For those of you that know a lot about the stock market. What would you personally invest in for short term?
and what for long term?

I am not sure I am one who should offer financial advice, but for my self I invested my short term funds in an elephant hunt and my long term funds in a Krieghoff .470 NE. Beats the hell out of the stock market.

Would like to have put some money in AIG couple months ago.

Will Rogers said, "The way to make money in the stock market is to buy a stock. Then, when it goes up, sell it. If it's not going to go up, don't buy it!"

You should have been asking this question back in Nov 08 to March 09........there are several variations on this theme but a couple cover it, one is "Buy when blood is running in the streets!" and two, "Buy in choas, sell in euphoria!"

Buying opportunities like March 09 when the market is pricing good and great companies at ridiculously low prices rarely come along. Of course, with October coming up you might get a second chance, albeit probably at a higher level.

quote:

Originally posted by Gatogordo:
Will Rogers said, "The way to make money in the stock market is to buy a stock. Then, when it goes up, sell it. If it's not going to go up, don't buy it!"

You should have been asking this question back in Nov 08 to March 09........there are several variations on this theme but a couple cover it, one is "Buy when blood is running in the streets!" and two, "Buy in choas, sell in euphoria!"

Buying opportunities like March 09 when the market is pricing good and great companies at ridiculously low prices rarely come along. Of course, with October coming up you might get a second chance, albeit probably at a higher level.

What is the deal with October?

I don't recommend short-term investments in the stock market. It's too hard to "time" the market. Don't listen to broker recommendations. Don't worry that you don't know a lot about financials, balance sheets, etc. You don't have to to make money.

There are always good deals out there. Have a horizon of three to five years. Pick stocks that have been beaten-down by bad news, but are essentially good companies. Once in a while you'll get burned. For me, WAMU hurt, and I got in too early in BAC and WFC, but at some point banks are going to come back.

Right now what is moving for me are Oil, Technology, and Health Care; as in BP, CSCO, DOW, EMC, HAL, PFE, and SNDK.

I think BP could go up another 40% in three to five years, but it doesn't have to. It pays a 6% dividend. A money market fund pays less than 0.5%.

HAL and SNDK could possibly double. HAL pays a small dividend.

If you want some other good dividend payers try BPL, DD, DUK, KMP, and MRK. They all pay in the range of about 5% to 8% at the moment. Don't take your dividends in cash, re-invest them in the stock.

I think you will make money on all stocks mentioned above. The hard part is knowing when to sell. I can't help you there.

Good luck.

I dunno how much money or how much tolerance for risk you have but it you've got a large amount of both, I'd bet it all on shorting 10 or 30 yr Treasuries. If you want to mitigate your chances of being stopped out, you could buy the same amount of TIPS, probably won't make as much money but it makes it into a fairly low risk trade.

quote:

Originally posted by Gatogordo:
I dunno how much money or how much tolerance for risk you have but it you've got a large amount of both, I'd bet it all on shorting 10 or 30 yr Treasuries. If you want to mitigate your chances of being stopped out, you could buy the same amount of TIPS, probably won't make as much money but it makes it into a fairly low risk trade.

Are you talking about the pink stock TIPS or something else?

Tips = Treasury inflation protected security, a US debt instrument.

Here's a slightly more detailed explanation.

bonds, tips, etc

I'm not going into detail, but basically if you are long TIPS and short Treasuries, you are expecting interest rates to increase and therefore the price of bonds to decrease. If interest rates increase it will almost certainly be as a result, or a cause of inflation, which will drive DOWN the price of the Treasuries (the short) while the TIPS (the long) would stay higher because of their principal inflation adjustment value every 6 months. This is not a one to one bet, I might add. The more aggressive and riskier trade is to just short the treasuries. I really doubt this is your kind of trade, I shouldn't have mentioned it, nor do I have any stake in any securities business, nor am I a financial planner/advisor, WHICH if you have any real assets or are going to have some in the near future, you really need to consult one. No offense but it is obvious your market knowledge is limited. Everyone has to learn sometime if they're going to invest, but asking people on the net is probably not a good start, that includes me because my age, finances, world outlook, future financial needs, etc. can be and almost certainly are completely different than yours, not to mention I could be dead wrong. Anyone who invests or trades much will be wrong quite often, the real question is what do they do when they have made a bad bet, so to speak.

Again, consult a trusted financial advisor.

In the interim if you have any real quantity of money, I'd consider putting it in a low overhead market tracking fund.

quote:

Originally posted by Gatogordo:
Tips = Treasury inflation protected security, a US debt instrument.

Here's a slightly more detailed explanation.

bonds, tips, etc

I'm not going into detail, but basically if you are long TIPS and short Treasuries, you are expecting interest rates to increase and therefore the price of bonds to decrease. If interest rates increase it will almost certainly be as a result, or a cause of inflation, which will drive DOWN the price of the Treasuries (the short) while the TIPS (the long) would stay higher because of their principal inflation adjustment value every 6 months. This is not a one to one bet, I might add. The more aggressive and riskier trade is to just short the treasuries. I really doubt this is your kind of trade, I shouldn't have mentioned it, nor do I have any stake in any securities business, nor am I a financial planner/advisor, WHICH if you have any real assets or are going to have some in the near future, you really need to consult one. No offense but it is obvious your market knowledge is limited. Everyone has to learn sometime if they're going to invest, but asking people on the net is probably not a good start, that includes me because my age, finances, world outlook, future financial needs, etc. can be and almost are completely different than yours, not to mention I could be dead wrong. Anyone who invests or trades much will be wrong quite often, the real question is what do they do when they have made a bad bet, so to speak.

Again, consult a trusted financial advisor.

In the interim if you have any real quantity of money, I'd consider putting it in a low overhead market tracking fund.

'

The reason why I asked was to clarify what you were talking about because their actually is a pink slip stock with symbol TIPS. I do know a little about it but am trying to educate myself and learn as much as possible.

I was 95% in cash in September of 2008. I started buying a little early, but I am way ahead of where I was last year. Buying the industry leaders when an industry is out of favor has worked for me. I think some financial stocks are still bargains, but I would buy during corrections. If you want more safety, buy funds. I own numerous ETFs. They are like mutual funds that trade like stocks. Not all are good investments though, so do some home work.

Since I want to semi-retire in a few years, I only buy when I see less risk. That's why I was in mostly cash last year. I started selling in Feb of 08. I bought a lot of defense stocks about six months before George W. got elected the first time and that worked great. Those are the type of opportunities to look for. I figured as bad as Al Gore was, he would not be as bad for the defense industry as Clinton was. Don't get in a hurry, wait for opportunity. Good luck.

Subscribe to Forbes magazine.

BusinessWeek is another you might pick up. I subscribe, but don't take their recommendations, just read the thoughts there to get an intuitive feel for what's happening.

Study the market. When you get to the point when you recognize how ignorant all the talking-heads are on CNBC, you are well on your way. Keep in mind that the financial analysts, stock brokers, etc. have little interest in promoting good companies, or making recommendations based on what is good for you or America. They want volatility. They want the prices to move, and they don't care whether they move up or down. They want YOU based on the volume of your transactions. They will help churn your account to maximize their fees.

Stay in control. Make your decisions based on your knowledge, and to a lesser extent their supposed expertise.

If you work in an industry, you should have a feel for the cycles in that industry. Look there first for good investment opportunities.

Subscribe to Investors Business Daily, published by William O'Neil, the best stock market guru I know, and equally politically astute.

This is just a general observation for those who might want a degree of protection in their portfolios (since mine is a fairly small part of my net worth I am much more aggressive than this normally and currently lean heavily towards selected natural resource stocks). This selection is based on my belief that the dollar will continue to lose value, or at best hold it's current lower relative values for the next year at a minimum. I like Novartis (NVS) a SWISS corporation which is a leading drug firm worldwide, collecting it's profits in SWISS francs. The bloom is somewhat off the rose at about $50 today, but if you hold it for about 7 months, you'll get a dividend of between $1.75 and about $1.90 (my best guess is that it will be $1.90, could be a bit higher) which would be an annual return of about 5% and I think there is some upside on the stock. Unless one is a very long term holder, if it goes up to $60, a return of 20% plus dividends if it has been held that long, I'd probably be a seller, depending on then current external factors.

I don't own any, am waiting for early Nov for many of my gains to become long term to re-position some of my portfolio. Just for the record, last stock purchase I made was a month or so back and I bought a 1000 more PVR (currently about $17.75) when it dipped below $15 one day, bt it at $14.99 on limit order. This is a somewhat complicated stock that pays a huge dividend, (and even "huger" if you bt most of your position around $10 to $12 like I did). I also own a position in it's parent PVA. I'm stating this just for the record and am not recommending this stock for others.

My only regret is that a year or so back I decided I had too much cash and converted most of it to hard assets so that when the market slump really hit last year I only had a relatively small sum to throw at it. At the time, my portfolio was in about 60% cash and I added all I could to it, plus margined to the max (nearly got stopped out in March and chose to sell a couple of thousand FCX one day at about $21, thinking I'd buy it back later.......dumb move.....currently about $70......grrrrrr......if foresight was as good as hindsight......). Oh well, anyone who plays the game folds a winning hand from time to time.

EMC moved enough to hit my trigger yesterday.

Probably not going to be meaningful to you but after today's gains I'm poised to move more money in if the market moves to the upside another 2.5%. Across the board that would hit my triggers on BPL, CSCO, EMC, HAL, PFE, and SJT. That won't happen exactly like that, but I suspect at least some of these stocks will be added to existing positions I already hold in them. (If I was a guessing man, I would guess that HAL is most likely to hit my trigger first.)

I was wrong. It was tech moving first. I picked up more CSCO.

The session today tripped a lot of my triggers. I added more BPL, HAL, and PFE as well.

If you have any interest at all in the market, now or in the near future, you need to be honing your tracking skills now by studying what's on the ground in front of you. It's very much like hunting game. Not much shooting but a whole lot of planning, studying, and thinking about where the game is going, and how to capitalize on that.