patrick.net

Yeah, talk about confusing. The Dow is down by more than 100 points, and most of the market is red today. One theory is that the market already priced-in the lock-up expiration, possibly over-reacting on the downside, and it is now normalizing to where it should be. I find a 12% rally with 3-4x average trading volumes and a flood of new shares a little odd, but who knows. It LOOKS like a pump-and-dump, but we'll have to wait & see if someone was actually pumping it. Given that the company's GAAP numbers went from net income in Q3 2011 to a net loss in Q3 2012, and that the market responded to this with another rally, there is still way too much hype around the stock and too many large players involved in keeping it super volatile.

If you want quick money, go to Vegas. If you want a solid long-term investment, there are dozens of other established stocks that make more sense. This one still has too much hype around it and too much attention from speculators. You will only make money on it if you are an insider.

I would avoid FB stock.

zzyzzx says

I would avoid FB stock.

Yeah, I avoid it (and many stocks) the same way that I avoid the roulette table. Shit, the roulette table has better overall odds I think...47.4% chance of 200% return. Facebook is particularly risky given how much hype there still is in the market, and the major players that can easily manipulate the stock price for their own return (at MY expense).

Big companies that provide basic necessities and give dividends...yes please. I'll leave day trading to the day traders.

Another mini-rally today. Any theories?

No ideas here.

Ah, Facebook. The single thing that just zapped a huge chunk of productivity gains made by technology, and the internet. Where else can a person share useles and mundane daily activities with others who couldn't give a shit less?

i used my gambling money to short-term trade facebook. buy at $21.7x. sold last week at $24.yy.

it's super volatile and scary.

i also tried to buy fb when it IPO'd but i got locked out because the computers couldn't handle the order volume. i'm really happy/lucky that i was able to successfully cancel my buy order that day; in hindsight, that the price should have, but didn't drop below $38.00 was a sign i should not have been on the buy-side since there was heavy selling pressure but from what i read the investment banks were propping it up to keep it above the $38.00 IPO price.

i also traded zinga for a tiny profit going long, despite it falling in price about 85%+ percent. got out just in the nick of time on that one. lol.

my biggest mistake so far this year was selling a large chunk of my total-market fund and going to cash in my 401k, i actually timed it well and got out close to a top in march (i think or maybe april/june - too lazy to look it up), but didn't believe the rally and missed the run up from june to october. i could have got back in a few weeks ago at what i sold at, but i'm a bit cautious and think there may be some down side and i can get back in at a better price. it's all kinds of fucked up though because of bernake and QE3 ($40B/month buying MBSs will do that); the fed has a huge influence ("don't fight the fed) and because of that you need to understand the economy as well as the feds influence on it

i'm considering buy some more of the total market fund to increase my equity exposure a bit since i'm not anywhere confident of being able to predict the market direction today, even though i'm negatively biased.

good news is i haven't taken a capital loss so far this year on any position which is great (and slightly lucky).