Hertz is a dog. Play stupid games, when stupid prizes.

I have long positions on MGM, SBUX, ROKU ($101), JPM

I wish you luck with that. That kind of gambling is just not my thing. But if you're comfortable with it, maybe it'll work out for you.

I like your picks! I think we will be well rewarded. This is the lightest I have ever been in tech but the valuations are crazy. Have to make money somewhere else.

Nasdaq running again.

FSLY, TTD, AYX, SE, LVGO amongst others hitting new highs. Long term winners, short term volatility

Gotta be patient with "in the ditch". 60-90 days much clearer picture. And there should be a more sustained rotation to those stocks during the re-opening phase. i.e. MAC et al

My current "Blast Off model". Most Aggressive. Doesn't mean buy today, most purchased Jan of 2019. Some added more recently. Growth/momentum I'd look to add more on dips for LONG TERM. Many of these are OVERVALUED by most any traditional measure. That's what they said about AMZN from day one to today. Sometimes you just have to pay up for growth

PINS hasn’t moved like others and is on verge. $36 is all time high. Trading at $22

AAXN
AYX
DOCU
FSLY
ISRG
LVGO
MDB
MELI
NVCR
OKTA
PINS
SE
SHOP
TEAM
TSLA (finally caved a few months ago)
TTD
TWLO
VEEV
WIX

Hertz trading halted by judge. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/17/hertz-stock-amid-controversy-around-stock-sale.html

GOOD!

TSLA 500 point up in just over 65 days??? Broke 1k today.
I just don't get this one.
slow lines, production down, dept thru the roof.
What am I missing? I'm way late to this party.

Did anybody follow me with Slack and Zynerba? I’m liking what I am seeing. Roku looking strong again today as well.

It’s kind of like Don’t fight the Fed

Don’t fight the Tesla

I gave up

Another great day today from high flyers

10-15% correction? I’m looking forward to it.

I have about 100K in VBLAX bonds. Should I get rid of these? What is better?

got in on ROKU @ $101
didn't actually believe it had this much room left in it

Nice hit there! I am in at $107. It's a small position at 200 shares, but profit is profit. Lot of rumors swirling about ROKU so we will see if any of them are true.

Better in what sense?

How does the bond position fit into your larger portfolio strategy and acceptable risk level?

I think a lot of inexperienced and 'investing uneducated' folks read posts in threads like this one and get a lot of inappropriate advice, bad ideas, and then make bad decisions.

When I see posts asking about trading options, but not understanding basics like contract size, or asking if there is 'something better' than XYZ investment, all I see is somebody on the precipice of making a bad decision.

A pinball forum is not the sort of place where I'd be seeking financial advice if I were asking these sorts of questions.

It's like going to a car dealership and asking if they have anything better.

Ok it’s time for this market to roll over like a dog!

Doing some simple math and making assumptions, it sound like you have roughly 6,000 or so shares. The investment is up about 3 bucks since it's inception, so depending upon your purchase price, you could have up to about 18K of profit, plus a 3.3% dividend. That is a pretty good lick, but it all depends on as investingdad said your tolerances, etc. Could you make more money in other places? Sure. But you would have to make those decisions.

related to conversations about not knowing what you're doing
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-year-old-robinhood-customer-commits-suicide-after-seeing-a-730000-negative-balance/

Not necessarily.

These are Admiral shares. Vanguard does auto conversion from investor shares to Admiral once you meet a holding threshold in the investment. Admiral are even lower cost.

VBLAX is a new Admiral class that was created not long ago.

It's very possible his true cost basis is much lower if was converted from investor shares.

I read that. Poor guy.

Let's be clear, those strategies are very advanced. For most, it's nearly gambling. Options were originally intended to function as a form of insurance or risk mitigation on an underlying investment.

A lot of people that play with them don't really understand them.

Yeah, what a horrible story. Especially since it may have cleared up over the weekend.

That is me in a nutshell. I know enough to know I only fully understand and am comfortable with the simple dividend enhancement and risk mitigation strategies of covered options.

Anything more complex is beyond my comfort zone and is where I would pay someone like Iceman to have his finger on the pulse and do those trades for me.

And you will never see me do anything on margin. Ever. Just ain’t my cup of tea.

It was an off the cuff kind of question. I have had these for several years, I would have to research it since my entire portfolio was just switched to Schwab. I didn't want to hang on to these shares if their performance is going away. Like if interest rates go up or another event. Would possibly go into NEM or Wheaton.

I never bet big on any 1 stock.
I have missed out on some huge $$ gains but it has also saved my ass several times

I try to keep a fairly diversified portfolio and as part of that, I have certain clip levels and position sizes that I allocate into. As an example, if I want to buy a certain amount of a stock, I might take a half position as an initial buy, and then average up or down. Occasionally, we will go make big moves into a stock right at the beginning based upon market conditions (Boeing is a prime example). I try to be diligent in determining entry and exit points, and will use trailing stops as needed. My guy is pretty on top of things and lets me know when we might want to make a rotation, which helps with the down sides. We have had some beatings for sure, but all in all we are ahead of the game.

Not only that, but Robinhood does basically nothing towards explaining ANY of that in detail. Like the article literally explained more than their app does.

Clearly, there was more wrong than just the way the app displays numbers here (And I say this as someone that battles frequent recurring depression), because most people I think would've gone after RH for more information, not just immediately gone for the final option, but they do have to accept ALL of the responsibility for just implicitly trusting that people know what they're doing without any kind of screening or education from their app. That's ridiculous, and honestly inexcusable.

I’m sorry about the guy taking his life, but I do not agree that Robinhood should shoulder the full blame on this. The guy was doing a fairly sophisticated maneuver that evidently he did not fully understand. Hell, I have a significant amount of money in the market and I have never done a call or put because I do not feel comfortable with it. Trading platforms are coded to prevent you from doing something that is incorrect, but they are not coded to question what you are doing. They also do not have a fiduciary responsibility in the types of trades that you make. There is no certification anywhere outside of the Series 7 and the like to become a broker. Now if Robinhood did something incorrect in giving him too much margin ability then they are at fault for that element.

Again, this is a sad outcome to a sad misadventure and I am sure that there is enough blame to go around, but you can not pin this fully on Robinhood. A good portion of the blame resides sadly with the guy making the trades.

They aren't obligated to teach anything, but allowing that much much leverage to someone with little means is the big takeaway issue, if not the app issue displaying the wrong balance, which is Robinhood's blame.

It looks like Robinhood is making some changes asa result of this. This is from their blog post today. None of this is really specific at this time.

Eligibility: We are considering additional criteria and education for customers seeking level 3 options authorization to help ensure customers understand more sophisticated options trading.

Educational resources: We are expanding our educational content related to options trading. We have added information on early options assignments to our help center and we will be hiring an Options Education Specialist to further enhance education related to our options offering.

User Interface: In the near term, we are rolling out improvements to in-app messages and emails we send customers about their multi-leg options spreads. We are also adding detail to the in-app history page to help users understand the mechanics of early options assignments. We are also working on changes to our user interface, including the way buying power is displayed. These changes will take a bit of time to roll out, but our teams are hard at work.

Looking at the Robin hood response, I'm wondering if the guy may have actually been net positive on that trade.

I'll be honest, if it had been me, I would have been in a panic as well.

Therein is the rub on certain options contracts, the potential for unlimited downside. Naked calls are no joke.

That's NOT full blame. In no way are they responsible for this guy going off the deep end and whacking himself less than 24 hours later. If he had just tried to talk to someone, or had spend a few days trying to figure out what happened and how it was going to pan out, his death could have been avoided. But he didn't choose to do that, unfortunately. What I'm saying is that they do have to be responsible, as an app trying to lure in novice investors, for at least TRYING to educate or warn people that certain investing mechanics have EXTREME risks that can be taken on with clearly very little leverage. The app should be capable of mathematically looking at something like this and going "Hey, you might be losing XYZ if this goes south, are you really sure you want to do this?", or adding a layer of "opt-in" with a warning and disclaimer up front for these things that can go south in a very bad, but not obvious to the average asshat like me, before they're enabled in the app. Also....probably the display issue could be addressed in a more consistent way of explaining why there's a sudden huge negative balance.

I think we all understand that stocks can go up or down.....but I don't understand options, puts, all this technical shit at all....and in the 8 months I've been using Robinhood, I haven't see any real initiative on their part to explain any of that to us noobs. Not asking for an explanation here, as I have no real interest in how these things work, just commenting on what I see as someone with very little investing knowledge and a user of their app. I was wise enough to not mess with any of that stuff..... someone half my age wasn't, was not educated about the issues of what they were doing, and likely over-reacted in a moment of insanity, and took their life. Not their fault that he did THAT, but it is entirely their fault they predicate their app on being "easy" and friendly to novices, but provide these same novices with tools far beyond their education or capability with next to no screening or education. You just can't do that anymore...that's how you get sued.

There are, IMO, a lot of misconceptions being talked here about options.

Selling one naked call is no different than shorting 100 shares of stock. The difference(s) used to be that the margin required to short a stock was 50%. Margin requirements can change at any time by direction of the SEC, or the broker may require higher margins than the SEC even requires. But let's stay with the 50% margin to short a stock.

The margin requirements for being short an option used to be the price of the call, plus 35%, and plus or minus any amount that the option is in the money or out of the money.

Let's do the numbers.

100 shares of a $60.00 stock at 50% margin will require you to put up $3000.00. If you bought the stock on margin and it went to $50.00, you are now down $1000.00. 100 x10 = $1,000.00 unrealized loss. Your $3,000.00 equity is now $2, 000.00. 50% margin on a $50.00 stock is $2500.00. The margin clerk is going to be contacting you for $500.00 to get your equity back up to $2500.00. Fail to send $500.00 to the margin clerk and he will sell your position down to a level that is needed to maintain proper equity.

( To anyone who thinks their stock position is not a loser until you sell, the margin clerk will educate you real fast that your losses, while not realized, are losses.).

The reverse is that you short 100 shares of a $60.00 stock. You still need $3,000.00 margin. If the stock goes against you and moves to $70.00 per share you are down $1,000.00 to $2,000.00 and the margin clerk will come calling. Only now, the 50 % margin for a $70.00 stock is $3,500.00. The margin clerk is going to want $1500.00 from you.

If you close the position out, you will have lost $1,000.00 of your money, whether long or short.

Now, let's do this with a naked call with 35% margin rates.

The stock is at $60.00. You sell the $60.00 call for $3.50 speculative premium. You margin requirement is $60 x 35% = $2100.00 - $350.00 premium = $1750.00.

If the stock blasts to to $70.00, your position is now $10.00 in the money---against you. Margin on a $70.00 is $70 x 35% = 2,450.00. Since your option is in the money against you, your $3.50 premium you sold does not help you with making your margin. So, cough up another $700.00 or the clerk will close you out.

If you shorted the stock you lost $1000.00.

However, if you were short one naked call and the stock went to $70.00, your loss would be $1,000.00 less the $350.00 premium you sold. Your loss would be $650.00.

That is it for a single option contract. I'd rather be short the call than short the stock. Another advantage with the naked call is when it comes to dividends. If you are short a dividend paying stock and you are short when the stock goes ex-dividend, you get to pay the dividend; The broker will automatically debit your account to pay the dividend. If you are short the call, you don't have to worry about paying the dividend; and actually, the option will be price adjusted downward to account for the dividend just paid.

So, where does this all blow up? Here is where you start talking about the siren song that options sing.

I have $3000.00 to my name. I can buy 100 shares of a $60.00 stock at 50% margin. If the stock goes to $70.00 I will have made $1000.00. However, let's say I could buy a $60.00 call for $250.00 premium. If the stock goes to $70.00 I will have made $1000.00 -$250.00 = $750.00. That's not bad. Gamble $250.00 and make a $750.00 profit.

For your $3000.00, you could have bought 10 calls for $2500.00 and sold them for $10,000.00 - $2,500.00. = $7500.00.

It is the leverage. That is the lure. That is the hook. You can make a fortune is you make the right options trade. And if you are naked 10 calls, you will be slitting your throat if this naked option position went against you.

It took all of the above to talk about one stock at one price and one option play that could be made with $3,000.00.
=========================================================

Imagine the math involved when you are talking call bull spreads and call bear spreads or put bull spreads and put bear spreads. How about vertical spreads, or calendar spreads, and straps and strangles, and butterfly spreads, and condors. In in monies, out of the monies.

The combinations of options strategies are mind boggling.
============================================

And now, the bitter truth. Options trade with time premium. I am going to change the numbers a little. This time we are talking a $35.00 stock. 100 shares x 100 = $3,500.00. You do not have $1750.00 to buy 100 share of $35.00 stock on 50% margin. But you have $1,500.00.

For your $1500.00, you can buy 4 at the money option contracts at $3.50 per contract. 1500/350 = 4 contracts. You are paying $3.50 premium on a $35.00 stock. It is a lousy, almost guaranteed to lose money position. Your $3.50 premium is 10% of the price. Let's say your option has 6 months of life left. Your $35.00 stock has to go to $38.50 at expiration for you to break even.

Trading long options, long calls or long puts is usually a losing proposition. And most options expire worthless. It takes a big bank account, but with the right amount of capital, a person can make a nice living just selling options naked. Who does this? Traders on the CBOE floor make their living selling naked options all day long.

Can a retail trader do this? Yes, but.... you are always going to be sucking hind tit when working against the CBOE floor traders. You have to know your stocks cold. You have to have your eyes on the political winds. And your eye has to always be watching the clock. And if you were asleep at the switch when Covid 19 took the market down you could have a big drawdown if you were naked a lot of puts.

===============================

I looked a little bit at this Robinhood deal with this kid that killed hisself and I cannot understand how he got into such a big debit position. My broker would have shut me down way before it got out of hand as it did with this kid.

And unless things have changed, the options disclosure forms you have to sign before you can trade options and trade options on margin, is a fairly simple affair. The broker wants you to trade and generate commissions and order flow: "OK, young man, I see you have signed the necessary paper work. Happy trading. Good Luck ".

Honestly, I've never traded options, and after reading this, fuck that. I'll make money the old fashion way. I'm sure it's fine if you have the willingness and desire to get into it, but i'll pass.

As someone who traded options in the past, the Robinhood incident is someone who had no idea what they were doing at all.
It sounds like he sold some put options.
When you sell put options (i.e. guarantee to buy a stock for $X) and the person you sold them to says OK, here's the stock (exercises the option) you have to buy it for $X per share.
Sounds like he was forced to buy the stock on margin and paid out the money; (huge -$XXX,XXX cash) but now he owned the stock to sell and could keep all the money to offset the negative balance.
Basically it's like buying a house with a mortgage, when you compare it to your bank account the loan balance it'll be -$XXX,XXX (or whatever).
Do you freak out?
No, as long as the house is still standing you can sell it, so there's nothing to worry about.

What news could spike this market this week?
What tricks does Fed have left?
Tap into Fort Knox and offer Gold Bonds?
What about war bonds?
Rocky week ahead. Watching, waiting for bigger dips.

I think people are worried about a spike in covid-19
+ the unknown about the election outcome

I am planning to convert everything to moneymarket very soon and wait for the correction. This is seriously overvalued. I am in s&p and some gold stocks. Looks like everything will drop and then I can go back in. I am where I was prior to this pandemic.

This ^^^^. In talking with folks all around the country, I think people have different opinions about COVID based upon where they live, when you ask their opinion about COVID, and if their region is trending up or down. COVID is not hitting all regions at the same time. Things are calming down a little here in the North East and Midatlantic regions, but we are seeing uptakes in other parts of the country now. This uncertainty and split-brain reaction is causing a lot of churn in everybody.

Taking a cue from @iceman44, I have been looking at the Vegas betting lines on the 2020 election and just recently, things have switched from Trump a slight favorite to Biden being a slight bigger favorite. Putting in the last 3 weeks below so you can see the trends. Factoring politics and the media out of this, this is a very close race. I think we are going to have a ton of twists and turns as we get to November, and the markets are going to react accordingly. I think that most pundits view Biden's fiscal policy views as more moderate compared to other Progressive candidates, so that could be more positive for the markets compared to somebody like Warren or Sanders.

Betting lines from Las Vegas Sporting Book and Bovado. Negative numbers denote the favorite.
https://lasvegassportsbetting.com/2020-US-Presidential-Election-Las-Vegas-Odds_P14398.html

Updated on June 3, 2020
US Presidential Election 2020 - Odds to Win
Donald Trump -115
Joe Biden +105
Hillary Clinton +4000
Andrew Cuomo +8000
Michelle Obama +8000
Mike Pence +8000
Nikki Haley +15000

Updated on June 13, 2020
US Presidential Election 2020 - Odds to Win
Joe Biden -105
Donald Trump EVEN
Hillary Clinton +4000
Michelle Obama +6000
Mike Pence +6000
Andrew Cuomo +8000
Nikki Haley +12500

Updated on June 22, 2020
US Presidential Election 2020 - Odds to Win
Joe Biden -130
Donald Trump +115
Hillary Clinton +5000
Mike Pence +5500
Andrew Cuomo +8000
Michelle Obama +8000
Nikki Haley +12500

Nasdaq rolling again today! AAPL, SE, LVGO, DOCU, PINS, TTD, AYX, FSLY, etc etc

"in the ditch" rolled backed in there again for the time being. MAC, CCL etc. Patience is a virtue. 1/2 half and 2021

Covid doesn't concern me at all despite the media's 24/7 focus back on that aspect of "Operation Chaos", now that the riots have receded.

Election risk? Yep, as DBLM says, I'm watching those odds. The only unbiased poll out there. Tech and Health Care wins either way. Along with a bigger allocation to "emerging markets". That's why we own stocks like SE and MELI and will consider others like BABA if it goes that way.

Why invest in the broader market S&P 500? I don't get it. Bottoms up individual investing.

On the downside, I see possible S&P 500 low of 2650 on some future volatility. Too many other positive factors as discussed before.

Actually the bigger question/issue is, will half of the country accept the election outcome? I can see some unrest with either candidate being elected, unless it's a landslide margin.

That’s a huge problem in and of itself. In our system, you only need to win by one electoral vote. And now, it’s not seen as legit unless you win in a landslide? I’m not disagreeing that that’s the perception of many, but man, that’s disturbing.

It might help if the electoral vote winner also wins the popular vote.

I don’t believe in “all in” or “all out”. Balance of stocks and cash to your comfort zone is likely a better way. Timing the market is hard and pretty much futile and can burn you. A lot of folks have cash and are waiting for the dip. Hello Warren Buffett!

If you do go all out when you come back in I would look at buying individual stocks instead of the S and P. We are in a “pickers” market now. I recently have sold off many of my etfs and Mutual funds and switched to stocks and I don’t think I am turning back. Here is why I switched

For example I just looked up VFINX and it looks like these 5 companies alone make up over 20% of the whole 500 company index. Here is the list of the 5 and YTD returns
Apple up 23%
FB up 17%
MSFT up 27%
Amazon up 47%
Google up 9%

Pretty good returns for horrible year. Yet even with 20% of the 500 index in these 5 stocks with great returns the index is down 2%??? So why invest in 500 companies when you can invest in 5 companies and use those as a base for your portfolio? These 5 are the ones who have pulled up the 500 Index Returns anyway over the last 10 years. These 5 also pulled up a lot of ETF’s And managed mutual funds also, but they charge .50 or 1% fee each year. These 5 are a great start to any portfolio but that is just MHO. Please do research on them.

I own those stocks above and added tech growth and some heath stocks like FSLY, SQ, MELI, TTD, SHOP, TWLO, SE, PINS, AYX, LVGO, ROKU, CRWD, NVDA, OKTA, etc.. I didn’t buy these all yesterday either. They have given me good returns over the last couple of months and I want to see how they do in the future.

“BUT” going back to “all in or all out“ of the market, I currently have 30% in Cash right now. I mix good returns and hedge against the bad that may come. I am comfortable now with this mix and can handle an upturn or down. Heck I looked around and most of the managed mutual funds have only 2 or 3% cash right now. They can’t buy the dip. Gold, like you have, is pretty good to own as a hedge also.

I do still own some tech ETFs. And like QQQ much better than the S and P index if you are out now and want to get back in.

I left my ETF and Mutual fund comfort zone to buy more Individual stocks because I realized I had to do it in this weird “Pickers” market. I like my mix now.

All about finding your comfort zone. Good luck!

Half the country didn't accept the election results 3 years ago. Nothing new and the market and the economy continued.

I saw the interview where blowhard Peter Navarro quipped that “the China trade deal is over”

Which I thought Mnuchin walked that back a bit right after or at least the conflicting signals coming from Trump and Lighthizer today

I think it’s just bluster during these tense times. Can’t see Mnuchin and Lighthizer onboard with Navarro rhetoric

Anyhow, causing futures to drop for the moment. 400 down

Whoops, CNBC jumped the gun on those headlines. Taken out of context it appears as I thought

Seems like most of the time an administration representative speaks, especially Powell you can make a fortune going short. Last 1,800 dow drop and Powell before congress, over night dow up 840 soon as Powell starts to testify, down 500.

Fed chair Powell caused a few wobbles. Then confirmed “all in” again and here we are

Peter Navarro is a long time China hater. Loves to hear himself talk

I’m sure Trump, Mnuchin and Lighthizer just whipped his ass over that comment. Futures now recovered.

True words.

Some good advice there, a good friend of mine has those companies along with DIS and SBUX and bought more when it was down. As far as comfort level? I didn't enjoy watching everything drop so fast. I am retired and while I have a pension, I don't want to be too risky with this money. I also don't want to spend a bunch of time trading and watching, either. Still in for now.

Congrats on being retired. Yes with individual stocks you need to keep an eye on things a lot more. Some like that and some don’t. Some only like looking when things are up and up but when they are down their stomach does a loop and they want to quit investing. That could be balanced with types of stocks that own and levels of cash on the side though.

I would look at QQQ over the S and P as an investment now or for the future though. Low cost and high returns from solid, large companies. I would recommend QQQ to an 80 year old retired person or an 20 year old with their first job, a millionaire or a first time investor with $1000 looking to get started.

There are so many investments out there. It’s mind numbing sometimes.

What do you think will happen to the stock market if Biden is elected