I’m seriously considering putting a big chunk into Exxon. I have about 8% of my portfolio in it now, I could bump that up to as much as 25%.
On the theory that it’s trading at half recent highs, and even if the US wallows, the rest of the non-dysfunctional world will still drive decent oil demand. But if somehow the stonks market is correct that we’re out of the financial woods (which I don’t believe) it will shoot up fast.
If it retested Feb lows when oil was trading at negative value - I’d lose about 30%. You have to feel like that’s worst case scenario. Whereas best case is +50% or more. So potentially not massive downiside and some chance at major upside.
I say this as someone who has made a decent amount of money going long oil companies… be careful right now. Oil, like a lot of commodity markets is pretty schizophrenic and I have a nasty suspicion that much of the money invested in oil production/exploration over the last decade is never coming back to the people who invested it much less generating a return.
Like carbon taxes are coming sooner or later. The oil business’s best days are a long way in the rear view mirror at this point.
I’m viewing this as fairly short term - like until covid is resolved or society crumbles - one of the two.
Edit: YOLO - I did it. Sitting on cash is boring. I figure -30% downside +50% upside. I’m still 50% in cash (all in FXE) in my portfolio. Maybe 22% Exxon, the rest other stonks and INTL funds.
In GA, you may be better off taking the smaller itemized deduction. If you take the standard federal then you must take the GA standard (which is only $6k). If you itemize, you can carry down the $23k itemized to your GA return.
Yeah, the whole “buy low sell high” slogan cost a bunch of folks a lot of money. Buy high and sell higher or never sell at all would have saved a lot of people.
There was one of those called Munder Net Net back in the dotcom days - all high-flying tech stocks. 2 of my uncles had a very big chunk of their net worths in it. They used to call me to ask me stuff like if I thought XML was going to be the next Linux.
I told them to get out of that thing while they could (I was dumb back then, I never give direct buy/sell advice like that now). One sold almost at the top. The other rode it all the way down. He still didn’t want to talk about it many years later.
CMGI was similar - a big holding company for tech companies. The CMGI boards on Motley Fool were epic:
Bears: Here’s a bunch of charts and concrete reasons why CMGI is worth like 1/20th what it’s trading at.
Bulls: Oh yeah, well it keeps going up! PPPPTTTHHHHH
Believe it or not I was a lurker back then. I learned a lot. It was obvious to me which side had actual logic and facts on their side and which was crazy. So even in the politics arguments I assume there are some lurkers out there figuring which side is crazy and which side has good arguments.
It’s also when I learned there’s no big reward at the end when you’re right. After endlessly deriding the bears for years, when the crash happened the bulls either disappeared or took a “How can you kick me when I’m down?” victimhood stance. There was no real payback. I guarantee most of those bulls never learned a thing and went on to the next snake oil, given their attitude after CMGI went to zero.
A similar thing happened with covid. All the hoax people in March instantly forgot they ever believed it was a hoax. Global warming will be just as bad.
One good option is to buy 5000 highly speculative stocks and then if 1 hits you can spend the rest of your life bragging about how you bought into Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net before anyone else had even heard of it. Never speak of the 4999 misses.
God DAMN it why didn’t I buy TSLA calls for infinity when he said that???
This is me like every day.
This makes some sense to me, like not 50%, but they should be up a lot. They are increasing their market share a shit ton right now, and a lot of it will stick.
We’ve got, what, 18M people unemployed? Probably more. That’s if you trust the Trump Administration that’s been caught lying about unemployment twice already. We’ve got 32% of people missing/late on housing payments in July.
Unless the biggest firms by market cap are selling unicorns to leprechauns, like how do those numbers just not matter at all?
I mean, it seems like all indicators are that:
The vaccines will produce antibodies.
The antibodies may only last ~3 months, but we won’t know for sure.
The antibodies did not protect rhesus monkeys from infection, but it wasn’t as severe.
Read today that according to an UBS-manager the ultra rich borrowed money to buy stocks after the COVID dip, made millions into billions and will start to unload to re-invest the money in stuff like real estates, private equity etc. in the coming months. Rich getting richer.
I often read that some of you are buying stocks and selling them within weeks/month. In Germany if I would sell stocks I would immediatly pay a flat rate witholding tax of 25% on the profits I made. Do you have to pay similar stuff?
Not immediate but capital gains tax on profits? I know in Australia you get a 50% discount on capital gains made so you only treat half your profits as income for tax purposes. Works out to a similar 25% rate but you only pay it when you file tax returns. I assume profits in Germany don’t come up again when filing your taxes?
The 25% tax I have to pay once I sell and make gains. When doing taxes you have to declare your income from capital gains as well. I am not sure how much it would be taxed again because I never did it so far. I ask my dad how it works on the weekend. The next stupid thing our minister of finance wants to do is introducing a fee on every financial transactions which would hurt small investors again as it would apply to my monthly saving plan buys. The rich guys can afford to do their stuff in countries that dont participate so it hits the wrong people. Just have to hope that he cant get the majority he needs among EU member states.
