Stocks

A majority of the stocks have been rising pretty rapidly lately including AAPL, anyone know why? Are people just getting those tax returns or something?

I would probably say that it is due to the FED giving billions of dollars. And that some now are feeling that the credit crisis is over and are heading back into the market. To the best of my knowledge the rebates haven't gone out yet.

But it's still not where it use to be, my portfolio is still down 70% from the beginning of the year. =( and right before the market decline i was up 200%.

LETS GO AAPL!!! LETS SEE $200+ AGAIN!!! (current share holder)

Considering it was at $200 not too long ago, I wouldn't consider a rise from $120 to $140 too exciting. But it's a definite improvement over the past couple months.

As for the market as a whole, I won't be breath easy until the Dow gets back over 13,000. My portfolio is still in the pits!

Yeah I know, it's just weird to see the sudden inclination of the past week or so, and it may not be an improvement, but definitely better than 119 :/ and FYI, I'm a shareholder as well of about 5 stocks or so, =/ i bought it at 134 =[[ at least it's actually over that now and a few cents away from 150

It is just the stock market being irrational as usual. It will go back down again.

I'm up ~8%. It generally hovers around there. Most of my money is in other countries, so it has no been affected nearly as much.

My suggestion? Just don't look at them until all of this is over. It will just stress you out and tempt you into selling.

cheesybanana said:

It is just the stock market being irrational as usual. It will go back down again.

I'm up ~8%. It generally hovers around there. Most of my money is in other countries, so it has no been affected nearly as much.

My suggestion? Just don't look at them until all of this is over. It will just stress you out and tempt you into selling.

Click to expand...

Yea I agree with you cheesy, don't look at your holdings until this is over, I sold a lot of my holdings and it ended up tanking me.

LISTEN TO CHEESYBANANA!!!

I'm up across the board. Very exciting times!!

For some real insight into what is happening, read Investors Business Daily (a newspaper) for a week or so. It is wonderfully informative. I wouldn't consider investing without it these days.

IBD's "take" on the current market movement is that the market is starting to accept that the credit crisis is over, and that people are moving out of safe havens like commodities and back into stock. So, expect to see a general uptrend from here on out. There will be a few more little "shocks" I am sure, but a general uptrend.

Just a warning for any of you who are of the Democratic persuasion. IBD is a very business focused newspaper with a very (very) conservative editorial viewpoint. You will not find a whole lot of editorial content that is kind to the Democrats.

Ooop....look at them fall again!

Darn, we jinxed it!!

ALRIGHT GO APPLE!!
(knocks on wood)

Apple reports this week!! Lets see $180+
(knocks on wood again)

Yeah I noticed that, woot woot!!

Mine are still down but i look at it as a good time to invest as you can get more shares for your money.

fleurya said:

Considering it was at $200 not too long ago, I wouldn't consider a rise from $120 to $140 too exciting. But it's a definite improvement over the past couple months.

Click to expand...

Are you kidding? This is going to seem like showing off, but I bought my Apple shares @ $92 and then sold them at $197. I re-bought them at @ $122 and could resell them again right now (around $160) for a pretty tasty profit. This is how people make money day trading, with these movements. Without the up and down movements, this would be impossible, especially considering Apple gives no dividend, a buy and hold strategy is utterly pointless as there is no yield.

The market is rising because despite all the doom and gloom, some of these companies have some amazing fundamentals - Apple has no debt, has rising sales, has rising Brand Awareness (according to most recent polls up more than 100% on last year) and is in complete control of it's supply line. Other companies are pretty solid too, as long as you're not into any of the US banks (apart from JP Morgan)!

As for the market as a whole, I won't be breath easy until the Dow gets back over 13,000. My portfolio is still in the pits!

Click to expand...

At the end of March my entire 401k and other hold stocks were showing a YTD return of -3.5%, but now only 3 weeks later shows a YTD return of 3% - I am sure you'll be back in the black before Q3 this year. Hold tight...

Zoolook said:

This is how people make money day trading, with these movements. Without the up and down movements, this would be impossible, especially considering Apple gives no dividend, a buy and hold strategy is utterly pointless as there is no yield.

Click to expand...

I completely agree. The key to good investing is to understand those up and down cycles and use them to your advantage. This is not day trading. My typical holding period for a stock is a few days to a few weeks, depending on where it is in that up and down cycle.

Everything that goes up usually comes back down again at some point. For good stocks, the overall trend is usually up, but to be really successful, you need to be able to read the price and volume curves with some skill, and sell a stock near where it starts to turn down, and then pick it up again once it "bottoms" and starts to come back up. This is just what zoolook is talking about wrt AAPL. I only wish I had been smart enough to buy it back when it was in the 90s!

BTW, AAPL reports its quarterly results this Friday (before the market open I think). Watch for blow out results and a rapid rise in the stock. Don't buy the stock based on this advice of course - I could be completely wrong! Like the release date for the next Apple gadget, we won't REALLY know until it happens.

mac57 said:

I completely agree. The key to good investing is to understand those up and down cycles and use them to your advantage. This is not day trading. My typical holding period for a stock is a few days to a few weeks, depending on where it is in that up and down cycle.

Click to expand...

Day trading was the wrong term as it's very specific, agreed. I didn't mean buying and selling within a day, I just meant any relatively small time trading; buying then selling in a relatively short time. i.e. any kind of trading that is not buying for dividends.

I had some amazing luck in 2007/2008 with Mastercard and Apple, more than doubling my money. Mastercard also has a crap yield, but the shares went from $89 when I bought them (after seeing Jim Kramer at the Learning Annex early 2007) to $215 that I sold them for in March 08. This was a one year investment for me, same as a fixed CD for example. Only difference is it was a 240% ROI rather than a 9% or whatever. Luck, luck, luck...

Apple was the same - I bought the stock a few weeks after getting my MacBook in 2006... and sold the day I saw it hit $200, but ended up with $197. Again, pure luck. When it went down to $120, I could not resist buying back the stocks again for almost $80 less each, and I think it will hit $200 again sometime soon.

I've had a few losses too though, so don't ask for any tips...

I see that Apple has posted quarterly results today, presumable after the market close. They LOOK good to me, but I don't know what the analyst's expectations were, which is what drives the stock up or down. If Apple beat the expectations, the stock will soar.

I checked my online broker (Scottrade) and in the after market, the asking price for AAPL was up more than $20 from today's closing price. "Soar" seems appropriate. You may just be sitting on a tidy profit this time tomorrow Zoolook. Here's hoping you are.

Waterpolo820 said:

I would probably say that it is due to the FED giving billions of dollars. And that some now are feeling that the credit crisis is over and are heading back into the market. To the best of my knowledge the rebates haven't gone out yet.

But it's still not where it use to be, my portfolio is still down 70% from the beginning of the year. =( and right before the market decline i was up 200%.

LETS GO AAPL!!! LETS SEE $200+ AGAIN!!! (current share holder)

Click to expand...

I don't think it would be pessimistic to say that the credit crisis hasn't yet begun. All the while the reports of job losses and increases in crude oil prices were coming out, the stock market stayed relatively stable. Based on that, I wouldn't be surprised if the market stayed relatively stable (minor losses) until a major loss occurred all at once.

You're correct...the rebates haven't gone out yet.

mac57 said:

I see that Apple has posted quarterly results today, presumable after the market close. They LOOK good to me, but I don't know what the analyst's expectations were, which is what drives the stock up or down. If Apple beat the expectations, the stock will soar.

I checked my online broker (Scottrade) and in the after market, the asking price for AAPL was up more than $20 from today's closing price. "Soar" seems appropriate. You may just be sitting on a tidy profit this time tomorrow Zoolook. Here's hoping you are.

Click to expand...

It went up, but it is back down again. Although Apple's second quarter results were impressive, they lowered their third quarter predictions.

Its not unusual, however, for Apple to set low predictions for the next quarter, just so they can beat them. We will certainly see the full effect tomorrow when the market reopens.

Apple's stock will always be an up and down stock, because they don't pay a dividend. So if the price stagnates, for any investor that's dead money that's not growing or generating revenue.

Stocks like Apple's are high risk in some ways, but also high reward if you go big. If you'd spent $50,000 on an apartment 5 years ago in a fashionable part of Brooklyn, NY, it might be worth $800,000 now. If you'd spent it on Apple shares, your investment would be worth more than $1.5 million today.

70% of Apple's shares are owned by corporations and mutual fund holders, and with around $18 billion in the bank (and rising), Apple could quite easily afford to go on an aggressive share buy-back scheme should the price get dangerously low.