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Stock-Age: Stocks, Options and Dividends oh my!

Tarazet

Member
KLA-Tencor could be a surprise. They increased their dividend in September, but the feeling on the street is negative about semiconductors so share prices have stayed low.
 

koam

Member
crisdecuba said:
Okay, here's the decision I'm faced with. By the end of the day either:

1. Sell NTDOY for a small profit and buy either NVDA and/or AAPL (reasoning: the market is down today and both these stocks seem like good short term profit investments)

2. Hold NTDOY and hope that their earnings announcement causes the stock to jump even higher (reasoning: their earnings announcement is likely going to be a very positive one)

I can't decide! Help! (Oh, and the purpose behind this is short term [i.e. from today to tomorrow/the day after that] gain, not long term investment).

Keep NTDOY. There's no reason for either NVDA or AAPL to go up by a lot any time soon. NTDOY has earnings this week.
 

gkryhewy

Member
koam said:
Keep NTDOY. There's no reason for either NVDA or AAPL to go up by a lot any time soon. NTDOY has earnings this week.

The counter-argument would be that the earnings good news (which will be released overnight tonight) are already priced into NTDOY through the 6% jump last night and this morning.

Did some good news just break, or did Bernanke fart in the appropriate direction? Market just spontaneously jumped 100 points.
 
koam said:
Keep NTDOY. There's no reason for either NVDA or AAPL to go up by a lot any time soon. NTDOY has earnings this week.

Oh, so we're finally getting dividends, eh? I was wondering when that was going to happen.
 

koam

Member
Cheesemeister said:
Oh, so we're finally getting dividends, eh? I was wondering when that was going to happen.

I'm not sure, can you check what the ex-dividend date is on your broker? you seem to have the most up-to-date info on ntdoy. On pink sheets it says that the ex-dividend was in 2006. If that's the case, only people who've had that stock since back then get dividends/
 

kathode

Member
Cheesemeister said:
Oh, so we're finally getting dividends, eh? I was wondering when that was going to happen.

There's just an earnings report coming out tonight. I haven't seen any speculation that it will include dividend distribution.

Either way I think NTDOY is safe to hold through this report, and even through the holidays. The Wii and DS are profit generation machines.
 
koam said:
I'm not sure, can you check what the ex-dividend date is on your broker? you seem to have the most up-to-date info on ntdoy. On pink sheets it says that the ex-dividend was in 2006. If that's the case, only people who've had that stock since back then get dividends/

Dividend Yield 0.60%
Declared Dividend 0.0753
Ex-Dividend Date 9/27/06
Dividend Payable Date 12/22/06


WTF?
 

koam

Member
Cheesemeister said:
Dividend Yield 0.60%
Declared Dividend 0.0753
Ex-Dividend Date 9/27/06
Dividend Payable Date 12/22/06


WTF?

Yeah that's what i saw, i think it might be an error?
 

koam

Member
Found this:

http://quicktake.morningstar.com/stocknet/StockReturns.aspx?Country=USA&Symbol=NTDOY

Code:
Dividend History 12-02 12-03 12-04 12-05 12-06 
Dividend $ 0.09 0.12 0.13 0.13 0.36 
Year-end Yield % 0.76 1.01 0.82 0.85 1.11 
S&P 500 Yield %      
 
 
5 Year History Splits and Dividends Amount Per Share 
07-05-07 Cash Dividend 0.627730 
 
09-27-06 Cash Dividend 0.060060 
03-28-06 Cash Dividend 0.301770 
 
09-27-05 Cash Dividend 0.063000 
03-28-05 Cash Dividend 0.067000 
 
09-27-04 Cash Dividend 0.066000 
03-26-04 Cash Dividend 0.064000 
 
09-25-03 Cash Dividend 0.057000 
03-26-03 Cash Dividend 0.062000
 

Ether_Snake

安安安安安安安安安安安安安安安
Yeah I'm not sure about the Wii long-term, but the DS is definitly going to continue to sell. The more people buy DSs, the more people buy DSs (me too factor, and casual aspect of it).

Nice rally after 2pm, hopefully a good sing that people are going to stop freaking out on bad financial sector news.

Ubisoft was up 6.50% today, thanks to yesterday's announced fiscal results. Told you guys Ninten-who?!;) http://www.boursier.com/vals/FR/FR0000054470-cours-ubisoft.html Went from 46 to 55 in 15 days.

THQ was up 2.61%, they've been going up since the drop that followed the announced possibility of lower-than-expected results. Q108 results will come in on Nov. 1st.

For those interested, Dell announced they will bundle Adobe products in some of their systems, including Photoshop; http://bigtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.co...-from-apple-in-adobe-deal/?source=yahoo_quote

AMD was down 4.44%, don't know why.

Intel dropped 2.95% and another 0.42% at the moment in after-hours. Transmeta Corp. announced one of the biggest financial events in its history, a $250 million settlement with Intel Corp. that caused its share price to more than triple.

Microsoft going up, 1.13% and another 1.02% in after hours. Microsoft beats Google to Facebook stake.
Analysts said Microsoft paid a steep price on a bet that the three-year-old company would be able to transform itself into a hub for all sorts of Web activity.

Nvidia was down 3.38%. Probably to the downgrading of Broadcom (semi-conductors).

Raytheon up 1.68%. And Military contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. said Wednesday its third-quarter net income soared 62% on the back of higher ship sales and raised it full-year guidance.

Universal Display was down 3.56%.

My Take2 shares totally plunged, 5.34% today, on no news:| Insider trading before some bad news?:/ Actvision down 2.23%:| Immersion down 0.74%:|
 

_Rafa_

Banned
there must be something i dont understand. At 2pm, i've put a limit sell order on ntdoy at 75.85$ and now its 76.40$ and my order hasnt been executed. WTF?

edit: i cancelled it and place another sell limit order at 76$ and 2 minutes after its been exectuted at 76.50......Someone can explain it?
 

koam

Member
_Rafa_ said:
there must be something i dont understand. At 2pm, i've put a limit sell order on ntdoy at 75.85$ and now its 76.40$ and my order hasnt been executed. WTF?

edit: i cancelled it and place another sell limit order at 76$ and 2 minutes after its been exectuted at 76.50......Someone can explain it?

So you made like $72 - commission?
 

_Rafa_

Banned
buy: 13x70,06 = 910,78$
Sell: 13x 76.50 = 994,50$
Commission: 2x4.95 = 9,90$

so i've made: 73.82$

so it's 8-9% brut on 2 days. Pretty happy.
 

gkryhewy

Member
NTDOY closed at 77.00! Fabulous. It was flopping around a bit on the nikkei post-earnings last night. Hopefully it holds steady or better tonight.

Rafa, don't forget your short term capital gains tax.
 

koam

Member
_Rafa_ said:
how does it works? where can i see the taxe rate?

Quebec?

Half of your profits are taxed at your tax bracket. Let's say your tax bracket is 40% and you made $100 in profit, you get taxed 40% on half of $100.

So basically:

profit = $100
half of profit = $50
40% of $50 = $20.

Tax = $20.
Money earned = $80
 

koam

Member
_Rafa_ said:
yeah im in quebec and im a student so its 100% profit!

No, it's not 100% profit. Hold on.

http://www.taxtips.ca/qctax.htm said:
first $29,290 28.94%

So basially, you're taxed 28.94% on half of your profits (at the end of the year). You have to submit income tax at the end of the year and put that as capital gains.
 

ArtG

Member
Microsoft posted a tremendous earnings numbers. Up almost 10% in after hours! If this holds, I'll be up about 20% since I got in. (If only I wasn't poor and was making some mad money off this... :lol )
 

lil smoke

Banned
I've decided not to touch my stocks until new years day. Not even looking at it! It's easy to forget the bigger picture with these recent swings and profit taking.

*puts fingers back in ears...hooooommmmmm*
 

_Rafa_

Banned
i've got 5k and theres no way im gonna put it all in one stock.

I prefer investing on short term stocks, get 5%-10%, and then invest the profit in other short term stocks, get 5-10%, etc...
 

gkryhewy

Member
_Rafa_ said:
i've got 5k and theres no way im gonna put it all in one stock.

I prefer investing on short term stocks, get 5%-10%, and then invest the profit in other short term stocks, get 5-10%, etc...

The problem with that is that there are going to be just as many times that you'll lose 5-10% as gain it. There are few short term plays that are as much of a sure thing as NTDOY was two days ago. You're better off investing in a company you believe in while their stock is on an upswing, and keeping it until it isn't. NTDOY remains on an upswing.
 

_Rafa_

Banned
gkrykewy said:
The problem with that is that there are going to be just as many times that you'll lose 5-10% as gain it. There are few short term plays that are as much of a sure thing as NTDOY was two days ago. You're better off investing in a company you believe in while their stock is on an upswing, and keeping it until it isn't. NTDOY remains on an upswing.

theres not just one good strategy. Buy signals and sell signals exist and i will try to take advantage of them. Its not true to say that trading short term means that you will gain a lot and lose a lot. There's ways to do things.
 

Troblin

Member
_Rafa_ said:
theres not just one good strategy. Buy signals and sell signals exist and i will try to take advantage of them. Its not true to say that trading short term means that you will gain a lot and lose a lot. There's ways to do things.

If you're really looking for some short term run-up, checkout some dry bulk carrier stocks like DRYS or EXM. Both are momentum picks, and pretty much toss valuation out the window.

Too risky for me, but a definite play if i were looking at the short-term.
 

_Rafa_

Banned
im already watching and playing with those type of stocks, but on TSX and tsx venture (im canadian).

stocks like :

qta.vn
zox.vn
not.vn

and a few others.
 
_Rafa_ said:
i've got 5k and theres no way im gonna put it all in one stock.

I prefer investing on short term stocks, get 5%-10%, and then invest the profit in other short term stocks, get 5-10%, etc...
With 5K, and lots of trading on $800-$1000 basis, commissions and taxes are likely to eat all your profits.

Your commissions are $4.95 each way?

I'd save up some more money and invest at least $2,500 per stock I bought (preferably $4,000 or more). Anything less, with commission that high, is just not a good idea, IMO.

The only way your strategy is going to work is if you win like 85-90% of your trades...which, needless to say, is very hard to achieve.

One even short bear run could wipe you out with that strategy.
 

_Rafa_

Banned
Maxwell House said:
With 5K, and lots of trading on $800-$1000 basis, commissions and taxes are likely to eat all your profits.

Your commissions are $4.95 each way?

I'd save up some more money and invest at least $2,500 per stock I bought (preferably $4,000 or more). Anything less, with commission that high, is just not a good idea, IMO.

The only way your strategy is going to work is if you win like 85-90% of your trades...which, needless to say, is very hard to achieve.

One even short bear run could wipe you out with that strategy.

i think 4.95$ per transaction is very correct and and dont pay taxes since im a student and i make less than 9000$ a year.

My strategy is the same of Michel Carignan, a professionnal trader so theres no problem with it and its not very risky. NEedless to say that when ill have more $$$, ill invest more $$ in each stock.
 
_Rafa_ said:
i think 4.95$ per transaction is very correct and and dont pay taxes since im a student and i make less than 9000$ a year.

My strategy is the same of Michel Carignan, a professionnal trader so theres no problem with it and its not very risky. NEedless to say that when ill have more $$$, ill invest more $$ in each stock.
Well, I have to disagree. Your strategy is VERY risky. Very short term selling with high commissions relative to the amount you are buying/selling is the defintion of risky trading. Just because some professional trader short term sells using TA doesn't mean it is without risk. TA by its nature is very risky.

BTW, I don't believe being a student exempts you from paying capital gains tax. Income tax, sure, but I believe capital gains is different (it is in the US at least, not sure about Canada).
 

_Rafa_

Banned
you cant say a strategy is very risky just because its short term! It depends on SO MANY more factors! You can be very risky with long term too. A strategy isnt only base on time!
 

Javaman

Member
_Rafa_ said:
you cant say a strategy is very risky just because its short term! It depends on SO MANY more factors! You can be very risky with long term too. A strategy isnt only base on time!

Since you lose broker fees everytime you trade (buy and/or sell) the more often you do it, the more it reduces your gains on the good trades and increases the losses on the bad. Keep in mind that buy and sell signals don't go directly to you, they filter through many people first who jump in early and get out by the time it reaches the masses.
 

xsarien

daedsiluap
_Rafa_ said:
i've got 5k and theres no way im gonna put it all in one stock.

I prefer investing on short term stocks, get 5%-10%, and then invest the profit in other short term stocks, get 5-10%, etc...

$5000 isn't going to do a lot on short term unless you're the next Warren Buffett. Even then, 10% is only going to be $500 before taxes. If I was thinking about throwing $5,000 at the market right now? I'd, well, be careful regardless. The past few months have been pretty ridiculous. I'd use it to get started with companies whose stock you should just hold onto, the shrill pundits call 'em, almost in an over-simplification, "grocery store stocks (e.g., General Mills, Coke, Colgate*)." The reasoning is that fads, wars and clothing trends come and go, but mom will always be buying cereal and other "essentials."

And if there's anything left over, buy a stock of a company that you just like. My "leftovers" in my last fit of buying went to [not saying**] just, well, because I was bored and thought it'd be a fun, short-term buck.


(*I don't own any of those, so it's not like I'm trying to pump up my portfolio.)
(** see above, I'm uniformly against praising a stock in public with tacit hopes it'd get others to buy.)
 

Javaman

Member
xsarien said:
(*I don't own any of those, so it's not like I'm trying to pump up my portfolio.)
(** see above, I'm uniformly against praising a stock in public with tacit hopes it'd get others to buy.)

One thing I've been wondering is how much quarterly reports can effect large mutual funds. Since the top performers slightly change every quarter I wonder if I could get ahead of the sluggish investor by chasing the performance the day that it is released electronically instead of waiting for the typical snail-mail paper and holding on for a month or so before re-balancing to my preferred spread. On the other hand, my (fallible) gut tells me that the funds are driven MUCH more by the performance of the companies that it is invested into instead of the fund purchaser's shifting of money around. It would be a pain to do the math appropriately instead of just looking at charts to compare since the funds invest in over 100 different companies.
 

_Rafa_

Banned
the fact is that if i make 8% with ntdoy on 2 days, I prefer that than making 8% on a month. I can use my gain in other high potential short term stocks faster. Thats basic. In the end, my commission fees will not be different.

If ntdoy was not more than 3-4% up on 2 days, i surely would have kept it for longer term. Who knows if it will hold tomorrow...IMO, i dont think so.

im watching now a couple of high potential stocks from great companys. They're at a resistence and i see buyers are making pression. Im just waiting the right moment to enter, place my limit sell price, and make profit. Sure it has some risk, but theres ways to to things that are safer than others.
 

Javaman

Member
_Rafa_ said:
the fact is that if i make 8% with ntdoy on 2 days, I prefer that than making 8% on a month. I can use my gain in other high potential short term stocks faster. Thats basic. In the end, my commission fees will not be different.

If ntdoy was not more than 3-4% up on 2 days, i surely would have kept it for longer term. Who knows if it will hold tomorrow...IMO, i dont think so.

im watching now a couple of high potential stocks from great companys. They're at a resistence and i see buyers are making pression. Im just waiting the right moment to enter, place my limit sell price, and make profit. Sure it has some risk, but theres ways to to things that are safer than others.

Pretty much everyone would, but you've got to work risk into your management of stocks. It's almost like you've got two forces pulling at your investments. The high risk of day trading is tempered with using set buy and sell prices. You'll more then likely gain money that way, but how will it compare to the market average as a whole? the buy and sell will lock a profit in, but you aren't going to get the entire spike of growth, especially if you are slower in doing it then the traders with inside knowledge and more direct access to the market. To each his own though. There's a certain alure about beating the system, but historically speaking day trading is hard to pull off. I posted this earlier in the thread but it has gotten lost in the shuffle.

http://www.travismorien.com/FAQ/trading/futradersuccess.htm
Odean's study of stock traders
Terry Odean, then a grad student at the University of California at Berkeley, and his Professor Brad Barber researched the accounts of 10,000 discount-brokerage trading accounts between 1987 to 1993.
Later, Odean repeated this study on a much larger scale, in the repeat he examined the accounts of 66,465 households from 1991 to 1996. So in total, he looked at a huge number of accounts, and a vast number of trades. The conclusions from each study were virtually identical: trading hurts your wealth.

Odean found that as a group all amateur investors underperform the market due to higher than necessary trading costs. But the 20% of traders with the highest turnover underperformed the most. In the sample, while the market went up an annualised 17.1% over the period, the average investor/trader with a turnover of 80%pa returned 15.3%, but the 20% with the highest turnover, 283%pa on average, got only 10%pa.
This study was performed with the clients of a discount (non web) brokerage. How would the figures change for the ultra cheap Internet brokers?

According to Odean, not very much. Commissions were an important part of the reason why active traders had the worst performance, but the main bogeyman was the bid/ask spread. In fact Odean believes that traders as a group are now doing even worse than they did in the old discount brokerage days because turnover has increased even more.

Odean offers the following example: The average trade in his sample was roughly $13,000 in size. Trading through a discount broker, an investor might have paid $60 or so in commissions "round-trip," or $30 for the buy and $30 for the sale. But by Odean's estimate, the typical investor also lost a full 1% to the bid-ask spread -- or $130 on this typical $13,000 purchase.

If this investor switches to an online broker that makes trades for only $10, the "round-trip" cost of the trade falls to only $20 -- but the spread still amounts to a loss of $130, for a total transaction cost of $150.

No doubt $150 is cheaper than $190 but it's only around 21% less, not the 66% that investors might believe that he or she is saving. And even this 21% savings could be swallowed up if investors choose to change their behavior and trade more frequently as a result of the lower commissions.

As a matter of fact, Odean did find a tendency to trade more when traders switched to cheap web brokers. In the second study he examined the trading records of 1,600 traders that switched from discount telephone trading to deep discount web trading. He found that turnover increased by a third and traders doubled their exposure to "speculative" stocks. That is to say that telephone traders were twice as likely as web traders to buy large stocks, compared to web traders that on average concentrated more on small speculative stocks trading on the NASDAQ and other minor exchanges.

The most interesting finding of Odean's research is that traders underperform as a group even after taking out trading costs. On average, the stocks these traders sold outperformed the market, and those they bought underperformed the market. One year after each trade, the average investor wound up more than 9% poorer than if had he done nothing. Two years later, the results were even worse.

Also a fascinating point...

Another finding was that the traders in the group had a strong tendency to sell the wrong stocks. Odean says traders "strongly prefer to sell their winning investments and hold on to their losing investments, even though the winning investments they sell subsequently outperform the losers they continue to hold." Selling a loser amounts to admitting you have made a mistake. Traders hate that, they much prefer to sell stocks at a profit, which makes them feel like a winner, as a result traders systematically weeded out good stocks from their portfolios and retained poor ones.
 

Javaman

Member
_Rafa_ said:
dont think i dont know that theres moments to sell too, even at loss. thats part of the strategy.

"the fact is that if i make 8% with ntdoy on 2 days, I prefer that than making 8% on a month."

Another thing too, is that you almost always have to have the next big investment lined up right away to put the money into since while it's out of the market it isn't making any money. It's great to make 8% here and there but how often will you be able to capture sure things like the Nintendo deal? Every couple of weeks or months? How does that compare with just leaving it in the good stock for a couple of months ? I hate to harp on you, but I just wanted to make sure you know about some of the risks you may have not considered and how a possibly short sighted gain view of the market can cloud the larger long term gain view.
 

_Rafa_

Banned
Javaman said:
"the fact is that if i make 8% with ntdoy on 2 days, I prefer that than making 8% on a month."

why are you quoting this?

Another thing too, is that you almost always have to have the next big investment lined up right away to put the money into since while it's out of the market it isn't making any money. It's great to make 8% here and there but how often will you be able to capture sure things like the Nintendo deal? Every couple of weeks or months? How does that compare with just leaving it in the good stock for a couple of months ? I hate to harp on you, but I just wanted to make sure you know about some of the risks you may have not considered and how a possibly short sighted gain view of the market can cloud the larger long term gain view.

when its out, its not losing neither. And the nintendo deal was not THAT sure. Just check what happenned with amazon this week. And theres good occasions almost everyday, you just have to be aware of them.
 

Troblin

Member
short term investing is fine. How do you think day traders/hedge funds make their money?
I don't know enough about technical analysis to attempt it.

Too time consuming for my tastes. I'd much rather do fundamental analysis on a couple stocks, buy at good prices, and hold.

To each his own.
 

gkryhewy

Member
Keep your NTDOY shares, kids (barring market collapse). Remember those news stories about tourist groups from China visiting small Japanese towns to buy Wiis?

Bloomberg said:
Nintendo Raises Wii Output, Will Boost Revenue With China Sales

By Hiroshi Suzuki

Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Nintendo Co. said it raised production of the Wii player by 80 percent during the fiscal second quarter to bolster revenue in Europe, and will further expand sales by selling the console in China next year.

Nintendo, the world's largest maker of handheld game players, plans to keep monthly production at 1.8 million Wii consoles, after boosting the output during the three months ended June 30, President Satoru Iwata said at a briefing in Tokyo today. The console will also be sold in Korea from next year, Iwata said.

The Wii lured buyers with a controller that replicates users' movements on screen, helping the player outsell Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3 console by about three to one, according to researcher Enterbrain Inc. The company today said it plans to introduce more features such as an online television guide on the Wii to attract more customers.

``We are trying to create an environment that every household has a Wii,'' Iwata said. ``We are not done yet.''

Iwata ruled out any immediate cut to the Wii's $250 price tag, following reductions by Sony.

The production increase, from 1 million units in the three months ended March 31, allowed Nintendo to ship more Wiis in the U.K. and European regions, Iwata said.

Sales of the Wii, which began selling in Europe in December 2006, rose about 50 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30 to 1.54 million, Nintendo said in a statement today.

Nintendo yesterday raised its sales target for the Wii by 6.1 percent to 17.5 million units in the year ending March 31, and the goal for game titles by 35 percent to 97 million copies.

Shares of Nintendo rose 2 percent to 67,700 yen at the close on the Osaka Securities Exchange, while the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average climbed 1.4 percent.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hiroshi Suzuki in Tokyo at [email protected] .
 
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