# You Just Know



## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

I know everyone says you just don't know for sure which way a stock will go in the short term, but is there ever a time that you are just sure it will go your way. Most of the time you have a good idea but it can still go against you but sometimes your gut and research just says your right and it goes your way.

Today I bought at HND at $8.14 and just by the way the intraday looked, how much it has dropped over the last few weeks so I just knew I would be right to buy it. So I bought it and set a price of $8.50 to sell if it got that high because I was going out to get gas in the US. Sure enough one hour later it sold for that price and I got the quick profit. The funny thing is I just knew for some reason and that price was also the high for the day.


----------



## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

Sometimes I know for sure a stock will go up.

However, I am horrible at figuring out my sell point.

Usually I set my sell point too high and end up selling on a market order later for peanuts. 

I think it was just about a week ago I bought GE, was gonna sell to make a quick $50, ended up making $9 or something ridiculous by the time I sold. hah!

But, $9 for 2 hours of nothing isnt bad, i guess.


----------



## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

Thanks kaejs but I am sure that almost everyone has had this experience and didn't play it right for some reason. But I would bet that everyone has a story whether they acted or not but did in fact know the outcome for some reason.


----------



## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

You are right, DC.
When you have been watching a stock for months or even years and in some cases across several business cycles, you start getting a good "feel" for it.
Almost like how an experienced Dr. just "knows" the diagnosis by listening to the symptoms.

This is particularly profitable in the case of high volume and esp. volatile stocks where you can take small but quick profits once you get to know the trading pattern.

Of course the tide can turn against anyone anytime without warning, and this doesn't work predictably all the time - otherwise it would all be too easy, wouldn't it?

I'm sure you and I are about to get shot now for recommending "trading" and not "investing"


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

harold imho the Dr. analogy is highly appropriate. Yes, we do get to know our patients.

it's far easier for us than for MDs. In the first place, we have far fewer patients. I myself have maybe 20 wonderful patients who are never ill, who only appear once a year for annual checkups, who get on w their highly productive lives somewhere slightly off my radar. Just like patients in traditional chinese medicine, these folks are committed to pay me an ongoing retainer when they are well, not an isolated fee when they are sick, so the revenue keeps coming in even though i rarely see them.

i might have 2 or at the most 3 active patients, whom i check up on several times a week, if not daily. When i say check up, i don't mean i actively perform a medical service for such patients. I mean i just look at their charts, readings & news & pop my head in to take a look.

so the case load is minimal for us compared to MDs.

also - unlike MDs - we can get away with mistakes. A prudent investment strategy means that self-correcting mechanisms are already in place. No decision will be life-or-death.

in short, it is entirely possible to dance with mr market. I used to have a broker who was an institutional trader, not a retail representative. As such, he was refreshingly frank & honest. He used to know, from his quote system, not only what the institutions were doing with his stocks at each & every minute, but he also used to know which institutions were the players. Oh look, he'd say, there's the Caisse bidding right now. 

he could dance, that guy.

lastly, imho if anyone should get shot here for being a trader rather than an investor, that is the fault of this nearsighted forum. Even a conservative investor will usually have one or 2 stocks that interest him, stocks that he owns & trades independently.

it is to be noted that a number of parties who are loudly decrying individual stock selection here in this forum are novice investors w small accounts plus (diagnosis) noticeable levels of a virus syndrome traceable to fear, anxiety & occasional envy. It is to be hoped that they don't infect the youngest patients, who are coming to the clinic to learn, with this virus.


----------



## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

Just make sure that your profit-taking rules account for trading costs. Trading frictional costs are worse for RE but whenever you are paying the "house" more than you are making, then you are probably trading too much.


----------



## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

humble_pie said:


> ...it is to be noted that a number of parties who are loudly decrying individual stock selection here in this forum are novice investors w small accounts plus (diagnosis) noticeable levels of a virus syndrome traceable to fear, anxiety & occasional envy. It is to be hoped that they don't infect the youngest patients, who are coming to the clinic to learn, with this virus.


Amen HP! Also, many of us maintain different buckets and allocate a %age of our portfolios to trading and to risky picks.

Plus there are some people like doctors and lawyers who will not spend the time needed to select stocks, or who lack the confidence or time to make decisions related to their financial health.

An analogy are the patients who delegate their health to their doctor. Good luck with that!


----------



## Homerhomer (Oct 18, 2010)

Nobody knows for sure that the stock will go up or down, if you think that you are kidding yourself (that's why stop losses and exit strategies ;-).

Many are successful day traders but their success ratio is not 100%, we can all get a good feel for a stock over time but nothing is for sure ;-)


----------



## Toronto.gal (Jan 8, 2010)

*dogcom:* I know exactly what you mean and I call that intelligent speculation, though many only believe in intelligent investing.  

Naturally sometimes it goes our way, sometimes not, but I have been lucky to have guessed right a number of times, not only that, quite a few times my orders filled at 3:59 at the day's highest/lowest price [depending if buying or selling]. But this normally happens with stocks I have been following for several days/weeks/months, so it's easier to predict the stock's pattern, though sometimes not even the big news of the day coincide with the movement of a stock, in which case I would just wait it out & more often than not, this is in fact the case. You're so right harold/humble, certain stocks do become our patients & even friends because we get so attached to them, lol.

*KaeJS:* you're funny! I hope you made your $9 after commissions. I bet GE stock went up $.50 cents the day after you sold, right?!


----------



## bean438 (Jul 18, 2009)

Short term nobody knows. Nobody.

People will talk about their "killing" that they made on a haunch but seem to not talk about the losers that almost certainly offset any gains.

Heck even long term, even with non cyclical consumer staple stocks with decades of dividend growth I do not know for sure they will go up.

There are NO guarantees, only reasonable assurances.

But I can tell you 100% without a doubt, sure as %$#&#, if I buy any stock it WILL decline shortly after, and if I sell a stock it WILL go up.

This is a skill that I have. It is always what happens.

IF you are looking to buy something, wait until I buy, and I can assure you it will go down in the days/months after I buy it.

In fact I have written this in my personal investment manifesto if you will, so I except it.

I really dont care about the short term fluctuations. I buy dividend growth for a reasonable price.

I am reasonably confident that my selections will perform well in the years to come, so long as we need food, soap, deoderants, toilet paper, natural gas for our furnaces, etc.


----------



## Toronto.gal (Jan 8, 2010)

bean438 said:


> But I can tell you 100% without a doubt, sure as %$#&#, if I buy any stock it WILL decline shortly after, and if I sell a stock it WILL go up.
> 
> This is a skill that I have. It is always what happens.


LOL, this happens to a friend of mine all the time, so I never buy/sell after she does.


----------



## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

I understand what you guys are saying and I know it can go against you like Harold says. And Toronto.gal you said sometimes it goes for you and sometimes not like most trades but this very rare trade is different because you somehow just know. 

What I am saying is that somehow you just know what the future will be. When I made that trade although a small one it was like I wasn't worried at all that it would drop like I usually am with almost all of my trades. I would say this however if I put in a large sum that could hurt me badly it would have been a different story.


----------



## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

All I can say to this thread is the same thing I've often asked people who have non-passive portfolios.

What is your return and how much did you beat the passive equivalent by?

Oddly enough, very few active traders even track their returns, which I find astounding.


----------



## K-133 (Apr 30, 2010)

Four Pillars said:


> All I can say to this thread is the same thing I've often asked people who have non-passive portfolios.
> 
> What is your return and how much did you beat the passive equivalent by?
> 
> Oddly enough, very few active traders even track their returns, which I find astounding.


Precisely. The mid to long-term average tells a better story than the odd success story. This applies to everything, not just the trading of stocks.

Sometimes you just know, but for most the likely likely scenario is that, equally or less than, they just knew wrong.

To entertain the OP, I trade with pretend money, and I found GOOG always does this for me. When it was down to $550, I felt it would go up, and sure enough, it was up to $590 a couple of days later.


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

we're not talking about the olympic athlete who alone wins gold in his match.

we're talking about the half of the pack - that's 50% - that will beat the median.

what's with all these wee, sleekit, timorous cowerin investors, all wringing their hands in alarmist despair & wailing that they won't enter the race because they have decided in advance that they are going to lose ...


----------



## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

^ agreed.
I think it is important to keep a flexible mind and be open to all ideas, strategies and opportunities.
An investor won't serve himself/herself well by typecasting themselves into neat little pigeon holes like "trader", "investor", "day trader" etc. and making up arbitrary rules like "always sell on 10% profit" or "always sell on 5% loss", and so on.

This is just my observation reading the posts of some seasoned investors here (and on other forums) and chatting with friends, co-workers who appear to be successful at investing.
I observe how they keep an open mind, move fast on opportunities, correct their mistakes quickly, learn from it and move on and in turn learn from others that are even more skilled than they are.
I personally have lots to learn and am a new entrant in this game but I think that keeping an open and flexible mind would serve us well rather than having a rigid regime of rules.


----------



## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

> Oddly enough, very few active traders even track their returns, which I find astounding.


 so they can selectively remember their wins and forget their losses

after brokerage fees, taxes and time, day trading is a slog that most people lose at ...... if it actually worked for most people, we would be hearing about it and we would all be doing it

just enter "day trading" into google and all the adverts should be a tipoff that, just like real estate, the real money is in selling newsletters and courses

if the guys that are selling the courses really knew how to make money trading stocks, they'd be _trading stocks_ which has a much much bigger upside than humping an investment course around the country

sorry, i just don't buy any of this


----------



## Guest (Mar 25, 2011)

Four Pillars said:


> Oddly enough, very few active traders even track their returns, which I find astounding.


Fwiw ... my Qtrade account does all that for me e.g. basic view, quote view, valuation view, allocation view, benchmark view ... e.g. performance ... year/quarter/market value/net invested/ROR ... why there's numbers, histograms, charts, colors ... look at all that green


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

since when was this a thread about day-trading.

i thought this was a thread about non-quantifiable factors that enter into short-term trading decisions.

people may describe this as intuition or feel, but with the more successful traders there is, almost always, a math set that underlies the decision.

math educators frequently describe the innate math recognition skills of pre-verbal children. Kindergartners, in effect. In every language, these sweet little tykes can recognize sets of numbers & point to correct progressions & answers even though they do not have one single word to describe why they are making the decisions they are making.

in the same way, when a good stock trader is making his intuitive decision, he is in fact utilizing the same kind of sub-verbal math skills even though he doesn't necessarily think these through in algebra.

furthermore, who ever said anything in this thread about courses.

this is not a thread about courses. It's a thread about people who can correctly process a series of important numerical details. In a flash.


----------



## Guest (Mar 25, 2011)

dogcom said:


> I understand what you guys are saying and I know it can go against you like Harold says. And Toronto.gal you said sometimes it goes for you and sometimes not like most trades but this very rare trade is different because you somehow just know.
> 
> What I am saying is that somehow you just know what the future will be. When I made that trade although a small one it was like I wasn't worried at all that it would drop like I usually am with almost all of my trades. I would say this however if I put in a large sum that could hurt me badly it would have been a different story.


I wonder who knew this ... RIM at 13:30h ... 523.9M shares outstanding, 462.9M floating shares ... down $6.61 ... now that is a lotta money!


----------



## Toronto.gal (Jan 8, 2010)

Fact is, that unless you're Buffett, you simply can't buy & keep all the stocks you want forever and ever, but that does not mean that you can't trade & make money with the ones that you have opted not to hold long term. 

For example, I don't wish to hold small biotech stocks, however, I enjoy reading about them, analyzing/trading them & so far, I have had success & used profits to DCA the long term stocks. 

My bottom line is to make a profit, not to figure out how much I would have made long term by not having traded the stock or having used that small amount of money for something else; that in itself would take me more time to figure out.

I recently purchased 1,500 shares of X company @ $3.50 
sold about 6 weeks later for $4.83 
made a profit of $1,995 - $6.95 commission x2, tax-free as done under TFSA. Then used a percentage of this profit to buy shares for X company I am holding long term & used the balance to continue trading same or other biotech stocks upon a decrease in the price. 

It is not a stock I would have wanted to buy & hold and certainly I would not have made that profit had I put my initial investment of $5,250 in the bank for 6 weeks. So what is wrong with this scenario? I have repeated this trade 4x with this stock in a course of 1 year because it is a relatively safe stock [1st time purchasing only 500 shares, now I'm much more comfortable with it]. I began doing same trade with another biotech company after I learned a big pharmaceutical company invested $8 million in it & so far have profited 2x.

I pick the companies carefully after doing a lot of research [not really feeling comfortable with penny stocks yet] & don't see anything wrong with this approach. Further, I have a very moderate limit for this type of investment [or speculating if you like] as I don't believe in tying/risking large amounts of capital, and by now, my speculative trades are financed with free money, not my own capital.

*@dogcom:* I meant that sometimes even the ones *I had felt certain about* to move a certain direction on a specific day/week, did not go the way I had predicted, but like you, yes, with certain speculative & non speculative shares, I have full confidence.


----------



## Homerhomer (Oct 18, 2010)

dogcom said:


> I know everyone says you just don't know for sure which way a stock will go in the short term, but is there ever a time that you are just sure it will go your way. .





KaeJS said:


> Sometimes I know for sure a stock will go up.
> 
> .


Please teach me!!!!!


I will give you 100% profit from my first 100 sure trades, I need some guarantee though, if any of the sure trades doesn't work out I want your house, if you don't have a house I will take a limb of my choice, however it's for sure so it shouldn't be a problem, right?


----------



## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

I'm not suggesting that active investors can't beat the market. I'm also not suggesting that everyone should be passive investors. If you enjoy picking stocks and feel you're successful, then go ahead.

If I were into picking stocks, I would want to know how much reward I'm getting for my efforts.

I'll give you an example - Canadian Capitalist used to pick individual stocks and he created his sleepy portfolio as a way to benchmark his stock picking. After a while, he realized that his stock picks lagged the sleepy portfolio, so now he has all/most? of his money in the sleepy portfolio.

Had he come to a different conclusion and confirmed that his stock picks were beating the sleepy portfolio then I'm sure he'd still be picking stocks.

In Toronto.gal's case - it sounds like she does monitor her activity - that one trade was very profitable and undoubtedly was better than any passive alternative. Can she do it over the long term? Only time (and her TFSA) will tell. 


http://www.moneysmartsblog.com/do-you-really-earn-your-investment-income/


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

speaking of free money t.gal, i once saw in a message board an interesting example of this carried to its logical extreme.

the poster was a camouflaged VP of a significant vancouver miner. That's right, he/she was not supposed to promote his/her own company's stock, and it was all highly illegal, but the fraud is very difficult to prove, so what can a poor piecrust do.

to continue, the poster had exceptionally sophisticated knowledge of mining stocks. What he/she did was invest. Stk would rise. Sell to remove the free money. Leave remaining skin either in the same game or else sell to invest in a better game. Repeat.

advancing in that fashion, he/she pointed out, meant *always* having *all* of his/her capital safe while deploying the free money for high-risk gain. Where, because of intricate knowledge of the industry, he/she had a better-than-50% chance of being right.

(signed)
what the pie crumb saw


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

pillars a while ago a bunch of folks posted their tfsa totals, which are useful little markers unless one has withdrawn.

i posted something in the mid 23 thousands.

that was a month ago. This am i glimpsed it was 24,568.

it didn't grow thru indexation.


----------



## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

humble_pie said:


> pillars a while ago a bunch of folks posted their tfsa totals, which are useful little markers unless one has withdrawn.
> 
> i posted something in the mid 23 thousands.
> 
> ...


They aren't useful, because they aren't being compared to any kind of index. Ok, the one guy who got his TFSA up to $250k (or whatever) probably doesn't need to compare, but I respectfully suggest that you do, unless you have only contributed a very small amount.

Had you made those same contributions and just bought an index - what would the total be then?

Markets have been pretty good since the TFSA was started. Esp Canadians ones.


----------



## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

i once bought this small mining stock right at the bottom for $1.25 and sold it the same day for $1.47 and then took all that money and bought another mining stock for less than a dollar and doubled my money by the end of the week !!

i do this all the time ...
it's great i just love it ...


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

you didn't get it, did you, cat.

the point was, the poster was & is the vice-president of an important canadian mining company.

is an expert trader.

is a multi-millionnaire.

would you be in that class ??

me, i was just an observer.


----------



## Toronto.gal (Jan 8, 2010)

Homerhomer said:


> Please teach me!!!!!


LOL, you can't teach it, it's called *perceptive insight!* For example, I knew GE shares would go up right after KaeJS sold them. 

I got your point humble!


----------



## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

I think Humble_pie may have answered the rare occurrence that I speak of or the perceptive insight that toronto.gal just mentioned . I trade a lot in a small account of course cutting my losses quickly and so on and watching different items and charts and so on when I do it. I believe this experience may be giving me skills that I was unaware of. Of course I won't let it get to my head but I have read somewhere that when you trade enough you do start seeing things that others don't.


----------



## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

On another note look at HND today it is being destroyed so it is a good thing that insight had me in and out of that stock. Also HND is the kind of ETF that you do want to trade in and out of and not hold it.


----------



## KaeJS (Sep 28, 2010)

Toronto.gal said:


> *KaeJS:* you're funny! I hope you made your $9 after commissions. I bet GE stock went up $.50 cents the day after you sold, right?!


*Toronto.gal*

Yep. $9.60 profit after commissions, haha.

And the day after I sold, GE did fly up. However, I added 50 shares of TD.TO at a lower price and averaged down. I am happy with my decision. TD Bank is on a roll.


----------



## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

KaeJS said:


> And the day after I sold, GE did fly up. However, I added 50 shares of TD.TO at a lower price and averaged down. I am happy with my decision. TD Bank is on a roll


KaeJS, not to second guess an op. from an armchair, but why did you sell GE?
GE has been hit hard in the aftermath of the Japanese nuclear crisis because they were the manufacturers of those dinosauric reactors over 40 years ago.
IMHO, GE may bounce back up at some point soon.
Yes, TD may be on a roll but IMHO you are buying it fairly valued at best and over valued at worst.


----------



## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

I love this off the cuff conversation that kaejs, toronto.gal and harold is having. I love the open end on my threads it leads to so many interesting thoughts and conversation.

To tell the truth I also love open ended video games like Dues Ex and so on. I know I am out on on the edge but that is where I learn the most.


----------



## Argonaut (Dec 7, 2010)

dogcom said:


> On another note look at HND today it is being destroyed so it is a good thing that insight had me in and out of that stock. Also HND is the kind of ETF that you do want to trade in and out of and not hold it.


HNU has a 1 year loss of -44.10%.
HND has a 1 year loss of -12.59%.

Why not just short both of them forever? I may do just that.


----------



## Causalien (Apr 4, 2009)

Yep, had those gut feelings. My biggest one in life was buying BAC at $3.80 and average + leverage up thereafter. Something I'd never do before once I've taken a position.

The few big gains by one or two gut feelings + adequate risk management more than offset the losses of the 99% of the rest of the mediocre trades.


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

_
" Had you made those same contributions and just bought an index - what would the total be then_?"

four pillars had i made the same 3 contributions but bought the tsx 300 index etf XIC instead, the current value of my tfsa as of the end of february/11 would have been 19,761.00.

however, my tfsa clocks in at 24,568.00, a significant outperformance.

i chose XIC as the closest comparable index etf. A raw index does not include reinvested distributions, therefore would not be a correct comparable.

i am wondering, would it be possible to ask for the relevant figure in your own tfsa. A comparison of the 2 performances - yours & mine - an indexer & a stock-picker - would shed a great deal of light on this issue. My working belief until shown otherwise is that no index fund whatsoever, during the past 2 1/4 years, could have produced the kind of gain i am reporting.

lastly, may i turn to your quoted remark below & inquire as to its source. You see, it's also my belief that no statistics exist showing whether investors track their returns regularly to indexes or not. Without source backup, your statement appears, to my eyes, to reflect personal views.

_" ... very few active traders even track their returns ... "_


----------



## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

Argonaut these ETF's are for short term trading only, they are not meant to be held because of the drag they they have on them. When they turn over contracts and do whatever they do you lose money over time, so if Nat Gas stayed at $4.00 and didn't move the entire year you would lose money on both sides with these ETF's if you held them.

On trading I always look harder at my losers then my winners. I want to know why I lost so much and what I should do better the next time. Last year when I started active trading I bought HNU at a low price and it started go down so I added on and it continued lower and I then finally cut my losses. It took my 2 months to get back those losses back and I learned a lot from that trade.


----------



## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

humble_pie said:


> _
> " Had you made those same contributions and just bought an index - what would the total be then_?"
> 
> four pillars had i made the same 3 contributions but bought the tsx 300 index etf XIC instead, the current value of my tfsa as of the end of february/11 would have been 19,761.00.
> ...


Excellent - It sounds like you are getting a good return on your portfolio. Unless you are spending an inordinate amount of time picking those stocks, it sounds worthwhile.

In our TFSA, we have contributed $20,000 and the current balance is about $20,600. If you want to measure that performance, you'll have to find a relevant high interest savings account benchmark. 

That quote is my own - I've asked at least 15 bloggers/investors over the last few years and very few track performance. Like maybe 3/15. Congrats for being one of the minority.


----------



## beans (Jan 25, 2011)

right now i know two things. RIM has gotta go back up....and NKE has gotta go back up

Just do it.

i love how pointless my posts are


----------



## Argonaut (Dec 7, 2010)

dogcom said:


> Argonaut these ETF's are for short term trading only, they are not meant to be held because of the drag they they have on them. When they turn over contracts and do whatever they do you lose money over time, so if Nat Gas stayed at $4.00 and didn't move the entire year you would lose money on both sides with these ETF's if you held them.
> 
> On trading I always look harder at my losers then my winners. I want to know why I lost so much and what I should do better the next time. Last year when I started active trading I bought HNU at a low price and it started go down so I added on and it continued lower and I then finally cut my losses. It took my 2 months to get back those losses back and I learned a lot from that trade.


Yeah I understand that leveraged ETF's are for the short term. My thought was to _short_ both the bull and the bear version of natural gas in equal weight. Unless there are no shares to borrow?


----------



## AshleyT (May 1, 2009)

These types of threads and conversations are common in bull markets, especially in Canada with everyone piling into our beloved resource stocks for the past two years. It's easy to look like a genius when the bulls are running and all the "hunches" are cashing. How quickly we forget the market's ability to teach us a lesson. Humility is deferred today, but will rule again. It was ever thus.


----------

