Click chart to enlarge
The chart above is a chart of SPY, which tracks the S&P. It is in the same place as it was 6 months ago, which we predicted in our last post. We didn't know what path it would take to get back here, but we did know that it had no upside. Why? The Obama tax code is designed to support the lazy and hurt the ambitious.
Here's the math...
For the average New York family making less than $217k, the taxes are as follows:
Federal income tax: 28%
Social Security tax: 10.4% + 2% at maturity = 12.4%
Medicare tax: 2.9% + .6% at maturity = 3.5%
NYS income tax: 6.9%
NYS sales tax: 8.63%
Real estate tax: 5%
Total tax: 64.43%
With 2/3rd's of their income going to taxes, and nearly all the rest going to health insurance, the average self-employed New Yorker earning $200k a year gets to keep about $17,000 of their earnings.
In contrast, the average New Yorker making $17,000 a year gets to keep 100%, or $17,000 of their earnings.
When you consider that the lifeblood of America's economy is its small business owners, it hardly seems efficient to take their incentive away.
92 comments:
Snot,
You seem like a generally smart guy but the ignorance and bigotry of this post really lowers my opinion of you. I have heard it from you before but let me once again remind you that people who make less money are not lazy and people who make more money are not somehow more ambitious, smarter, better then others or deserving of greater things in this society.
I have two children. One works as an investment anaylist and makes a lot of money doing a job that has benefits, travel, lots of days off and is 9-5 The other child works 5-9am at UPS loading trucks and then goes home sleeps and gets up and works at the local grocery store in the meat dept from 1-9pm. Typically logging 60hours a week he makes around 30K a year which barely covers his mortgage and car payment. It is the tale of two worlds and it burns my ass to hear prententious asses like you pontificate about how wealth is tied to work or how somehow people who make less money work less or are lazy. Perhaps gov. Romney should make a few staements like that and we'll see how his campagin goes. I am sure you sit in a room at a computer all day thinking you work hard. Please come by the farm here and we will put you out in the field picking berries for a day. In regards to your simple breakdown of taxes lets first all state taxes are up to the state. If you don't wnat to pay property taxes you do not have to own any property.
I am not sure how you come to the fact that should a New Yorker making $217,000 have to pay 64% in taxes he ends up with $17,000? I believe he ends up with about $79,000 The guy digging a ditch for $17,000 still pays social security and sales tax. Why don't we just say he makes $15,000 after taxes. So the lazy ditch digger makes $15,000 but the ambitious computer gazer makes $79,000. Please tell me again how you think this is taking away peoples incentive not to dig ditches.
Rich people always bemoan why they have to pay the most of the taxes. I am going to let you rich super smart people in on a secret...it's because you have all the money. Creating a society where we have this great chasm between all the rich people and the rest is not something to aspire to. It will not serve our country, or our society well.
Squarpeg,
I think some things need to be clarified. The "lazy" does not refer to either of your children... far from it! In the 1960's, under JFK, just under 12% of the population of the United States were dependent on the government. Today, that number is nearly 22%. 67 million Americans live off of the government, not including government employees.
It's that difference of 10% that we're referring to... that 10% of people who make a living off of learning how to work the system that comprise "the lazy". They are a drain on the rest of us hard working individuals who contribute to society, whether we do it by shipping parcels, chopping meat, or pushing pencils.
I got my start in a meat room. One of my jobs was making the sausage. It wasn't hard mixing the spices or cutting the pork into chunks that would fit into the machine. Nor was it hard to run them through the machine into the casings. What was hard was doing it in a freezer. Ask your child. They'll tell you that after stuffing enough sausage to fill the case, you can't feel your hands for quite some time. It was so cold it actually hurt.
I didn't have enough skills to get a job doing much of anything. But I soon learned that it didn't take skill. It took attitude.
Not the attitude of entitlement, but the attitude of "what can I do for my country". I was the opposite of that 10% that asks what their country can do for them. I have no doubt your children are too. It just seems today that dependency is the theme of America, and it's accelerating. When you create a system of dependency as we have, you create dependents.
It kills me to see someone collecting disability because they sprained their ankle, when meanwhile you can walk to the corner store and see a quadraplegic gainfully employed bagging groceries.
The only disability in that 10% of entitled people is a disabled attitude.
In JFK's time, 25% of federal spending paid for those dependent on Uncle Sam. Today, that number is 70%.
To further clarify our point about those in lower income brackets having the same expendable income as those in higher income brackets, we would have to make a new post. There are many tax codes that kick in to further limit benefits as income increases. Too many to list. Not to mention that $80k in NY is likely similar to $20k in other parts of the country.
Your children are clearly not the problem. But we do have a very significant problem that is only getting worse each year. (8.1% worse each year if you need to affix a number to it).
We, as hard working self-employed New Yorkers, are frankly tired of footing the bill.
I don't disagree that there are huge issues to be fixed, not only in the disability program but in so many areas. My observation is to be very careful about how you see yourself in regards to others. Feeling that you are the hard working one and that society is stealing your personal wealth to give to the lazy parasitic people is a bad thought process. Yes,there is some truth to it, but your money also goes to many extremely needy people. When I was a young man and had two small kids and was making $5.00hr. I took food assistance for about a year. I have to say looking back it was a blessing, it really helped us out at that point in time. Let me thank you personally for that.
I live a more comfortable life now, and yes I am a business owner myself. I spend the winters on my boat in Florida. I am always staggered by the shear immensity of wealth that rings the 1500 mile coast line. Unbelievable really. I also travel to Mississippi on occasion and the contrast in some areas is so great it makes you wonder if you are in a different country. The two worlds are not the same, the opportunities and struggles of people in those different stratas are also not the same. I do not dispute your notion that we should not encourage dependency in people. We need a rework that to a better system. You must also admit you are not an island alone in your wealth creation. You are a capable worker, a fortunate person amongst all 300 million of us calling this country our home. It should not be the goal of our society to simply raise an elite class of rich people who are not asked to help assist others. I think you are probably doing alright, as I am. Suppose we could convince you that the money you were paying actually only went to people in real need or to causes in society you thought were worthy. Would you still have an issue with the amount of taxes you are paying?
Thanks for the thoughtful reply as always. It's amazing this blog still has a bit of a heartbeat. We're tossing around the idea of reviving it. To your comments, we would not have any issue with the amount of tax we're paying if we felt it was going to people in real need. In fact, we'd gladly pay more, as evidenced by our voluntary contributions to the 9-11 fund and the Katrina fund.
The difficulty we have is accepting the amount we're paying out to a new breed of dependents that have learned to work a system with no real enforcement. It's the same issue we have with the stock market. Nobody enforces the rules. When the SEC fines a company for illegal practices, the company is forced to pay back a small percentage of the money they made on the illegal practice. That makes no sense to us.
Government handouts in the U.S. have gotten to a point that they work in a similar way as Wall Street. This country is flooded with a new breed of dependents who dedicate their time to learning how to fleece the system. And no one is there to stop them, so the number of dependents continues to grow. They tell their friends, and their friends tell their friends, and so on.
If we could have a percentage of our tax money back so that we could use it to send a check directly to the poor in Mississippi, it would renew our faith in the system.
You would not believe the number of freeloaders on Long Island, New York. Perfectly young, healthy, mentally stable individuals who chose to be on unemployment or disability rather than work at a job that is "below" them. I, for one, never felt that packing sausage at the local supermarket was below me. That was at a time when only 1 in 10 people required government assistance. Today it's 1 in 5. Who are these people, and why do they feel so entitled? Should we really be paying for Ms. Fluke's contraception? Or is she just part of this new breed of dependents that cannot imagine having to pay their own bills? Couldn't she instead have gotten a job at the local diner waiting tables while going to school? After all, that's what we did.
Imagine a country in which there is a fund that pays out $12,000 to anyone who turns in someone living off of the government without real need. Further imagine a country where if it is found that the tip was without merit, that tipster would pay $12,000 into the fund.
In a matter of about a year, we'd be back to a 10% dependency rate, and 50% of government spending would be slashed. That 50% would go a long way to giving back to the poor and rebuilding their homes, their cities and their lives. We think it's time that the fleecers pay instead of the rich.
SDS
HDGE Consider HDGE instead of a leveraged index ETF that degrades over time.
Let him buy SDS. It goes under $15 again today and it will continue to degrade his portfolio away unless he finds a new trick.
SDS degrades if you hold it - it gets "worser and worser"
Hi Snot,
Are you going to double down on your SDS position when it hits the neighborhood of 13? Or capitulate to the market's seemingly endless slow melt-up? I've been eyeing the QID, but the NASDAQ looks like it's only in the center of it's channel, and (just like the S&P 500) has more room left to the upside before it will pull back in. Does the S&P/DOW/NASDAQ/Wilshire 5000s last three months of consolidation under their respective 200 day linear regression lines concern you at all? They all look to be using that line as a potential springboard.
Thanks in advance for your reply.
Be careful of following Snot's advice. You don't know who he is any more than any other anonymous poster in message boards or anonymous blogs like this. If you followed him down the LED path, remember what happened to your portfolio then. And remember his infamous advice at another tipping point -- "sell, sell, sell." The DOW promptly went up 1200 points starting the very next day, never came back down, and the "sell" message was erased from the blog. Snot's holding SDS goes against the advice he has give all throughout the LDK, the POT, and the LED years of his "career" as an "analyst." He urges others to find the strongest sector and then find the strongest stocks in the sector and ride them up the channel until they peak. Meanwhile, if you can short, short weakness. He doesn't short stocks directly, he claims, because he is investing via a retirement account at the real estate company where he works. He doesn't manage a hedge fund ("we" - ha).
The market overall is up well over 10% YTD. Holding a leveraged index short while the market is up around 10% is not "long relative strength - short relative weakness." It is leveraged index.
To follow Snot's original advice, if someone took a sector like tech, one might have ridden Apple this year and done well on its relative strength while shorting HP or shorting in a weak sector like solar (LDK, FSLR). Or one could stay conservative and draw dividends and sleep well at night. I did the latter and I'm up 12% for the year. As always, do your own DD.
Will SDS drop below $14 this week?
Now the question is when will SDS drop below $13. Follow Snotwheel or follow the FED?
Wrong. The question is will Snot erase this thread before SDS drops before $13.00.
Reverse split. SDS continues to degrade and decline. The new number requires recalculation. Maybe people will forget the pain or ignore the reality. Need 9% or 10% just to get back to the so-called "buying levels" and then 22% to get back to 11,000, where the S&P supposedly "belongs." Wow. 30% total of pain. While we wait for that, I'm making money, and I'm positioned safely with lots of bonds. Snot, do you still hold nothing but SDS?
Snot, so now that you're at break-even with the SDS back up to 56, are you going to continue to hang on to it, or dump it?
Break even??????????? 56 divided by 4 is $14. More recently he was buying some on dips in the $15s, but he had been holding it much longer from earlier in the year and the market has moved well up since then.
Anon, don't you get it? You are responding to Snot posing as Anonymous, claiming he is break even, so that he can suddenly bring out a new strategy and new portfolio and claim all is well. But so few people are visiting here now, it doesn't matter. He can just erase this thread and start all over. Whatever! Yawn!
Snot,
Since you invest in a retirement account, what do you think about this?
http://www.investingdaily.com/11059/business-development-companies-bdcs-another-tax-advantaged-investment
Joe
Good day for you SNOT? Or good two days? Three more weeks of this and you should be back to even, so will you develop a new strategy? The Socialist Entitlement States of Amerika Portfolio?
All the old-timers here, if you are still around, look at LDK. It temporarily became a penny stock and is still flirting around the $1.00 price. What a long, extended stage 4 decline. Yikes!
My pick in place of the degrading, dangerous SDS. We may lose tax breaks on capital gains and dividends, etc., so buy BRKB, or BRKA if you have enough to invest. Crazy low P/E, P/B, etc. fundamentals. Doesn't pay a dividend. Lots of institutional holders and mutual fund holders (63% or so) plus insiders (12%). As always, do your own D/D.
BRKB sounds good, but don't sell all of your dividend paying equities yet. After the sell-off, they should be just as sound fundamentally as before. Even if dividends are not taxed more favorably in 2013 forward, an equity that pays a dividend may still have a legitimate place in your portfolio. In this brief election downturn,--I hope it is brief and already over--telecomm and utilities have been especially hard hit. However, now might be the time to buy something like T or VZ or SO. Other bargains may be there like MCD, which I bought two days ago. If Europe gets their debt, entitlement issues back from the brink -- some signs they are -- and if the fiscal cliff is avoided for the near-term, the next 6 or 7 months may be very good for equities.
Snot has frequently claimed that everything is rigged so that the big boys can rake in the cash. If so, check out this article which gives a Goldman Sachs report on hedge fund underperformance this year. You can listen to Snot or you can listen to facts.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/smart-money-hedge-funds-now-191817907.html
Snot often says that news is insignificant and that all one needs to do is read the chart. Everything one needs to know is in the chart. Problem with this is that the chart only tells you what has been. It isn't certain in predicting the future. Usually selling high in the channel works, because an equity will pull back and give you a chance to buy lower. But sometimes an equity breaks out of the channel and the channel establishes a new path. As for news, look at the chart. When House Speaker John Boehner spoke today and suggested he would lead Republicans in trying to fix the fiscal cliff, putting revenue increases on the table, with a need for Democrats of doing the same with spending cuts, the market rallied from a partial percentage point deficit to a very nice gain or the day. News. And the market reacted. Just like if we get bad news, the market may react the other way. How else does one explain that immediate reaction on the Street today? Oh, it was already planned by the corrupt people at Goldman Sachs and other financial firms who totally control the market? Yeah, right. Sure. I guess that is why the overwhelming majority of hedge funds this year have returns behind the market indexes, and some of them are even in negative territory in contrast to 10%+ by the indexes.
SDS is down to $55.93 at the close, which divided by a factor of 4 puts SDS back under $14 in pre-reverse split terms (October 4/5 the date for the reverse split). It got close to going under $13 ( x 4 = $52) two and three months ago. Will it go back down and close under $13? Watch the chart AND the news. If we avoid the fiscal cliff, it might. If we don't, then SDS might be a buy. I hope none of you have harmed your portfolio holding SDS for the last few months.
An old article on decay if one holds a leveraged ETF or ETN over a period of time. These leveraged ETFs are designed for day trading or very short term (days or a week or two) trading, not investing. This is because they tend to degrade over time. The more volatile the market, the more quickly they degrade. So beware of following Snot on SDS or any other leveraged "investment."
article on decay
Snot's LED darlings over the last 2 to 3 years.
RBCN, his "relative strength" racehorse, from $30 to $6.25, and showing "relative weakness."
VECO, from $56 to $29, although it is off its much lower bottom.
CREE, from $70+ to $33, although it is off its much lower bottom.
SDS, his one trick pony after giving up on LED, from $81 to $55 over the last year, approximately.
The S&P over the last 3 years, up approximately 28%. And the S&P is up about 12% over the last year compared to Snot's current choice, SDS being down about 30% over the last year.
Listen to Cramer and a multitude of other experts. Diversify. Don't follow anonymous real estate salesmen acting as bloggers in finance. Don't follow them down a one-trick-pony path. For example, if you had all of you money in VWINX, a conservative balanced mutual fund, over the last 3 years, you would be up 20%. Don't listen to posters like me on a blog. Do your own DD.
"I'll never abandon this blog" (Snot).
Well???????????????
It will take a fiscal cliff crash of epic proportions for Snot to get back to even while the indexes are well above 10% for the year. No wonder Snot has abandoned his blog.
Hey, Mr. "I'll never abandon this blog," why don't you just kill it?
chart for SDS which shorts the S&P
Looking at the chart, in January, 2012 Snot recommended being 80% and using SDS to short the market. SDS has declined since them looking like stage 4, but also due to the degredation one gets from holding these leveraged instruments. In July 2012 he was staying the course. SDS had experienced a partial recovery in the previous two months, but it was already on its way down again. There was another partial recovery in November, but it continues DOWN.
That was 80% in cash.
Looking at SPY, each time in the last year and a few months that Snot had declared doomsday for the market, SPY has taken off. For the sake of the majority that are long the market, Snot, please post another doomsday message. We want another rally.
SPY
Snot has been wrong since his infamous "Sell Sell Sell" call which was posted RIGHT at the absolute bottom.
In our lifetime we will never see a call that was more wrong than that one.
2013 good year for equities?
The above article suggests that 2013 will be a good year for equities. If so, it will be a bad year for SDS and Snot. Should he "sell, sell, sell" SDS?
Where, oh where, has my Snotwheel, sell, sell, sell, oops, LEDs have died, oops, the market has rallied and SDS is bleeding, oops, news does actually matter, oops, fundamentals do matter, oops, the chart only tells you what has already happened and can't predict the future for certain so I've got to do something other than look at a chart, oops, I got caught using my Steelelana name to pump my Snotwheel blog, oh my, I erased whole sections of my blog to try to get rid of my bad calls like "sell, sell, sell," ridiculously blaming it on the thread being too long, but people still remembered the bad call, gone?
SDS down 1% today. Continues to degrade, decline, and generally get killed. GOOG hit a home run. Equities are crushing the shorts in afterhours. Nice time to be a bull. Sentiment is getting mighty positive.
Whew, what a thrashing AAPL took. Out to the woodshed and beat to a pulp. The darling of the hedgies and big boys. It hit $700 and many experts said it would go to $1,000. It has been down hill ever since. With all of their cash, it is getting cheaper and cheaper by the day. I might buy it if it goes below $400.
How low will it go? Calculating backward for the 1/4 reverse split, SDS is flirting with $12.00. That is some serious pain. And Snot is silent. Back on September 13th, I posted:
Now the question is when will SDS drop below $13. Follow Snotwheel or follow the FED?
I actually thought Snot would erase this thread first before it went below $13. Now we are flirting with $12 (in pre-reverse split numbers). And still Snot is MIA.
Meanwhile, I just picked up a cheap copy of "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham at a used bookstore. Pretty cool.
Ouch! SDS getting killed. Are Snot's supposed "clients" standing for his lack of performance? Who would stay with a money manager who stubbornly refuses to exit such a hugely losing position? That is the classic amateur mistake- waiting to be made "whole" again.
Ladies and gentlemen. SDS just went below $12, in pre-reverse split 1 to 4 valuation. That is what happens when you hold these leveraged Proshares babies longterm. Proshares tells you they are designed for VERY short term trading. Does Snotwheel warn people of that fact? Does he warn newbies who might wander on to his blog? Yikes. Where did the money go?
An up day for SNOT. How about that.
An AAPL a day keeps the portfolio growing. AAPL goes up $5 or $10 and I sell my 100 shares. AAPL goes down $5 or $10 and I buy them back. Wash, rinse, repeat. Really ran up to the close. Maybe someone knows something. Listen for whispers.
I suppose Snot doesn't really give a damn that he keeps losing money day after week after year shorting a market that just won't quit melting up. After all, it isn't HIS money that he's losing, it's his poor sap "clients" money that he's losing! Those sadly misguided blokes. Time to find an advisor that knows it's better to take a small loss and move on than to let it grow into an epic fail like he has. How do you sleep at night knowing that you've lost your clients millions of dollars (supposedly) Snot??
"De pain...de pain!!"
His "clients." He doesn't run a hedge fund. He is in the real estate business in New York and a few people in the company where he is an employee allow him to manage a small retirement account, or they did some years ago. Who knows what the situation is today or what the truth really was back then. The "we" and "us" in his posts from years ago was pompous posturing that fooled a bunch of people into thinking he was someone of importance in the financial field. He would also post under the name Steelelana and brag on Snotwheel and Snotwheel's blog in order to try to gain a following. Multiple identities. A legend in his own mind. "Millions of dollars"???? Hardly.
So many conflicting things have been said by Snotwheel and by others over the years, all of them hiding behind aliases, that no one knows the real truth except the person posting each message. Does anyone except an idiot really take investment advice from a blog under an alias name like Snotwheel? I doubt it. This is entertainment, just like most Yahoo finance message board are entertainment.
BUY BUY BUY!!!
Whoever recommended HDGE is getting killed if they are still in it. Not as bad as those who are in SDS if they are still in it, but still bad. I hope Ruby did not naively follow Snot into SDS. Oh the pain. Going down, going down, down. Going down, going down, down.
1. Diversify your investments,
2. Trim costs and fees,
3. Eliminate debt,
4. Preserve capital,
5. Don't invest on margin,
6. Don't spend more than you have, in other words, save.
Nothing fancy there, but it will work better than SDS in a bull phase of the market or trying to catch a trend like LED that is already at the top.
Okay, so when WILL the SDS, QID or DXD be a "buybuybuy"? Anyone starting to get tempted?
Not me, not yet, and when a correction comes, I'll probably use something else to short. Have a small short of long treasuries now. When FED even hints at an exit, there will be a blood bath.
SDS just keeps on disappearing, just like Snot has disappeared when his advice was kaput.
Stocks are going to the moon!
Those who are long, who ignored Snot. On the count of four. All together now. 1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . "Kaaaching. Ring. Ring. Ring. Cash Register Ring."
Waaaaaah! It's not any fun when all I do is lose money!
I'm going to pick up all my marbles and go home and never write on this blog again!
Snot said, "Go for POT, the fertilizer company. Go for POT." But he was late to the party. Those who followed him were even later. POT collapsed and went to stage 4. Some newbies seemed to have lost money. Their postings expressed alarm.
Snot played with the leveraged indexes and said, "Sell, sell, sell." The indexes rallied that very day and went on a bull run. Snot erased that part of his blog but many readers simply would not forget.
Snot reappeared pumping LED and relative strength. Those ponies ran out of relative strength pretty quick and the mo-mo LED stocks blew up. Snot disappeared once again for months.
He reappeared and said he would never abandon this blog. He put most of his money in cash, supposedly, and some in a leveraged short, saying the market couldn't go any higher. It has done nothing but go higher ever since and Snot has been missing in action.
So much for Snot the great financial adviser. But what do you expect for a financial adviser named Snotwheel?
What was the on-line name of that dude who was always a contrary to everyone else and who drew these wild charts with predictions off of every single little blip up and down on the chart. He claimed that he was making huge profits every other day on the basis of his chartology even though you could track his predictions in Snot's blog and they were correct only about 40% of the time, depending on the vagueness of his language and the flip-flop nature of his prognosis. Toward the end before he disappeared, he claimed he was into options and that he was making 10x and 20x profits every other day. What a joke. Wonder what really happened to him and what he was really like.
Now that Snot is down 30%, 40%, 50%, how much is it, on his short trade, it may be approaching the time to prepare for a correction or a pullback in the market? Why? Because of Snot? Hardly. Because of technicals. Notice that every sector is overbought except utilities, seriously overbought. Also, during this earnings season, revenues and profits are looking weaker and weaker. The economy and recovery are both very fragile. Finally, June is approaching.
article on sectors being overbought
But don't listen to me. Go to the link and read from experts and read the WSJ and the Street and other reliable sources.
Snot says, "News doesn't matter. Ignore the news. Don't bother with fundamentals either. Just read the chart. Everything you need to know is in the chart." Well, I ignored Snot, as usual, and I not only read the chart on PG, I checked the fundamentals of the company. They were still good when I read the news that PG had been clobbered 7% to 8% on an earnings/guidance issue a month ago. So I started trading PG on the bounce and the climb back up over the last month. Nice 1% and 2% pay offs multiple times over the last month. Then there was more NEWS, which Snot says does not matter. Ackerman was pumping PG. I made sure I kept a hefty share of shares in my portfolio as I kept trading. Wham! More BIG NEWS hit the wires this morning. Snot claims that the street is crooked and that the market is rigged ahead of time and that a news story is chosen after-the-fact, good or bad, to explain why the market went up or down. Nada. This was news early this morning that the former CEO was being brought back in. Did Ackerman the activist investor have anything to do with it? Whatever. PG was up 4% immediately after the news in premarket and it opened up 4% and held the gain all day.
Kachinnnnnngggggg!!!!!!!!!!
Ring me a nice extra 4% profit on PG. Conclusion? Listen to the news. Check the fundamentals. And read the charts. Not Snot. :)
Anyone buying SDS?
I bought T (AT&T) over the past three days. Telecomm stocks were hit hard with the FED easing talk, since big dividend stocks went down more than the S&P as a whole. T went down about 10%. It was a bargain with its great dividend and the upcoming ex-dividend date in early July. It was showing signs of being oversold on the chart. Stochs were starting to give a buy signal. RSI was giving bullish divergence. It bounced off the 200 day average. Some good news came out about an innovation center being opened. As always, do your own DD.
chart
Yesterday was ex-dividend for T (AT&T) for me. Counting the dividend (45 cents) I'll get in a few days, that is approximately 5% for a less than three week trade. I hope some of you jumped in on it. I cashed out half of the shares yesterday. I'll sell the other half today. Will this rally continue?
why don't you just kill it, snot?
Snot's last blog entry was about 1 year ago. 1 year and 1 day ago to be exact. Any bets on him doing anything this July 23rd? I bet one can of Sam's clone of Dr. Pepper that Snot won't do anything. :) Someone else want to bet one Sam's cola that he will come out with a grand new strategy for making a killing in the market, acting like a pro investor, pretending that he has been making a killing in the market all along but he just hasn't had time to share what he's been doing with readers on the blog?
All you have to do is go to the top of this page and click on "Next Blog" a few times to see how many other losers have attempted to write blogs regarding the stock market. Most of them have also thrown in the towel, proving once again that "Those who can, do, and those who can't, teach".
Cold Hard Truth, you sound like Snot posing as "Cold Hard Truth," because the line about teachers is one of his favorite lines. An alias hiding behind an alias. You could have at least used Steelana, the name you used to use in message boards to pump your blog, saying how great Snot's blog was.
Ya, because Snot is the ONLY person to ever say that (very true) line about teachers.
Unfortunately, that line is true for Snot as well. If a person was an uber successful trader why would they be wasting their precious time and energy trying to help a bunch of home gaming blog trolling pikers?
Next I wonder how long it will take for posters to start blaming Snot for the beating POT is taking today!
Ahhhh, but the line isn't true. Cramer is a teacher and he made tens of millions in trading and then in his hedge fund. There are tons of other examples. Yeah, the ferts are taking a beating today. Anyone going bottom fishing. I've gone bottom fishing one 4 or 5 earning misses and done well so far. I got lucky on AAPL. I didn't notice when its earnings report was coming up and purely by luck I bought it two days before it reported and got a nice pop. Yeah baby. Today I try XIV after selling MCD for a little 2% gain. Waiting on my T and MSFT bottom fished buys to run up 2% and I'll sell them. I, for one, never blamed SNOT, because I didn't take his advice. I preferred to be a Troll on his blog. More fun.
Snot did do some decent teaching in his blog and in his posts. It was nothing original to him, as he would quickly tell you. He was merely passing along a few principles of Graham and others on value investing and the ideas related to stages an equity typically passes through and longer term channel trading. If you ignored the sometimes "spot on," sometimes "spot off," analysis regarding solar, fertilizer, LEDs, leveraged ETFs for following the indexes, his basic approach was quite useful for some investors. His condescending attitude turned a lot of people off, though, and made his pre-blog posting in LDK's message board section a lightening rod and his blog comments sections less informational and more testosterone flushing sessions. I, for one, would enjoy a lower key blog sharing ideas rather than pronouncements.
SDS hurt real bad when FED speak (news).
It is news (so it doesn't matter according to Snot). There is a shutdown of the gov't and the debt ceiling crisis is looming. No one knows for certain what will happen, but maybe Snot will get a dip or pullback and recover some of his losses. How have others hedged? Cash? Options? Short positions? Derivative ETNs? Bonds? Real estate? None of the above? Don't think there will be a correction so you haven't hedged?
In January, 2012, Snot said one should go to 80% cash. The market was going to drop because it was in dangerous territory. Have a little SDS (a leveraged short). Six months later in July, the market had gone up a little but dropped back to where it was in January. Snot said, "I told you so." But if one looked at a chart of SDS, it had degraded. Furthermore, if one looked at a chart of SDS from January 2012 until right now (October 2013), it has gone from about $75 to about $33. Ouch. Similarly, SPY has gone from to about $126 to about $176. Yum, yum. Cash has gone from about $1.00 to $1.00. Sniff, sniff.
Yawn. Why don't you go ahead and kill it?
Merry Christmas everyone, uh, anyone who still checks in here. Hope all is well with you. Grace and peace to all.
A good example of how NEWS matters. It wasn't already decided before the news broke. It wasn't already predicted within the charts. T and VZ reacted to the news.
http://www.thestreet.com/story/12241801/1/why-att-t-is-up-today.html?puc=yahoo&cm_ven=YAHOO
Well, Snotwheel, at least you can say your were right when you told people to get out of LDK. It looks like they are turning out the lights.
Hey Snot, you still alive and selling real estate in NYC? Why don't you post something?
Two months away from the longest bull market ever. I wonder if Snot is still cash plus a leveraged short ETF. If he were, would he admit it?
Where is Snot? This market keeps on bleeding up. And there are individual picks that will make you money in the short term by playing the channel. E.g., I bought HFC ten days ago. I sold it yesterday morning before it flopped. Bought it again this morning as it dropped further on "news" of some minor oil exports allowed by Obama (even though Snot says "news" doesn't matter). Sold those shares in a day trade after lunch. Bought it again before the close. We'll see how I do with it again tomorrow or in the next few days. It is 81% institutionally/mutual fund owned. Play the channel with good picks in a mostly sideways market and ride the slow tide up with index funds. VIX stays low as calm reigns. Keep your eyes open in case fear returns. Realize that volume is low. Happy trading to all.
Why is this junk blog still on the web?
Why? My guess is:
1) Either Snot is too lazy to take it down, or,
2) He is waiting for people to forget how awful his arrogant predictions were, so that he can erase everything and resurrect a new round of pontifications and gather a new circle of adoring fans.
Another month and another nothing from Snot.
Yawn!
Snot's "Sell Sell Sell" call will go down as the worst and most wrong call of this generation.
No wonder he deleted that post, since it showed that he wasn't any better than that doofus Iconoclast420. What ever happened to that fool and his spider web charts anyway? He must have done the same thing Snot did- blow up his account.
Iconoclast - I remember him. He turned himself into an options expert (in his own mind). He made daily claims of 10x and 20x gains via options. Before he got into options he was into spiderweb charts. Oh yeah. He would look at the RSI chart and draw a line off of every jagged edge and make a semi-divine prognostication off of it. At the end he would declare that the market would go up and down in the next week and that he would make money off of it. You were clueless as to whether or not he was long or short. He made claims both ways day after day. He thought he was an iconoclast, breaking traditions, but he was just a spiderman chart reader.
Snotwheel -- a blog gathering rust in the stock picker's junkyard.
I haven't been here in months. Looks like I haven't missed anything. I only came here for amusement anyway.
http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=SPY&p=D&yr=0&mn=3&dy=0&id=p77151843179
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cramer-remix-pull-trigger-tomorrow-000219586.html
Good thinking, even though many of you on this blog in years past ridiculed him.
Dear Snot, aka, Steelalana (or something like that):
The market is looking very frothy. It keeps going sideways. Would you give another "sell, sell, sell" pontification, so that it maybe we can get another year out of this bull market. :)
LIC bought an additional 38,090 equity shares or 0.03% stake of Bata India on January 19, through open market .Stock Cash Premium
Where are you Snot (aka Steel Elana and other names used to game your fame via other blogs)? I thought that by now you would have crawled out from behind your curtain of anonymity to parade as a trading genius once again, pontificating on charts to a crop of newbies. Is the real estate business in NY going well?
Coming up on Snot's 10 year anniversary of ghosting this blog. I have often wondered what became of him, does anyone know? I still use his "trend channel" theory- Buy at the bottom of a stock's channel, add more in the middle, then dump it all at the top...then rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Snot if you're out there, maybe you could post a one time "guest article" or something and let us know? We weren't all haters contributing to your blog, and I for one am still making a living trading and am wondering how many (or few) who used to haunt this blog are still doing the same. Snot, are you one of the survivors??
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