[anxvariety]

Carlsbadliving seems pretty grumpy for living in such a nice area code 😉 Hopefully he/she isn’t saying there aren’t discernable trends or patterns to be reported in the market… surely there is no one single resaon, but there are certainly leading indicators and I think that’s what the media trys to report on (albeit 6 months late 🙂 )

[anxvariety]

Hey bugs, thats no excuse, saiine and I are programmers.. we’re supposed to be the most anti-social!! 🙂

[anxvariety]

I owned it in the past.. but I haven’t bought any in the last year.. If we go into some sort of real tough recession it’s a stock I’m going to look at getting back into..

I was just posting that I thought it’s business model is interesting from a real estate/contrarian point of view.

[anxvariety]

I understand the approach.. it sounds like it’s evaluating the ‘current state’ of the company.. there are experts out there that can predict that state quite a while before it happens and thats why they invest.. so by the time the individual investor get there, it’s probably too late too really see a significant gain.. also, P/E can mean that all the investors sold off the stock since they don’t see much potential in it for the future.. ‘milked cow’

Just like when XOM reported record earnings.. the stock If I remember correctly was down a little bit the next day.. that’s because the profits had alreay been priced in… in some cases of companies with low P/E, the future losses might already be priced into the stock.

When I first started investing I was advised by someone who didn’t know what they were doing.. and they told me good P/E = always win, and I discovered through losing a little money that isn’t always true.

[anxvariety]

Powayseller, even value and P/E are hardly synonmous…

But if you insist on P/E, perhaps you should look at PCU(Souther Copper) their P/E is 8 and they pay $11 per share dividend(12%)..

BUT WAIT! before you buy.. you should probably read the news.. there youll find that the peruvian goverment is about to or is having elections and that one of the candidates has promised to de-privatize the copper industry in that country, which will or could completely whipe out PCU…

So their P/E says more about the stocks past than future…

Just an illustration.. trying to play P/E devils advocate.

[anxvariety]

Powayseller, there’s no way you’d convince any investor of some holy grail P/E number.. QCOM had a negative P/E for MANY years, all the while it was exploding.. and it’s now profitiable.. ‘Potential’ is a very important factor in determining what sort of P/E you’ll find accceptable.. If looking at P/E was the only factor in determining what a good buy would be.. then it’d be easy.. A low P/E can also indicate bad things, like the companies market is going to disappear or they are about to fall apart, or what they are selling is seasonal(oil)… but if you are always looking for a low P/E, in general I think you’re going to end up with low volatiltiy stocks.. maybe that’s what you’re looking for.. sometimes that can be synonmous with low risk, but nothing is certain..

I think COP is sort of an anomoly because the energy market is cyclical and they typically fall in the summer and rise in the winter during storms and such..

[anxvariety]

I think PSA is a steady beast.. that will just continue doing what it does.. as you can see if you check out the 15 year view PSA has gone consistently up and up and is pretty unphased by most economic events…

Powayseller, it’s me I’ve been loading up on COP NOV 60 options for 2 weeks now! 🙂

I won’t touch the stock itself with a 20 foot pole because it requires investor to put up way too much capital up front… and personally I’m not interested in doing that in an industry where one ‘dude’ in Iran can completely shake things up… with options you get wayyyy more upside without all the risk.. Lets just say someone has 15k in COP options.. to get the same amount of leverage through buying stock they’d probably have to buy 100k worth.

If COP is $80 in November, that $15k will be worth $40k. If someone were to buy the stock they will have gained only 30% and they had to plunk down $60 per share!

We need someone that’s anti-options to come and refute what I’m saying.. because I haven’t been challenged at all with my options blabbering!

[anxvariety]

Sorry, I meant to change the title of this post to be more specific.. PSA sounds like public service announcement. If a moderator wants to change it to ‘Public Storage interesting investment’ that’d be cool, thanks.

[anxvariety]

saiine offered up his brother in laws restaurant in Cardiff/Solana beach… that’s a pretty central location and would allow some people from North County (like me) to make it.. The food is also really good there.

RightSide, your posts sounds as thought you’re vindictively contrarian.. but this board is pretty much a place where alot of contrarian investor and real estate shorts like to hang out so I doubt you’ll get much of a fight..

[anxvariety]

That’s a good factor to consider.. the maintenance costs and such..

Kiki, you made me think of one of hte main reasons I am asking about selling.. I don’t so much want to sell to get the money ‘now’ per se, as much as I’m concerned that in 5 years there won’t be many people with money to even buy my truck at all.

How does everyone see this playing out? How will this housing bust affect resale values of expensive items like trailers, boats and cars? I would imagine cars would be less affected than boats, since boats probably take a back seat to basic transportation.. but does anyone think the money will dry up so much that people won’t be buying anything other than really cheep cars? That’s probably my main concern with the truck…

[anxvariety]

..most of the foreclosed homes sell for nearly full market value and often do not represent the “deals” many people expect

Even ‘full market value’ can suck, especially when the supply is pushing market prices down.

[anxvariety]

doctuer, thank you for your amazing reply. You communicate a wise confidence…

It’s cool that there is such a mix of people here.. different professions and specialty areas.. yet at the same time most seem pretty moderate and low key about things.. I guess we’re all interested in housing situation.. I’m surprised that a ‘financial/economic’-ish forum is so friendly and not overly technical or number-crunch-ish.. very cool. Good mix.

[anxvariety]

I typed out a really long response.. but decided to remove it, because it’s too easy to make a mistake in my calculations tha t might mislead..

Here are two good places to find out why you might want to buy options VS the stock:

http://biz.yahoo.com/opt/basics1.html

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/op?s=COP

The jist is, you get way more upside, with a controlled amount of downside.. alot more volatility.

Also, writing your own options is very cool if you’re long on a stock.. Look up ‘writing covered calls’. It’s a great way to make money on stocks you’re holding long on. You sell someone an option to buy your stock at a price that’s higher than what you bought at or around what you would be willing to sell it for at a particular future date.. What it comes down to with covered calls, you are guaranteed to make money on the call you write, your only downside is opportunity cost if the stock were to somehow double or something you’d lose out on whatever the stock price did above the call you wrote.

I hope I’m not consufing anyone reading this.. I’m just trying to give a summary so you can guage interest and then go read the specfics from someone who is a good writer.

[anxvariety]

Thanks, I think I’m going to sell my truck and keep the boat.. Just wanted to make sure no one had any strong opinions either way that could possibly shift me..

PowaySeller, I don’t know much about the specifics of trading on diff exchanges.. but maybe someone else knows the answer to those questions you have about stop loss rules on diffferent exchanges.

As far as stop limit %, I would think 15% is way too low of a stop loss on options as I see 15%+- swings very often in my options..

I bought some Zeal reccomended some CCJ options 2 months ago.. I just sold some of them earlier today for a gain of +80%… this is just one example, and their track record could be erased in a few heartbeats…

Yes, according to Zeal COP is fundamentally very strong.. P/E of 6.xx. For people that don’tknow anything about stocks P/E is price over earnings, it means how much the stock earns realitive to its price.. So if COP is P/E of 6, it could mean their stock price is 60 and EPS(earnings per share)is 10. For the exact numbers just look up the stock quote symbol COP.. I just bought more COP NOV 60 calls today.

I only buy options in the amount that I am willing to lose.. because I realize ultimately I have 0 control of the markets.. Options themselves are my stop loss, because I only buying what I’m willing to lose completely for the shot at the upside.. and with that you get alot more volatility than with stocks..

Remember stop losses wouldn’t do much in a ‘black monday’ type scenario anyways.

[anxvariety]

Reading over my questoin again I realize how subjective it is.. but then again, its those types of questoins that are the hardest! Some things you can plug into a calculator and it will spit out an answer.

You guys say it’s good to have things that make you happy or that you really want that are within your means.. but do you think that’s still true in a time like now? Where there’s almost a silence before the storm? I almost feel like I should be riding a bike and eating ramen.. because you know as they say, when there’s blood on the streets can be one of the best times to buy… Example.. An extra $1000 into Qualcomm 15 years ago, would probably represent $50-100,000 now, and that’s where I’m debating on sacrificing luxuries, and even maybe going on the other side of the coin of sucking it up and maybe even doing some uncomfortable stuff, like riding a bike, staying in my house with no AC on, eating ramen, basket weaving, and collecting cans from neighbors trashcans!

When you guys talk about afforability.. is affordability to you whether you can pay cash for it and still have enough money to live and save with, or is affordability, can you borrow the money to pay it, and still have enough income left over to save and live?

I would be pretty reluctant to borrow much money that I had to pay interest on.. even if I really wanted it, for example the boat I really wanted, but I wouldn’t have borrowed money to get it… I borrowed money to get my truck, but I could have paid cash with it.. I was just hoping that borrowing from Toyota would help remove some of the cob webs off my credit.

Powayseller, I agree with what you say about Zeal.. I follow their investment tips pretty closely, and have done quite well over the 6 months that I’ve been a subscriber. I’m a little concerned about having too much cash in the market, because I’ve lost it all before.. My protection against that now(or at least what makes me sleep at night) is that I’m solely invested in options and gold, with equal amounts in cash.

The economic high that we have had(whatever ‘we’ is, I’ll say southern california) had me pretty bummed out from an investment perspective over the last 10 years.. because I felt like everything was at a peak and finding good investments would require more advanced foresight(that I don’t have at this point) since the only thing most experts were talking about was real estate.. That’s why now I want to make sure I have as much ammo(cash) if the big financial storm hits… because I believe this is one of the only ways to make a class jump(besides inheritance or hard work luck and a good ideas) and help myself get out of the rat race (middle) class!!

Thanks for the resposnes.

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