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Rocker, your point about shorting in February is well taken, but only reinforces my point about shorting and how hard it is to accumulating wealth.



If you timed it perfectly and you were lucky enough to short then, you gained 100% max. If you were a contrarian bull and bought RIMM, BIDU, CROX, NILE, CMG, GOOG, AAPL, etc etc after that drop in February, you'd be sitting on 50-400% gains on all these names. Again, my advice is to focus on the long side and be a contrarian. It is just so much easier than shorting. Buy quality growth companies with unique products/business models when people are bearish and selling.
 
<p>Im 75% in overseas stocks with a good deal of the rest short. I actually had a very good this week. MY SRS and SKF were up very nicely and my ATK (Alliant Techsystems), where I used to work and have about 3Gs of stock, was up alot as well. NTDOY.PK is holding up nicely and an option on HXL (carbon fiber maker) is up about 40% and almost in the money. </p>

<p>All told by the end of the year I am looking at cash and IRA gains of between 40-50%, which I guess aint too bad! Only regret is not buying gold earlier when I was debating between SRS and GLD, but now my SRS is up like 10% so whatever. I was going to short CFC after the big up day but just never committed. Still think its worth shorting but I am a bit scared of someone coming in and buying them or something or them lying through their teeth to improve their earning and values. Financials will continue to suffer so I have high hopes for SKF...</p>
 
<p>Bishie's my type guy. I just got 183 acres just south of Santa Fe New Mexico. Its nothing much, but hopefully in a few years it will be worth something. We'll see.</p>

<p>-bix</p>
 
I sold umm about 35,000 measley (Bishie has intimidated me) grand worth of shares; so now they're parked in Merrill's money mkt funds. Out of the frying pan. . . Is there a way to buy gold within an IRA? I supposed you could buy mining shares, but somehow, that doesn't seem to be the same thing. House, worth Goddess knows what, hub's generous govt pension money, his govt IRA, called something else, invested in this and that. Anybody have any thoughts about whether I should sell GE? I don't want to sell Barnes & Noble (bks), 'cause I buy so many books there. And Home Depot is not going anywhere, but I figure one good disaster, and they will be sitting pretty.
 
Geez, I'd dump HD asap....what with this housing debacle. It's a disaster of a whole different sort.....which will continue to negatively affect the value of the stock. My .02 cents.
 
<p>bishie:</p>

<p>You must have good stories to tell about your 17 houses. I can't even manage to keep one rental property, sold it after all the tenant hassles.</p>

<p>For foreign securities do you buy ADR or trade on the actual foreign exchange. Any particular brokerage you reccomend for Asian and Canadian securities? </p>
 
<p>Troop--maybe people who can't sell and want to move up, will after a while decide to do some home improvement projects themselves. I think this has happened before. Also, I am very confident that Mother Nature will deliver some sort of horrible disaster requiring lots of repairs. Hurricane, earthquake, fire, flood, melting icecaps, whatever. . . </p>

<p>I don't have that many shares in Home D. My greatest success was Gamestop, which was a spin off from somebody, going up so much. I didn't pick it, I didn't watch it go up, I finally decided that enuf was enough already with the mkt and opened my most recent Merril report and goggled at the increase since last I looked. If I had looked earlier, I would have sold Gamestop earlier and missed out on a huge increase. So now I sold.</p>

<p>Time and chance. . . </p>
 
I have a property management company collecting the rent and finding tenants. I pay the expenses directly and handle accounting on them. It is definitely an inexact science in picking a property management company. Just like in apartments some really rack up the expenses or let units sit vacant. Everyone has horror stories as a landlord and you always get some bad tenants. I do run credit checks against the tenants and my tenant's FICOs are actually fairly high. I do have some tenants over a 700 FICO (mainly that were previously homeowners but have been relocated) although my minimum is 600.





I'm invested overseas through ETFs, mutual funds, and ADRs. My Canadian funds are with TD Waterhouse Canada though. I have heard horror stories of people using foreign brokerage firms and the firms stealing the money so I'm sticking with the risk averse course on that.
 
Hey IC, we were at the District tonight, and guess what, they have a Peets!!



They made us a lovely Latte'



Didn't know it was there, it's opposite Borders....
 
<p>Yep, I have to keep on top of the property management. Mine seems to want to come up with alot of excess expenses. I flat out told them I want a bi-weekly statement. Plus they get a straight % of whatever comes in. If they make less they get less.... But i set up some rules for renting. I try to keep a 640+ minimum score for tenants... but its a struggle sometimes.</p>

<p>In the end, i've PAID people to get out.... its not fun, but its cheaper and FAR less hassle.</p>

<p>good luck</p>

<p>-bix</p>
 
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