I bought Lowes and HD in April. I'm up 74% on Lowes and 38% on HD. That said, I sold a bunch of fsptx to buy them. I might of been better just keeping the $ in fsptx. But, I was looking to diversify a little too.

Agree with much of what you said with the exception of Bitcoin. To me, and many professional investors as well, Bitcoin is all just smoke and mirrors. Bitcoin is not based on anything of worth like conventional currency. The majority of bitcoin is held by a group of investors who could make a conference call and then take their profits and move on to other investments in a matter of hours. Have people made money on bitcoin? Yes, but the possibility of losing big looms large. As always, investing is a gamble. Don't bet anything you can't afford to lose.

I used to have an IT company and one of my clients was a financial planner for the very well to do. He showed me his methodology for investing in mutual funds due to their lower risk. I've tried to follow that and I don't think I've ever made less than 25% per year. Now that my company has their 401k with Fidelity I have access to anything I am doing much better, I should hit over 40% this year. Much lower risk and very steady growth. I've tried professional investment planners, they were terrible. They think if they make you 8% you should be grateful. I still say that MACGX is the one to get into, consistent long term growth and the dividends it just paid were huge. Morningstar rated it the top earning fund.

^^^^^^solid advice but most people don't like funds because they aren't glamorous enough to brag to their buddies about. Why talk MACGX when Tesla is up 400%!!!! This is what gets athletes in trouble, they think safe and 8-10% is losing vs. bragging about one stock that exploded (albeit at a significantly higher risk). NOBODY wants to talk about the losers, just like gambling.......Yeah went to Vegas and won 20K, ummm ok but what about the last time when you lost 50K!


I read a story years ago about Scottie Pippen (ex-Bulls player) and how he got killed in a super risky real estate deal. He was blinded by crazy promised returns that he didn't calculate the risk. The scammers feed on the players greed for a big return and failure to gauge risk properly. Needless to say, the property got foreclosed on, the partners had no money but Pippen sure did so the bank sued because he guaranteed the loan.


I worked in financial services at a national firm in Boca Raton, FL when I graduated from college. When the dot com thing started rolling people were coming into the office demanding 25% returns on everything. People with NO risk tolerance, one lady wanted to pull 450K out of CD's and go into the market chasing returns. After doing some digging we realized the CD money was her parents retirement money and she wanted to dump it in the market, pay the parents a 5% return and then keep the rest for herself. Needless to say, she was shown the door by management. Had a Dr making 400K a year, had 180K in mutual funds and he wanted to boost the returns yet he had zero disposable income, literally spent the whole paycheck. 3 kids in private school, renting a big house, leased cars, tennis for the wife........zero savings. We couldn't figure out the 180K. Was he a saver before he got married, did he just move to a high cost of living area and took a lower paying job? His 180k was his inheritance from his mother, he wanted to double it so he could use it as a down payment to buy a house! The returns are rarely the problem, the spending usually is the culprit!

Cruise lines might be losing $$ but I bought Royal Carribean at $22, now it`s $72.
225%
Too bad got cold feet and sold most of it too early:(

Never made a straight stock purchase but almost popped my cherry on that one.

Not being US owned made me nervous.

Not afraid of foreign investments but the covid variables effect on the cruise industry and who would be making the decisions on/for them....., made me nervous.

As in a commahala harris............, and/or pelosi....., attack the rich??

gino burgerFI opened today at $15

fact is a blind guy could have picked any stock back in March and be up 100%, 200%, 1000%.

there are only a handful of stocks that aren’t up YTD.

hindsight is always 20/20. Tesla and some of the big winners pale in comparison in gains versus some of the stocks that aren’t mentioned. Good example is overstock. Could have bought them back in March for $2.50. It peaked at $128. That’s almost 60X!!!!!

coulda woulda shoulda...:throw:

Anyone know what percentage of people investing are only buying individual or multiple stocks vs. being in some form of mutual fund ?

I bought all individual stocks.