OT: Favorite Wall Street Investments Currently

Submitted by Champeen on

Alwyas looking for great investments to research.  No shame in sharing information in helping everyone make money.  Post your favorite stock investment(s) and why.  

MU (Micron)

Pros: Incredibly Undervalued based on PE.  EPS/Revenues growing at incredible rate for a company under 10 PE.  Demand for NAND and DRAM chips are robust and continue to grow.  With IOT as the next revolution, growth very well will accelerate propeling MU to new levels.

Cons:  In past, DRAM demand/supply has been cyclical.  MU would reap rewards one year, lose money the next.  Handful of analysts still beleive their chipsets will remain cyclical going forward.

DQ (Daqo New Energy)

Pros: Again, like MU, currently incredibly undervalued. EPS/Revenue growth exponential with PE under 10.  Pure Polysilicon supplier currently at 18,000 MT with aggressive Expansion plans to 30,000 MT end of 2018, 65,000 MT end of 2019, 100,000 MT end of 2020. China Trade war helping DQ as Hemlock Semiconductor cannot afford to shp Poly to China because of Tarifs.  China largest consumer of Poly (Polysilicon is the raw material of wafers/cells/modules).  DQ is the lowest cost producer of Polysilicon.

Cons: Do you trust a chinese company and their numbers?  What happens when Chinese trade war has ended?  What if Thin Film modules somehow take over in efficiency against PV modules?  Are expansion plans to aggressive?

Do your own research as always.  List yours, i always love recommendations.

Champeen

May 25th, 2018 at 12:51 PM ^

Funny story - i shorted apple twice (long ago, when they were just PC players) and made money both times.  I believe if i would have still held those short (it was at $20 and before many, many splits) id probably be down a billion dollars on a thousand dollar investment!

The evolution of Apple is a really, really intriguing story.  How many times were they almost bankrupt?

M-Dog

May 23rd, 2018 at 1:22 PM ^

In 1980, I had an investment class in college.  The prof told us there were two companies that were about to go public and we should make every effort possible to invest in them.

One was Genentech, which doubled after going public.  In one day.

But that was just a warm-up.

The other was . . . Apple.

Had I followed his advice, I'd be typing this from an island somewhere instead of clandestinely at work.

The problem was I was a poor college student at the time with no money, working at a diner after classes to scrape by.  And it was not easy to invest those days.  You had to go to a brokers office and set up an account and invest in a minimum lot.  That was a hurdle well beyond anything I could do.

I often wonder if he followed his own advice though . . . 

 

 

JamieH

May 23rd, 2018 at 1:58 PM ^

Apple was a TERRIBLE investment in 1980.  They were dead money for 17 years.  You might as well have put your money in a pillow case.  If you invested in Apple in 1980, by 1997 you would have LOST money.



The time to have invested in Apple is 2003, not 1980.  They were useless as an investement before then.  In fact, the main reason I didn't, despite all the success they were having at the time, was their 2 decades of ridiculously bad performance.  Seems silly now, but 20 years ago, they were not a good company in terms of actually making money, and in fact had been on the brink of bankruptcy several times.   

Longballs Dong…

May 23rd, 2018 at 2:41 PM ^

I hear these Apple stories all the time and they just prove the person talking/recommending doesn't really know anything.  Apple was basically flat for 20 years and darn near bankruptcy the whole time.  Unless your profoessor said, "Buy Apple because soon these casettes are going to be converted to digital and Apple seems uniquely positioned to capitalize on that movement and create a really cool music player and digital platform.  once those catch on, they'll create a phone which will make ridiculous amounts of money." then he was just wrong. Guessing that a stock will do well for reasons A,B,C and coincidentally the company does well because of X,Y, and Z so you end up with the correct conclusion is not impressive.  It's called dumb luck.   Also, Apple is up about 37,000% in 38 years.  That's good, but not near the best performance over that time.  Microsoft is up over 105,000% in that same time.  

mGrowOld

May 23rd, 2018 at 12:31 PM ^

Outperforms everything over time.   Low fee structure and as long as the market's going up - you'll make money.

I've never lost betting on America.   There are times when I've seen steep drops in valuation (1987, 2008) but over time the US economy always moves forward.

 

PopeLando

May 23rd, 2018 at 1:47 PM ^

This is an excellent approach for anybody.

The market may be overvalued, and individual stocks will still go up and down, but "time-in-market and low fees" is a more tested and safe approach than "I've totally found the next bitcoin lol"

PopeLando

May 23rd, 2018 at 11:46 PM ^

Lol while I hope ak47 has $5m, what that means is that his 401k administrator just is confident that $5m of assets across everyone in the plan will end up in that fund.

And lots of places waive their minimum requirements if you ask nicely.

ScoutExile

May 24th, 2018 at 4:04 AM ^

  • "And lots of places waive their minimum requirements if you ask nicely."

 

Unfortunately, as someone who currently helps run these funds, we can't waive minimum requirements in very many cases. If your household group has over a million in assets with Vanguard itself and not through a third party, then we may be able to accomodate you, but we're not money-hungry enough to risk upsetting the stability of our funds by making a bunch of exceptions (we have maximum limits on buy-ins for the exact same reason).



Also, don't buy our funds through a third party; they're commission and fee free from our website... unless you sign up for a brokerage account, then I think it's $20/year with free trades on Vanguard products. I work with the funds though (it's expensive to trade non-Vanguard products with a VG account though, so ask for discounted trades if you want a brokerage account); I don't work on the retail side, so don't quote me on that exact price. And always convert to Admiral Shares as soon as you're eligible.

ScoutExile

May 24th, 2018 at 11:48 AM ^

...it's more of a balancing act, especially with other firms being more hostile in light of our recent growth.

 

You probably make more than me because Vanguard gives us a sweetheart retirement package and better benefits than I have seen anywhere else, but I love being able to spend my winters at the Scottsdale HQ2 and the summers at the main HQ in Malvern. Everyone at Vanguard is way more kind hearted than any other firm I've been at, too (empathy and community involvement are qualities that we look for in determining a fit for our culture moreso than competitiveness). After living for so long in Ann Arbor, I really love working here. Vanguard is far more culturally "Main Street" than "Wall Street", which is perfect for me.

 

If you (or anyone else) has questions, feel free to ask. We have strict policy on what I'm allowed to say publicly, so if I'm allowed to answer them, then I promise that I will. If I'm not, then I can give you a phone number and extension to call.

House Mother

May 23rd, 2018 at 3:24 PM ^

"A Random Walk Down Wall Street" by Burton G. Malkiel...gives lots of reasons why hot tips and market prediciting/timing don't work.  Buy and hold Vanguard Index Funds. Another bonus is that is is interesting reading.  John Bogle's brother from another mother. 

LJ

May 23rd, 2018 at 12:32 PM ^

Honestly man, unless you're really really good at this stuff, it's unlikley you're going to be able to do better than an index fund over the long haul.  Any information you think is helpful to your analysis is already known and accounted for by the many people doing this professionally, so it's almost certainly already factored into the current price (if the information is even useful at all).

Longballs Dong…

May 23rd, 2018 at 2:49 PM ^

Fun fact, a few years back, Wells Fargo (i think it was WFC) looked at their brokerage accounts that had the highest returns to see if they could determine why they outperformed.  The most common trait among all of those accounts?  The investor was dead.  They hadn't been traded.  They hadn't been over-analyzed and profit balanced. They just sat for years.  I put about 50% of my portfolio into a mixture of S&P, NASDAQ and DOW ETFs.  40% is in 4 stocks that I have no intention of selling unless something major happens to me or the stocks.  10% is just in random things I'm playing with because I'm a degenerate gambler also.  i tend to believe that you'll only outperform if you are NOT diversified.  I have increased my portfolio risk and variance and so far, over the last 20 years, it's worked for me.  

TrueBlue2003

May 24th, 2018 at 12:20 AM ^

because they're taking 1-2% of your principal every year.  That's tough to overcome in the long run.

But if you're really, really good (say as good as the best managers), and you're trading your own portfolio at low transactions fees, you'd beat the market.

But to others points, very few people are really, really good.  Best to get yourself a low cost index fund.

uofmdds96

May 23rd, 2018 at 2:37 PM ^

daytrade that.  It has some nice swings.  I have a bit in the crypto market.  Currently up over 100%, but in December I had XRP up 17X and most up 4X.  My entire crypto portfolio had almost quintupled.   Luckily entered the market early, not early enough for a lambo, but comfortable enough even after the pull back late December.  I put $500 into Dentacoin and made $9300 on it.  It would have been more, but I had trouble finding an exchange to sell it on.  $500 got me 4.125 million DCN.  If I would have not been so cautious, $200 would have got me 8 million at the IPO.

ckersh74

May 23rd, 2018 at 12:33 PM ^

Bought Valero at $67, now ~ $120

Amazon at $960 in September, now bouncing between $1550-1600.

Bought Ford at $12.25. Only hanging on to it now for the dividend yield.

Should never have sold Boeing or Albaba in early 16. Still kicking myself in the ass over those two.