Unconventional Investors in the House?

[quote]challer1 wrote:

[quote]kakno wrote:
Many buy tablets but end up wondering what the hell to use them for. I don’t see them replacing computers any time soon. It’s more likely that computers will replace tablets IMO. Microsoft had to go that way with Windows 8. [/quote]

Computers will replace tablets? That’s preposterous. You are letting your prejudices blind you to the future. Even though I am a PC guy myself, writing this post on a $1500 custom desktop, I realize that technology goes one way and it is not backwards. You or I might feel that way about tablets, but the average user is not doing real work on their tablet nor are they playing high end games. The tablet does just about everything they need.[/quote]
Exactly. Tablets are a step back. You can’t multitask and you can’t really produce anything on them without it being a real pain in the ass. And I’m not so sure everyone could pay their bills with just a tablet. The only thing good about them is the resolution war Apple started, which has yet to fully spill over to computers.

Touchscreens are making their way into laptops. Some computers can do exactly everything a tablet does and everything a computer does. I think this will eventually kill android and iOS tablets, which are still just toys. I only use my Nexus 10 for reading. If I want to get something done, I still need to bring my laptop.

Surface sold better than expected, but many of those interested in windows tablets were waiting for the surface pro. (with x86; a real processor capable of running full windows and all windows programs with really good performance) A real windows tablet can replace a desktop, laptop and a tablet. The only obstacle is power consumption, and it will be really interesting to see what Intel’s Haswell processor family will bring to the table.

And on the phone side, budget windows phones will be really competitive against budget android phones. Give it a few years and I believe they’ll overtake iOS.

[quote]The way tech for the average user is heading is toward the cloud. The devices consumers will buy simply be an interface to interact with cloud-based applications. The idea of a computer or individual tablet will slowly fade, as users access the same base of information and software whether they are using their phone, tablet, or other yet developed device. Office computers will be replaced with workstations consisting of a small piece of hardware and a broadband connection for accessing the cloud. A keyboard and mouse (and perhaps possibly touch screen/voice commands) for improved efficiency are a possibility, but the resurgence of desktops is not.
[/quote]
We’ll see. Who’s to say you won’t use a windows computer to access the cloud? Moving everything to the cloud will increase latency a lot and is yet another step back. I still think most would prefer a competent windows laptop at the end of the day.

I don’t think Microsoft are going to be going down anytime soon, provided they move with the times. I do however think it is a mistake to invest in them, they are such powerful players in an increasingly competitive market. Realistically they aren’t going to get a much bigger market share than they do now, hence they are not going to be a good prospect for long term growth.

Challer1 is bang on the money with the cloud stuff. That is going to be the future, the only question is when. Internet speeds are increasing so quickly that the latency/load up issues will gradually become non issues. But then there’s no reason why Microsoft can’t keep up with that movement.

And for the record, I use windows 8 and think it’s fantastic, although some of the apps are a bit gimmicky and pointless, but I just don’t use them.

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Well, I’m tired of just seeing day traders, gold traders, market timers, &c. post their threads with their trades (or, not) in it.[/quote]

I consider myself a trader, not a timer. My view is timers are those who who rely on some sort of mechanical indicator or mathematical formula for entries and exits. Studies I have seen for timers beating the returns of the S&P range in the 1-4%.

It might be said that timers reduce risk, but beating the S&P or making money is difficult without increasing risk.

Timers generally do well avoiding bearish phases of the market. But they seldom occur. A passive buy and hold strategy will handily beat all but the elite of market timers.


What is it you like about the book? I read lots of books and have an extensive library…but have never read that one (Unconventional Investing). By the reviews of it on amazon it doesnt appear to be something I would consider…however, for a penny used or a few bucks I might take it on my next order batch and skim through it.

One good book that I read once and liked and recommend to a complete novice and may be similar is the Gone Fishing Portfolio…

…which lets you take a look and manage your funds once a year…and gives tips on avoiding the fees that suck money from the system. I consider it a good introduction to investing in the markets.

[quote]kakno wrote:
Exactly. Tablets are a step back. You can’t multitask and you can’t really produce anything on them without it being a real pain in the ass. And I’m not so sure everyone could pay their bills with just a tablet. The only thing good about them is the resolution war Apple started, which has yet to fully spill over to computers. [/quote]

I’ll say it again - most home users do not need to produce anything of merit on their personal computer. We both know that tablets are not good for productivity, but the average user’s home computer time is anything but productive. People spend most of their time watching youtube videos, check their facebook and email, and shop on amazon. For this purpose, the tablet is a step forward, like it or not.

[quote]kakno wrote:
And on the phone side, budget windows phones will be really competitive against budget android phones. Give it a few years and I believe they’ll overtake iOS.[/quote]

LOL. Windows might crack the tablet market with their surface pro, but there is NO WAY they will come close to iOS with the Windows phone, especially for budget phones. Appeal aside, how are they going to compete in the budget phone market when Windows wants to charge phone makers for using their OS while Google gives away Android for free?

[quote]challer1 wrote:

[quote]on edge wrote:
Hey. I just came up with a pretty decent investment scheme!

Check out this chart on Microsoft;

Buy at 25 and sell at 30. Doing this over the time period shown, looks like about 11 years, would give you 7 round trips and turn 2500 into more than 10,000. Thats not even factoring in the dividend, which is pretty decent these days and you would get over half of them.

Usually about the time you can spot these patterns is the time they go away but what the heck, next time msft hits 25 I’m in for 100 shares. Microsoft isn’t going any where so my biggest risk is that it gets away from me and with all the over-head on the market these days I don’t think that’s too likely.[/quote]

Don’t think it’s a good idea. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. It is also extremely foolish to think that MSFT is “not going anywhere” as well. I can envision a world where MSFT is at half its value in 5 years and completely irrelevant in 10 years. Surface tablet bombed, Windows 8 sucks, windows phones are just laughable, Google and twitter own search, Facebook and linkedin own social. PCs have been a dying market for awhile now and the laptop market just contracted for the first time ever last quarter. Not only that, but tablets are set to overtake laptops in total sales this year, and microsoft is getting crushed by apple and android-based tablets.

The only reason microsoft is still a profitable company is because most businesses still run windows and use MS office, which could easily change. We wouldn’t need to see the complete destruction of microsoft to see the stock price tank like a rock. All they have to do is report 1 bad quarter and cut their dividend and that stock falls 30% overnight.

With a plan like this, I think it would be easier to pick a stable regional bank, like WFC. Since nearly all their business is mortgages done in the US, the odds of the company having a really bad quarter are very low. Interest rates are very low and the housing market, though recovering, is still near its bottom. Definitely think it is ideal to trade in a winning company rather than one with a questionable future like MSFT.[/quote]

Good points and good discussion with Kakno.

Funny Intel was brought up. After I posted last night I started looking around for stock trading in a clear channel. Intel was the next best I found and I just happened to have bought Intel on Thursday for my son’s Edu fund.

My basic approach to investing is to invest in health care due to demographics, energy due to increasing world wide demand, and forign countries that have favorable demographics and natural resources. I’m highly preferential to dividends esp increasing dividends.

In my opinion the market has limited upside potential, not likely to go much above 1600 and we are in a mature bull market not having a correction in two years or a major correction in four. Due to my opinion about the upside potential converging with the fact of a mature market, I’ve been a seller for the past couple of months. Health care has been terrific for me and energy has been ok. I haven’t been selling my forign holdings which have done very well.

When we get a decent correction I’ll be buying back in. I don’t see any catalyst looming so I suspect most of 2013 will be a pretty good year for the market. I think 2014 will be ugly, we’ll see.

I’ve never done well with “story” stocks but I plan on buying Tesla if I still like the company by the time we get a correction. Some other out of “plan” stocks I will buy back are Starbucks and Costco. I like the companies and I like owning them.

Gold miners

[quote]challer1 wrote:
I’ll say it again - most home users do not need to produce anything of merit on their personal computer. We both know that tablets are not good for productivity, but the average user’s home computer time is anything but productive. People spend most of their time watching youtube videos, check their facebook and email, and shop on amazon. For this purpose, the tablet is a step forward, like it or not.
[/quote]
Browsing isn’t as “light” as it used to be. I want to watch a youtube video, browse the web with several tabs open at once, chat with some friends on facebook and buffer some other youtube videos all at once. That’s not a poweruser, that’s average lazy bum.

Even sites with lots of gifs and ads can be hard for the most powerful tablets and phones. As hardware gets better, bloatware increases too. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Booked

Students often need to take notes, others often need to write emails and documents, not just read them. That isn’t very fast on a tablet or phone.

[quote]
LOL. Windows might crack the tablet market with their surface pro, but there is NO WAY they will come close to iOS with the Windows phone, especially for budget phones. Appeal aside, how are they going to compete in the budget phone market when Windows wants to charge phone makers for using their OS while Google gives away Android for free?[/quote]

The apple logo adds 20% to any price. Not very hard to beat. And cheap bloated android phones will probably not match the experience you get from a Lumia 620 or similar. I’d prefer it to an iPhone 4 too.

The world is bigger than the US. When you’re not automatically forced into an overpriced contract, phone price matters. 95% of the apps an adult needs are there, and the OS is light and therefore quick even on slower hardware. Don’t count them out yet.

[quote]on edge wrote:
Funny Intel was brought up. After I posted last night I started looking around for stock trading in a clear channel. Intel was the next best I found and I just happened to have bought Intel on Thursday for my son’s Edu fund.[/quote]
Same danger there, but with a good twist. If android and iOS tablets do the impossible and kill the computer, someone still has to power the servers powering “the cloud”. And that’s going to be intel and to a smaller extent AMD.

Intel also make some mobile processors, which perform remarkably well both power and performance wise. In the Motorola RAZRi for instance. And they’ll only get better. Intel are at least a year ahead of the competition when it comes to manufacturing technology.

Be careful too if AMD seem to get closer to bankruptcy. With your anti-trust laws, there’s a risk intel could get split up so they don’t get a monopoly. With ARM processors though, they might not be considered to have a monopoly.

[quote]kakno wrote:

[quote]challer1 wrote:
I’ll say it again - most home users do not need to produce anything of merit on their personal computer. We both know that tablets are not good for productivity, but the average user’s home computer time is anything but productive. People spend most of their time watching youtube videos, check their facebook and email, and shop on amazon. For this purpose, the tablet is a step forward, like it or not.
[/quote]
Browsing isn’t as “light” as it used to be. I want to watch a youtube video, browse the web with several tabs open at once, chat with some friends on facebook and buffer some other youtube videos all at once. That’s not a poweruser, that’s average lazy bum.

Even sites with lots of gifs and ads can be hard for the most powerful tablets and phones. As hardware gets better, bloatware increases too. Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - When you die

Students often need to take notes, others often need to write emails and documents, not just read them. That isn’t very fast on a tablet or phone.

[quote]
LOL. Windows might crack the tablet market with their surface pro, but there is NO WAY they will come close to iOS with the Windows phone, especially for budget phones. Appeal aside, how are they going to compete in the budget phone market when Windows wants to charge phone makers for using their OS while Google gives away Android for free?[/quote]

The apple logo adds 20% to any price. Not very hard to beat. And cheap bloated android phones will probably not match the experience you get from a Lumia 620 or similar. I’d prefer it to an iPhone 4 too.

The world is bigger than the US. When you’re not automatically forced into an overpriced contract, phone price matters. 95% of the apps an adult needs are there, and the OS is light and therefore quick even on slower hardware. Don’t count them out yet.[/quote]

You’re still confusing stocks and the mass market with your personal preference. Just because YOU like windows does not mean the average user will. You’re right, the world is bigger than the US. The world is a LOT bigger than Sweden. Being from a tech savvy country like Sweden and being a young adult male, of course you don’t like tablets - they’re not efficient. However, the mass consumer market does not care about this. The mass market is buying tablets and phones as primarily entertainment devices, not like a computer.

As far as your bit goes about students, tablets have already overtaken schools on a mass scale in those that can afford it. My uncle teaches at some overpriced fancy private school, and he says all the students have a tablet. Each desk is a docking station with a keyboard. Students take around their tablet from class to class. No paper, no textbooks, everything done via tablet. Students have a “tablet pen” which they can use to “handwrite” things such as on math tests, which are saved into the tablet and available for the teacher to access and grade on their computer. I don’t think we’re too far off from seeing that play out in public schools.

[quote]on edge wrote:
My basic approach to investing is to invest in health care due to demographics, energy due to increasing world wide demand, and forign countries that have favorable demographics and natural resources. I’m highly preferential to dividends esp increasing dividends.

In my opinion the market has limited upside potential, not likely to go much above 1600 and we are in a mature bull market not having a correction in two years or a major correction in four. Due to my opinion about the upside potential converging with the fact of a mature market, I’ve been a seller for the past couple of months. Health care has been terrific for me and energy has been ok. I haven’t been selling my forign holdings which have done very well.

When we get a decent correction I’ll be buying back in. I don’t see any catalyst looming so I suspect most of 2013 will be a pretty good year for the market. I think 2014 will be ugly, we’ll see.

I’ve never done well with “story” stocks but I plan on buying Tesla if I still like the company by the time we get a correction. Some other out of “plan” stocks I will buy back are Starbucks and Costco. I like the companies and I like owning them.[/quote]

I actually hold some TSLA. If it jumps up to $40, I’ll sell in a week. I think it’s a good stock to have but like you I think there will be a dip at some point given that their valuation is already pretty high. Only thing that worries me about this stock is that their primary goal is to spread the adoption of electric cars, not become the world’s leader in car sales.

I like costco and starbucks too. Definitely would be a buyer of costco if it ever dipped to 95. SBUX I like too, but would ideally like it at 50.

Good points. We’ll see how it turns out. The new competition will be very interesting and great for consumers.

[quote]on edge wrote:
BC, what do you mean by “tactical asset allocation”?[/quote]

What was called market timing, it got a bad rap, so it seemingly turned into tactical asset allocation (because asset allocation is the best way to not lose all your money…free lunch, diversification, &c.)…um, day trading would be the most popular term though not entirely accurate.

[quote]Hold Up wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Well, I’m tired of just seeing day traders, gold traders, market timers, &c. post their threads with their trades (or, not) in it.[/quote]

I consider myself a trader, not a timer. My view is timers are those who who rely on some sort of mechanical indicator or mathematical formula for entries and exits. Studies I have seen for timers beating the returns of the S&P range in the 1-4%.

It might be said that timers reduce risk, but beating the S&P or making money is difficult without increasing risk.

Timers generally do well avoiding bearish phases of the market. But they seldom occur. A passive buy and hold strategy will handily beat all but the elite of market timers.


What is it you like about the book? I read lots of books and have an extensive library…but have never read that one (Unconventional Investing). By the reviews of it on amazon it doesnt appear to be something I would consider…however, for a penny used or a few bucks I might take it on my next order batch and skim through it.

One good book that I read once and liked and recommend to a complete novice and may be similar is the Gone Fishing Portfolio…

…which lets you take a look and manage your funds once a year…and gives tips on avoiding the fees that suck money from the system. I consider it a good introduction to investing in the markets.
[/quote]

There are plenty of books that I like, but mostly because I like the fact that most people (who fail to beat the market) don’t like this guy even though he receives a flat fee of $1m to routinely bring in above market returns to the endowment fund he works for (having a large endowment fund allows him to take higher risk investments (such as real estate around the school)). He basically has a large industry that not only hates what he says but also hates that he goes against the norm for his industry in how he invests and how he is compensated.

He advocates compensation that would eliminate fat cats and would de-incentivize fund managers in making unwarranted risk.

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]Hold Up wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
Well, I’m tired of just seeing day traders, gold traders, market timers, &c. post their threads with their trades (or, not) in it.[/quote]

I consider myself a trader, not a timer. My view is timers are those who who rely on some sort of mechanical indicator or mathematical formula for entries and exits. Studies I have seen for timers beating the returns of the S&P range in the 1-4%.

It might be said that timers reduce risk, but beating the S&P or making money is difficult without increasing risk.

Timers generally do well avoiding bearish phases of the market. But they seldom occur. A passive buy and hold strategy will handily beat all but the elite of market timers.


What is it you like about the book? I read lots of books and have an extensive library…but have never read that one (Unconventional Investing). By the reviews of it on amazon it doesnt appear to be something I would consider…however, for a penny used or a few bucks I might take it on my next order batch and skim through it.

One good book that I read once and liked and recommend to a complete novice and may be similar is the Gone Fishing Portfolio…

…which lets you take a look and manage your funds once a year…and gives tips on avoiding the fees that suck money from the system. I consider it a good introduction to investing in the markets.
[/quote]

There are plenty of books that I like, but mostly because I like the fact that most people (who fail to beat the market) don’t like this guy even though he receives a flat fee of $1m to routinely bring in above market returns to the endowment fund he works for (having a large endowment fund allows him to take higher risk investments (such as real estate around the school)). He basically has a large industry that not only hates what he says but also hates that he goes against the norm for his industry in how he invests and how he is compensated.

He advocates compensation that would eliminate fat cats and would de-incentivize fund managers in making unwarranted risk.[/quote]

The other thing I like about the book is that it is below my level, but still somewhat in-depth (goes into theory) for the average user. Using the book, if you implement the strategy it takes maybe an hour initially and 20 minutes a quarter (or once a year) to adjust.