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I've been doing a lot of work on the personal finance aspect of my life. Doctors don't learn squat in medical school or training about how to properly manage money. I've been trying to remedy my total ignorance.
Also, as part of the MBA mentality, I'm starting to look into the stock market and cryptocurrencies, but I'm still a total novice.
Posts: 3438
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
With your timeline, the conventional stock market wisdom of index funds would appear to make sense. A good inoculation against widely held but invalid beliefs is "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
In 2007 I was 70 years old. House prices started to level off from their climb into the bubble zone. Thanks to discussions with sophisticated friends, a market downturn was foreseeable, though trying to "time the market" is not wise. I was completely out of the stock market by mid-2008. This makes it sound like a cool calculated decision, but the fact is, I was getting cold feet.
The crash occurred, not too long after I fled. The financial carnage of late 2008 exceeded everything that just about anybody had anticipated.
I have not owned a publicly traded share since mid-2008.
The stock market was good to me while i was in it. By sitting it out since then I have left a substantial sum of money on the table. But I have enough to be comfortable, and I sleep well at night.
If at your age someone had predicted I would have as much money as I do now, I wouldn't have believed it. If they had predicted how much, but that I wouldn't feel any richer than I do, I wouldn't have believed it either.
Posts: 3466
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
Ramzi,
In my opinion, you cannot go wrong by investing long-term in the stock market or in mutual funds that deal in growth stocks. Find a reputable financial adviser to guide you in choice of stocks or mutual funds to invest in. When you think you have a good mix, stick with it. Do not try and "play" the market. Invest for the long-term. And don't lose your nerve during the inevitable downturn of the market. It is bound to happen, but the worst thing you can do is "buy high and sell low." Historically, stocks and stock mutual funds have always bounced back from a downturn and reached even greater heights.
Regarding cryptocurrency, my advice would be don't touch it. Cryptocurrency is a relatively new concept and is totally "on line" so to speak. Bitcoin is at an astronomical height right now, but it and other cryptocurrencies are extremely volatile. they can lose hundreds, even thousands, of dollars in a very short time. And there is no regulation, government or otherwise, of cryptocurrencies. Apparently some businesses are beginning to think about accepting cryptocurrency. I saw where Elon Musk and Tesla may be thinking of accepting cryptocurrency as payment. I wouldn't touch cryptocurrency until and unless it achieves a long, stable record and there is regulation of the market.
Just my thoughts.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
Posts: 1756
Joined: Jul. 11 2003
From: The Netherlands
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
I sold and bought stocks for more than 25 years. Sold all my stocks a few years ago. Now I have gold and bitcoin. The world have borrowed too much, and the stocks will come down hard I think. When the stocks collaps, I will sell the gold and buy stocks again.
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
Easy:
1. Buy a stock/crypto at random 2. Become friends with Elon Musk 3. Ask him to pull one of his usual how-the-hell-is-he-still-not-in-jail pump-and-dumps on the stock/crypto you bought. 4. Wait during the pump, sell early in the dump. 5. You are now rich. 6. Write a book about how you got there through sheer grit and perseverance. Preferably include quotes from dead Roman or Chinese dudes. 7. Buy me that Lester Devoe you owe me. 8. Send all your money to davewphx so he can un-curse it for you. 9. Ask davewphx to send me half of it so I can do a double un-cursing on it (you can never be too cautious). 10. Wait for davewphx and me to send your money back. 11. Wait longer. 12. Wait some more.
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to Piwin)
quote:
Easy:
1. Buy a stock/crypto at random 2. Become friends with Elon Musk 3. Ask him to pull one of his usual how-the-hell-is-he-still-not-in-jail pump-and-dumps on the stock/crypto you bought. 4. Wait during the pump, sell early in the dump. 5. You are now rich. 6. Write a book about how you got there through sheer grit and perseverance. Preferably include quotes from dead Roman or Chinese dudes. 7. Buy me that Lester Devoe you owe me. 8. Send all your money to davewphx so he can un-curse it for you. 9. Ask davewphx to send me half of it so I can do a double un-cursing on it (you can never be too cautious). 10. Wait for davewphx and me to send your money back. 11. Wait longer. 12. Wait some more.
Well 12 is my favorite number, so you may be onto something, there...
Posts: 1756
Joined: Jul. 11 2003
From: The Netherlands
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
The only real advise I can give you is this.
ETF’s are the cheapest and easiest to deal with for a private person. Buy and hold strategy is the best for your nightrest. (You can never beat the market).
So what to do. Take three EFT’s, for instance the Dow Jones, the Dax (German) and the shanghai. Take the money you can miss easily, split it in three parts and invest the one thirth in time of a correction in all three the indexes. This way you spread your money easily. If it goes down, use the second third to invest in the same index, etc.
Now you have after a while a nice basket stocks all over the world and you can wait and see what happens. I think this is the most save, cheapest, and worryless way of trading and it is not very time consuming.
A side note: Investigation shows that investing in yourself is the most profitable ever.
Posts: 3438
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to Ricardo)
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo Can someone explain to me why it’s not all just called “gambling”?
If you play the games in a casino, you are very likely to lose money over the long run. The odds are stacked against you. If you shoot craps with your friends, you are likely to break even in the long run, if you don't go broke first. If you play poker with your friends, the outcome hinges on the distribution of skill among the group. Poker is called gambling, but it is in fact a game of skill.
Why would the stock market not just be called "gambling"? Because in the stock market, in the long run you will make money if you play it right. Here's a chart the illustrates that.
The S&P 500 is a list of publicly traded stocks selected to cover a wide number of industrial areas. The blue line is the S&P 500 price (vertical axis on the left). The orange line is the average earnings per share for the S&P (axis on the right). The price of the S&P closely parallels the earnings per share.
OK, so they went up. Why did they do that, and why are they likely to continue?
I'm no expert, but Warren Buffett, who is an expert, says the answer is increasing productivity. I read this to mean that he thinks increasing productivity is the main driver of the stock market's upward trend.
There are a lot of different measures of productivity, but let's look at one, non-farm productivity. To calculate this you survey non-farm industries. You record the value O of its outputs and the cost of its inputs I. O-I is the added value. You divide this by the number H of hours worked. Productivity P = (O-I)/H. P is a measure of the efficiency of the industry. The more money you make per hour worked, the higher the value of P.
Joint stock companies sell shares of stock to raise money. When you buy a share, you own a piece of the company. The company uses the money to pay for facilities, research...things to make money with. When the company makes more money per hour worked, you get more bang for your buck. Companies become more efficient in a variety of ways. Big ways include advances in technology and more efficient organization. Warren Buffett (him again) points out that people today aren't smarter than they were in 1920, nor do they work harder per hour. But the accumulated value of the advancement of business culture-including technology and organization-has driven the rise in productivity.
Playing the stock market short term is gambling. Trying to pick stocks or timing the market short term are losing games, relative to the S&P 500. But if you invest in a broadly diverse portfolio and hold for years, you are betting on the continued advance of at least one element of civilization.
You can buy exchange traded funds whose investment strategy is for each share to parallel the S&P 500, or other market indicators.
So far, so good.
But, as I said, once I had made my stake, I got out. I don't regret the money I have passed up over the last 10 or 12 years. I have enough. I sleep well at night.
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
crypto is gambling at best and a pyramid scheme at worst.
it's not tied to productivity or anything other than hype. its intended use is dead in the water as the vast majority of holders regard it as a stock rather than a currency. not to mention the environmental impact that all the miners have.
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to JasonM)
quote:
Might create a bot to gamble my money for me.
If I win a lottery or gambling pool it won’t change my game plan, at all. I’ll just stay on track with the original strategy, which is to keep on building guitars until the money runs out. Mind you, if I win an obscene amount it’ll probably change me, probably for the worse, at least that’s what I’ll be told. But I won’t care...
I think that unless you have the time, training, and inclination to develop a strong investment strategy on your own, then you’re probably better off finding an honest money manager who’s tied to a reputable firm with a proven track record and work with them. I interviewed mine and when I found one I liked I stayed with them. I had other portfolios but terminated them all once I felt they were calling it in, or acting more in their interests than mine.
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
This is not financial advice, but ...
I wouldn't bother with the stock market. At some point the market will crash, all the fundamentals are similar to pre-depression era figures. I have been in the crypto sphere for some time now. That's where you should put most of your money followed by some in gold and silver as a hedge. There is no free market driving the economy right now.
Double digit interest rates, 10X- 100X gains are possible in that space and it is still early on. Most models out there including JP Morgan and Chase put Bitcoin up in the $200K to $300K range by end of 2021. Once a Bitcoin ETF is created in the US, it's game over for the dollar.
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
A lot of the headiness associated with crypto-currency reminds of the “new economy” talk that went on towards the end of the high tech boom about twenty years ago. Companies were placing ads on prime time television talking about “bandwidth” and “services”, but really just with an eye towards pumping themselves to investors, rather than pushing their fundamentals. In many cases, they weren’t pushing the fundamentals because they didn’t have any, their fundamentals had been replaced by market value and I’m talking about some pretty big companies at the time.
I went to a “futures” conference in Washington D.C. back then and attended a week’s worth of lectures on the latest telecommunications strategies. Many of the lectures were hosted by smug presenters, newly rich from having had their companies acquired by larger corporations, who seemed to be more interested in pumping their latest scheme than informing. When one lecturer, who had been instrumental in the development of TCP/IP and now stinking rich, started talking about “Cisco gift certificates” I knew it was time to get out. Only one or two of the presenters encouraged planning based on firm engineering principals rather than Pie in the Sky catch phrases and they were almost openly scorned for it.
When I got home I started paying more attention to the ads and economic talk shows, and all I seemed to be hearing was talk about the “bubble” being fueled by this wonderful high-tech, high bandwidth, Information Age “new economy”.
I mean, seriously?? But that’s what was going on. Sound familiar?
Half my co-workers in telecom ASIC design had bought into the BS so fully that they spent more of their time day-trading than doing any actual development work. Co-workers were asking for/demanding incredible perks and selling their services to the highest bidder. I had one co-worker who took a new job elsewhere, honoured his two week notice, and was a millionaire on paper from the options he had been given by his new employer before he even walked out the door. Managers started pushing a ‘Start-up’ mentality. Dumb move. You couldn’t manage a project because you couldn’t expect or plan on half the team sticking it through to the end. It was a BS-fueled mess and within the year the bubble popped. Quite a bit of money invested in the “new economy” disappeared into thin air. It was a con.
I’m just cautioning that when something starts to get heavily pushed by the mainstream as a “can’t lose” proposition one should be very careful. It doesn’t work that way and believing that investing in any trend, including crypto currency, can be an automatic road to riches is a mugs game, IMO.
I’m not saying don’t do it, but be careful. Just as with gambling, don’t play with money you can’t afford to lose.
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to gerundino63)
quote:
ORIGINAL: gerundino63
I sold and bought stocks for more than 25 years. Sold all my stocks a few years ago. Now I have gold and bitcoin. The world have borrowed too much, and the stocks will come down hard I think. When the stocks collaps, I will sell the gold and buy stocks again.
Smart, and the dominoeffect will start with USA most likely, a bit like in 2008. Gold seems the most reliable choice at this time, for those who can afford it.
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to tele)
Seems like crypto is no more... thoughts? My sense is this was all a game (pump and dump) by billionaires who made their money and are now moving on to the next trick to get wealthier.
Posts: 3466
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
quote:
Seems like crypto is no more... thoughts? My sense is this was all a game (pump and dump) by billionaires who made their money and are now moving on to the next trick to get wealthier.
I wouldn't say it is "no more." It has demonstrated that it is extremely volatile, however, and as I and others have commented previously in this thread, it's value at any given time is entirely based on the faith of those who hold it. Even that charlatan Elon Musk, who a few months ago said he would accept cryptocurrency to purchase the Tesla, has disowned that idea.
Cryptocurrency has no basis for value, other than the hopes and faith of its holders. It does not have the backing of a nation's economic strength, such as the good faith and credit of the US government backing the dollar. It is not backed by productivity of any sort. It is a bit like a pyramid scheme, which depends on the "greater fool" theory, i.e., you will gain if a "greater fool" comes along to buy into it and therefore maintain or increase its value after you have already bought into it.
At your age, Ramzi, my advice is to invest long-term in the stock market, either via solid stocks or mutual funds. The market always goes up over the long term. It sometimes tanks, and when that happens it can be scary. I remember Monday, October 13, 1987, when the Dow jones plummeted 23 percent in one day. I was at the American Embassy in Santiago, Chile at the time. Some of my colleagues were scrambling to contact their brokers to get out of the market. I was practically the lone dissenter, advising them to stay in. The market regained all its losses within three years and continued climbing. The same thing happened after the crash of 2008, although it took a bit longer to regain losses.
The key in your case is your age. You can afford to absorb temporary losses in order to reap long-term gains. Keep the interest and capital gains reinvested in the stocks or mutual funds. The power of compound interest cannot be overstated. And hold for the long-term. Trying to "time" the market short-term is as foolish as buying into cryptocurrency.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
Posts: 1932
Joined: Jul. 12 2004
From: San Francisco
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
Buy land-they aren't making anymore!!HAHA. I thought the market was high under Obama when the dow was 16k. I have money in the market but more on the sidelines since the Obama administration. Clearly that was a mistake, but over the years I've made money in the market, and taken it out to buy real estate, then saved more and put it back in the market. That has worked well, and I sleep better than if I had a large percentage of my assets in the market.
Mutual funds, ETF's, and index funds are a good way to get diversification, but then you miss out on stuff like Apple, assuming you make the right decision to buy it in the first place.
At this point I'd be happy to get 5%-8% on my dough, but it's not out there right now unless you take risks.
If I was a young doctor, I'd buy a house before investing in the market. Heck I did that and I wasn't a doctor. I've done business with many wealthy people over the last forty years, and one thing they had in common was property ownership, residential and commercial. When you get a rent check, it's real money. When bitcoin goes back to 60k, you don't get anything unless you sell. Then uncle sam lines up for his cut....
Posts: 208
Joined: Mar. 29 2017
From: The Netherlands
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
2 years ago I was for Business in Vienna and could not get my head around the reason why a 5 star business hotel needs bitcoin vending machines in the lobby. Made no sense to me.
Later that evening, downtown, it suddenly made sense. All the erotic-entertainment-companies advertised with accepting crypto-currency.
Luckily for me, my customer preferred an Italian restaurant that accepted normal credit card 😊
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
Ramzi, you should include these two books in your self-guided MBA curriculum: The first is, “The Intelligent Investor,” by Benjamin Graham. Graham was Warren Buffet’s mentor. The other is, “The Battle for Investment Survival,” by Gerald Loeb. Both of these authors lived through the great depression as young adults and died in the 1970s. They were considered experts in investing and each had about 50 years of experience in the stock market when the final versions of their books were published. Interestingly, although Graham is known for value investing he made a large part of his fortune using a speculative investment approach similar to what Loeb advocated.
You should find a reputable, licensed investment firm to help you execute whatever strategy you adopt. They can help you deal with the constant legislative changes that affect investment options and outcomes as well as issues related to taxation. Also, find a long-established firm that survived the crash of 2008.
Rental property is tricky these days. If you decide to own residential or commercial real estate you should hire an attorney. If you want to invest in cryptocurrency only put as much money in as you are willing to lose. Even with your income I wouldn’t put more than $1,000 in cryptocurrency.
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to rombsix)
Cryptocurrency concepts are going to evolve and it’s a part of the future. If you try it get in early on one of the ventures and don’t put much money into it. If it works it will be a long term investment. Let whales buy cheap and sell when they reach their tipping point, but hold on and ride it up and down. In a decade it will stabilize somewhere higher. If you put in 800 dollars to a new venture and forget the roller coaster of quick turnover it will end up being a sum eventually.
In Mirecourt where the old French bowmakers were from, each bow maker kept two or three bows a year for retirement to sell. After thirty years of bow making how many bows is that?
The other thing is, it’s ok to be poor because you can be a doctor until you’re quite old, it’s not like being a fisherman.
And this is the worst place to ask about investment advice... that I can guarantee. None of them are giving you the best advice, marry a rich woman.
Posts: 3466
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
None of them are giving you the best advice, marry a rich woman.
That might have worked at one time, Stephen. The problem today is rich women are savvy enough to execute pre-nup agreements that will leave Ramzi out in the cold financially if the marriage doesn't work out.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
Posts: 3466
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
I didn’t mean rich with money, I meant rich with life and love.
Nice deflection, that. Ramzi can't live on a woman's tango ability alone.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, With the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here, Who tried to hustle the East."
Posts: 3438
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
RE: Stock market and cryptocurrency (in reply to estebanana)
quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana None of them are giving you the best advice, marry a rich woman.
I moved to Santa Barbara in 1989. I was 51, single, still had all my hair, ran 5 or 6 miles a day. I took a stake in a small employee owned defense business. Salary was tops for the defense business, benefits were literally all the law would allow. Had some investment income besides the dividends from the business.
In most places I would have been well off. In Santa Barbara I was just relatively solid middle class.
Several people, both male and female, seriously advised me to find a wealthy Montecito widow. Just flat out said that's what I ought to do, and meant it.
It didn't accord with my self image. I told my advisors, honestly, that I was very poor at taking orders.
Besides, I was still in love with my girlfriend in San Francisco.
But apparently finding a rich Montecito widow was seen as a legit financial move.
One of a few explicitly discussed social customs I encountered only in Santa Barbara.