$cost.... any thoughts at what levels you might get back into brazil? I'm watching the ewz for about $2 lower where I see some support and thinking about averaging in at that point. Unfortunately, there is little technical support IMHO once the bovespa cracks 36000. right on on the GLD thing. I'm at 615
$Cost -- Pretty phenomenal returns this year (as well as previous years). What are you doing about taxes? Are all of your gains in a tax-deferred retirement account? I'm curious as to how someone so successful can take the sting out of the taxman's bite. Again, congrats.
I would say about 85% is in a Roth IRA.....I will have to pay taxes on my forex account, Divs that are foreign, Divs and Capital gains that are taken out of my account and my UBS account for options....The tax man gets me in many other ways and I pay my share....Is it a fair share, I could argue both ways....Since I disagree with almost everything this government has spent boat loads of money on in the last few years I have limited my withdrawals....At my age taxes are the last thing I like to think about, but every April I take a nice hit...The key to the tax man is try not to spend $$$....The less I spend the less I have to take out of my account and the less I pay in taxes every year.....My yearly expenses are really never more than 90K....Insurance, Bills, Taxes, Gas, Food, Living Expenses, leisure and everything else you need to survive....At my age you pretty much have all the toys and accessories you need... The kids need a little help every once in a while, so I act like the bank and charge the Risk Free Rate.....This way they won't screw up their credit scores, get overcharged with interest on their mortgages, cars are paid up front in cash and I am pretty understanding with late payments....This method is a good learning lesson to them all....From a young age I taught them all about assets, liabilities, savings and interest....They are all still learning, but if I was a real bank they all would have many marks on their record... I guess I got to where I am today by being cheap and staying cheap, but when the time comes to spend cash; I can splurge with the best of them... $COSTAverageMAN
So where's the account at today? Haven't seen any numbers in a while. What % did you end up with for the month of May, where 9 out of 10 hedge funds were bleeding from their eyes.
03-20-06 07:09 PM You Have Got To Be Kidding Me!!!!! New Fed. Chairman (I'm so disgusted I can't even say his name) wants long term rates to rise or else he's going to keep raising rates!!!! Way to come out swinging...........This is a loose loose for equity holders in my opinion......Long term rates rise market begins to falter.....Long term rates stay close to where they are today, Fed. BOY wrecks the equity markets by raising short term rates to 5.25 or above......Just My Opinion.....The Man hasn't even opened his mouth yet and I already feel sick....The speech is out!!!! By the way thanks for the comments...I feel better now!!! Excel Sheet will be ready soon $COSTAverageMAN This was an older post of mine back in MARCH......But it is the truth of all truths about equity markets. How one can view a market when It's over bought...(not sayin it is, just a funny example!!!) I look at the Market as a "Ponzi Scheme", Ponzi said he could double your money in a year. one man believed him..Ponze then spent that year looking for 2 new people to believe him..he found them, took their money and at the end of the first year.. the first man got twice the amount he gave Ponzi...Word broke out around town that Ponzi could double your money and everyone before you new it was giving Ponzi money and for years he kept doubling the EARLY INVESTORS money...A PYRAMID SHEME...Ponzi had so much money that he left town and lived a luxurious life.. Moral of the story.... lets hope your not the man with the paper when the buyers disappear on speculative sh#t.... I did like my little story and It can apply to the market...and the illiquidity of a market during a correction.... (Hence the ILL can make you sick not being able to get out of a position as $$ disappears similiar to light in a black hole) ..... (Not saying we are going there) ///Corrections are kind of like "Ponzi" skipping out of town.... leaving the late investors/speculators with the HOPE that one day he will come back and just give them their $$$ back...EX: JDSU, LU, CIEN...If these apply to you... I'm sorry and hope you dollar costed like 20 times on the way down... You may just break even soon(It's been along 6 years though) Don't forget to adjust for "inflation and risk free rate"....Sorry thats just MEAN.. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AKA "BLACK MONDAY" When: October 21, 24, and 29, 1929 Where: USA ---A string of terrible days led to a more than 40% drop in the market from the beginning of September 1929 to the end of October 1929. In fact, the market continued to decline until July 1932 when it bottomed out, down nearly 90% from its 1929 highs. --------------"Ponzi skips town"--------------- ---Americans were as bullish as ever. The stock market was guaranteed to make everyone rich as the first world war had been won, and industrialization was resulting in previously-unimaginable luxuries. It was a good time to be American. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE CRASH OF 1987 When: October 19th, 1987 Where: USA ---The amount the market declined from peak to bottom: 508.32 points, 22.6%, or $500 billion lost in one day. The largest one-day percentage drop in history. ---This was the crash that everyone expected but could not justify because of the work of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC--which was established for the prevention of further crashes and fraudulent practices that had infected the stock market--was doing a fine job after the war and finally coaxed tentative investors back into the market in the sixties. "What the little guy is back--heard that recently" The SEC, however, COULD TAKE INVESTORS TO THE PROPER INFORMATION BUT COULDN'T MAKE THEM THINK. In the early sixties and seventies, investors looked not at the value of the company but at the appeal of its public image and the vernacular used to describe it. The following kinds of over-embellished company sketches would attract the public eye. Investors were infatuated with these companies, which somehow represented some higher idea and purpose. EX. TODAY "GOOG","AAPL","HANS", "NTRI" Fortunately, the newbie chairman of the Fed, Alan Greenspan, was around to help fight off a depression by preventing the insolvency of commercial and investment banks. "What was that we corrected after a new Fed Chairman" ((Not saying these companies aren't good just some people LOAD THE BOAT UP not knowing anything, but they are talking about it on CNBC)) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Asian Crash (or Crises) When: 1989-2004 Where: Southeast Asia but primarily Japan Percentage Lost From Peak to Bottom: 63.5% as of 2003. ---The Japanese have an uncanny ability to enhance what they adopt from the Americans (market economy). Sadly, the Japanese have picked up on crashes as well and made theirs a lot bigger than any one historical American crash. The crash of the Nikkei has morphed into a massive, surly bear that attacks any signs of recovery. It all started with the a boom/bull market of the 1980s. "Just don't get stuck with depreciating Paper" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Dot-Com Crash When: March 11th, 2000 to October 9th, 2002 Where: Silicon Valley (for the most part) Percentage Lost From Peak to Bottom: The Nasdaq Composite lost 78% of its value as it fell from 5046.86 to 1114.11. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida Real Estate Craze When: 1926 Where: Florida The amount the market declined from peak to bottom: Land that could be bought for $800,000 could, within a year, be resold for $4 million before crashing back down to pre-boom levels. The prices were so inflated that to buy a condo-style property in 1926, you would've had to pay the same as you would now have to pay for a luxury home in the guard-gated communities in Miami ($4,500,000)--without adjusting for inflation! "SOUNDS FAMILIAR" As hindsight is always 20/20, we should take the time to highlight what we can learn from these past tragedies. First off, we should point out that most market volatility is all our fault. In reality, people create most of the risk in the market place by inflating stock prices beyond the value of the underlying company. When stocks or commodities are flying through the stratosphere like rockets, it is usually a sign of a bubble. That's not to say that stocks cannot legitimately enjoy a huge leap in value, but this leap should be justified by the prospects of the underlying companies, not just by a mass of investors following each other. The unreasonable belief in the possibility of getting rich quick is the primary reason people get burned by market crashes. Remember that if you put your money into investments that have a high potential for returns, you must also be willing to bear a high chance of losing it all. Another observation we should make is that regardless of our measures to correct the problems, the time between crashes has decreased. We had centuries between fiascos, then decades, then years. We cannot say whether this foretells anything dire for the future, but the best thing you can do is keep yourself educated, informed, and well-practiced in doing research. $COSTAverageMAN