men. They are also producing a remake of Leprechaun, which excites me and is really the only reason I bought stock in Lions Gate.

Ha, I'm watching Leprechauns Revenge right this moment.

That might be a good tip on Lions Gate, they have produced lots of popular movies.

 

That's just for the other day ...
I'll watch it over a week and invest some in it as deemed necessary ...
I think that, over all, it's a good pick though ...

Another area that many people seem to be watching carefully is the whole "social media and internet-related" area. LinkedIn, Groupon, Yelp (IPOed on Friday and had a 60% pop), Zynga (I bought this a couple days after the IPO as a speculative play, held two months and sold for a 37% gain - but since then it has gone on to make more huge gains) and of course Facebook which could probably IPO in the next few months. I believe this is the new "bubble" and is why I got out of Zynga so quickly. Be careful with these stocks, but the potential to make big gains are there, if you are also very willing to make big losses. Don't get greedy with these, if you end up buying. Make a goal of "I want to make/willing to lose x%" and when it hits that, get out. Facebook is the only one of the bunch that I could see holding on to for long-term.

See quote above. I decided to dip back into these "hot" stocks since Zynga was a good play for me. So a day after I posted that quote above I bought 70 shares of LinkedIn at $87.67. I set my limit to sell all once I hit a 20% gain, and today at lunch I sold at $105.35 for a 20% gain in three weeks. So between Zynga and Linkedin I'm up $3k total on those two trades. If I continue doing these shorter term trades (swing trading not day trading), I need to look into my tax implications. Stocks sold when being held less than a year = taxed at my federal tax rate. I could bump up my 401K contribution to 12 or 13% from the current 11% to lower my taxable income.

So now I have the original amount I invested in Zynga, the profit from Zynga, and the profit from Linkedin sitting in my brokerage account begging me to go in again. I've had my eye on a company that has it's IPO this week. (No date set yet.)

"Millennial Media." Mobile advertising. Nearly 200% revenue growth in 2009 - 2010, and over 100% growth from 2010 - 2011. 2nd largest mobile advertising platform behind Google. (Apple's iAd is 3rd).

http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/27/millennial-media-sets-price-range-for-ipo-at-11-to-13-per-share-valued-at-974m/

Never buy an IPO stock on the first day, unless it tanks. You have to wait patiently watching the ticker, until a pull back and then pounce. It's really a game of timing. The one time I have gone against this IPO buying on the first-day rule, is with Visa. I've held on since IPO day and am up 100%.

Loin's Gate keeps getting lower and hovering around the $14 mark ...

Yeah, but since I am holding LGF long-term I can handle the fluctuations. The Hunger Game sequels aren't coming out until next year and the year after. I am in at 14.52. I could have sold on Monday for a 6% gain, but again I am holding on to this one for years.

Millennial Media is debuting on the NYSE tomorrow as ticker MM. http://seekingalpha.com/article/464831-millennial-media-s-ipo-offers-growth-and-opportunity

I will be watching this like a hawk and will buy in when I feel it's the right time. This one I will hold short to medium term. It would be a great long term investment too, but i will have everything locked up long term if I keep it.

Good point(s) ...
I'll keep a look at it as well ...

LGF is a good buy.
I'm impressed by your wins but you should be going bigger. Can't you trade on margin? Less than 20K when you're calling it right isn't worth the effort. Put your apple hares up as collateral?

I actually bought and sold the house on the same day, the deals were sorted out earlier but they settled 2 hrs apart. Made 50k. That's less than I've lost over the last 4 years on the crash but it felt good to get back to even in one afternoon. So I took that money and have two more in the pipe now. If they work out I'm seriously thinking of taking 6 months off to focus on property. It's risky but one day I'll be dead so fuck it.

>>I actually bought and sold the house on the same day, <<

Thats where the real value is, but I've always wanted to renovate the properties and lease them out myself and be a landlord.

Thanks to the wife I have no balls now and no power to leverage so we are stuck with the handful of shit we originally purchased with no hope of leveraging it on to a larger market.

Property is where it's at! That is a fantastic return, Nick. Yeah, no risk, no reward. I have to get over my fears of fucking up. That's what's holding me back from property, from buying on margin, and from options trading. Austin was never hit terribly by the home devaluation over the past couple of years. This city is hot. A little too. So many tech firms coming here (we already have many, many tech firms) but for instance Apple is proposing building a campus here and adding 3,600 Apple employees. Samsung, Google, AMD, Dell, etc on and on. We're dubbed "Silicon Hills". A huge Tokyo Electron facility is just half a mile up the road from me.

I am able to trade on my margin. My margin buying power is currently $56k. The margin interest rate if I used that entire amount is 6.75%.

So Millenial Media was up nearly 100% (from the IPO price of $13/share) on Thursday. Us small folk can't get into the actual IPO pricing. You have to have BIG BIG dollas for anybody to even give you the time of the day. But Friday, Millenial sunk 6.5% which is a good start. It's at $23.39. I'd probably bite if it gets in the $19.50 area.

Tru - renovations are good. One of the two I'm working on now needs a reno, there's a trades person going in Monday, hopefully he's done before settlement date and I can move it quickly. The other place is hopefully just a quick and easy 30-40K. I'll count it when it's sold, not before.

Why can't you leverage your assets? You have no debt, right?

Kyle - just do it mate. Be careful of course but unless you can really leverage up you'll never be able to accelerate.

Leverage is your friend. You're right, I need to take advantage of that.

As a complete aside, I think earlier in this thread I talked about how I am collecting first edition books now. There is a local book chain, called Half Price Books, that has a pretty large assortment of first edition books, signed books, etc. Once or sometimes twice a year they have week where Mon - Tues are 40%, Wed - Thurs 30%, Fri - Sat 20% and Sun a whopping 50%. That includes their first edition books which I just can't believe they allow, and I wonder how long they are going to keep doing it.

So you can technically make nearly a 100% profit on a single purchase, instantly. Now it does depend on whether their pricing is correct on the book, depending on the condition, value, etc. It's a large, local bookstore so I am pretty sure they do their research before pricing the books.

Last Sunday was their 50% off day. I went in and found an incredible, first edition Isaac Asimov - The Naked Sun (signed by Isaac as well) priced at $500. I'd actually looked at it multiple times over the past year or two. I bought it out the door with tax, for $270. If it really is worth $500 it's nearly a 100% gain, but I believe this could be worth a lot more. It's a very scarce book and the dustcover is in great shape, plus it's signed! The book is an ex-library book so there  are some markings consistent with a library, but I still am amazed I was able to pick this up. I am not reselling these books, but starting a nice collection. The others I have picked up in this same manner for either 40% or 50% off at Half Price Books over the past two years are, Stephen King's The Stand 1st Edition (Signed), Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire 1st Edition (Bookplate signed), and F. John Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned 1st Edition. Anne Rice was in town about two weeks ago at a different book store, signing copies of her new book, The Wolf Gift, and I picked one up and had her sign it. I want to stick with collecting what I enjoy reading - mainly horror and sci-fi.

I need to contact an appraiser soon, and also probably bump up my home insurance coverage.