Bear Market -- When's a good time to buy and what?

[steve B]

If I had decent money and was still young...

The index funds are the smart long term play.

If you want to do some day trading type stuff, or more mid range, treat it like a casino, and put aside only as much as you're willing to lose. Consider it "play" money.
A friend who ran computers in the financial sector told me every day trader will eventually lose a lot. The financial places automate the buying and selling, and turn huge volume based on pre set numbers for particular stocks. If it goes below a certain number, buy say 10 million shares. If it goes up by some amount, like one cent, sell it all. Same if it goes lower by a certain amount, sell to limit losses.
All that can happen in under a second.

Some "play money" ideas.
Look into some energy stocks that may have seasonal price swings that are predictable. For example suburban propane usually has a low early in the year, then rebounds over the summer. Maybe not bad for a 3-4 month flip, but then again, they've been generally downward since 2011 with some decent spikes both ways along the way. The difference this past year was only about $4 a share though. Plus you have to remember to pay yourself for the time spent keeping track.
From what I've seen, international unrest usually is good for gold and silver. Especially gold. And is generally not good for stocks.
That's something you cans see right now, gold was around 1500 but was already having a start at a spike when the coronavirus was first detected around Jan 1.Big spike jan 7,the day it was recognized as a coronavirus, settled around 1550, gradually to 1550 is early February, over 1650 feb 4, down to 1580 by the end of Feb, then back up to 1631 today.
Some wild swings, and the biggest gains are probably already gone. Unless the news gets worse.
Again, it's pretty risky, if you bought in oct 2011, you still aren't at beak even.. I'm not sure how fast commodities get sold, but you can see with a near hundred solar swing in the last few days that if it takes much time at all to process, it would all depend on when the price got determined.
The coin dealer I hung out at years ago would sell bullion type stuff at the price that day, and would buy for I think that less 10%, so after that you'd have to be up at least that much to sell.

In the 80's before instant info, I wrote my economics paper on the lag time between gold prices raising and dealers changing the price tags on collector type coins where there was numismatic value too. Gold would go up, but most would only reprice at most once a week. When gold went back down, there was a similar lag time, as many only even looked at spot price weekly.
The prof didn't understand it but figured It was too short to get an A but too long and maybe actually smart, so not a C. I took my B on a poorly researched and documented paper and was pretty happy. I didn't have enough money to try it, but the dealer did, made a few bucks by buying during the upswing lag and gave me a few bucks in free stuff. Which I probably spent on something dumb that hasn't gained in 30 years...

So take that as a big caution about the above ideas. You might make a little, you might lose almost all of it.

[stlcardsfan]

Buy QQQ at these levels and watch the ride over the next 20 years.

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by stlcardsfan

Buy QQQ at these levels and watch the ride over the next 20 years.

right..i am waiting for dow to get to 19000...even if goes down to 14000 etc..in next 10 years..you figure will get over 19000

[wazoo]

The airlines sure look mighty discounted right now...

[sb1]

I don't comment much on these type of threads but buying QQQ is a great way to start, especially at it's current level. I have several thousand shares, most of which I bought at about $50-60

Right now it's about $55 off it's high of $237, and should rebound and exceed that as the tech sector comes back.

[wazoo]

Originally Posted by sb1

I don't comment much on these type of threads but buying QQQ is a great way to start, especially at it's current level. I have several thousand shares, most of which I bought at about $50-60

Right now it's about $55 off it's high of $237, and should rebound and exceed that as the tech sector comes back.

Good call. Congrats on the early buy in. Seem like a solid ETF to track.

[1952boyntoncollector]

Originally Posted by 1952boyntoncollector

right..i am waiting for dow to get to 19000...even if goes down to 14000 etc..in next 10 years..you figure will get over 19000

almost there...

[cardsagain74]

Going to offer a contrary point of view that I rarely see: be very cautious of the standard advice that the US stock market can always be counted on for a 9% per year return in the long run, you can't lose if you stay invested long enough, and similar assumptions.

This assumes that everything will work out similar in the next 50-100 years here as it has for the last 50-100, and it just doesn't work that way. Especially for a country that's only been around for 244 years and didn't start its massive economic boom until the last 100.

Our nation's GDP is now around 40 times what it was in the early 1960s, and we were already the globe's biggest superpower back then. How much more explosive economic expansion can really be expected from here?

Dynasties rise and fall, and when you're the current cream of the crop, it always seems like you'll shoot to the moon and your country's dominance will never end. I'm not saying that will happen (or even come close) during the lifetime of someone who's 23 now, but it's a reminder to keep any can't miss views in perspective.

All that being said, any 401k employer matching does give you a consistent small leg up. But even with that, you can't count on your 401 k to no doubt provide some huge retirement egg for you. Boring ol' principal-protected investments and savings may become a lot more necessary for the eventual golden years of anyone who just got out of college

[Shoeless Moe]

Anybody else notice the only 5 states now with Stay at Home Orders, California, New York, Illinois, Penn., and Mass. all have a Democratic Governor.

I'm not saying I'm just saying.


Current breakdown of Governors is 24 are Democratic, 26 are Republican. Yet the 5 states shutdown are again run by Democratic Governors. Just find that not to be a coincidence and somewhat interesting.

I'm currently neither a Republican or a Democrat, so have no agenda, but find it interesting every story on CNN is doom and gloom, and they are obviously a Democratic station, and now the ONLY states with shutdowns, are ALL Democratic, the shutdowns also fuel the fire of FEAR.

I find that Illinois has a whopping total of 5 deaths, and they shut the state down. And that is 5 TOTAL deaths since this broke in the US which was what maybe mid February. Regardless of when it started there can be 20 murders over any given weekend in Chicago. A car accident could have 5 deaths.

All this over 5 deaths????

7,700 people die every day in America, Natural Causes, Heart Disease, Cancers, other diseases, accidents, murders. 7700 a day!

We have had what 200 from the Corona Virus TOTAL.

I honestly think we may have cured cancer with all the money lost in the stock market and resources being spent on the stop of a virus that has killed 200 people out of 327 million Americans.

200 people die in a plane crash.

Yet the economy is being destroyed, jobs lost, retirement savings wiped out, college funds wiped out, massive layoffs, oh yah kinda redundant, but all this hysteria and chaos over 200 deaths? Again over 7000 Americans die any given day. And I know yes it could spread and we need to stop the spread but was mass panic and hysteria fueled by CNN and others really necessary. And even if it did spread it's pretty much under a 1% death rate, cancer and other diseases are higher then that. CNN & other news channels ratings have skyrocketed and will keep this going as long as possible which sucks for the US, but great for their ratings.

But playing the devils advocate, if we didn't do much and it spread more rapidly then it obviously will now, then you "could" have 20,000 die b4 there is a cure. At the rate its increasing (fairly slowly mind you, we won't get close to 20K deaths by the time this is over) And 18,000 died from the Flu just in 2018 (look it up), but nobody called that out or panicked, not sure why.

According to the American Cancer Society, in the U.S., an estimated 606,520 people will die from cancer in 2020.  This equates to 1,660 people dying of cancer each day in 2020. 20-40 dying each day to the Virus. Just wish we had put all this effort/money/concern into Cancer research and stoppage.

[todeen]

Originally Posted by Shoeless Moe

Anybody else notice the only 5 states now with Stay at Home Orders, California, New York, Illinois, Penn., and Mass. all have a Democratic Governor.

I'm not saying I'm just saying.


Current breakdown of Governors is 24 are Democratic, 26 are Republican. Yet the 5 states shutdown are again run by Democratic Governors. Just find that not to be a coincidence and somewhat interesting.

I'm currently neither a Republican or a Democrat, so have no agenda, but find it interesting every story on CNN is doom and gloom, and they are obviously a Democratic station, and now the ONLY states with shutdowns, are ALL Democratic, the shutdowns also fuel the fire of FEAR.

I find that Illinois has a whopping total of 5 deaths, and they shut the state down. And that is 5 TOTAL deaths since this broke in the US which was what maybe mid February. Regardless of when it started there can be 20 murders over any given weekend in Chicago. A car accident could have 5 deaths.

All this over 5 deaths????

7,700 people die every day in America, Natural Causes, Heart Disease, Cancers, other diseases, accidents, murders. 7700 a day!

We have had what 200 from the Corona Virus TOTAL.

I honestly think we may have cured cancer with all the money lost in the stock market and resources being spent on the stop of a virus that has killed 200 people out of 327 million Americans.

200 people die in a plane crash.

Yet the economy is being destroyed, jobs lost, retirement savings wiped out, college funds wiped out, massive layoffs, oh yah kinda redundant, but all this hysteria and chaos over 200 deaths? Again over 7000 Americans die any given day. And I know yes it could spread and we need to stop the spread but was mass panic and hysteria fueled by CNN and others really necessary. And even if it did spread it's pretty much under a 1% death rate, cancer and other diseases are higher then that. CNN & other news channels ratings have skyrocketed and will keep this going as long as possible which sucks for the US, but great for their ratings.

But playing the devils advocate, if we didn't do much and it spread more rapidly then it obviously will now, then you "could" have 20,000 die b4 there is a cure. At the rate its increasing (fairly slowly mind you, we won't get close to 20K deaths by the time this is over) And 18,000 died from the Flu just in 2018 (look it up), but nobody called that out or panicked, not sure why.

According to the American Cancer Society, in the U.S., an estimated 606,520 people will die from cancer in 2020.  This equates to 1,660 people dying of cancer each day in 2020. 20-40 dying each day to the Virus. Just wish we had put all this effort/money/concern into Cancer research and stoppage.

You're missing the point of the panic. The panic isn't the 200 deaths. The panic is that our hospitals can't operate that many patients on respirators. So if my little town in washington gets hit, we only have a handful of respirators available. So then they have to fly out people to another hospital, using up resources elsewhere. This is the problem in Italy. They don't have enough respirators for everyone and so doctors are choosing who has the best chance to survive.

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[nebboy]

Originally Posted by stlcardsfan

Buy QQQ at these levels and watch the ride over the next 20 years.

+1