great site/service if you can trade in your 401k

[ualdriver]

You told me billionaire technical analysts don't exist, and I give you 4. They made their billions as successful technical anaysts, but now you're saying that they made it through fees. How do you know that? They made much in fees likely, sure. What percentage of each person's net worth was made through fees vs. investing their own money if you are going to claim they don't count? Even if ALL of their net worth was through fees (doubtful) they WERE successful chartists (or at least to people who invest that way) and that is how they made their billions... with successful technical analysis of stock.

Cohen hasn't been convicted of anything. Innocent until proven guilty. I don't even think he has been indicted. If he is convicted, cross him off the list.

I still haven't read the article put will sometime during my trip.

 

[PCL_128]

You told me billionaire technical analysts don't exist, and I give you 4.

I think it was clear that I was talking about someone who actually got to be a billionaire by investing using technical analysis. I'm sure there are plenty of billionaires who buy into the technical analysis myth, as it's quite popular nowadays (just watch CNBC), but they didn't get their fortunes from it.

They made their billions as successful technical anaysts, but now you're saying that they made it through fees. How do you know that?

Because I can do math. Just take a look at their net worths, look at their income each year from just management fees, and look at how long they've been managing this massive amount of money at such high fees. When you do the math, it's easy to see where their money came from. Either that or they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars of investment returns a year on hookers and blow.

Even if ALL of their net worth was through fees (doubtful) they WERE successful chartists

Not sure how you draw that conclusion. There are thousands of mutual funds that have below-average performance and charge ridiculous fees for the privilege of keeping your money with them. Just because someone commands ridiculous money management fees doesn't mean that he deserves it based upon his performance. Another issue with hedge funds is that they're typically so secretive that you really don't know how they're making their money. While technical analysis may be a part of it, we really don't have any way of knowing how much of a factor it plays into the investment returns that they've made. As Bill Gross said today, most successful money managers aren't good; they're lucky. Which goes right back to Buffett's commentary on looking for statistical significance, which you find easily in the Graham-Dodd value investing community, but you don't really find elsewhere.

Cohen hasn't been convicted of anything. Innocent until proven guilty. I don't even think he has been indicted. If he is convicted, cross him off the list.

The prosecutors are slowly working their way up the corporate ladder until they get enough evidence to convict him. It's been enough so far that I think the old maxim applies: "where there's smoke, there's fire."

I still haven't read the article put will sometime during my trip.

I think you'll find it interesting.

 

[ualdriver]

Dude, I don't know what kind of relationship you and Warren have going, but it is seriously clouding some of the statements you make. First, you already have a guy convicted who hasn't even been indicted yet, if he gets indicted at all. He could be guilty. If he is guilty, cross him off my list.

Back in post #81 you imply that that there are no billionaire chartists, and I give you 4. They made their billions running hedge funds using what appears to be technical analysis from outside observation. Their skills as CHARTISTS made them billionaires. They didn't make those billions by selling lemonade or opening department stores. If you had invested $10,000 with James Simons, for example, in 1990 in his quantitative hedge fund, it would have been worth around $4M in 2007. Did he make money on fees? Yeah, sure he did. He (his hedge fund I should say) got big fees because he made big profits trading on technical analysis. You criticize guys like him for collecting big fees, but he couldn't have collected those big fees unless he had been successful. Have you heard of "2 and 20?" If you're a hedge fund and you lose money, you get 2% (in this example) If you make a profit, you get the extra 20% (in this example). Hedge fund managers make their "big" money by taking a big share of the profit from trading. If his trades hadn't been extremely profitable, he wouldn't have become a billionaire. He didn't become a billionaire collecting 2% fees from a money losing hedge fund.

Did he collect every dime that came in? Of course not. You can't do "math" and say yeah, all of his net worth is from fees. Did he have partners and staff and employees he shared that money with? He probably did if it's like any other hedge fund I have read about. One article says he had almost a 100 PHds on staff. Do you think he made a "buck or two" as a succesful CHARTIST? Invested his own money? He got to be a successful hedge fund manager BECAUSE he was a successful chartist. If he wasn't a successful chartist, he wouldn't have become a billionaire.

Just because you (and I) don't believe in that particular brand of investing doesn't mean that aren't successful people who did make millions (or billions) using those techniques with luck or skill. I'm not even debating you because I disagree with you about technical analysis. But you're making these blanket statements (like in #81 & 75) that I don't believe to be true.

BTW, now I'm going to ask you to prove that aforementioned point. You say in Post #75:

"Pretty much everyone who follows the same Graham-Dodd basic framework watches their wealth compound over the long-term at a rate far exceeding that of the overall market"

Can you give me numerous examples of "everyone?" If RedDog changes his mind, where does he find "everyone" so he can invest with them? Do they have an auditable track record and can I view it? Could you specifically quantify "far exceeding" using recent performance, and not just from the mid 1980's? I'm sure in the intervening 30 years or so that long term rate has continued, particularly with those hand picked in the article? Thanks.

 

[RedDogC130]

I am purposely staying out of this because it is with PCL. After watching his comments over the years. I have no desire 1 to argue w him 2 to justify any investing strategy. all I am trying to do is show that there is a good service out there. If u think I am trying to just make $ off people. Go register from a different computer and I don't make a penny. I could really care less. This service is more about people learning than piggy backing trades. When you learn his techniques. You can make your own trades outside his. I have many occasion where I have gotten into a trade before him and then he alerts it and u would be shocked with the inflows of $ into the security and it rockets. He has the highest rated chat room in the financial circles. I was shocked the first time i watched his alert come out and pulled up a 5 min chart and the candles and volume was amazing. His following is huge. This is not a fly by night operator. Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. Heck his ZNGA pick was up over 14% today. The guy has made over 70k ytd. I have seen the alerts live. He is not b.s.ing the stats. He has had losers no doubt as I would expect and hope. Not much else I can say.

 

[PCL_128]

Dude, I don't know what kind of relationship you and Warren have going, but it is seriously clouding some of the statements you make.

Buffett is an investing god. Yes, I idolize the man. But no, it doesn't cloud good judgement. It creates good judgment.

Back in post #81 you imply that that there are no billionaire chartists, and I give you 4. They made their billions running hedge funds using what appears to be technical analysis from outside observation. Their skills as CHARTISTS made them billionaires. They didn't make those billions by selling lemonade or opening department stores. If you had invested $10,000 with James Simons, for example, in 1990 in his quantitative hedge fund, it would have been worth around $4M in 2007. Did he make money on fees? Yeah, sure he did. He (his hedge fund I should say) got big fees because he made big profits trading on technical analysis. You criticize guys like him for collecting big fees, but he couldn't have collected those big fees unless he had been successful. Have you heard of "2 and 20?" If you're a hedge fund and you lose money, you get 2% (in this example) If you make a profit, you get the extra 20% (in this example). Hedge fund managers make their "big" money by taking a big share of the profit from trading. If his trades hadn't been extremely profitable, he wouldn't have become a billionaire. He didn't become a billionaire collecting 2% fees from a money losing hedge fund.

Did he collect every dime that came in? Of course not. You can't do "math" and say yeah, all of his net worth is from fees. Did he have partners and staff and employees he shared that money with? He probably did if it's like any other hedge fund I have read about. One article says he had almost a 100 PHds on staff. Do you think he made a "buck or two" as a succesful CHARTIST? Invested his own money? He got to be a successful hedge fund manager BECAUSE he was a successful chartist. If he wasn't a successful chartist, he wouldn't have become a billionaire.

Just because you (and I) don't believe in that particular brand of investing doesn't mean that aren't successful people who did make millions (or billions) using those techniques with luck or skill. I'm not even debating you because I disagree with you about technical analysis. But you're making these blanket statements (like in #81 & 75) that I don't believe to be true.

I think I've sufficiently responded to all of this. They make their big money off of fees (the math is plain and simple, even for a 5th grader), and the money they make off of profits is gravy. As in any large collection of people, there will be statistically insignificant examples of people who do well on a 50/50 proposition. That's all you've provided here, in stark contrast to the statistically significant examples of Graham-Dodd.

BTW, now I'm going to ask you to prove that aforementioned point. You say in Post #75:

"Pretty much everyone who follows the same Graham-Dodd basic framework watches their wealth compound over the long-term at a rate far exceeding that of the overall market"

Can you give me numerous examples of "everyone?" If RedDog changes his mind, where does he find "everyone" so he can invest with them? Do they have an auditable track record and can I view it? Could you specifically quantify "far exceeding" using recent performance, and not just from the mid 1980's? I'm sure in the intervening 30 years or so that long term rate has continued, particularly with those hand picked in the article? Thanks.

Buffett provides "numerous examples" in his article. And they aren't "hand picked," they're the people he learned to invest with in Graham's classes in business school. They all used the same underlying principals that Graham taught, and that's how they made their fortunes. And that's why it is statistically significant. It also happens to be why, after nearly 30 years, there has still never been an article written or a study conducted that attempts to refute Buffett's points in the article. It can't be done. It is mathematically impossible for such a large sample of people who use the same investing techniques to beat the market by such wide margins simply by chance.

 

[PCL_128]

And UAL, if you think Buffett's speech is "too old," and you want something more current, take a look at a paper written in 2006 called "Graham and Dodd Revisited," which is basically a modern follow-up of Buffett's original speech/article to see if the same principals still work in the 2000s. The short answer? Yes, and in spades. Here's the article: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878145

 

[ackattacker]

I am purposely staying out of this because it is with PCL. After watching his comments over the years. I have no desire 1 to argue w him 2 to justify any investing strategy. all I am trying to do is show that there is a good service out there. If u think I am trying to just make $ off people. Go register from a different computer and I don't make a penny. I could really care less. This service is more about people learning than piggy backing trades. When you learn his techniques. You can make your own trades outside his. I have many occasion where I have gotten into a trade before him and then he alerts it and u would be shocked with the inflows of $ into the security and it rockets. He has the highest rated chat room in the financial circles. I was shocked the first time i watched his alert come out and pulled up a 5 min chart and the candles and volume was amazing. His following is huge. This is not a fly by night operator. Nobody is forcing anyone to do anything. Heck his ZNGA pick was up over 14% today. The guy has made over 70k ytd. I have seen the alerts live. He is not b.s.ing the stats. He has had losers no doubt as I would expect and hope. Not much else I can say.

Sounds like a classic pump and dump. Great way to rig the system and make money by suckering a large number of "followers" into inflating a stock price. Then the insiders get out before the whole thing crashes and the "followers" get screwed. There is a reason his website is entirely owned by a paid stock promoter. Could not imagine a more sketchy arrangement.

 

[RedDogC130]

Sounds like a classic pump and dump. Great way to rig the system and make money by suckering a large number of "followers" into inflating a stock price. Then the insiders get out before the whole thing crashes and the "followers" get screwed. There is a reason his website is entirely owned by a paid stock promoter. Could not imagine a more sketchy arrangement.

Don't know too many pump and dumps that actually short stocks so your assumption is not correct. Pump and dumps are designed to trap the person buying. Swing trading is totally different but obviously you have no clue about that.

 

[Andy]

Don't know too many pump and dumps that actually short stocks so your assumption is not correct. Pump and dumps are designed to trap the person buying. Swing trading is totally different but obviously you have no clue about that.

Shorting penny stocks? Timmy Sykes (a famous pump and dumper) is starting to push that concept ... dump the pump. He looks at stocks that are being set up for the pump and dump and recommends shorting them when he thinks they've peaked.

TA's a valuable investment tool. Penny stocks is a negative alpha sandbox.

 

[RedDogC130]

Who is talking penny stocks?