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Post by japhy on Aug 27, 2016 11:58:23 GMT -5
Haha this will take some time: I just came back from two weeks of hiking, carrying food for a week, sleeping in basic shelters and so on. I hoped that it might bring some clarity and there was nothing else to do. There were some special moments but no great woho experience. My understanding from my own journey is that experiences cannot bring you clarity, but that you manifest clarity due to what you do within the experience. An experience is merely a space filled with information, that the individual then interacts with and creates sensations and conclusions proportional to the state of being of that individual. A lightbulb moment\realization\moment of clarity can be experienced while serenely alone atop a majestic mountain or while at home doing the dishes amidst the noise of the burbs coming in through the window. The key element is not your surroundings, it's your attitude within each moment that determines if you will have a magical experience or not. And while it is true that a more peaceful or perceived spiritual environment is conducive for moments of clarity, that is only due to the individual has yet to be able to manifest inner stillness amidst an externally noisy and busy environment. But once you have mastered this skill at quiet peaceful Zen retreats, as one example, then the environment is no longer the vital element, you are, as it actually is. The environment does not bring things to you, you bring yourself to the environment, you utilize what you perceive in the environment according to your state of being at the time. Ok going for the hike was just the best thing to do. The alterative (in my mind state) would have been to hang out at home. When I first found non dual teachings and meditation i thought: that's it. And what do yout think about them now? Sometimes those concepts create more problems nowadays. I had some insights and some wooho. Nowadays the teachings are not new and I rarely meditate. A certain lightness of experience which was there has gone.What does that signify? Everything changes. What is there to do? I really don't know. There are infinite things to do...what do you want to do with your finite human life? I am figuring that out. For now I'm having cake and Hit choclate. Do you mean hot chocolate, or is this a play on words concerning some spiritual practice? No, it was a typo: Hot chocolate. Sorry for the confusion created. Yes. I am an addict who wants more honeymoon. Marriages bores me. And don't tell me to find the one who is bored :-(. A honeymoon is a temporary holiday away from the bulk of day to day living. And while honeymoons are intoxicatingly wonderful experiences, the profound joys obtained from working at the relationship does not occur on them. Being drunk or stoned may feel really good, but you don't make any worthwhile self development that can be used to create a wondrous day to day life. The goal is to develop oneself so the day to day life is as wonderful as the honeymoon. Imagine a life where you don't need to take a holiday to get away from your day to day life or re-energise or experience something wonderful, because your day to day life already fulfills or your needs and desires due to the development of your attitude, your state of being. A lot of presumptions here: 1. Are you sure you don't work on your relationship on a honey moon? What is it to work on a relationship? Do you divide your relationships in free time and work? "Oh darling, don't kiss me now. We really need to work on our relatonship. We can do that in our free time. We just need to wait for one more hour. We are on the clock now." 2. How do you know you don't make self devolpment when drunk or stoned? What makes the one state superior to the other? Is an alcoholic not able to make self development? So if the sober state is superior to the high state, how does it come that some alcoholics recover from alcoholism? They need to sober up at some point and sobering up appears when you are still drunk. So they made a move from the "worse" drunk state to the "better" sober state. That's a move of self development, isn't it? More: What is self development at all? Does the self need to be developed? 3. Where does imaging such a life take me? This might not be the way to answer a koan, I interpret zendancer did not say it is a koan, he said it might even make a good one. There is no koan, only a simple question was asked. What zendancer asked, and the same thing the sage asked is, examine yourself to find out why you behave differently in the two different situations. For if you behave differently, then it seems you are being controlled\influenced by the different situations. I am not a Zen guy. But what is a koan other than a simple question? The only difference would be the attitude and the way of answering that question. ZD told me it might be a great koan. So he implied I could make a koan out of it, by comtemplating that question. But I never wanted to do that. I approached the question from mind and I was justifying myself for that. But I have another koan for you: What did Zendancer and the sage really say? ;-) but I just want to be honest. And how do you be honest, what must you do to be honest in situations? I was justifying myself, because I wanted to talk from amind point of view. Sometimes there is "nothing to do". Thinking starts. Even sometimes I have something to do, still there is thinking. Sometimes there is perfect quietness. Rarely. Yesterday I found an ax in the woods and i was making firewood and then suddenly I made a sculpture out of a stem. I had never done that before. Perfect absorbtion. Can't you also be in 'perfect absorption' when only thinking, when there's nothing to do, when in pain or fear, when practicing stillness of mind? Maybe I can be in perfect absorbtion of mind :-). I am talking and missing the point, maybe. But something wants to talk.Isn't talking an expression of your thoughts. Don't you have thoughts because you are thinking about a matter. Aren't you thinking about a matter because you are exploring it and wanting to understand it. Once you understand and have resolved a problem, will not thinking and talking end. Until then, why try to suppress talking and thinking. If talking and thinking arises when you practice stillness of mind, then perhaps there are things that require your attention. You got a point here. A part of me doesn't want to be quiet. It wants to avoid fear and pain. Do you say this because in your quietness, your fears and pains are amplified? Maybe I am more aware of them. Yesterday at night my mind settled down. I was sitting there. It felt significant. But with time I became aware of a strong pain. First I observed, but it became to bad. What are your thoughts about pain, why do humans have pain, be it physical or psychic? There are many forms of pain and reasons for pain I have seen: Pain because of social neglegt. Pain because of burns. Pain of unkown origin. Pain because of gum infection. Pain because of mobbing. Pain beause of lonliness. Pain beause of loosing a loved one. Pain because of a motorcycle accidents. Pain because of amputation. Pain in menstruation. Pain because of being hit with a machete. I don't think it was because of posture. It was just there. I decided to go to sleep, but something wants to know where that pain came from. Do you classify it as wrong to want to know where the pain comes from? No. I'm not better than any alcoholic who medicates his fear and pain ( not that alcoholics are worse ppl). Just for me I use mental **** instead of liquor. Even that's how I ended here. I'm not sure how honest I am. Perhaps then the problem is not mental activity itself, but using mental activity to medicate and numb you to your fears and pain, instead of resolving them. Yes. Maybe I'm honest now but often enough not. The first one is: "Life is suffering" I think. The others I forgot. Honest about what specifically? Honest about my life, honest about how I feel. Or put in another way: Is really thinking the problem or what I want to avoid through thinking? You figure it out, which is better, avoiding a problem or resolving it, and consider the short and long term aspects of this. But who makes the choice? Maybe because there was no need to avoid something through thinking? Ask yourself why you avoid, and isn't it usually when someone wants to avoid something they stop thinking about it, but you seem to be saying you avoid a matter by thinking about it. It's a point. But there are also people who think all their life about something thus avoiding action. Why do people think much? To avoid facing reality. I think this depends on the quality of the thought. In my flat tyre scenario i wrote in my response to zendancer, one thought was avoiding the reality of the situation, and the other wasn't. The former did not resolve the problem, the latter did. Are you sure all those thoughts will appear in that scenario? Is this scenario here right now? Did you ever experience that scenario? Who wants really face it? It takes a lot of courage. Yes it does, and the tricksy manner of fear is that when you face something you fear, the fear increases, and when you avoid that which you fear, the fear reduces, hence why many choose avoidance.( including me for decades) But when you muster up courage while you are also fearful, and you not only face the matter but delve into it, "Perfect absorption", you experience new info about the matter and most often than not, the fear greatly reduces to where it never causes you to avoid, or is fully eradicated. Avoidance is no longer required. But who chooses to avoid or not to avoid? Or does on or the other just happen? Of course quietness is nice but what bubbles up into the silence? Pain and fear. Perhaps the point of stillness is to allow that which requires your attention to bubble up to it. Maybe. But I don't like it. At least for me, nowadays. "Lifetimes" of pain and fear. I don't want to face that. Do I have a choice? I think you do, you can choose to avoid and thus live your life with these pains and fears, or you can muster up some courage and deal with them and perhaps fully remove them from your being, and begin living a life free of such debilitating things. We shall see. Just that the eightfold path was always a bit complicated for me. Plus i know many buddhists who are still stuck. I was in a group once but even their monk never attained SR. And it's always a bit confusing because the stuff is thousands of years old. Perhaps it's because SR is not a part of Buddha's teaching, but has been incorporated into Buddhism by others over the centuries, just like how Buddha never described himself as a god or god-like, but now some cultures have people making alters to him, presenting offerings and prayers that he will act on their behalf. That some folk have deified him into a god, yet none of that has anything to do with Buddha's original teachings. So Buddha was never self realisied? The "danger" of informal practice is that you turn away when it gets painful. Well, you are turning away, not that 'turning away' is an innate part of the practice. The 'danger of turning away due to pain' is within you, not the practice. Noticed. Furthermore: Emotions can together with thought form a cycle where emotion causes thought and thought causes emotion. Perhaps thought and emotion do not have their own innate power to form a cycle. Perhaps the formation of a cycle is created by the person who has the thoughts and emotions. Noticed |
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Post by japhy on Aug 27, 2016 12:44:37 GMT -5
I really counted the goat farming. I "own" a small project in a "third world country" (haha I hate this term). Once I calculated that if the goats go into the hundreds there might start coming some serious money. But for now they are only 11. But who knows: reproduction is exponetial if resources are sufficient and my partner has a lot of land we can use. Plus the running costs are really low since they are freely greasing.(At least I thought so until there was an outbreak of foot and mouth disease in that area). Otherwise my programming skills and my math education might get me a job. (That are the magic 3.) Ha!  I had a feelin' about the goats! So is it that you've actually been to the project and spent time working there? Is your partner's land there or where you live? Had you any experience on the farm prior? So the Master's program is in software/engineering? Have you worked in the field for many years at this point yet? What are your 2nd thoughts about that based on, primarily? I have not yet seen the project operating due to bad time managment (It has just been running for 2 months now). I have been there during construction and took part in that (small time: basically cutting down some trees, purchasing the materials, planning and supervising.) I don't live in that country at the moment, but have lived there in the past. My partner is from that country and he has the right to use the land we are operating on. I don't have any experience in farming, but my partner has farmed goats for a decade during his teens. My role is very limited to funding the project and getting on the nerves of my partner to send me budgets, so that I can do the finacial planning. In theory I probably have the last word in the big decisions but I usually trust his judgement. It's an experiment for me. I suspect that in that specific country agriculture and construction are the best sectors to invest if you are operationg with small captial (except maybe trading) and I like that you really see some progress. But it's all a bit risky and might also fail. The masters programm I am considering is math, but depending on where I want to end I can specialize differently. But in theory I can go into a lot of sectors with the master like: consulting, banks, insurances, software engineering, research for companies or universities, technology and probably some more. In the country I live (in some subjects) companies usually prefer to hire master graduates, so almost everybody I know does the master just right after the bachelor (doesn't make so much sense but that's how it is here). I have had a student job in a technology company for have a half year which was a mix of research and software engineering, so I haven't worked a lot in any field. The experience was mixed. I thought that most programmers in that company did not look too healthy. I did not really dislike the job itself but the environment stressed me a bit. Before that I worked at the university I was studying which was more relaxed but I wanted some new experience. But they all were no "real" jobs. Just small money. Any more questions? Are you working in the software engineering field by any chance? |
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Post by stardustpilgrim on Aug 27, 2016 12:56:28 GMT -5
Ha! I had a feelin' about the goats! So is it that you've actually been to the project and spent time working there? Is your partner's land there or where you live? Had you any experience on the farm prior? So the Master's program is in software/engineering? Have you worked in the field for many years at this point yet? What are your 2nd thoughts about that based on, primarily? I have not yet seen the project operating due to bad time managment (It has just been running for 2 months now). I have been there during construction and took part in that (small time: basically cutting down some trees, purchasing the materials, planning and supervising.) I don't live in that country at the moment, but have lived there in the past. My partner is from that country and he has the right to use the land we are operating on. I don't have any experience in farming, but my partner has farmed goats for a decade during his teens. My role is very limited to funding the project and getting on the nerves of my partner to send me budgets, so that I can do the finacial planning. In theory I probably have the last word in the big decisions but I usually trust his judgement. It's an experiment for me. I suspect that in that specific country agriculture and construction are the best sectors to invest if you are operationg with small captial (except maybe trading) and I like that you really see some progress. But it's all a bit risky and might also fail. The masters programm I am considering is math, but depending on where I want to end I can specialize differently. But in theory I can go into a lot of sectors with the master like: consulting, banks, insurances, software engineering, research for companies or universities, technology and probably some more. In the country I live (in some subjects) companies usually prefer to hire master graduates, so almost everybody I know does the master just right after the bachelor (doesn't make so much sense but that's how it is here). I have had a student job in a technology company for have a half year which was a mix of research and software engineering, so I haven't worked a lot in any field. The experience was mixed. I thought that most programmers in that company did not look too healthy. I did not really dislike the job itself but the environment stressed me a bit. Before that I worked at the university I was studying which was more relaxed but I wanted some new experience. But they all were no "real" jobs. Just small money. Any more questions? Are you working in the software engineering field by any chance? japhy, I thought of the ideal career, virtual reality programming. Probably in ten years nobody will have to leave their house. You will be able to take a vacation anywhere in the world...etc...etc...etc... |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 27, 2016 12:58:54 GMT -5
drats! I bought at the top, and now I can't give this stuff away That's the inherent hazard when buying at the top! Haha. During the internet bubble I watched a stock (Citrix) go from $90 to $100/share in one day. The following day it went to $110. When it fell back to $90 a few days later, I thought, "Wow, what a deal!" I didn't know a thing about the stock except that it had been recommended by an economics professor. I bought a bunch of shares, and when it fell to $80/share, I bought even more. That's about when the bubble burst. It eventually bottomed out at about $6/share. Sometimes good lessons have to be learned the hard way! LOL well I hope you didn't panic sell out of fear, Citrix is back up to $88.. all you needed was a little patience.. |
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Post by laughter on Aug 27, 2016 13:46:28 GMT -5
Ha! I had a feelin' about the goats! So is it that you've actually been to the project and spent time working there? Is your partner's land there or where you live? Had you any experience on the farm prior? So the Master's program is in software/engineering? Have you worked in the field for many years at this point yet? What are your 2nd thoughts about that based on, primarily? I have not yet seen the project operating due to bad time managment (It has just been running for 2 months now). I have been there during construction and took part in that (small time: basically cutting down some trees, purchasing the materials, planning and supervising.) I don't live in that country at the moment, but have lived there in the past. My partner is from that country and he has the right to use the land we are operating on. I don't have any experience in farming, but my partner has farmed goats for a decade during his teens. My role is very limited to funding the project and getting on the nerves of my partner to send me budgets, so that I can do the finacial planning. In theory I probably have the last word in the big decisions but I usually trust his judgement. It's an experiment for me. I suspect that in that specific country agriculture and construction are the best sectors to invest if you are operationg with small captial (except maybe trading) and I like that you really see some progress. But it's all a bit risky and might also fail. The masters programm I am considering is math, but depending on where I want to end I can specialize differently. But in theory I can go into a lot of sectors with the master like: consulting, banks, insurances, software engineering, research for companies or universities, technology and probably some more. In the country I live (in some subjects) companies usually prefer to hire master graduates, so almost everybody I know does the master just right after the bachelor (doesn't make so much sense but that's how it is here). I have had a student job in a technology company for have a half year which was a mix of research and software engineering, so I haven't worked a lot in any field. The experience was mixed. I thought that most programmers in that company did not look too healthy. I did not really dislike the job itself but the environment stressed me a bit. Before that I worked at the university I was studying which was more relaxed but I wanted some new experience. But they all were no "real" jobs. Just small money. Any more questions? Are you working in the software engineering field by any chance? Interesting stuff on the ag project, thanks for explaining. I can see how there'd be a pull to that, but have nearly zero points of reference. Best of luck with it.  I used to work as a software engineer, yes. from what I've seen, the mathematics education will increase your importance to your potential employer, but decrease your indispensability in the sense had by an operations-level person, and what you will learn and the skills you develop on the job will have less lateral flexibility. As in everything in life, it's a trade-off. Looking back, the projects that I got the most satisfaction out of, grew my skills and abilities, and were glad that I worked on involved the most stress and pressure. It's a function of how interconnected you are within the organization. The more people depend on you, the more demanding the role, and the more effective the team that you're a part of, the more satisfying the work will be. |
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Post by laughter on Aug 27, 2016 13:48:44 GMT -5
Hopefully those are the three where the big bucks are: archery, goat farming and meditation.  Even more lucrative than goat farming (assuming that's possible) is designing computer games. Well yes, the man's avy is an elephant, after all.  |
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Post by zendancer on Aug 27, 2016 14:01:30 GMT -5
That's the inherent hazard when buying at the top! Haha. During the internet bubble I watched a stock (Citrix) go from $90 to $100/share in one day. The following day it went to $110. When it fell back to $90 a few days later, I thought, "Wow, what a deal!" I didn't know a thing about the stock except that it had been recommended by an economics professor. I bought a bunch of shares, and when it fell to $80/share, I bought even more. That's about when the bubble burst. It eventually bottomed out at about $6/share. Sometimes good lessons have to be learned the hard way! LOL well I hope you didn't panic sell out of fear, Citrix is back up to $88.. all you needed was a little patience.. I didn't panic, but I could see the writing on the wall, so I sold out at about $40/share on the way down. I lost at least $25,000 on that one stock. Yes, Citrix was a good company (though grossly over-valued at the time I bought it), but it took more than 16 years to regain a $90/share price. The lesson I learned was not to buy a stock that I knew nothing about, and not to buy a stock whose fundamentals can't justify the share price. The good thing about losing a lot of money very fast is the sobering effect such a loss can have. I quickly learned that I was extremely ignorant about the stock market! These days I love to give people free financial advice in the hope that they can avoid a lot of the stupid mistakes I made. haha |
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Post by enigma on Aug 27, 2016 18:56:29 GMT -5
'Jack of all trades' has been my approach since leaving the electrical engineering field 25 years ago. It became clear that I enjoy new challenges and have trouble doing the same thing two days in a row, which makes me unsuitable for....well...almost everything. I moved to Oregon, bought a house and remodeled it top to bottom, which was wacky fun. Did it a few more times before offering my services to others. Typically, I don't know what I'm going to be doing from one week to the next, and I love it. Yep, that's one of the main reasons that I, too, love construction so much; the work changes all the time. No chance of getting bored. LOL. I built my first home almost totally by myself (had to get some friends to help set one large window, and had to hire two guys to finish a concrete slab), and every day was a blast. If I got tired of laying stone or framing, I'd work on plumbing or electrical stuff or whatever else seemed interesting or fun. I lived in the shell of the structure while I worked on it (no rent!), and by the time I finished it, I had accumulated a lot of sweat equity. I picked up stone on the property for building the walls and fireplace, and bought scrap building materials for pennies on the dollar. Before I could finish the project I had to go to work to earn some money, but I continued to work on the house on weekends. Later, I built hundreds of homes and commercial buildings, but I continued to do the physical work that I found most enjoyable--foundation work, framing, laying hardwood flooring, etc. Any work that wasn't fun I subbed out to others. The only thing that would have made the work more fun (and more profitable) would have been a better understanding of finance and money, but that's a whole different story. haha I got to work today ready to build a deck, and found out the customer had changed her mind. It didn't "feel right". Hehe.  |
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Post by enigma on Aug 27, 2016 19:05:51 GMT -5
 drats! I bought at the top, and now I can't give this stuff away That's the inherent hazard when buying at the top! Haha. During the internet bubble I watched a stock (Citrix) go from $90 to $100/share in one day. The following day it went to $110. When it fell back to $90 a few days later, I thought, "Wow, what a deal!" I didn't know a thing about the stock except that it had been recommended by an economics professor. I bought a bunch of shares, and when it fell to $80/share, I bought even more. That's about when the bubble burst. It eventually bottomed out at about $6/share. Sometimes good lessons have to be learned the hard way! LOL That's the trick, buy high, sell low.  |
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Post by enigma on Aug 27, 2016 19:29:14 GMT -5
That's the inherent hazard when buying at the top! Haha. During the internet bubble I watched a stock (Citrix) go from $90 to $100/share in one day. The following day it went to $110. When it fell back to $90 a few days later, I thought, "Wow, what a deal!" I didn't know a thing about the stock except that it had been recommended by an economics professor. I bought a bunch of shares, and when it fell to $80/share, I bought even more. That's about when the bubble burst. It eventually bottomed out at about $6/share. Sometimes good lessons have to be learned the hard way! LOL well I hope you didn't panic sell out of fear, Citrix is back up to $88.. all you needed was a little patience.. Hey somebody has to lose their shirt so that the rest of us can make a profit. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 27, 2016 21:08:12 GMT -5
I didn't panic, but I could see the writing on the wall, so I sold out at about $40/share on the way down. I lost at least $25,000 on that one stock. Yes, Citrix was a good company (though grossly over-valued at the time I bought it), but it took more than 16 years to regain a $90/share price. The lesson I learned was not to buy a stock that I knew nothing about, and not to buy a stock whose fundamentals can't justify the share price. The good thing about losing a lot of money very fast is the sobering effect such a loss can have. I quickly learned that I was extremely ignorant about the stock market! These days I love to give people free financial advice in the hope that they can avoid a lot of the stupid mistakes I made. haha Lately I'm in the red on solar panel maker SunPower (SPWR) and not sure what to do. I think I do know enough about solar panels to say it's a good technology, and there will be more of them in the future, but... (and I've made this mistake before) ... just because a technology will be useful and popular doesn't mean a specific company is going to be able to profit from that. I think once I get out of this stock, I may stay out of stock gambling forever. Or maybe only buy index funds, which I heard Warren Buffet say people should do if they don't follow things closely. |
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Post by zendancer on Aug 28, 2016 8:27:24 GMT -5
I didn't panic, but I could see the writing on the wall, so I sold out at about $40/share on the way down. I lost at least $25,000 on that one stock. Yes, Citrix was a good company (though grossly over-valued at the time I bought it), but it took more than 16 years to regain a $90/share price. The lesson I learned was not to buy a stock that I knew nothing about, and not to buy a stock whose fundamentals can't justify the share price. The good thing about losing a lot of money very fast is the sobering effect such a loss can have. I quickly learned that I was extremely ignorant about the stock market! These days I love to give people free financial advice in the hope that they can avoid a lot of the stupid mistakes I made. haha Lately I'm in the red on solar panel maker SunPower (SPWR) and not sure what to do. I think I do know enough about solar panels to say it's a good technology, and there will be more of them in the future, but... (and I've made this mistake before) ... just because a technology will be useful and popular doesn't mean a specific company is going to be able to profit from that. I think once I get out of this stock, I may stay out of stock gambling forever. Or maybe only buy index funds, which I heard Warren Buffet say people should do if they don't follow things closely. Good idea. The SPY ETF has an expense ratio of .09, and the VTI has an expense ratio of .04. If you're not interested in reviewing things like PE's, P/S ratios, cash versus debt relationships, PEG ratios, income and balance sheets, etc in an effort to find undervalued stocks, then a fund like the VTI is the way to go. Remember, about 80% of actively managed mutual funds CANNOT beat an S&P index fund over time. Before I got interested in individual stocks I put $10,000 into the Schwab 1000 (an index fund that owns the top 1000 US companies by market cap), and I put $20,000 into a relatively conservative growth and income mutual fund. This was in the nineties when the market was going straight up. For several quarters I looked at the statements and both funds were going up at the same rate as the market in general. Then, like most people, I ignored the statements for a while. Three years later I happened to look at the quarterly statement and was astonished at what I saw. The index fund had doubled in value to $20,000, but the G&I mutual fund had lost half its value and was worth the same amount I had put into it several years earlier--%$20,000. I quickly pulled up 5 year graphs of both funds to find out what had happened. The index fund graph showed a steady rise from $10,000 to $20,000, but the G&I mutual fund showed a steady rise until one particular day when the value collapsed by a massive amount. What happened? The G&I fund manager had made a bad bet, so, not only had he been paid substantial fees for managing the fund, he had lost all of the gains accumulated over several years. If the mutual fund had matched the performance of the index fund, it would have been worth $40,000 or more, but instead, it had returned zero gains over a period when the market was rising explosively. This is why Buffet and other highly successful investors recommend that people buy index funds. Warren Buffet has gained almost 20%/year, on average, for the last 50 years. He represents the best performance that anyone could hope for. Peter Lynch also had similarly spectacular gains when he managed the Magellan Fund. An index fund over the last 50 years has probably gained about 10%/year, on average, and an index fund is not managed at all. A computer simply reshuffles the index to include the list of companies selected to mirror the market. This is why the expense ratio is so low. There are no people being paid to buy and sell stocks in the fund. The only reason that a person might want to buy and sell individual stocks is because s/he is willing to study individual companies in an attempt to beat the performance of an S&P index fund. If an investor can't beat the S&P 500 with his/her stock picks, then s/he should simply buy an index fund and forget about it. For some investors, stock picking is an intellectually-exciting game, and the fundamental challenge is to outperform the S&P 500. From everything I've read the only stock pickers who can consistently beat the S&P 500 are value investors--people who search for undervalued stocks that the Wall Street herd commonly overlooks. Fortunately, it only takes one big winner to make up for a whole lot of losers. Stock pickers are always searching for what Peter Lynch called "the ten bangers"--stocks that go up at least ten times the initial purchase price. If you're stuck in a stock like SPWR, and the future doesn't look good, there's a way to get out, but it entails a fair amount of risk. You have to sell some portion of your position at a momentary high, and then try to buy the shares back when the stock falls lower. This lowers your cost basis. By repeating this procedure again and again, it's possible to exit the stock with a minimal loss. The risk is that the stock will keep rising and leave you behind. You can mitigate that risk by using options, but only the most sophisticated investors will understand how to do this. Best of luck. |
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Post by japhy on Aug 28, 2016 10:11:30 GMT -5
Lately I'm in the red on solar panel maker SunPower (SPWR) and not sure what to do. I think I do know enough about solar panels to say it's a good technology, and there will be more of them in the future, but... (and I've made this mistake before) ... just because a technology will be useful and popular doesn't mean a specific company is going to be able to profit from that. I think once I get out of this stock, I may stay out of stock gambling forever. Or maybe only buy index funds, which I heard Warren Buffet say people should do if they don't follow things closely. Good idea. The SPY ETF has an expense ratio of .09, and the VTI has an expense ratio of .04. If you're not interested in reviewing things like PE's, P/S ratios, cash versus debt relationships, PEG ratios, income and balance sheets, etc in an effort to find undervalued stocks, then a fund like the VTI is the way to go. Remember, about 80% of actively managed mutual funds CANNOT beat an S&P index fund over time. Before I got interested in individual stocks I put $10,000 into the Schwab 1000 (an index fund that owns the top 1000 US companies by market cap), and I put $20,000 into a relatively conservative growth and income mutual fund. This was in the nineties when the market was going straight up. For several quarters I looked at the statements and both funds were going up at the same rate as the market in general. Then, like most people, I ignored the statements for a while. Three years later I happened to look at the quarterly statement and was astonished at what I saw. The index fund had doubled in value to $20,000, but the G&I mutual fund had lost half its value and was worth the same amount I had put into it several years earlier--%$20,000. I quickly pulled up 5 year graphs of both funds to find out what had happened. The index fund graph showed a steady rise from $10,000 to $20,000, but the G&I mutual fund showed a steady rise until one particular day when the value collapsed by a massive amount. What happened? The G&I fund manager had made a bad bet, so, not only had he been paid substantial fees for managing the fund, he had lost all of the gains accumulated over several years. If the mutual fund had matched the performance of the index fund, it would have been worth $40,000 or more, but instead, it had returned zero gains over a period when the market was rising explosively. This is why Buffet and other highly successful investors recommend that people buy index funds. Warren Buffet has gained almost 20%/year, on average, for the last 50 years. He represents the best performance that anyone could hope for. Peter Lynch also had similarly spectacular gains when he managed the Magellan Fund. An index fund over the last 50 years has probably gained about 10%/year, on average, and an index fund is not managed at all. A computer simply reshuffles the index to include the list of companies selected to mirror the market. This is why the expense ratio is so low. There are no people being paid to buy and sell stocks in the fund. The only reason that a person might want to buy and sell individual stocks is because s/he is willing to study individual companies in an attempt to beat the performance of an S&P index fund. If an investor can't beat the S&P 500 with his/her stock picks, then s/he should simply buy an index fund and forget about it. For some investors, stock picking is an intellectually-exciting game, and the fundamental challenge is to outperform the S&P 500. From everything I've read the only stock pickers who can consistently beat the S&P 500 are value investors--people who search for undervalued stocks that the Wall Street herd commonly overlooks. Fortunately, it only takes one big winner to make up for a whole lot of losers. Stock pickers are always searching for what Peter Lynch called "the ten bangers"--stocks that go up at least ten times the initial purchase price. If you're stuck in a stock like SPWR, and the future doesn't look good, there's a way to get out, but it entails a fair amount of risk. You have to sell some portion of your position at a momentary high, and then try to buy the shares back when the stock falls lower. This lowers your cost basis. By repeating this procedure again and again, it's possible to exit the stock with a minimal loss. The risk is that the stock will keep rising and leave you behind. You can mitigate that risk by using options, but only the most sophisticated investors will understand how to do this. Best of luck. How can you be stuck in a stock? It's just a psychological thing that don't want to sell in the red. Either you think it's a good investment or not. If not just sell. Of course you can also trade the swings because you want to come out in the green and maybe you will. But you might still perform worse than an ETF so you are really in the red (plus all your time!). If you enjoy the trading it's a different story maybe. Just my thought, but not much experience here. |
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Post by zendancer on Aug 28, 2016 10:54:39 GMT -5
Good idea. The SPY ETF has an expense ratio of .09, and the VTI has an expense ratio of .04. If you're not interested in reviewing things like PE's, P/S ratios, cash versus debt relationships, PEG ratios, income and balance sheets, etc in an effort to find undervalued stocks, then a fund like the VTI is the way to go. Remember, about 80% of actively managed mutual funds CANNOT beat an S&P index fund over time. Before I got interested in individual stocks I put $10,000 into the Schwab 1000 (an index fund that owns the top 1000 US companies by market cap), and I put $20,000 into a relatively conservative growth and income mutual fund. This was in the nineties when the market was going straight up. For several quarters I looked at the statements and both funds were going up at the same rate as the market in general. Then, like most people, I ignored the statements for a while. Three years later I happened to look at the quarterly statement and was astonished at what I saw. The index fund had doubled in value to $20,000, but the G&I mutual fund had lost half its value and was worth the same amount I had put into it several years earlier--%$20,000. I quickly pulled up 5 year graphs of both funds to find out what had happened. The index fund graph showed a steady rise from $10,000 to $20,000, but the G&I mutual fund showed a steady rise until one particular day when the value collapsed by a massive amount. What happened? The G&I fund manager had made a bad bet, so, not only had he been paid substantial fees for managing the fund, he had lost all of the gains accumulated over several years. If the mutual fund had matched the performance of the index fund, it would have been worth $40,000 or more, but instead, it had returned zero gains over a period when the market was rising explosively. This is why Buffet and other highly successful investors recommend that people buy index funds. Warren Buffet has gained almost 20%/year, on average, for the last 50 years. He represents the best performance that anyone could hope for. Peter Lynch also had similarly spectacular gains when he managed the Magellan Fund. An index fund over the last 50 years has probably gained about 10%/year, on average, and an index fund is not managed at all. A computer simply reshuffles the index to include the list of companies selected to mirror the market. This is why the expense ratio is so low. There are no people being paid to buy and sell stocks in the fund. The only reason that a person might want to buy and sell individual stocks is because s/he is willing to study individual companies in an attempt to beat the performance of an S&P index fund. If an investor can't beat the S&P 500 with his/her stock picks, then s/he should simply buy an index fund and forget about it. For some investors, stock picking is an intellectually-exciting game, and the fundamental challenge is to outperform the S&P 500. From everything I've read the only stock pickers who can consistently beat the S&P 500 are value investors--people who search for undervalued stocks that the Wall Street herd commonly overlooks. Fortunately, it only takes one big winner to make up for a whole lot of losers. Stock pickers are always searching for what Peter Lynch called "the ten bangers"--stocks that go up at least ten times the initial purchase price. If you're stuck in a stock like SPWR, and the future doesn't look good, there's a way to get out, but it entails a fair amount of risk. You have to sell some portion of your position at a momentary high, and then try to buy the shares back when the stock falls lower. This lowers your cost basis. By repeating this procedure again and again, it's possible to exit the stock with a minimal loss. The risk is that the stock will keep rising and leave you behind. You can mitigate that risk by using options, but only the most sophisticated investors will understand how to do this. Best of luck. How can you be stuck in a stock? It's just a psychological thing that don't want to sell in the red. Either you think it's a good investment or not. If not just sell. Of course you can also trade the swings because you want to come out in the green and maybe you will. But you might still perform worse than an ETF so you are really in the red (plus all your time!). If you enjoy the trading it's a different story maybe. Just my thought, but not much experience here. It's very easy to get stuck in a stock. You buy a stock that looks undervalued, but the price drops. If you have total confidence in the stock, you may choose to double down (buy more shares at the lower price), and thereby lower your cost basis. But the stock may continue to fall. Some investors automatically sell any stock that falls 10% below their buy point, but most value investors will not do this. I've made lots of money by riding a stock all the way to the bottom while continually buying more shares. When the stock rebounds, it can be progressively sold on the way up for big gains. Why sell shares on the way up? To lock in gains in case it falls back. Sometimes, however, you discover that there were problems with the company that were not foreseen when the stock was purchased, and you lose confidence that it will ever rebound. This is called "a value trap." If you sell the stock, you have to take a big loss, and the only time that makes perfect sense is if one thinks that the company may go bankrupt. Every stock story is different, and an investor has to constantly review the numbers and the basic story to decide whether to continue holding the stock or attempt to get out of it. Sometimes a stock falls so far that it isn't worth selling; you just hang onto it and hope that one day it will recover. If it looks like it'll be underwater for a long time, and the price is oscillating, then it may make sense to sell on upward bounces and buy back the shares on downward bounces. This strategy is not always successful, but sometimes you can get out of a stock by playing this game until your cost basis drops to the current value of the stock. Then you can kiss the shares goodbye and say "good riddance!" haha Because you have a math background, you might find stock investing fun (and highly profitable). It helps to be smart and to be able to think outside the box. It also helps to be able to focus intensely upon the numbers. In the movie "The Big Short," the one-eyed guy, Michael Burry, had Asperger's Syndrome, and it allowed him to dig deeper into the numbers than almost anyone. His record as a stock trader was mind-boggling, and he gained almost $500 million by shorting the housing market in 2006. In the same movie, and book, two young guys discovered a strange aspect of the Black-Scholes option pricing formula, and in three years they turned a $100,000 inheritance from one of their grandmothers into $30 millions dollars. They made tons more money by having a deep insight into the structure of CDO's, an insight that no other major players ever saw. Check out the movie or book. As a mathematician, you'll be able to appreciate the insights that these people had. I have a friend who's a math genius. He got interested in options, and he was able to accurately calculate all of the odds involved in the way he wanted to play options. He made money on almost all of his trades, but he was so risk averse that he couldn't take full advantage of his knowledge. The whole investment game can be summarized as finding investments with a very high chance of paying off, and then betting big. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 28, 2016 18:58:46 GMT -5
[...] If you're stuck in a stock like SPWR, and the future doesn't look good, there's a way to get out, but it entails a fair amount of risk. You have to sell some portion of your position at a momentary high, and then try to buy the shares back when the stock falls lower. This lowers your cost basis. By repeating this procedure again and again, it's possible to exit the stock with a minimal loss. The risk is that the stock will keep rising and leave you behind. You can mitigate that risk by using options, but only the most sophisticated investors will understand how to do this. Best of luck. Thanks for that info. I've been squeezed for a while by low income and liquidity, but I just got a good job so that should help and allow some techniques like this in coming weeks and months. |
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I just came back from two weeks of hiking, carrying food for a week, sleeping in basic shelters and so on. I hoped that it might bring some clarity and there was nothing else to do. There were some special moments but no great woho experience.My understanding from my own journey is that experiences cannot bring you clarity, but that you manifest clarity due to what you do within the experience.
I had a feelin' about the goats! So is it that you've actually been to the project and spent time working there? Is your partner's land there or where you live? Had you any experience on the farm prior? 
