Stock Market Chat

I'm one of the people that did this when I had to quit my career.

I got lucky in a sense because I started the business with a partner (who also has health problems, though very different from mine and also had to quit his job) and we got almost all of our early inventory from his neighbor who had an entire attic full of rare comic books that we sold on commission (something neither of us knew anything about so we had to research and learn to roughly grade each one). We were able to get about $30k worth of stuff to sell at zero risk to us.

After we sold most of that, the first year, we moved onto sports cards because my partner knew a lot about baseball cards especially. We would go to eBay on weird times (like Tuesday nights when there is less traffic) and bid for things that were being sold way too cheap, then turn around and sell it for what it was actually worth. It's a tedious process and we are constantly scanning for things. The good thing though is this is something that can be entirely done online. We eventually started going to thrift stores, too, but there are way too many resellers at those now and there isn't enough there to pay the bills with so it's almost not worth it. We used to go daily, now we go a few times a week tops.

Anyway, between sourcing and shipping, it is a 10-12 hour day, 7 days a week if you want to survive that way. And both of us are having to share one place and one car (and are both constantly scanning online for items). It's not exactly easy but doable. If you had a place already paid for, it would be much easier and less stressful, though.

 

@FGG We have a lot in common. Working in healthcare, medical research, investing and taking care of cats and dogs. I collected sports cards all my life and used eBay to sell. I have a few posts about this. I would get my good cards PSA graded. A cousin of mine owned a large field - a flee market. I sold cards there too, plus other things. This was almost next door to where Frequency Therapeutics is. Back then, that location was also a field.

You and I had talked about this. "I had a weekend sports card display at a convention center on Route 128 outside of Boston where Ed Markey came to my display and we talked for about 30 minutes."

 

My brother used to do this, but on eBay, back when we lived at our parents' house. Their garage started to look like a warehouse with all the stuff he was selling. He did well out of it.

 

How do you decide when to jump into this stock? It seems really volatile...

 

Trade NVAX viewing volatile option ratio backspread strategy indications. When backspreads options increase - buy. When not - don't buy or sell. Backspreads can profit from a security making a big price movement in either direction, but the potential profits from an upward movement are unlimited, while the potential profits from a downward movement are limited.

Be careful trading today. Both army leaders and professionals are well involved with option strategy and this can easily hurt the herd.

Also with US dollar sensitive investments, central banks will retake control and there should be more down pressure until inventory is renewed. Watch -DI on chart directional movement index along with average true range and EMA.

 

A coworker of mine did this a little over a decade ago. He spent a year or 2 working a massive amount of overtime to save up money (I do software development contracting work and the overtime is paid). After a year he had enough money to buy a house in rural Pennsylvania and rent it out. His plan was to move to Mongolia (he learned to speak the language in college) and live off of the rent money from the house he bought. He went so far as to buy the house and quit his job (making sure to send everyone in the office a long letter that detailed why he was leaving - basically he was burnt out), but I didn't keep in touch with him so I was never sure what happened next. It always seemed like a cool idea though, and at the time he was pretty young (I think 27).

And actually, the more I think about it, you don't really even have to leave the US to live a lot cheaper. The town I grew up in (Las Cruces, NM) is so much cheaper than where I now live (Baltimore-Washington area). If I didn't have roots and a family here, I would definitely relocate somewhere cheaper.

 

To me it's funny to hear people say "I have to work a lot right now so that I can retire early" or "so that I can work less and go fishing". And the thing is many of this people can just go fishing right now and retire from the rat race if they use the right strategy. This usually involves relocating inside the country or abroad.

One of my co-workers always says that one of the world's greatest problems is that everyone works a lot. We should all work less and relax. If everyone worked less we would be paid about the same, but we would not need to work so many hours.

For instance, what happened when women started working? That in the medium term, and in the long run, families were able to afford the same amount of goods they bought before with only one person working. Now it takes two members of the family working to buy the same stuff.

 

Cardano is moving right on schedule. It's up 35% since I posted.

I might sell some when it hits £1, but I plan on holding this longterm. My average is 6p.

I dumped all my card cashback into Solana a few days ago at £2.85, and that's doing well also.

 

That attitude was the norm at one of my old jobs. I was on a project that let us work as much overtime as possible, as long as we were doing actual work. People took it to the extreme. One guy slept in his car sometimes, and there was a running chart of who worked the most hours (two people worked 2200+ hours of overtime for the year). It was addicting too. For over a year I regularly put in 60 hour weeks. I enjoyed the camaraderie, but after a while it really wears on you. You're not really living and the idea of waiting until you're old to do the things you want to do is kind of morbid.

After I quit that job I vowed never to work an hour of overtime again. I've often thought about how if we as a society just stepped back and changed the work week to 4 days instead of 5, we could be so much happier, but I unfortunately just don't see that happening.

 

That's a lot of overtime! I hope your employer paid well at the time. It may pay off to do that for a while, for a year or two, if there is excellent pay and one is working towards the goal of early retirement or working a lot less for an extended period immediately after.

I mean, to me it makes sense to work a lot for a short time if there is a clear goal in sight as an incentive. The idea of working a lot consistently for 40 years, through good and bad times, economic crises, health issues, etc sounds really bad, but there are people that are caught in that frenzy and then realise they are just working to pay overvalued properties at bubble prices, rushing around like "chickens without a head" (as we say in Spanish haha)... getting nowhere really...

 

I thought I was well paid at the time, however, my next job paid 40% more, so I was clearly being paid below market.

As an aside, most of the people I worked with had been doing the overtime thing their whole career. One guy was retiring (he was old-ish, maybe 60?) and had purchased 100 acres in Pennsylvania, along with a big house. It was his dream. In some respects he was getting what he wanted, but he was also obese and out of shape. I kind of silently wondered how long he would really get to enjoy it.

And actually, that was the other thing that struck me. Other than the guy who moved to Mongolia, no one else seemed to have an early out plan. Most were in their 40's, and basically fell into your category of "chickens without a head". I don't know if people just get greedy, or if their lifestyles get more expensive as they make more money (cars, vacations, overpriced houses, etc).

 

You raise some good points. I find that people don’t plan ahead like the previous generation once did. Everything is a bit haphazard, and this is partly because of how wages haven't kept up with inflation. In the UK, there is quite clearly a housing bubble - in some parts of the country - as the prices now far outweigh what people are earning. It's only sustainable for as long as the wealthy can keep buying them up. They are now so expensive that the working class are being priced out, and so are the middle class. It's insane. In days gone by, one salary was all it took to pay off a mortgage. Now you are lucky if two salaries cover it. The scandalous part is that rentals cost even more. The system is f*cked up!

It is not sustainable and I fear for future generations.

 

Came here to see if #stonks craze got MPP et al buying frequency therapeutics (freq). I couldn't find a reason not to get some shares.

I mean, if you HAVE to speculate on one in particular.

 

This is just an idea, so shoot me down in flames if it doesn't appeal to anyone.

Who would be interested in a 6 week trading contest, purely for fun, where all proceeds go to Tinnitus Talk?

The rules would be simple, we start with a nominal amount like $25 (circa £20) or something, and then we try to maximise its potential as best we can. This would not be a pissing contest of who's the best trader, etc, so it would have to be done in the right spirit. All we would have to do is post our trades afterwards.

Would anyone be up for this?

 

The problem with this is some would buy $1000's on a stock pick. Every time that I had mentioned a small medical company, volume and share price immediately went thru the roof. Some even bought $100,000 worth to half a million dollars worth. This was posted by someone on a Yahoo message board right after a medical company mention by myself - here. "Something is up - absolute ton of share trades being bought." I'm afraid that some, maybe later may buy too high.

I find stocks every day of the week that may go up that day or within a short time, 20% to 100% and sometimes 500% to 2000% or even more. If I posted picks, I would also need to post a caution - do your own research before buying and not to buy over a certain price until more evaluations are made. This thread gets a lot of hits, more than most other stock message boards that have discussion on small stocks.

 

Greg, there would be no need to post the picks as that would defeat the object of it. It would be nothing more than a friendly competition of who can make the most out of $25. When I said post the trades I meant at the end. However, if one wanted to cheat it would be welcomed anyway , so I'm not sure that step is entirely necessary.

Tinnitus Talk would be the ultimate winner from it. We don't have to do this, it was just an idea. In either case, I will invest $25 on their behalf, regardless. I'm not sure what timeframe to give it, though.

 

Bulls make money, Bears make money, Pigs go broke.

 

Can we do a paper trade contest for fun instead?

 

I've just made a £25 Tinnitus Talk trade. We’ll see how it goes.

 

It's a good job there aren't any pigs here then

 

That wouldn’t benefit this forum.

 

The intention was to help support the forum. Nobody has to say what they are buying or selling. It can be kept 100% private with the option to show how the money was made at the end.

 

There are a lot of stocks you can't buy for $25 and you couldn't diversify with that.

I do like the idea of a fundraiser though. Maybe two separate contests?

 

How about everyone that bought FREQ at their IPO donate their profits to this forum?

 

I included mine in with a larger purchase so I can profit from it as well as Tinnitus Talk.

 

My only problem is I can't find a stock under that price that I would buy right now (maybe DRRX but adding more atm would miss the train).

I would ask you what you bought but that would defeat the purpose...

I guess I am out if those are the rules and I will just donate then.

 

There aren't any rules per se. People are welcome to make the rules up here. I think part of the fun is finding something you can buy for a small amount. To me, this adds to the interest.

 

People have still gotta eat, lol. I think that's a bit too extreme.

 

They can eat macaroni and Ramon noodles.

 

Yeah, when I was thinking of an alternative it was more along the lines of donate $5 or $10 to play and then it's just a fun paper contest with a larger amount to compete with. But your way is easier and properly works well with the serious traders who have lots to pick from.

Not to mention, I know of at least one person who plans on using the proceeds to pay for their injection.