OT: Stock and Investment Talk

[rurahrah000]

Some end of year thoughts from Mr. Ives:

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I would agree most of this except I am not as high on TSLA. I am not sold on FSD and autonomous driving in the near future. It may be a few years before the technology is truly ready. I also think that TSLA has given up a lot of its previous advantage to other companies like Waymo. I will probably be wrong considering Musk's influence over Trump. PLTR will do fine, but not likely to have a year like 2024. It may even be down next year.

The other thing I would disagree with is the notion that mergers are going to go wild in tech. People forget that there is an overlap between the far right and far left and both sides have spoken against companies, particularly tech companies, becoming too big. I believe JD Vance has also complimented Lina Khan on several occasions on her endeavors against big tech and other companies. Of course, they aren't going to keep Lina Khan around... that would just be bad for optics. There will be more mergers, but my hunch is that mergers aren't going to be allowed to run rampant. Lot of today's problems in the airline and health care (hospitals and insurers) can be traced back to mergers gone wild.

Now this is more in your wheelhouse. I don't understand why you feel the need to act like an expert in medicine. You make yourself a very easy target when you talk out of your ass.

 

[T2Kplus20]

I would agree most of this except I am not as high on TSLA. I am not sold on FSD and autonomous driving in the near future. It may be a few years before the technology is truly ready. I also think that TSLA has given up a lot of its previous advantage to other companies like Waymo. I will probably be wrong considering Musk's influence over Trump. PLTR will do fine, but not likely to have a year like 2024. It may even be down next year.

The other thing I would disagree with is the notion that mergers are going to go wild in tech. People forget that there is an overlap between the far right and far left and both sides have spoken against companies, particularly tech companies, becoming too big. I believe JD Vance has also complimented Lina Khan on several occasions on her endeavors against big tech and other companies. Of course, they aren't going to keep Lina Khan around... that would just be bad for optics. There will be more mergers, but my hunch is that mergers aren't going to be allowed to run rampant. Lot of today's problems in the airline and health care (hospitals and insurers) can be traced back to mergers gone wild.

Now this is more in your wheelhouse. I don't understand why you feel the need to act like an expert in medicine. You make yourself a very easy target when you talk out of your ass.

Agreed that TSLA is currently a Trump/influence play with the opportunity to prove it from a business POV. As of now, it is my largest stock position in my personal/fun account. AXON, NVDA, GEV, and META rounding out my top-5.

I think we agree on most of this. I believe M&A activity will be solid and most deals be given the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure not all will be okay'ed but most will and that's a big difference over the past 4 years. However, I do believe Trump/his team will keep pushing on anti-trust issues of mega-tech. Perhaps not to the extend of Lina Khan, but still keeping the pressure on.

Any thoughts on Ackman's statement about Freddie and Fannie?

 

[RUDeac]

Was gonna ask you guys about Fannie and Freddie.

 

[T2Kplus20]

Was gonna ask you guys about Fannie and Freddie.

I need to do some research on Fannie and Freddie. Ackman has an interesting POV, but I lost track of both of them after the GFC.

Overall, another great year for the markets! VOO ended up about 25%.

 

[T2Kplus20]

Nice 2024 recap from The Compound crew:

 

[jtung230]

The last two months were not pretty. But good year overall.

ETA portfolio was up 19%. Not bad with a 80/10/10 portfolio. Will have to rebalance to 70/20/10 this year.

 

[T2Kplus20]

The last two months were not pretty. But good year overall.

ETA portfolio was up 19%. Not bad with a 80/10/10 portfolio. Will have to rebalance to 70/20/10 this year.

Working on my 2024 calculations now (been tracking +2-3% versus the S&P for most of the year). Unfortunately, my personal/fun account will be tough to figure out. Fidelity says it is up 166% YTD! LOL. This includes several large equity vests from my company and I can't seem to remove it. My main custom stock basket is up 35% which makes up about 60% of the account, so that's probably a good estimate to use.

20% bonds? Just don't see the value in that unless you are in retirement. Bonds got crushed in the last bear market, so what's the point.

 

[ScarletNut]

Historically, the first 5 business days of January lets us know how the market will perform for the rest of the year.

 

[T2Kplus20]

Historically, the first 5 business days of January lets us know how the market will perform for the rest of the year.

Professor Seigel mentioned that he believes seasonal dynamics were front-run this December. Since everyone was anticipating a Santa Clause rally (late Dec) and then repositioning/profit-taking (early Jan), both were shifted up a few weeks. Makes sense to me.

Maybe the market cleared the deck before the start of 2025? I did my reallocating over the past few trading days.

 

[jtung230]

Working on my 2024 calculations now (been tracking +2-3% versus the S&P for most of the year). Unfortunately, my personal/fun account will be tough to figure out. Fidelity says it is up 166% YTD! LOL. This includes several large equity vests from my company and I can't seem to remove it. My main custom stock basket is up 35% which makes up about 60% of the account, so that's probably a good estimate to use.

20% bonds? Just don't see the value in that unless you are in retirement. Bonds got crushed in the last bear market, so what's the point.

My bond portfolio is a hold to maturity position that offers an avg tax equivalent yield of 7.75%. I very happy with that.

 

[T2Kplus20]

My bond portfolio is a hold to maturity position that offers an avg tax equivalent yield of 7.75%. I very happy with that.

That's a fancy way of saying muni's and t-bill making 4-5%, right? :)

Bond funds seem like an awful way to invest. I did look at the specific bond offerings via Fidelity a few times, but have a lot to learn and research. I know @ScarletNut is big into individual bonds.

 

[jtung230]

That's a fancy way of saying muni's and t-bill making 4-5%, right? :)

Bond funds seem like an awful way to invest. I did look at the specific bond offerings via Fidelity a few times, but have a lot to learn and research. I know @ScarletNut is big into individual bonds.

Munis and QDI perf, yes. T-bills is only state and local tax free.

 

[Knight Owl]

That's a fancy way of saying muni's and t-bill making 4-5%, right? :)

Bond funds seem like an awful way to invest. I did look at the specific bond offerings via Fidelity a few times, but have a lot to learn and research. I know @ScarletNut is big into individual bonds.

Buffet has almost $300 billion in TBills last I checked. I have slightly less.
Warren must be scratching his head at the recent Apple stock price run up. I know I am.
MSFT is about a 11% run up from their ATH and a 19% run up to a $500 stock price. Both seem likely to hit in 2025 even if $500 only holds temporarily. It’s only 10pm at the AI party that goes well past last call…

 

[T2Kplus20]

Buffet has almost $300 billion in TBills last I checked. I have slightly less.
Warren must be scratching his head at the recent Apple stock price run up. I know I am.
MSFT is about a 11% run up from their ATH and a 19% run up to a $500 stock price. Both seem likely to hit in 2025 even if $500 only holds temporarily. It’s only 10pm at the AI party that goes well past last call…

+1
Buffet royally screwed up selling so much AAPL. It's still BRK's largest holding, but wow, awful timing. Love MSFT for 2025! It's going to be a huge AI winner.

 

[Knight Owl]

+1
Buffet royally screwed up selling so much AAPL. It's still BRK's largest holding, but wow, awful timing. Love MSFT for 2025! It's going to be a huge AI winner.

I hope so but not holding my breath in the short term…PE is about 35. What’s really amazing to me is that a company like MCDonalds is selling at a 25+ PE. Maybe MCD will be expanding bigly in Latin America and Africa but I dunno. I prefer any spicy Mexican food to over-salted beef. The Impossible Whopper at BK is a guilty pleasure for me though…all the salt but no cholesterol.

 

[RU-05]

Professor Seigel mentioned that he believes seasonal dynamics were front-run this December. Since everyone was anticipating a Santa Clause rally (late Dec) and then repositioning/profit-taking (early Jan), both were shifted up a few weeks. Makes sense to me.

Maybe the market cleared the deck before the start of 2025? I did my reallocating over the past few trading days.

I think the post election run up stole the Santa Claus rally.

 

[Knight Owl]

Yeah…People really believe that Trump won’t do anything that he promised to do I guess like increasing the average tariff by more than 5X for starters to more than 21.6%.

 

[T2Kplus20]

Working on my 2024 calculations now (been tracking +2-3% versus the S&P for most of the year). Unfortunately, my personal/fun account will be tough to figure out. Fidelity says it is up 166% YTD! LOL. This includes several large equity vests from my company and I can't seem to remove it. My main custom stock basket is up 35% which makes up about 60% of the account, so that's probably a good estimate to use.

20% bonds? Just don't see the value in that unless you are in retirement. Bonds got crushed in the last bear market, so what's the point.

Across our portfolio (all 9 accounts), we were up 26.5% for 2024. Our best account was my personal/fun account coming it at about 36% (which is a bit of an estimate as per my previous post). Very happy with the year! I did some reallocating over the past week and made sure my value plays were where they should be.

Even better, my little one beat the S&P 500 for a second year in a row. Her portfolio of VOO plus her favorite 10 companies/stocks came in at 25.5%. We reviewed the performance of every stock and she decided at add SNAP for 2025.

 

[T2Kplus20]

I think the post election run up stole the Santa Claus rally.

Very likely the case! Hope you did well in 2024.

 

[RU-05]

+1
Buffet royally screwed up selling so much AAPL. It's still BRK's largest holding, but wow, awful timing. Love MSFT for 2025! It's going to be a huge AI winner.

I think Berkshire owned so much AAPL that if they sell a big chunk it will push the price down, and then there will be a relief rally once they are done selling. So it's partially mechanical, not fully poor timing.

But yeah, they could have held a little longer.

 

[RU-05]

Very likely the case! Hope you did well in 2024.

Meh. I mean I did quite well, but not surprisingly I didn't beat the major indexes. I dipped my first toe into buying the Q's. I'm probably going to put a sizable chunk of my portfolio into a SPY-QQQ split, and then have a smaller chunk where I buy individual stocks.

I think part of my issue is owning too many stocks. I need to widdle that down to a more manageable number of high conviction stocks.

Not there yet, but that is probably where I am heading.

 

[jtung230]

Bulk of your savings should be in index funds. You can have a small allocation for stock picking. I own 10 individual stocks. 90% of that is in Apple, Google and Amazon. Love to sell and diversify more but tax consequences is a killer. Working on a trade that could solve the tax issue via my advisor. Will see if it works.

 

[RU-05]

I think I'm going to add to DVN. So dumb.

 

[RU-05]

TSLA misses on deliveries. Stock down 4%. Back below $400.

 

[T2Kplus20]

Meh. I mean I did quite well, but not surprisingly I didn't beat the major indexes. I dipped my first toe into buying the Q's. I'm probably going to put a sizable chunk of my portfolio into a SPY-QQQ split, and then have a smaller chunk where I buy individual stocks.

I think part of my issue is owning too many stocks. I need to widdle that down to a more manageable number of high conviction stocks.

Not there yet, but that is probably where I am heading.

+1
It's hard to beat the S&P 500 when the big boys continue to lead the way. We beat it by a few points in 2023 and 2024 only because we have a sizable growth/tech lean, so essentially we are overweight the Mag 7. However, this caused us to underperform the index in 2022. The foundation of your portfolio should be the indexes.

Tom Lee mentioned a bunch of times the danger of owning too many stocks. He limits the Granny Shots to a 30-35 stock subset of the S&P 500. Anything too much bigger and you are just going to mimic the index.

In my personal/fun account, I own:
33 stocks via my FS Insights custom stock basket - I use this as a core stock "index" and mostly track it in aggregate (which you can do on Fidelity)
6 clinical stage biotechs because I am crazy - also via the Fidelity custom basket tool (which is awesome)
8-10 high conviction additional plays - GEV, LULU, SNAP, NKE, CVX, etc.

I have a watchlist of 35 other stocks, but I'm at the point where if a new one goes in, an old one needs to come out.

 

[RU-05]

+1
It's hard to beat the S&P 500 when the big boys continue to lead the way. We beat it by a few points in 2023 and 2024 only because we have a sizable growth/tech lead, so essentially we are overweight the Mag 7. However, this caused us to underperform the index in 2022. The foundation of your portfolio should be the indexes.

Tom Lee mentioned a bunch of times the danger of owning too many stocks. He limits the Granny Shots to a 30-35 stock subset of the S&P 500. Anything too much bigger and you are just going to mimic the index.

In my personal/fun account, I own:
33 stocks via my FS Insights custom stock basket - I use this as a core stock "index" and mostly track it in aggregate (which you can do on Fidelity)
6 clinical stage biotechs because I am crazy - also via the Fidelity custom basket tool (which is awesome)
8-10 high conviction additional plays - GEV, LULU, SNAP, NKE, CVX, etc.

I have a watchlist of 35 other stocks, but I'm at the point where if a new one goes in, an old one needs to come out.

Owning a limited number of stocks and a clear winner like NVDA is a good recipe.

 

[T2Kplus20]

Owning a limited number of stocks and a clear winner like NVDA is a good recipe.

Another recipe for success! My two biggest growth funds were significantly overweight NVDA last year (FDGRX and FBGRX). Gotta ride the best horse.

By the way, not a good idea to own mutual funds in a brokerage account due to taxable distributions. However, FBGRX (Fidelity Blue Chip Growth) has an ETF equivalent.

 

[RU-05]

Added to BA.

 

[rutgersguy1]

Josh Brown talking about opportunities in stocks and sectors that are downtrodden and you don’t necessarily have to buy the names that have ripped. (music to my ears lol)

Mentioned pharma including GLP names (which I’ve mentioned here recently), housing stocks, SBUX and NKE which haven’t had 3 consecutive negative years in many decades but just did, etc

If you don’t like paying ATHs (that’s me) for stocks there’s a lot out there to look at he says.

 

[T2Kplus20]

Josh Brown talking about opportunities in stocks and sectors that are downtrodden and you don’t necessarily have to buy the names that have ripped. (music to my ears lol)

Mentioned pharma including GLP names (which I’ve mentioned here recently), housing stocks, SBUX and NKE which haven’t had 3 consecutive negative years in many decades but just did, etc

If you don’t like paying ATHs (that’s me) for stocks there’s a lot out there to look at he says.

I've had BA, NKE, and SBUX on my watchlist for a long time as turnaround plays of icon brands/companies. I bought NKE mostly due to Ackman's purchase. SBUX has the best CEO in the space, so they look promising. And for BA, someone needs to build all these damn planes. BA is kind of too-big-to-fail and Elon is saying positive things about it.

Easy to think all 3 are buys right now.

 

[RUAldo]

. I bought NKE mostly due to Ackman's purchase.

I had Nike on my list but after seeing the “I TOLD YOU SO” campaign they are running during the CFP I think I’m gonna sit this one out. I didn’t like it to begin with but when my teenage son was making fun of it (unsolicited) I’ll trust my gut.

 

[rutgersguy1]

I had Nike on my list but after seeing the “I TOLD YOU SO” campaign they are running during the CFP I think I’m gonna sit this one out. I didn’t like it to begin with but when my teenage son was making fun of it (unsolicited) I’ll trust my gut.

I’m good stepping in for NKE if it gets a little deeper 6 handle on it.

 

[RU-05]

Josh Brown talking about opportunities in stocks and sectors that are downtrodden and you don’t necessarily have to buy the names that have ripped. (music to my ears lol)

Mentioned pharma including GLP names (which I’ve mentioned here recently), housing stocks, SBUX and NKE which haven’t had 3 consecutive negative years in many decades but just did, etc

If you don’t like paying ATHs (that’s me) for stocks there’s a lot out there to look at he says.

And Brown is one of the biggest advocates of investing in growth over value.

Not that he's saying invest in value on this latest call, but yes look for opportunities that don't have such high valuations.

 

[RUAldo]

And Brown is one of the biggest advocates of investing in growth over value.

Not that he's saying invest in value on this latest call, but yes look for opportunities that don't have such high valuations.

SBUX is one I was deep in the red on until the new CEO was announced and I got out with a nice return. I’ve been looking to get back in but although I am there everyday for my morning rip-off grande cold brew I’m not seeing any changes. One of my regular stores was closed around the holidays due to the Union strike. The local manager didn’t even tell the sister store up the street as I was apparently the one that broke the news to them which really pissed off those employees. There are also a bunch of new coffee shops popping up all over North Jersey which sort of surprised me.

 

[Rutgers Chris]

SBUX is one I was deep in the red on until the new CEO was announced and I got out with a nice return. I’ve been looking to get back in but although I am there everyday for my morning rip-off grande cold brew I’m not seeing any changes. One of my regular stores was closed around the holidays due to the Union strike. The local manager didn’t even tell the sister store up the street as I was apparently the one that broke the news to them which really pissed off those employees. There are also a bunch of new coffee shops popping up all over North Jersey which sort of surprised me.

Local owned, smaller chains are beating them all around me in California. The neighborhood coffee shop is definitely on the up swing

 

[Rutgers Chris]

Two of my favorite stock indicators had a neck and neck battle this year. From returns posted thus far it looks like Nancy beat most of this thread.

 

[rutgersguy1]

And Brown is one of the biggest advocates of investing in growth over value.

Not that he's saying invest in value on this latest call, but yes look for opportunities that don't have such high valuations.

Often my biggest gains are in beaten down hated stocks like GE or big tech a couple years ago, staples in the past etc…

Accumulate some in those times and then wait, might take some time but often as long as the company has some solid fundamental story it comes around eventually. I don't like getting in on a massive run. I rather get in when it's falling and hated even if it's somewhat before a turn and falls further. I tend to buy more at certain points using charts.

Mind you I always do this in the safety of large cap, megacap names not some of the more esoteric names that come up here where that kind of knife catching can be a little more dangerous than my variety lol.

The one time I took a bath with that tact were the financials in the crash.

Accordingly as a retail investor might do after being burned, financials (banks) have become a no touch for me because I don’t trust any of the CEOs besides Dimon to know what actually goes on in their own bank. New regulations keep things in check but they can always come and go so I don’t look in that direction anymore.

 

[RUAldo]

Local owned, smaller chains are beating them all around me in California. The neighborhood coffee shop is definitely on the up swing

Plus you have Dutch Bros which is crushing it. I’m also impressed by the quality and decors of these smaller coffee shops. I drink SBUX b/c I’m a creature of habit but may jump ship for a local joint soon.

 

[Rutgers Chris]

Plus you have Dutch Bros which is crushing it. I’m also impressed by the quality and decors of these smaller coffee shops. I drink SBUX b/c I’m a creature of habit but may jump ship for a local joint soon.

Lot of new chains out there that we’ve gotten used to. Kids love Dutch Bros

 

[T2Kplus20]

And Brown is one of the biggest advocates of investing in growth over value.

Not that he's saying invest in value on this latest call, but yes look for opportunities that don't have such high valuations.

Most value stocks are "value" for a reason, but there are plenty of turnaround possibilities.