How to Invest ?

[avb3]

Originally Posted by smurphny

B......Gold could rocket higher than anyone believed possible.

IMHO Stocks have been overbought so they are coming off for a time. A good moment to buy.
Gold is vastly over priced and many who have been holding gold for a while (its often a long term hold) will be moving to crystalize their profit.

I'm with Mark on this one. I only have a bit of gold left in my portfolio, having sold some off on every $50 uptick. Could I be wrong? You bet. I also didn't start buying at $1000 an ounce.

The reality is I have held it for a long time. It was NOT a great investment if you look at time verus money and the returns I could have got even in a fixed income market.

Right now money is made on gold/silver because of other peoples fears. Delfin, you probably will do OK, because I suspect you will not hold on to try and reach the top, but many will.

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by MarkSF

I remember trying to convince a colleague that it was a great time to buy stocks, when the DJIA hit a low of 6000ish. He looked at me like I was mad. He reads all the same reports, news, and blogs you do and had just SOLD his stocks and bought gold. Hmmmm.

Hmmm, indeed. The DJIA hit 6000 in October of 1996, when gold was $375.00. Today, your friend is up 500% and you are up about 80% if you invested in the DJIA group of companies.

[GeoPowers]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Always buy when everyone is telling you not to. Always sell when everyone is telling you someing will go up.

IMHO Stocks have been overbought so they are coming off for a time. A good moment to buy.
Gold is vastly over priced and many who have been holding gold for a while (its often a long term hold) will be moving to crystalize their profit.

+1! Gold et al will be the next bubble. Watercooler wisdom doesn't work. The one rule that does is buy low sell high, which is another way to say what Mark did. Go against the current!

[MarkSF]

"A great company like GE? Are you not worried about GE's exposure to derivatives and their exposure to the credit markets they control like in Australia and the fact that they took 140 billion in tarp money last time...... if you are not......well that is your decision...but just like BOA they can go down very fast. "

The largest TARP payout was 45 billion, to Citigroup. No-one got 140 billion.

Troubled Asset Relief Program - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Can you tell me where GE is in the table of payouts? Because I don't seem to be able to find them.

GE has a financial wing, which lost a lot of money during the crash. But it also is involved in lots of things that will be needed in the future : alternative energy - solar, healthcare, industrial, you name it.

The more people I hear say that gold is a great investment, the more I think it's a bubble that's likely to pop, sooner rather than later.

There's nothing wrong with being in a bubble, as long as you know it and are ready to get out!

[MikeinLA]

I do kick myself for not buying gold at $ 500, but I also kick myself for not buying Amazon when it was $ 1. Past is past. My investment goals are simply to preserve what I've got and hopefully stay a bit ahead of any inflation. About 1/3 of my net worth is in paid off "stuff" like my house, boat, cars, watch collection, guitars, guns, ammo, etc. Another 1/3 is in CDs at 5.25% which don't mature for a few years yet. The last 1/3 is in dividend stocks which pay a steady dividend of 5-10%. I watch the payout coverage ratios carefully and these companies have a history of paying and increasing dividends. Despite the past few days, I am still ahead on them price-wise as well. I intend to watch the market this week and will probably increase my stock positions. I visit a "survivalist" forum from time to time to satisfy my anti-government bias, so I get the whole "SHTF, worthless fiat currency, beans & ammo" thing, but in the end I simply don't buy it....and I understand normalcy bias. But I also know that we and other nations have survived such crises before and I believe we will again. I also have a vibrant business which is doing well and which I never really HAVE to retire from. Lastly, though it might mess up my kid's inheritance, it wouldn't kill me if I lost everything and just lived on my boat again. Been there, done that, and life was good. So, what's to fear?

Mike

[Delfin]

Originally Posted by avb3

I'm with Mark on this one. I only have a bit of gold left in my portfolio, having sold some off on every $50 uptick. Could I be wrong? You bet. I also didn't start buying at $1000 an ounce.

The reality is I have held it for a long time. It was NOT a great investment if you look at time verus money and the returns I could have got even in a fixed income market.

Right now money is made on gold/silver because of other peoples fears. Delfin, you probably will do OK, because I suspect you will not hold on to try and reach the top, but many will.

Well, I hope you are correct. My current target is around $2,000/oz for gold and $115.00 for silver, although the silver price is predicated on the global economy not collapsing which appears more and more likely. There is so little silver left above ground and its uses so varied, it is hard not to see it getting closer to the millennial gold silver ratio of 1:15 or so if industry is still producing stuff. Both will likely overreach in a topping blow off, and probably sooner rather than later. Hope I'm out before then.

Tough times to make decisions in, and my wish is that everyone is correct in whatever they do.

In the meantime, I am sticking with diversified commodity spread investing as the safest and best way to make a reasonable return on active capital.

[cat man do]

Originally Posted by GeoPowers

+1! Gold et al will be the next bubble.

Next?

George Soros warns gold is now the 'ultimate bubble

George Soros, the hedge fund investor who called gold "the ultimate bubble", has sold almost his entire holding of the precious metal, leading to fears that the price is about to fall.

[70AMX]

Originally Posted by MarkSF

"A great company like GE? Are you not worried about GE's exposure to derivatives and their exposure to the credit markets they control like in Australia and the fact that they took 140 billion in tarp money last time...... if you are not......well that is your decision...but just like BOA they can go down very fast. "



Can you tell me where GE is in the table of payouts? Because I don't seem to be able to find them.

General Electric Gets a $140B Bailout - What's the Point of AAA?


Snippit:
Except there's one problem: G.E.'s financial services business may be the blackest box on Wall Street. The unit has little transparency, no regulatory oversight, and now, we are finding out, an unstable funding model.
In particular, G.E. has chosen to fund its finance business with short-term commercial paper rather than secure more stable long-term funding based on its triple-A rating--which, it appears, turns out to be fiction.

General Electric Gets a $140B Bailout - What's the Point of AAA? - Seeking Alpha

and
F.D.I.C. to Back $139 Billion in GE Capital Debt - NYTimes.com

[avb3]

Originally Posted by 70AMX

[B]

General Electric Gets a $140B Bailout - What's the Point of AAA? - Seeking Alpha

and
F.D.I.C. to Back $139 Billion in GE Capital Debt - NYTimes.com

Rather dated links which really don't say anything about the current situaiton. Everyone knows that GE Finance was the drag on GE. Time to move on from that story... it's 3 years later now.

[MarkSF]

Originally Posted by 70AMX

General Electric Gets a $140B Bailout - What's the Point of AAA?


Snippit:
Except there's one problem: G.E.'s financial services business may be the blackest box on Wall Street. The unit has little transparency, no regulatory oversight, and now, we are finding out, an unstable funding model.
In particular, G.E. has chosen to fund its finance business with short-term commercial paper rather than secure more stable long-term funding based on its triple-A rating--which, it appears, turns out to be fiction.

General Electric Gets a $140B Bailout - What's the Point of AAA? - Seeking Alpha

and
F.D.I.C. to Back $139 Billion in GE Capital Debt - NYTimes.com

"The FDIC will guarantee up to $139 billion in long-term and short-term debt issued by GE Capital through June 30, 2009, but that does not mean we intend to issue that amount."

There's a difference between the FDIC guaranteeing some debt, and a TARP payout. Like the difference between me having 300K in liability insurance on my boat, and being given $300K by State Farm. It's a rather fundamental one.

GE never took a TARP payout.

[Wainui]

USA total gold reserves are 8,133 tons.
Gold at $1,600 = $51 million per ton
USA values Gold at $45 per ounce.

[smurphny]

Gold has no intrinsic value. Everyone knows it's value is a bubble and the price will surely collapse......hmmmmm.....everyone knows.

[farotherside]

Originally Posted by smurphny

Gold has no intrinsic value.

Bologna. Gold is an excellent electrical conductor and it does not corrode.

[tropicalescape]

Originally Posted by drew23

Bologna. Gold is an excellent electrical conductor and it does not corrode.

Is that why my power bill is so high?

[Wavewacker]

Well, we are considering dumping some gold. The street price seems to be about a grand an ounce, individuals don't sell directly into themarket with physical gold on hand. There is almost 60 pounds of gold and almost 40 pounds of sterling....anyone interested....LOL

Invest, invest in plastics my friend, plastics, that's where the future is....hmmm, that was another time, another musical.

Now, raise chickens,the future is in chickens, eggs and chickens, cost of inventory is just chicken feed, sell the droppings to survivalists for fertilizer and power needs for their gold. Sell some eggs too when they find out they can't eat the gold. Sell the feathers to keep these survival types warm in the winter since they cam't burn the gold effeciently for heat. There is a future for real chicken kings across the country too. It was the staple of the last great depression for those who could afford meat or for the really smart ones who grew them.

You can boil, broil, fry, grill, deep fry and even bake chicken. Pick anyway you like and sell the prepared meat for more gold. Then trade your gold for land so you can raise more chickens. After awhile, use some of the land you acquire to build chicken eating places, sell it by the bucket, yes, for more gold.

In a short time with the economy in the dumps and skirmishes breaking out, you'll have enough gold to buy a private lake. You can go sailing and always have water, but you may need to purify it. You can do that through very large tubes full of clean chicken feathers, then through a sand filter, then carbon and that should be good enough.

Chickens, that's the future for the self reliant. Become a chicken king, with a string of resturants, private land, a never ending food supply, gold and a private lake to sail. If you play your cards right, you could have a private clothing label, South Face Chicken Feathers!

Good luck,

My investment strategy has been dart throwing and it has worked as well as any other, IMO.