Before the meltdown, I used to get asked if I had any hot tips. I always said "put your money in a blue chip mutual fund." Recently two of my neighbors asked about specific stox they hold, one was ADP and the other was CAH. ADP was at 52 and I said get out b/c I thought it was going to 43 or lower. CAH was at 72 and I said get ot b/c I thought it was going to low 50's. Neither person got out, and both stox did as the charts said they would. Actually they went lower. Later, the ADP owner was mad because it went to 54 before it tanked. The CAH owner said there was no way I knew it was going to tank. Moral of the story: Don't say anything other than, Ihave no tips and I'm sure you'll make the right choice.
Try saying: "Will you be paying for the tips and advice with cash, check, Visa, or Mastercard?" That should end the discussion. 777
this is a perfect example to what I was referring to in my earlier post...they didn't want your opinion.they wanted to tell you what they had so if they went up they could tell you you were wrong and say how much $ they made...... this is also the reason I got out of the brokerage business......I never had a client call me and say, "thanks for that position, you made me some nice $"...but I think at least 35% of them called when they had a position that went down even 5%.......when I left the business(August 2000) I had 75 year old people calling me telling me they wanted this and that tech stock....I had one guy who had a huge position in (LU)...the stock had dropped 10 points earlier that summer(this was almost 30% of his portfolio)...I practically begged him to sell (stock was about 45 or so i think), he just wouldn't do it....I knew it was time to leave that business. And I'm so glad I did. Brokers are getting arbitration cases against them. A lot f them are out of the business. Come to think of it the best trade I ever made was my broker hat for my daytrader hat.
i tell them i don't know....if they insist i tell them to buy gold and hold it. then they just give me a stupid stare and that ends the conversation!!!!
what they expect me to know. My friends always ask me the oddest questions - then look at me cross-eyed when I tell them I don't know off the top of my head. "What's the Deutschemark trading at compared to the yen today?" "Will interest rates rise next month?"
Uptik I recall from the trading room that you were a broker before, as I was. Of course in your day you had quotrons. In mine we used a chalkboard. I had similar experiences as you described. When the client made money, they were brilliant for having followed my recommendation. When they lost money, I was an idiot. Who needs that?
i have a friend who got a pretty nice settlement from an accident he was involved with.. he told me that he had put his money in intel.. this was 2 years ago.. i told him that intel was trading near its low and the chart looked down to me, also that i felt the market would pull it down regardless.. he gave me 1000 reasons why intel was the right choice, and then with a knowing smile he let me in on the real secret.. if intel did go down, he would just buy more.. well, it did go down.. he did buy more.. and then he had to sell it all at a big loss.. did he learn his lesson? a few months ago we were having lunch again and he told me that he had taken what was left of his money and bought some cheaper stocks that he planned to sell as soon as they went up a couple points each.. i told him that some companies were just too high a p/e ratio for funds to justify buying and that there would be sellers leaning on them until things turned around.. and that the market was in a downtrend and any long positions were not a good idea.. i cited csco as an example.. to this, i got 1000 reasons why csco is the company of the century.. cash on hand blah blah blah.. john chambers blah blah.. earnings blah blah.. well, months later.. he is upside down again.. some people dont want to listen to reason.. i dont try to reason with him because i know he can only hear what he wants to hear.. everything else is a waste of time and energy.. super nice guy, just not smart about money.. -qwik