theworldaccordingtochris

we spend

24% of our time gathering resources to live
33% of our time sleeping
43% of our time living

the work part is too much

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me: i’m glad my gaydar sucks

winston: that’s like a zebra in africa saying “I’m glad I can’t tell what a lion is”

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http://undergroundvalue.blogspot.com/2008/02/notes-from-buffett-meeting-2152008_23.html

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although this is a huge generalization, poor people are the most generous and genuine people in the world.  they seem to give more % wise

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“first solar, i shoulda invested in them like 2 years ago, haha, oh well”

yea or GEX
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=gex
the next buble people are saying
alternative energy

“so you think like 1.5-2 months jump on solar and other alternatives?”

more like 3-6 months
BUT we’re going to see at least one more BIG rough spot
coming up
really soon
hence the ultrashort ETFs i recommended
then we wait
let the market tell us
we don’t need to capture it at exactly the bottom
i’d rather miss a few points off the bottm
than get in and have it fall further.

but seriously, now’s not the time to be buying

for a quick buck, buy any one of these today or tomorrow and hold for 1-3 months. let me know if you buy and i’ll give you the exact price targets to sell at. you will be golden. i’m 100% invested in these, that’s how much i believe in them

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=twm
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=skf
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=sds
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=dxd
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=qid

it’s based on market fundamentals, 10 year bond rising, mortgage rates rising, more defaults, home prices down. bond insurers splitting, subprime half going bankrupt

and also technical analysis, the same shit that says XLNX will have trouble busting through
$22.5. it also says NVDA is temporarily at a bottom, but probably will go lower
all ETF’s they are inverse ETFS up 2% when underlying is down 1%

DXD is inverse to DOW
SDS is inverse to S&P500
QID is inverse to NASDAQ100
TWM is inverse to Russell 2000
SKF is inverse financials

but they trade like stocks so you don’t need to short anything, the ETF does it for you, you just buy and hold it.

also if you graph the stock market with a 50 week moving average (long term market timing signal that hasn’t been wrong for the past 20+ years, you’ll see it just turned negative) meaning the stock price crossed the 50 week moving average of prices.

buy in 12/51995
sell in 12/4/2000 for 196% gain
buy in 9/1/2002
sell 2/4/2008 for 40% gain

the yellow line is the 50 week moving average

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my friend who shall remain anonymous probably experienced one of the worst days of his life ever.  this post is a tribute to him holding his chin up in spite of all the events that have passed.  and it is also for satisfying the inner shadenfreude in all of us.

for weeks, he had been building up the idea that he would have romantic intentions with this girl that he used to be friends with.  he made sure she didn’t have a boyfriend and lined up his ducks.  he was finally going to clear the cobwebs in his pants and possible hold hands with her.  after years and years and years and years of being out of action, he was going to dive right back in, or so he thought…

they re-established contact and tried to meet up on several occasions.  finally she invited him to an 80’s themed party.  he bought a blue 80’s track suit online, which left little to the imagination.  his friends offered to roll with him to the party, but his plans for spending the night dominated all rhyme and reason.  there would be no reason NOT to stay over.

when he arrived at the party, he turned out to be one of the few people dressed for the “theme” party.  he arrived a little too early and the party was getting started, but early enough to see his lady friend had a male suitor with her for the night.  plan foiled, but he was to try to make the best of the situation, small talk with strangers turned out to be the best it would get.

as the party wound down, his friend asked him to drive her two gay guy friends home.  apparently he offended one of them on the way home as he just told him to stop and he would get out and walk.

a little too buzzed to drive all the way home from sf and without warm bed and said girl, he parked in a krispe kreme  parking and nearly froze to death as he slept.  at 7am, he drove home and took a shower, causing his nose to bleed.

last week, his GPS and phone were stolen from his car.

(no this isn’t me)

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so markets are up, this is a good thing right?  maybe.  i’m not buying that we’ve bottom just yet for a few reasons:

•  warren buffet wants to insure the municipal bonds.  this is not the same as the mortgage backed securities that are threatening trigger big losses in the markets
• some bond auctions have failed, leading to interest rates of 20%+
• mortage rates have actually gone up in the past few months, while the fed cuts the target rate
• housing prices have not stablized

what does this all mean?  i’m not sure, but perhaps no one is willing to lend money these days anymore.  why?  maybe they don’t have any money left to lend?  maybe they don’t have transparency on what they are lending for.  read “when genius failed”.  the similarities to 1997 is eerie.

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no matter what the government data says, or what comes out of the mouth of the wall street economists, one thing i’ve noticed recently has been an increase in petty crimes.

in the past month alone:

• my roomates GPS and phone were stolen from his car, the front passenger window was smashed in.
• my friend’s apartment was broken into and they were burgularized, everthing was overturned and valuables were stolen
• another friend’s car was broken into in SF’s japan town and his latop was stolen
• someone attempted to break into my friend’s gf’s car and broke the pick in the door handle

are we headed for more dire straits? based on the perceived increase in crimes, it seems like the recession is just beginning.
time to deposit your money in your mattress, buy rations, build a panic room, and load up on ammo.

haha kidding aside, it wouldn’t hurt to purchase $12 renter’s insurance. i turned locked my GPS and set my “safety location” so that in the event that my GPS is stolen, they won’t know where my house is.

be safe out there.

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what is a stop-loss?

i’m glad you asked. a stop-loss is set so at a certain price so that if your stock drops in values, you will automatically sell at a loss at the stop-loss price to prevent you from losing more.

for example:

buy at $20, set your stop at $18. if the stock hits $18, you sell automatically but be careful because if the price moves after hours, for example if it gaps down to $17, you’ll get sold for 17. it’s not gaurantee that you get 18

take for example xilinx:

bullish flags are good, but they are not 100%. you should wait for it to break out of the flag. usually they break to the north, but for xilinx, this will be hard because north of the bullish flag there are huge amounts of resistance. on that chart xlnx was at this range for a LONG time. it means that the price has had support for a while. it’s hard to bust through

also the 30 and 50 day moving average is there too. stock prices usually bounce off their DMA (daily moving averages). i use the 50, 100, 200 DMA. this guy uses 30,50,90. the 50 DMA is also on the top side. so xilinx has to bust through the 50DMA and also the price support from november to december. if it can do that, then it’s clear sailing.

i disagree with this guy however. why risk buying xilinx now? there is too much risk. listen to the markets. wait for it to break the 50DMA, the flag, and price supports at 22.5. if it gets above that, then buy and set your stop at 22.5. that way the most you can lose is a few cents. if you buy here and set your stop at 18.25 that’s like a BIG loss if you’re wrong. limit your risk.

you can be right 30% of the time and still make money if you limit your risk and let the winners run free.

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I was thinking of moving stuff in my RothIRA. Right now all my money is in one of those timed-to-retirement funds with Vanguard — it’s a fund of index funds that’s 90% stocks and 10% bonds and the mix will get more conservative as I get closer to retirement. It’s dropped 6% since I moved my RothIRA to Vanguard in June 2007. I know 6% isn’t much, but it seems like the stock market is going to continue dropping for the next few quarters.

I was thinking of moving it all to a bond market index fund. Do you think I should? And if so, which one of these four should I pick?

Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund
Vanguard Short-Term Bond Index Fund
Vanguard Intermediate-Term Bond Index Fund
Vanguard Long-Term Bond Index Fund

I don’t understand the relevance to my decision of the short-, intermediate-, and long-term elements. I mean, I know what those terms mean …

… but what should do?

oh yeah, here’s the breakdown of my current fund:

many sheeple blindly sock money away in their 401k’s and ira’s without putting much thought into what their hard earned money is purchasing.  when the market is down, they say, they are long term investors.  they spend hours researching what the best $100 blu-ray player they can buy for their money, and almost no time researching what the best investment decisions they can make with their money.

although during my relatively short lifetime, we’ve seen 8+% gains in stocks, 30+% gains in real estate, low 30% tax rates and mild inflation; historically, there have been periods of time when stocks have sideways for more than 10 years, real estate has crashed, deflation has taken hold, and tax rates for the upper bracket have been above 90%.

with that being said, i think we should all be a little more pro active when it comes to managing our next egg.  the last think you want to do is have your retirement plan blow up and end up working at a call center.  the market is unhealthy.  why not ride out this turbulence and preserve your capital

a 6% loss is a big deal, with a 6% loss, it takes a 6.4% gain to recover

it’s great you’re looking to invest in bonds.  i’d park my cash in bonds for the next 6 months.  keep it simple and move your funds to 100% bonds for safety if you don’t want to be an active trade and want to sleep well at night.  you are still adequately diversified because presumably you have savings, and other assets and the bond fund itself is diversified.

regarding which fund to pick, the short, intermediate, and long just mean how long it takes the bond to mature, much like a 5 10 15 or 30 year mortgage.  when the bond stops paying.  a 1 year bond will have a low rate because rates are likely not to go higher vs. a 30 year bond which has it’s yield locked in at ~4%.

i’d also recommend buying a bond ETF versus a mutual fund.  the ETF’s are more liquid, meaning you can trade in and out of them easily, and their expense ratios (the amount it costs to manage the money) usually are less ~0.1-0.2% which is much lower than the 1-2% mutual funds charge to market and manage their funds.

take a look at AGG.  it pays a 5% dividend and is a good way to preserve your capital (money)

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