[Official] Stocks/Crypto/Investing thread

[UltraMega]

Welcome to the Stocks/Crypto/Investing thread!

 

 

This will serve as a place for people to ask questions, share ideas and experience and talk about what's going on in the investing world. Since this is a tech site, naturally there will likely be more focus on tech related markets. Crypto is definitely included in that, but note that this thread isn't about mining but rather crypto investing, though discussions about profit gain and the financial side of mining are welcome. 

 

A little common sense rule: Do not come here for specific advise on investing and likewise avoid giving specific advise on investing to anyone. 

Do say: I think Microsoft is a good company to invest in 

Don't say: You should buy shares in Microsoft 

Do say: What are some good strategies for investing in the tech market?

Don't say: What stocks should I buy?

Screenshots should be fine just make sure you edit them to remove any personal info. 

 

 

Helpful Links:

Infographic: 40 Stock Market Terms That Every Beginner Should Know (visualcapitalist.com)

Stock Quotes, Business News and Data from Stock Markets | MSN Money

Today's Market | InvestorPlace

 

OP:

I was thinking maybe we should have a thread to talk about stocks, crypto, other types of investing. With crypto blowing up, investing is becoming of all kinds has gained more attention it seems. You guys have any interest in a thread for talking about this stuff? Sharing idea, strategies, or just bragging about gains haha. 

Thoughts? 

Edited October 18, 2021 by UltraMega

[Diffident]

I personally wouldn't invest in crypto.  It's too volatile.  You would need to watch it constantly.  I do all my investing in my Roth IRA so I don't have to pay taxes on my earnings (or at least less).  I can't make any withdrawals till I'm 59 1/2, but I'm not investing to get rich, it's for retirement.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Diffident

[pio]

1 hour ago, Diffident said:

I personally wouldn't invest in crypto.  It's too volatile.  You would need to watch it constantly.  I do all my investing in my Roth IRA so I don't have to pay taxes on my earnings (or at least less).  I can't make any withdrawals till I'm 59 1/2, but I'm not investing to get rich, it's for retirement.

There's limits on how much you can put into that every year though too.  There's lots of rules with IRA's, definitely not for everyone.  Roth is definitely the way to go though unless you're making big big cash now.  Traditional makes sense if you have a great job, as you'd be in a lower tax bracket when you retire.....so you'd pay less taxes on the income when you're 60.

I'm a broke son of a gun, so I'm using crypto.  Sold my car for $2000 early 2020, now I have $15k.  Nevermind what I made off mining (and lost).  I'm in it because its volatile, I'm counting on those large dips and gains because its about the only way I'll see any real growth on a fixed income that I have now.  My only regret is I wish I had more in there, really counting on it to make my dream of home ownership happen.

I don't have any tips for anybody though.  Other than I guess, don't get scammed like I did lol.  I fell for that Elon Musk bitcoin scam that was going around social media last year. -_-  Been off social media ever since that happened lol.

[BWG]

Doge to the moon!

 

That is all...

[Andrew]

Well, giving advice probably isn't a good idea for the same reason why giving medical advice is not a good idea.

[UltraMega]

12 minutes ago, Andrew said:

Well, giving advice probably isn't a good idea for the same reason why giving medical advice is not a good idea.

Yea, no one should be looking for specific financial advise from anyone on here but people could have questions on how to get started, what certain terms mean, etc. More sharing knowledge than giving advise. 

[Andrew]

Yeah, I do think getting advice on how to do things is fine, but not advice on when to buy certain stocks or crytocurrencies or whatever.

I did put £200 in some cryptos on the 10th and it's now at £281 so that's neat.

 

I'd also recommend getting a Coinbase account and doing the Learn and Earn thing. You don't get much, but you do at least effectively get free money. I've made like $40 since February with it. And if you do decide to use Coinbase for buying/selling crypto, you really should use the pro version over the regular version. It's incredibly easy to buy/sell using the regular version but that comes at a cost of literal cost. The fees are a lot higher. If you use Pro, the UI is a bit harder to learn how to do certain things but the fees are significantly smaller. For example, buying £100 worth of bitcoin using Coinbase, the fees will be £3.84. Using Coinbase Pro, you're only going to pay £0.50 in fees.

 

EDIT: lol in the 30 minutes of me making this post and this edit, it's gone from £281 to £285. The neat thing about Crypto is just how volatile it is. You can make a lot of money very quickly, but at the same time, you can lose a lot of money very quickly.

Edited August 27, 2021 by Andrew

[UltraMega]

I use Charles Schwab and there are no fees unless the stock your buying is foreign or something. For normal stuff definitely no fees. 

Edited August 28, 2021 by UltraMega

[Avacado]

2 hours ago, Andrew said:

Well, giving advice probably isn't a good idea for the same reason why giving medical advice is not a good idea.

But what if the person giving medical advice is a medical professional?

[iamjanco]

2 hours ago, Avacado said:

But what if the person giving medical advice is a medical professional?

 

Depends on the medical professional and the relationship you have with them. Dr. Livack from the old country lived across the street from us when I was a kid. Best doctor I ever knew. 

 

I've got a lot of mixed feelings about the medical professionals I've met and continue to meet these days. I've met the odd good one, but I've met a lot more mediocre ones, including a few who were really bad.

 

 

[UltraMega]

Seems like the responses are positive. As was pointed out, I do think there should be some rules/guidelines to ensure no one sees this as a place to seek financial advise, and I am interested to know how you guys think those rules should be structured. 

 

At that point I think we could start a more official thread with a list of rules to ensure its all on the up and up, and go from there. 

[ENTERPRISE]

As someone who is aiming to start getting into stocks this is useful. It is time I took advantage and started making more money than my day job!  

 

Thanks in advance for any info. @UltraMega has given me some tips and should prove useful. Wont invest a huge amount in crypto right now. My starting point will be on far safer bets. Occasionally I will pop some expendable money into higher risk stocks, such as Crypto.

 

[UltraMega]

49 minutes ago, ENTERPRISE said:

As someone who is aiming to start getting into stocks this is useful. It is time I took advantage and started making more money than my day job!  

 

Thanks in advance for any info. @UltraMega has given me some tips and should prove useful. Wont invest a huge amount in crypto right now. My starting point will be on far safer bets. Occasionally I will pop some expendable money into higher risk stocks, such as Crypto.

 

Just too elaborate a little here, I gave E a summary of what I make over a 6 month period as a percentage of my investment in certain tech stocks (about 13%), and I think this is the kind of info we could all potentially benefit from. A shared interest in the tech side of the investing world. More than happy to share this info, and I'll start if off in a few days when it's clear what we all want this thread to look like. 

Edited August 28, 2021 by UltraMega

[ENTERPRISE]

So it looks like Robinhood is a no go as they do not accept signups outside of the UK. I took a look at Charles Schwab, I was taking a look at the account types. The ones that would interest me would either be Brokerage or Automated & Managed Portfolio's. I assume @UltraMegayou use the standard Brokerage ?

[Andrew]

I'd just avoid Robinhoood after the whole thing that happened with GME and AMC stock. Both were going up a lot, and Robinhood automatically sold some peoples shares in GME and AMC without permissions for "their protection" while it was still going up, then locked them from buying back in again. That type of business practise just put me off it completely. If it were available in the UK and I had an account with them, I'd just close it.

 

@ENTERPRISEas far as stock trading apps, there really aren't any in the UK. eToro is the only real choice from what I've seen.

 

[ENTERPRISE]

1 minute ago, Andrew said:

I'd just avoid Robinhoood after the whole thing that happened with GME and AMC stock. Both were going up a lot, and Robinhood automatically sold some peoples shares in GME and AMC without permissions for "their protection" while it was still going up, then locked them from buying back in again. That type of business practise just put me off it completely. If it were available in the UK and I had an account with them, I'd just close it.

 

@ENTERPRISEas far as stock trading apps, there really aren't any in the UK. eToro is the only real choice from what I've seen.

 

 

I do remember the Robinhood shenanigans and it did make me wonder, but it is now a moot point as I cannot use it lol. I will check out eToro though and see what they are about. Do you per chance use eToro ?

[Andrew]

1 minute ago, ENTERPRISE said:

 

I do remember the Robinhood shenanigans and it did make me wonder, but it is now a moot point as I cannot use it lol. I will check out eToro though and see what they are about. Do you per chance use eToro ?

I don't, however I was going to start buying shares in various companies. It does seem like unless you go through a broker, there really isn't much of a choice in the UK. For this reason, I ended up just abandoning the idea and just investing in Crypto instead.

[UltraMega]

On 28/08/2021 at 09:39, ENTERPRISE said:

So it looks like Robinhood is a no go as they do not accept signups outside of the UK. I took a look at Charles Schwab, I was taking a look at the account types. The ones that would interest me would either be Brokerage or Automated & Managed Portfolio's. I assume @UltraMegayou use the standard Brokerage ?

Yea a brokerage account is a standard stock account and that's what you want. 

[UltraMega]

Updated the OP, laid out a little ground rule, if anyone wants me to add anything let me know. 

Anyway, I'll go over some of my own experiences investing.

 

A couple years ago my Uncle took me to dinner and basically told me to start investing, so I did. I only put a couple hundred in at first and just watched it for a while, tried to learn about the process and such. I'd say I'm just now at the point where I feel comfortable with it, having watched it go up and down enough times to sort of trust that it always comes back up in the end... so far haha. So over time I've move more and more of my saving into my stock account so that it can grow. 

Initially I was more involved, mostly because I was nervous about it but over time I've gone from trying to be really hands on to mostly letting proven tech companies and a few more traditional companies keep me on a modest but steady rise. I've learned mostly through trial and error. The biggest mistakes I think I've made were selling a few stocks too early, like AMD and Turtle Beach. AMD I sold most of my shares in maybe 6 months ago because I wasn't sure they'd maintain growth with chip shortages and Intel starting to take their jobs seriously again now that they have real competition, but AMD has continued to grow since and I haven't bought back in yet. 

 

Turtle beach I think I regret the most. They make headphones and maybe controllers and other accessories for gaming. With the last console launch cycle their stock had a huge surge, and thinking this would happen again so I bought in early around $11. Again with chip shortages and the way console sales have been slowed down I thought Turtle Beach wouldn't be able to hit another surge and I sold it around $22, so I made money, but now it's up more and it's just continued to go up steadily. I was looking for a surge but instead it's been a steady rise which really is even better. 

 

Here is what my portfolio looks like right now, and the last 3 months of history. Before that I moved some stuff around, sold some stuff that I had sort of forgotten why I bought in the first place.. and consolidated my account so the last 3 months is more relevant to my way of thinking about stocks now. For a while I was reading up on stocks a lot and investing in a lot of things that sounded good but I ended up picking too many things to keep track of so I had to narrow it down a bit for my own sake. 


 

My plan going forward is to try to get more responsible with routinely setting new stop limits. I figure I can miss a lot of the down days if I set limits often, so hopefully that will work out. 


As a tech enthusiast I feel like there are some insights I get that help with investing. There are some companies I feel like I can understand better than a less techie type of person would and that definitely helps me gain confidence in certain companies. For example, I feel like I know about as well as any investor could that Microsoft is going to keep going up. While that wouldn't have been true maybe under Ballmer, the new CEO is killing it and they seem to have a real thick momentum at this point. Similar arguments can probably also be made for other huge tech companies like Apple, Amazon, etc. Google is the only outlier in my mind as far as major tech companies, partly because of the anti-trust suite. 

Edited August 30, 2021 by UltraMega

[UltraMega]

PayPal is mulling over a stock trading platform for customers in the US

WWW.TECHSPOT.COM

---

PayPal is reportedly considering an expansion into stock trading less than a year after launching the ability to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies on its platform.

Wonder if this would also boost their stock value. 

[pio]

What's your guys' thoughts on building mining rigs this late in the game?  I'm debating on cashing out the little bit of crypto I have (all interest at this point), and building a couple 5700XT rigs or 6700XT rigs.  I fired up my couple of RX 580's this weekend, and was pleasantly surprised that they still pull a profit.  I figure a ton of higher end cards would do even better.  The idea would be to keep working on it till its a sustainable "business" for me.  I have access to cheap power and 100a of 220v.  My only holdup is the PoS thing coming up with ETH, I know that's going to put a hamper on ETH mining.

I dunno, I'm just tired of sitting here living paycheck to paycheck every month and barely putting food on the table. -_-  I'm never going to have my own property and house at this rate and that's what I long for the most.  Obviously, I'm not asking for "personal advice", but moreso just a collective "what's your thoughts on my plan that I'm probably going to attempt and fail at anyway?" lol.  If I play my cards right, its not going to affect me at all financially other than I'll lose upwards of half of my holdings.

[UltraMega]

8 hours ago, pioneerisloud said:

What's your guys' thoughts on building mining rigs this late in the game?  I'm debating on cashing out the little bit of crypto I have (all interest at this point), and building a couple 5700XT rigs or 6700XT rigs.  I fired up my couple of RX 580's this weekend, and was pleasantly surprised that they still pull a profit.  I figure a ton of higher end cards would do even better.  The idea would be to keep working on it till its a sustainable "business" for me.  I have access to cheap power and 100a of 220v.  My only holdup is the PoS thing coming up with ETH, I know that's going to put a hamper on ETH mining.

I dunno, I'm just tired of sitting here living paycheck to paycheck every month and barely putting food on the table. -_-  I'm never going to have my own property and house at this rate and that's what I long for the most.  Obviously, I'm not asking for "personal advice", but moreso just a collective "what's your thoughts on my plan that I'm probably going to attempt and fail at anyway?" lol.  If I play my cards right, its not going to affect me at all financially other than I'll lose upwards of half of my holdings.

I don't mine so I don't have any first hand experience but if you have the means to do it with enough capacity to add up to a meaningful amount, I don't think there's a lot of down side on a personal level.

 

For me, I don't see a huge difference between something like mining and having money in stocks. Either way your spending money hoping to make money. Mining is probably less risky since the only way you could really lose big would be if you bought a bunch of GPUs and they lost their value before you could at least make enough to cover your costs which seems super unlikely right now. 

 

I guess the best question for you would be if mining is more profitable than putting the same money in some reliable stocks. 

 

With my stocks, 20k nets me about $2300 over a 3 month period. If you assume that as a baseline, what could you make with 20k worth of mining gear in 3 months? 

Edited September 6, 2021 by UltraMega

[pio]

3 hours ago, UltraMega said:

I don't mine so I don't have any first hand experience but if you have the means to do it with enough capacity to add up to a meaningful amount, I don't think there's a lot of down side on a personal level.

 

For me, I don't see a huge difference between something like mining and having money in stocks. Either way your spending money hoping to make money. Mining is probably less risky since the only way you could really lose big would be if you bought a bunch of GPUs and they lost their value before you could at least make enough to cover your costs which seems super unlikely right now. 

 

I guess the best question for you would be if mining be more profitable than putting the same money in some reliable stocks. 

 

With my stocks, 20k nets me about $2300 over a 3 month period. If you assume that as a baseline, what could you make with 20k worth of mining gear in 3 months? 

Well, assuming roughly $5 per card at 6 cards per $5000 or so.  $15k would net somewhere around $2500 ish per month?  I was planning on going to about $10k invested, and with TODAY'S pricing + my current RX 580's, I'd be getting roughly $70 per day which is $2100 per month (assuming I can score enough cards).  Of course I'd assume that current pricing won't continue.  I'd also assume that it's not going to completely half from where it is now (that'd be BTC at $25k).  So even in a predicted "worst case" it'd still be making $1050 per month ish.  With 12 cards running, there's no way my power will be anywhere near that much, so it'd still be profit.  Kinda depends on the cards I can find available to do it though, I'm trying not to use any of my daily use cards for fear of losing one lol.

To be honest, I'm kind of more interested in just playing with the hardware again, refreshing my skills (had a 24 card 580 farm in 2017), and just seeing if I can do it and stick to it.  I've been doing my retro rigs, but those aren't actually doing anything for me other than they're fun to build.  At least this, I could potentially be earning passive income to further the farm "investment".  Heck, at this point its all "the house's money" really, as I paid off my investment long time ago with the 24 card setup.  It's just a big step for me to even think about dropping $5,000 on a rig with a paycheck to paycheck type situation.  But I know the formula works if I can sit on the coins long enough from experience and watching this stuff for the last 12 years.

I think I might go ahead and do it though.  It's been awhile since I took a risk, and the last two times it's really paid off decently had I not derped afterwards.  Maybe this will put me into property ownership sooner.

[Avacado]

53 minutes ago, pioneerisloud said:

Well, assuming roughly $5 per card at 6 cards per $5000 or so.  $15k would net somewhere around $2500 ish per month?  I was planning on going to about $10k invested, and with TODAY'S pricing + my current RX 580's, I'd be getting roughly $70 per day which is $2100 per month (assuming I can score enough cards).  Of course I'd assume that current pricing won't continue.  I'd also assume that it's not going to completely half from where it is now (that'd be BTC at $25k).  So even in a predicted "worst case" it'd still be making $1050 per month ish.  With 12 cards running, there's no way my power will be anywhere near that much, so it'd still be profit.  Kinda depends on the cards I can find available to do it though, I'm trying not to use any of my daily use cards for fear of losing one lol.

To be honest, I'm kind of more interested in just playing with the hardware again, refreshing my skills (had a 24 card 580 farm in 2017), and just seeing if I can do it and stick to it.  I've been doing my retro rigs, but those aren't actually doing anything for me other than they're fun to build.  At least this, I could potentially be earning passive income to further the farm "investment".  Heck, at this point its all "the house's money" really, as I paid off my investment long time ago with the 24 card setup.  It's just a big step for me to even think about dropping $5,000 on a rig with a paycheck to paycheck type situation.  But I know the formula works if I can sit on the coins long enough from experience and watching this stuff for the last 12 years.

I think I might go ahead and do it though.  It's been awhile since I took a risk, and the last two times it's really paid off decently had I not derped afterwards.  Maybe this will put me into property ownership sooner.

You are grossly over-estimating profitability, things have changed  since the last hardfork (ETH). Your 6 580s would net you 13$ day if you're lucky and the gas fees will eat you alive when you try to sell. Currently my 4 2080Tis make about 0.15 ETH per month @ 240 Mh/s when I mine. It's not really worth it anymore to mine ETH at least. You might want to do some more research before pulling the trigger on that 10k "investment". You'd be better off just buying the crypto. Honestly, please don't jump in the game at this point.

 

 

Edited September 6, 2021 by Avacado

[ENTERPRISE]

On another note. I just signed up with eToro. As per the conversation with @UltraMegaI have taken a look at the VGT index, interesting stuff. I will likely do some actual investing once I have sorted my job issue out, first things are first lol. I will need to do some reading as per the links in the OP and familiarise myself with the risks etc. While it is all exciting, these are not things you jump into without looking.