Stock Market

[fallacy]

This has been a weird year. My house is paid off so I started investing heavily at the end of 2019 beginning of 2020. When the stocks started crashing in March of 2020 I thought that figures as soon as I start to invest I will just end up losing half my money. I was not too worried about it though, I put my money into 500 index funds so unless the stock market was just over it would come back.  Well as we know it has come back, having gone down 30% it is now up 50%. I don't know what to do anymore, I will keep putting money into 401k every paycheck until I max it out for the year but beyond that. I put $6,000 into my IRA for the year and $3,500 into my HSA for the year but still have not put them into an investment because I don't understand what is going on with the market. I think the government is just printing so much money it is finding itself in the market, if they give us another stimulus check it will be more of the same for the short term anyway.


My biggest holding is FIDELITY MSCI INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY INDEX ETF
Large Growth Equity ETF. in my brokerage account. I ended up buying 680 shares at $79.23 per share, it is like $112 per share now.  I will post a picture, It has 338 different tec companies holdings with the first 10 making 57%. Apple along makes almost 22%


What is everyone invested in?

[bobbyb13]

Fundamentals went out the window so long ago that it is a terrifying thing.  Almost all the stocks people are making money on now (when they actually sell it!) have price to earnings ratios that no same person 20 years ago would ever have bought.

Correct about the fed printing press.  It can't end well, but who the hell knows when it all goes pear shaped at this point?
When they stop with the Universal Basic Income trials?
Or when the healthcare/insurance/pharmaceutical cabal collapses- because it finally bankrupted the country.

A dollar collapse is inevitable (as is it's removal as global reserve currency) and the inflation we see in everything already is only going to get worse.

We are on the same path as the UK (the reserve currency issuer before the US) so look to history for how it will all go.
Before it was the French, Dutch, Spanish, Portugeuse...

This crap can't go on forever so all I can say is the one thing my very wealthy neighbor (the currency trader) said was:

"Number one rule of investing is preservation of capital."

Most of my $$ was stolen in 2000 and 2008 by those who run the casino- now I manage my own mess.

ETFs are far safer long term than day trading GameStop and Tesla !
Other than that I have had buy and hold money in Cytosorbents and Blackberry for years now believe it or not.

[Vocalitus]

I'm waiting for BTC to get to 100K then I will cash mine into gold.

The rest is a crap shoot.

[danny_galaga]

I'm waiting for BTC to get to 100K then I will cash mine into gold.

The rest is a crap shoot.

At what price did you buy in?

[Vocalitus]

It was 2010 and I think BTC was 5c.

[Grasshopper]

The same thing is happening in the UK (and I guess the rest of Europe). The government is simply printing money to keep the economy afloat. We used to be told this was the type of thing that only banana republics did. But apparently it's perfectly OK if we do it, and give it the fancy term "quantitive easing". The weird thing is that despite QE, inflation has been incredibly low for over a decade, and no one really knows why.

However, there must surely be a day of reckoning. My biggest fear is that we're on the cusp of a massive housing market crash. The crazy thing is that, every time the housing market looks like it's faltering, the government implements policies to further inflate the bubble. It's like they know a crash is inevitable, but they don't want it happening on their watch...

[fablog]

The inflation is low because the production capacity is in excess over the world. But, the inflation is high when you check in detail the prices (housing price buble for exemple). So, if you are a young person beginning his adult life, price seems very high, but not for an older person who own a house.

We live the same crisis since the crash in 2000. The answer by all the government was always the same: more debt and more money printing. When you take that in account and rework the numbers, we are in a recession since a long time because when you borrow 2$ to make 1$ of growth, it's not a real growth.

[Grasshopper]

But, the inflation is high when you check in detail the prices (housing price buble for exemple). So, if you are a young person beginning his adult life, price seems very high, but not for an older person who own a house.

Indeed. That's one of the main problems. The official inflation rate (upon which economic policy is based) doesn't take into account asset price inflation (i.e. house prices, stock market, etc.). So, you can end up with a situation where the official inflation rate is less than 2% but house prices are growing by 10%. It's completely bonkers.

[fallacy]

You can feel the inflation hitting hard now for everything. I was trying to get a very small front yard 8’ by 10 ‘deck rebuilt and I had contractors come out for a quote a few years ago and they were all quoting me $5,000. It never happened for whatever reason. The deck is not something I will use, it is just something that needs to be replaced. I decided let's try again so i called up some contractors; first off no one wants to come out to give you a quote anymore they all just say send me some pictures. Now they are coming back saying it will be 12,000 - 13,500 grand. This is the kind of prices we are seeing in just 2 years. If this was normal inflation that we are used to it should have been around $6,500 or something.

[BadMouth]

"There is no inflation because wages haven't gone up." - the gubmint

I went to Walmart to buy some cheap crappy $2 tools for a separate 3D printer workbench area and they were all priced $6.  I did not buy them.

[Vocalitus]

I decided to buy an active 15ft HDMI cable, instead of a RX580 for my 1Up Star Wars.  $480 for a $150 graphics card?  Its a bit fiddly but it works.

If you are working you need to save, or open a savings account and start saving real money.  Draw a line in the sand and start putting money away. Once you have 20K in your bank account all the worries of the world seem to stop.

Best to wait for the bubbles to burst.  No point buying a $350K house for it to end up being worth $80K.  The bubbles will burst and there will be echoes of 2008.  History likes repeating itself.

It only money.....yeah right.

[RandyT]

If you are working you need to save, or open a savings account and start saving real money.  Draw a line in the sand and start putting money away. Once you have 20K in your bank account all the worries of the world seem to stop.

Maybe.....but that isn't really the current trend.  Every dollar printed from nothing and given to someone else, causes that money you have socked away to lose value.  The more which is printed, the less buying power pre-existing dollars have.  The less buying power the higher the cost to produce goods.  The higher the cost to produce goods, the higher the prices consumers must pay for them.

It is estimated that every "free" 1200 dollars in stimulus payments will cost taxpayers over 16000 in the long run.  So that 20k you have saved is already gone.  You just don't know it yet.

I'm certainly no financial advisor, but putting that money someplace that holds it's current value, either by investing in markets or in solid, tangible and valuable commodities, seems like a much better idea.  I get the feeling that the longer one waits to do so, the more difficult that will be to do.

[fallacy]

If you are working you need to save, or open a savings account and start saving real money.  Draw a line in the sand and start putting money away. Once you have 20K in your bank account all the worries of the world seem to stop.

That's just bad advice like RandyT said inflation means your saved money becomes more and more worthless. Money needs to be invested, It is the only way money you earn today can retain its value or even exceed inflation 3,4,5,10 years from today.  You need an emergency fund but I would not keep anymore than $15,000 to $20,000 in your checking everything else needs to be invested.

Best to wait for the bubbles to burst.  No point buying a $350K house for it to end up being worth $80K.  The bubbles will burst and there will be echoes of 2008.  History likes repeating itself.

Ya… don't count on that, if I had to take a guess I would say housing prices continue to go up in the next few years at which point there might be some small 5% to 10% drop which still means the prices will still be higher than they are today. 2008 were its own circumstances they were literally giving whatever Adjustable-Rat mortgages to anyone who could not afford so that they could put these loans into mortgage back securities and get paid for those as well. When the rates went up everyone stopped paying their mortgages at the same time causing a crash. I here it is hard today to qualify for a Fixed rate Mortgages and I don't think Adjustable rate Mortgages are even done anymore.

[nitrogen_widget]

cost of lumber skyrocketed because there is a shortage due to sawmills in canada closing because of the pandemic.
cost of video cards is insane because of bit coin miners buying up all the new cards they can get their hands on, followed by scalpers buying up what they can get just to resell at higher prices, add in manufacturers can't get the silicone in large enough amounts for manufacturing.
Then you have people with older cards that can still handle current games on low to med settings going..."people are desperate now, time to jack that GTX-960 that was selling for $30-$40 last yr up to $200 or let the idiots bid for it so i don't feel like as big a scumbag".

the big problem is the people stupidly paying these prices for these old video cards.

so I don't believe lumber and video card prices at least are because of inflation.

[RandyT]

so I don't believe lumber and video card prices at least are because of inflation.

The real question as it pertains to these, is will the problem solve itself before inflation kicks in and makes the solution moot?  Your guess is as good as mine.

And where the video cards are concerned, due to the situation surrounding them, they have become a marketable commodity where prices are determined by supply and demand.  If the supply is NATURALLY short, and the demand is high, I wouldn't feel like a scumbag getting back my purchase price on these already ridiculously high priced items.  Screw the scalpers.  Those are the real scumbags.

[fallacy]

Scalpers are only the symptom of the problem. The real problem is these companies with no pre-orders no 1 per customer, you could have gotten graphics cards out to the people that wanted 1 for its intended purpose but instead they don't care. Look at the Quest 2, no scalpers cheap price and they sold millions because they had it locked down. People were receiving them from there pre order literally a day after launch. They almost did too good of a job there was no FOMO or conversation to be had on not being able to get one. I guess for oculus it was more important to get them into people's hands to have them try VR for the first time rather than just have them forget about it and move on. Nvidia clearly could give less of a shi and it seems to be working for them.

[RandyT]

Look at the Quest 2...

Apples to oranges.  A high-end graphics card, as we have seen, can remain viable for close to a decade.  Given the rate of advancement and intense competition, it would have been financial suicide for FB not to have been able to meet demand with a "lower end" VR system.  There are already competitors looking to get a chunk of that market segment.

[pbj]

When the rates went up everyone stopped paying their mortgages at the same time causing a crash.

That's the biggest lie of 2008.  Go take a look at the percentage of foreclosures in the years prior to the crash. 

Yes, there was an uptick, but the big issue was the banks were leveraged 100:1 on those mortgage backed securities.

The effort to spin this as "greedy people buying homes they couldn't afford" is very simplistic and misleading.

[fallacy]

The effort to spin this as "greedy people buying homes they couldn't afford" is very simplistic and misleading.

who is spinning what? who are you quoting?

[RandyT]

That's the biggest lie of 2008.  Go take a look at the percentage of foreclosures in the years prior to the crash. 

I don't know about that.  This graph doesn't really support what you're saying.

The effort to spin this as "greedy people buying homes they couldn't afford" is very simplistic and misleading.

I don't know if it's a matter of greed on the part of buyers.  I see it more as government getting involved in the private sector and doing what always happens.  The people who bought into homes they couldn't afford were victims of the intervention, as well as of their own naivety.  There's plenty of blame to pass around for that fiasco.   

[pbj]

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/chargeoff/delallsa.htm

 

[RandyT]

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/chargeoff/delallsa.htm

All I can see from that data is a spiking trend and slow recovery which took 10 years for things to be back down to 2007 levels.  What are you seeing?

[fallacy]

There is a movie called The Big Short that did a good job explaining how the 2008 crash happened.

Quote “Somewhere along the line these B’s and double BBs’ went from a little risky to DOG SHI!. I’m talking about rock bottom fico scores. No income verification. Adjustable rates ... Dog SHI! The default mortgage rates are already up from 1%to 4% and if they rise to 8%, and they will a lot of these triple BBB will fail. When that happens Crash!"

[bobbyb13]

There was some greediness on the buying side of that round of housing drama but, like normal, the greed was mainly on the banking sector end- and a large portion of what pbj alluded to.
A lot of the investment was tenuous at best- the leverage blew it all up.
It's how all ponzi schemes eventually end up.

My last job on the mainland was working at a private mortgage lender.  It was alarming to learn what goes on in that industry.  I had to get out when I saw what it actually was- paycheck be damned.

The guy who owned the place could buy very detailed info for anyone in the database of the credit reporting agencies, based on any criteria he wanted.  "Give me a list of all the people in the USA who have a credit score between 'a-b' a debt load between 'c- d' an income between 'e-f' and own their own home."

There were fresh reams of paper every week with personal information that many would assume was confidential, all so that somebody could structure a refi or purchase to maximize what the bank would make, with little to no regard for what the homeowner may suffer.

When most of that turned out to be known bad investments for the last bagholder it was packaged up so that it could be sent somewhere that taxholders could make up for the losses.

Sadly President Barry and Eric "The Place-Holder" let nearly all banks and individuals involved off the hook with not prosecuting the many people involved and letting us pay for it by giving the banks who stood to collapse from these well known shenanigans the money to keep them alive- by the graces of our tax dollars.

And that's after we had first lost out because many financial advisors also had our retirements invested in that "vomit" and all that capital vaporized.

And then most people who lost their homes lost them in fraudulent foreclosures via illegal documents pumped out by a computer in a far removed bank.

It's all simply unconscienable behavior- and it will continue until it is properly punished.

What's really bad is that real productivity has not recovered since the last blow-up and soon we may have another.

Housing is a fart in a stiff breeze compared to how insolvent Social Security and the health care system as a whole (via Medicare and pricing collusion throughout) happens to be.

There already aren't enough people in the workforce to pay current entitlements even 10 years out as it is.

Invest in arable land so you can grow something to eat when a loaf of bread is a hundred useless american fiat bucks!

[fablog]

The 2008 crash was the consequence of the 2000 crash. The US government didn't want to take the loss and let die what needed to die, so they create a stimulus to buy house for everyone. The buble burst in 2008
 So I'm agree it's the responsibility of the government. But today, a government who let die a part of the economy won't be reelected, so I think the responsibility is shared with the citizens. The system is crazy and corrupted. The questiin isn't if it will end badly, the question is: when. As long as there is trust in the money, the game will continue. China understood that and have a huge gold stock. If the dollar crash (it won't be the first money to crash) for a lack of trust, China will propose a sound money. It could be this year as it could be in 10 years, who knows!

Envoyé de mon LEX722 en utilisant Tapatalk

[nitrogen_widget]

so I don't believe lumber and video card prices at least are because of inflation.

The real question as it pertains to these, is will the problem solve itself before inflation kicks in and makes the solution moot?  Your guess is as good as mine.

And where the video cards are concerned, due to the situation surrounding them, they have become a marketable commodity where prices are determined by supply and demand.  If the supply is NATURALLY short, and the demand is high, I wouldn't feel like a scumbag getting back my purchase price on these already ridiculously high priced items.  Screw the scalpers.  Those are the real scumbags.

I just looked after not looking for a month and prices have come down on the older high-end cards.
Like 10 yrs old (which is actually good enough to play most of today's games on mid to low settings)but still almost twice what they going for pre-pandemic.

I'm just grumpy i can't pick up a 5yr old video card for a spare PC for less than what it retailed for.

[danny_galaga]

It was 2010 and I think BTC was 5c.

Jesus Christ. Sell some of it at least!

[Vocalitus]

It was 2010 and I think BTC was 5c.

Jesus Christ. Sell some of it at least!

No point, it will more than triple in value by next year

[Vocalitus]

Look at the Quest 2...

Apples to oranges.  A high-end graphics card, as we have seen, can remain viable for close to a decade.  Given the rate of advancement and intense competition, it would have been financial suicide for FB not to have been able to meet demand with a "lower end" VR system.  There are already competitors looking to get a chunk of that market segment.

Look at the Quest available at Best Buy for $199.  Refurbished - looked new in the box (no hairs).

Bought a 10ft cable to play Alyx for $10 and it plays very well with an AMD 3600 and RX580.  No obvious lag and some near brown pant moments make the game awesome.  The old ticker can only do 60 minutes a day though...

[danny_galaga]

It was 2010 and I think BTC was 5c.

Jesus Christ. Sell some of it at least!

No point, it will more than triple in value by next year

At what point will it slow down? Do you think one coin be worth a billion dollars one day? If not, what?

[fallacy]

Noob, if he thought that way he would have already sold long ago. He will sell when he can think of a better investment to put that money into.

[Zebidee]

Noob, if he thought that way he would have already sold long ago. He will sell when he can think of a better investment to put that money into.

That's not how it works if you actually want to make money from investing. I'm not saying that "long-term hold" isn't a valid strategy, but it isn't one to apply to highly speculative stocks like bitcoin.

Risk management: A good strategy would be to minimise future risk and to lock in gains already made by selling a portion at either a pre-determined profit level, or once it has fallen a certain level from a peak (tip: you can do both with provisional stop-loss orders!). Managing your risk is the most important thing when investing, and once you have made a paper-profit you are at risk of losing it. So lock it in by selling some. If you still believe in bitcoin, you can buy back in later when you think the price has fallen enough and an upward trend is starting.

Another reason to sell some is that highly speculative stocks should make up a quite small proportion of your portfolio. The exact proportion is up to you, but my point is that if Bitcoin has gone up dramatically, an initially small proportion is now a relatively large proportion of your total portfolio. If something happens to it, you'll be hit hard. So again, de-risk yourself by selling some to bring your portfolio balance back into line.

If you don't care about portfolio balancing then you don't care about risk, and you are just gambling. May as well head off to Vegas.

In general you shouldn't sell something just so that you can buy something else. That's because the best times to sell and buy rarely coincide. Rising tides lift all boats, and rising markets lift all stocks. The time to sell is usually when the markets are up, and the time to buy is usually when they are down. It is therefore good practice to be disciplined with your buying and selling decisions, don't link them directly together because you set yourself up for selling and buying at the wrong times for the wrong reasons.

Might sound funny but when the GFC hit, my first thought wasn't "OMG my stocks have lost all their value!", it was "damn, I don't have enough cash to take advantage of the bargains". If only I'd sold some stuff earlier at "fair value", made some more cash available, I could've made a killing on undervalued stocks. But selling into a depressed market to get money to buy stuff with is crazy. The best times to buy and sell rarely align.

[Grasshopper]

Bitcoin is somewhat similar to a Ponzi scheme in that it's not backed up by any tangible revenue generating assets. Bitcoin's value is based simply on what investors think it's worth, and if they suddenly decide it's worthless, then a lot of people will get burned.

[fallacy]

Holding investments long term regardless of short term outcome is the opposite of gambeling. Yes, diversifying your investment is a must. I’m never going to buy single stocks because the risk that any company can go to zero at some point is too high (I learned that the hard way in the 90’s with MCI). Then you have something like Cisco system stock which still is used but never recovered from its crash in 2001 which makes no sense just from an inflationary stand point.


No the time to buy and sell never align that's why you should just buy and hold. For every win you have trying to day trade you will have a = loss. The worse thing is when you get a few small wins in a row then you grow confidence and go bigger just to watch yourself go straight into the red.


Real Estate is a good example of moving your investment to something else. Because of the upfront price that makes a barrier to entry to start that investment. The point is why sell your investment just to hold on to cash long term?

[fallacy]

Bitcoin is somewhat similar to a Ponzi scheme in that it's not backed up by any tangible revenue generating assets. Bitcoin's value is based simply on what investors think it's worth, and if they suddenly decide it's worthless, then a lot of people will get burned.

I thought that on its first run up a few years ago but I don't think that anymore. There is this smart youtuber named Barnacules on one of his podcasts he was talking about crypto and Bitcoin. He was saying anyone can start their own cryptocurrency (Why Dogecoin exists) He even started his own Barnacules coin. The problem is to get it seeded with miners, then most of the coins come from the creator himself, when he sells it will kill any value the coin might have gained. He was saying not only was Bitcoin the first but it had the time to be seeded across the world, so much so that not even China cannot take it over with the majority of mining machines at this point and manipulate the code. I feel like Bitcoin is here to stay.

I don't believe in any of the altcoins… I get that Etherum is like silver to Bitcoins gold it is like the moon to bitcoins earth. I guess it is alright.

Dogecoin this is the most dangerous one. Made successful because of the meme also because it was a joke the creator himself said he does not own any of the coins somehow giving it more legitimacy and trust. The problem is unlike bitcoin there is no cap to how many coins can be mind… any value the coin has will deflate on its own as more and more coins are created.  Some companies and Elon Musk are trying to capitalize on the meme by legitimizing it; fundamentally it is not a legit coin to begin with.

[danny_galaga]

Noob, if he thought that way he would have already sold long ago. He will sell when he can think of a better investment to put that money into.

That's not how it works if you actually want to make money from investing. I'm not saying that "long-term hold" isn't a valid strategy, but it isn't one to apply to highly speculative stocks like bitcoin.

Risk management: A good strategy would be to minimise future risk and to lock in gains already made by selling a portion at either a pre-determined profit level, or once it has fallen a certain level from a peak (tip: you can do both with provisional stop-loss orders!). Managing your risk is the most important thing when investing, and once you have made a paper-profit you are at risk of losing it. So lock it in by selling some. If you still believe in bitcoin, you can buy back in later when you think the price has fallen enough and an upward trend is starting.

Another reason to sell some is that highly speculative stocks should make up a quite small proportion of your portfolio. The exact proportion is up to you, but my point is that if Bitcoin has gone up dramatically, an initially small proportion is now a relatively large proportion of your total portfolio. If something happens to it, you'll be hit hard. So again, de-risk yourself by selling some to bring your portfolio balance back into line.

If you don't care about portfolio balancing then you don't care about risk, and you are just gambling. May as well head off to Vegas.

In general you shouldn't sell something just so that you can buy something else. That's because the best times to sell and buy rarely coincide. Rising tides lift all boats, and rising markets lift all stocks. The time to sell is usually when the markets are up, and the time to buy is usually when they are down. It is therefore good practice to be disciplined with your buying and selling decisions, don't link them directly together because you set yourself up for selling and buying at the wrong times for the wrong reasons.

Might sound funny but when the GFC hit, my first thought wasn't "OMG my stocks have lost all their value!", it was "damn, I don't have enough cash to take advantage of the bargains". If only I'd sold some stuff earlier at "fair value", made some more cash available, I could've made a killing on undervalued stocks. But selling into a depressed market to get money to buy stuff with is crazy. The best times to buy and sell rarely align.

Exactly all this. I'm not saying vocalitus has to do anything we say, especially if he only spent say five bucks on Bitcoin at the start. If it disappears tomorrow he's only lost five bucks. But if a dollar investment then is now worth say fifty Grand now, it sure would be sweet to just sell 10-20% of your holdings right now. 

Oh and Zebidee, I feel you. I've had three occasions now where markets feel sharply and I didn't have enough cash to take advantage. Doh!

[danny_galaga]

Fell sharply. It's insanely difficult to edit a post on my phone 

[Zebidee]

Exactly all this. I'm not saying vocalitus has to do anything we say, especially if he only spent say five bucks on Bitcoin at the start. If it disappears tomorrow he's only lost five bucks. But if a dollar investment then is now worth say fifty Grand now, it sure would be sweet to just sell 10-20% of your holdings right now. 

Oh and Zebidee, I feel you. I've had three occasions now where markets feel sharply and I didn't have enough cash to take advantage. Doh!

Using your limited cash to buy into something is a bit like being a sniper with a musket. You only get one shot and it takes ages to reload. Choose your targets carefully and aim well

However if you prepare and sell something to cash up during good times (and wait 3 days for the funds to clear in many cases), it is like having another few muskets ready and on hand during the bad times, when there are plenty of easy targets.

Aside from hoarding cash, there are a few sneaky ways to make sure you are cashed up in a crisis. However they all come at a cost, bit like insurance. Warning: these are only for "active" traders that know what they are doing.

You can use derivatives, like contracts for difference (CfDs) or options, to make bets that the market goes down. These come in all kinds of flavours but are usually linked to specific tradable securities (hence "derivative"). You can massively leverage your exposure and risk (and gain) with these so take care.

An interesting and less-risky one is an index warrant, which as the name implies are linked to market indexes. These also come in different flavours, but are very like insurance policies in that you buy the right to sell (or buy) at a set price. They can be set to automatically execute if certain conditions are met (NASDAQ falls by XX%), but they also have time limits. If the market tanks you trade the warrant for a cash bonanza when everyone else is floundering around cashless and selling cheap. Because they can be executed automatically, you can cash in while drinking daiquiris and eating peeled grapes by the pool. YUM YUM.

DISCLAIMER: Follow my ideas at your own risk! Always seek financial advice from some qualified person in you pay, that has insurance for when you sue them, before investing on some dumb idea from a guy giving armchair advice on BYOAC.

[danny_galaga]

Definitely no derivatives of any sort for me. And no leveraging. Just what I can put away. Mind you, I am thinking of buying a bit of Bitcoin and etherium, which for all intents and purposes is a derivative- that is, not a commodity. A friend has been trading for a number of years so aim getting learned up from him.

[Zebidee]

Definitely no derivatives of any sort for me. And no leveraging. Just what I can put away. Mind you, I am thinking of buying a bit of Bitcoin and etherium, which for all intents and purposes is a derivative- that is, not a commodity. A friend has been trading for a number of years so aim getting learned up from him.

Safer.

Don't learn just from your friend, even if they are wise. While I'm sure you'll learn things from them, you'll also pickup their bad habits (we all have them). Grab a few good books on share trading and investing, and if you want to be an active trader get at least one on trading to charting signals. Charting is a good way to pick up on short-medium term price trends, though there are a few caveats to that. You can mostly ignore charting if you are a longer term fundamentals buy-and-hold investor.

Whatever you do, develop an investment strategy and trading plan that works for you *and follow it*. It is your precious money so protect your capital by diversifying your investments across different sectors and markets. Decide what proportion you want to actively "play" with for short-term & speculative trading and stick to it (I would keep this relatively quite small). Continuously adapt your trading plan as needed but follow the plan, let it tell you what to do. Avoid making decisions "on the fly", while the numbers are whooshing past you - it doesn't work as emotions will override good sense.