<p>The 50/200 cross is one of my secondary indicators as is the 13-day EMA. They are all on my default stockcharts settings.</p>
<p>“There is a method that trounces the market which involves buying low and selling high.”</p>
<p>I think this is the basic idea behind the 200 DMA methodology. You get in somewhere near the bottom (although clearly not at he bottom) and sell somewhere near the top (although not at the top).</p>
<p>The method I’m talking about doesn’t involve any technical indicators - mvg, macd, stochastics, demark indicators whatever.</p>
<p>Never did write calls on PVX and it doesn’t look like I will get a chance to:</p>
<p>(Reuters) - Pembina Pipeline Corp (PPL.TO) agreed on Monday to buy Provident Energy Ltd (PVE.TO) for C$3.24 billion ($3.16 billion) in an all-stock deal that will create one of Canada’s biggest pipeline and natural gas processing companies.</p>
<p>Based on Pembina’s closing price of C$27.90 a share on Friday, the offer values Provident’s shares at C$11.86, a 25 percent premium to their Friday close of C$9.51 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.</p>
<p>[Pembina</a> to buy Provident Energy for $3.16 billion | Reuters](<a href=“http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/16/us-pembina-provident-idUSTRE80F1DA20120116]Pembina”>http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/16/us-pembina-provident-idUSTRE80F1DA20120116)</p>
<p>PVX is 25% of my stock holdings across multiple accounts. This means that I will have to find another stock in the “this company is so good that I could hold it forever” category that does energy. It took years for me to find this one and I hope that I can find a replacement for it soon.</p>
<p>One by-product of this is that I found out that I can trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange with a modification to my Fidelity account. They are going to do this for me - this opens up a lot of other stocks to play with. I will also be able to trade on a lot of other foreign markets. I will need to do this with my wife’s Ameritrade account too as there’s PVX there. The Fidelity person said that if I didn’t enable international trading, that the new shares would arrive in my account but I wouldn’t be able to sell them.</p>
<p>There will be a shareholder vote coming up and they will need 66% approval to go ahead with the buyout.</p>
<p>Congrats BCEagle91…</p>
<p>Some of the best trades are the ones that are never done. :)</p>
<p>"There’s a Columbia student on the Rich Dad, Poor Dad that believes that it’s easy to make 20-25% a year returns and he seems pretty adamant about it. I don’t think that he’s ever done any trading, investing or running a business. He also expects to make $500 to $700 thousand a year. Do they get this stuff from Columbia (the professors surely know better) or from myths? "</p>
<p>They probably don’t get it from the professors, no one with half a brain with any kind of exposure to the financial markets would ever claim that one. Yes, you can see returns in that range,Hedge funds can do that, but the problem there is hedge funds also can show spectacular losses, as many have in recent years, plus hedge funds require large entry fees, usually in the million plus range. The real problem is that those kind of returns are near impossible to maintain, some mutual funds tracking small cap, potentially rapid growth stocks often show a 5 year average that is up there, then fall into the ‘normal’ range later.Index funds can make those kind of returns in a boom market like you saw in the 80’s and then in the 90’s., but it doesn’t last. Part of the problem is people see articles on hedge funds or see ads for aggressive mutual funds over the short term, with large returns, and say “hey, dude, that is possible”…</p>
<p>As far as making 500k or more a year, that is the Ivy league syndrome, believing that if you get into an Ivy league school, get a degree in finance or business, go work as an investment banker you too will be making that kind of money, guaranteed…without realizing how few people, even going to Ivies, who come out and make that kind of money within X years of graduation. Sure some do, some go on to manage hedge funds and make millions, but like the rest of the economy, those kinds of numbers for people in those areas are less and less likely…and a lot of those kids have been told that all the years they are growing up, that they need to get the best grades, the highest SAT scores, etc to get into a top level college, and then the gravy flows unlimited, and it doesn’t work like that, for an Ivy or any other school.</p>
<p>Hedge funds had a very bad year…</p>
<p>So many famous hedge fund managers did poorly…</p>
<p>I have no idea how accurate the chart in the link is, but it is ugly…</p>
<p>[NOT</a> SO MUCH “HEDGING” IN HEDGE FUNDS THIS YEAR… | PRAGMATIC CAPITALISM](<a href=“http://pragcap.com/not-so-much-hedging-in-hedge-funds-this-year]NOT”>NOT SO MUCH “HEDGING” IN HEDGE FUNDS THIS YEAR… – Pragmatic Capitalism)</p>
<p>In 2011, the stock market had the most days in any calendar year where 90% of the stocks moved in the same direction…yet the market went nowhere.</p>
<p>Musicprnt,</p>
<p>What do you know about trading etfs against their NAV?</p>
<p>dstark-
From what I know of ETF’s (and I am no expert, I don’t trade them myself and am not as heavily involved in equities markets as I once was), I would be really careful about doing what I think you are doing, in effect it is doing arbitrage between the value of the ETF and the underlying instruments Net Asset Valuation of the ETF, and that is risky. If I understand ETF’s correctly the way the prime brokers who have the rights to the ‘real’ ETF’s sell them, they do so trying to create a zero arbitrage position. If that is what you mean, it would mean trying to second guess their valuations and try to find where their methods fail, and I would be really careful about doing that and I suspect you either would make very little or would lose money on it. Based on how those guys operate, I think it would be really difficult to find the fault points in their methods to do that, if that in fact is what you mean. Take this with a few pounds of salt, as I am not all that familiar with ETF trading personally nor have I dealt with the algo side of that from a systems perspective.</p>
<p>Musicprnt, thanks for your thoughts.</p>
<p>Got annuity papers today.</p>
<p>2002-2006, Boom-Boom years, and DS (now 26, unhooked, hot) college years, we got regular mailers from a successful Financial Planner who gave a course at the local community college, workbook, asset list, goals, standard financial planning much like any other planners that we have seen. One of the features was to take the home equity and fund a fixed annuity. From what I heard, he could also broker the home refi/2nd besides doing the annuity. </p>
<p>Some thought that this gambit was a bit risky. But looking at what has happened in the financial markets and housing markets, this gambit could be a very reasonable and conservative plan. :fishyeyes:</p>
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<p>Some did quite well too despite all those nasty 2/20 fees.</p>