Stocks: buy before close to day or ride it down another day or two
 

Some of us have our favorite stocks to play with. Mine have been Facebook, Ford and Rite Aid Drug. I've done ok making some spending money by riding their high and low swings back and forth. But like some others have done, I sold out of all of them a couple of weeks ago when the market really started going stupid.

Well now here it is two weeks later, I'm sitting on the money and all three stocks are down an average of 10-15%. What buy in suggestions? I'm thinking 1/3 purchase today, tomorrow and Wednesday. What says the group?

timing the market? ...

i like your idea.

I'm not a market timer on all of my investments. I'm not that smart or lucky. But these three stocks have had a predictable swing back and forth that has allowed me to have a bit of walking around money over the last few years. Except for the last 6 months, all they have done is go up along with the rest of the market. Hey if I guess wrong it won't be the end of the world for me.

I've got some cash on the sidelines as well. I think we have farther to fall.

Hold off. I'm thinking things find a new stable place next week sometime.

Iffn I was in that sitch with extra $$$ just waiting to get in the game, i'd do it now. Tonight.
Bet that it'll spring up in the morning.

but that is without consulting my crystal ball and my prognostications are not what they used to be.

If you liked the price at 10-15% higher.. then you should add to your position with the recent price action. Add to them as prices fall and look for new ones to start positions in. I've been watching Ford lately, and I've hit a lot of my price alerts in the past couple days so I'm ready to start adding again soon I think. I'm terrible at timing as usually things go up after I sell or go down after I buy :( But now just always looking to add to my positions. I just upped my 401k contribution today 5% to make sure I'm at least taking advantage of the recent sell off even if I'm to big of a wimp to buy in my brokerage, roth and IRA :D

Public storage, and private healthcare.

You're welcome. ;)

Buy low, sell high always works. Choosing when is harder. If you like the companies, think they have a good long term future, and are currently discounted, buy now and ignore the emotional market moves. You may miss the rock bottom but you lock in a known discount. Averaging over several days spreads your bets but there is no guarantee either way.

I bought just before close yesterday. Got lucky.

me too...at the insistence of my financial advisor.

Late last week I rolled out all my calls to at least 2016 and rolled a few of them down. Mainly DIS and GILD and NFLX. GILD and NFLX are killing today so that's nice. I got stopped out of a few of my non-divy stocks.

For fun, I am long SVXY. Seems like a no-brainer.

Oh, and when I say "That's Nice" i mean that the butt-clench is just a little less painful.

who do you recommend to buy through?

Be careful with the SVXY. I've looked at a few ways to trade the VIX, but every ETF I've ever seen has terrible tracking error to the VIX. It's been my experience that most ETF's that use the futures market fail to correlate closely with the underlying.

Just sucks to have the trade right, but the mechanism you use doesn't represent the real world.

If you think Vol is too high you might be better served just selling a straddle in the SP500.

I'm waiting to see the indices retest the recent lows. Overall I think this pullback should be bought, but I usually don't try to time exact bottoms or tops.

(I largely exited stocks in mid May, so I have been watching this whole thing from the sidelines. The few stocks I have, have been getting clobbered recently. The bond funds I have, have been doing okay. The net return has been about flattish. That's okay with me.)

Oh well, another clock cleaning today.

Yes today was a really strange day for SVXY; I got stopped out after lunch; and learned a few things re/spreads and stops on stuff that moves really fast. :eek:

I was 100% invested and got cold feet friday and punched out to zero. I was lucky and it saved me almost $100k.

I will likely not get back in until the Dow bounces at least once and then retests the lows...of today...or wherever it bottoms and moves up. I worried at midday today that classic strategy might have not been wise...but glad I held out to see the close...as that is typical pattern.