<p>“Wild ride in the markets today. My account opened up way up, went way down and closed with a moderate gain. Nice to see the Russell over 1K again.”</p>
<p>I guess that means tna. </p>
<p>If I dont have to count bonds, the day was good. :)</p>
<p>I am getting used to this bond decline. I doubt the bond market is going to go to normalized rates for some time, but this has been a heck of a decline. I think the bond market may have some more problems until qe is decreased. Then in a perverse way, the bond market will recover some. Markets anticipate after all.</p>
<p>There is a chance that bondholders panic though. Many people who own bonds do not understand them and bought them for safety. That can be a bad bet.</p>
<p>I have decided that I can live with my bond portfolio crushed so if people want out…that is cool. There may be an opportunity to pick something up at a good price. </p>
<p>A friend of mine bot some munis using a nuveen fund for his mother. My friend bot the fund 2 months ago. The fund uses 30 percent leverage. The fund has already lost over a years interest in value in two months. </p>
<p>It’s only down 10% over the last two months. That seems to me to be plenty of time to take a stop loss. On low-price stocks, I may even have wider stops than 10%. I don’t consider 30% leverage as high.</p>
<p>That link was dated may 31. The decline continues.</p>
<p>Edit… Oops. It was Jun 30. Well… The decline still continues…just not as bad.</p>
<p>That is a long term play. It is not a trade. May not work well though.</p>
<p>Owning bonds directly works better than leveraged bond funds when rates rise. Interest rate risk declines slowly over time as investors own individual bonds.</p>
<p>I hit tennis balls with a guy that owns a construction company. I haven’t seen him all summer so I asked him what he was doing and he said that he’s been working flat-out this summer. He has an absolute ton of work and he said that it is very hard to find anyone with skills. There’s work all over our region. I know that things are hot in Boston but I guess that has spread up to NH. He told me that there’s a huge shortage of skilled construction workers because so many gave up on construction after the 2005 bubble popped. This jives with the increased demand for workers that I’ve seen in some of the smaller mill cities up here.</p>
<p>“Of the countrys most expensive large metro areas, Oakland saw the highest annual gain, with asking prices jumping 31.2 percent. However, it remained more affordable than San Francisco: Average Oakland residents forked over 37 percent of their salaries for mortgage payments, while San Franciscans paid 55 percent.”</p>
<p>There’s probably a lot of stock options income in there to help pay the mortgage. I personally think that depending on stock options income is a risky way to pay a mortgage because some years there isn’t any income.</p>
<p>Maybe stock options, or bonuses, or who knows what. </p>
<p>I guess with the lack of inventory on the market most people arent in desperate trouble.</p>
<p>Got some month end statements.</p>
<p>Looks like my bond portfolio is down about 7.5 percent or so this year…</p>
<p>Now the value of the portfolio has gone up over the last few years. This decline may have taken that gain away. I am too lazy to look right now. Maybe later. :)</p>
<p>Going back to the 55 percent number. That number seems high. I dont know anybody near that number. Banks wont loan against that number.</p>
<p>Ok… Just checked two bond accounts. I am down about 1 percent in value since I have owned those accounts, but I did get paid interest the last few years. The losses are due to the crap I bought earlier this year. Shouldnt have bot the crap.</p>
<p>I think I am going to throw that seeking alpha intel guy in the garbage. He was getting goofier and goofier in his posts which was bugging me. The more I read his stuff, the more I think he doesnt understand stock prices and that is ok. Of course, I am still long some intc so what does that say about me? Lol. </p>
<p>Intc was downgraded by at least 3 firms the last couple of days. It is going to be very difficult to make up for declining pc sales. It just is. That intc tv could have been cool. </p>
<p>My average buy was about 23.90. I sold some higher. I dont know if I am up at 23.10. I am going to check later. I am busy today. </p>
<p>Summers tax proposal is interesting. I guess the details will show whether the proposal is a tax cut or a tax hike overall. </p>
<p>BCEagle91, good luck to your daughter today.</p>
<p>I like INTC but I have my trading rules. I think that I mentioned that they would have earnings issues through they year and that they have to execute on mobile and that the rewards would be at the end of the year. I guess I wasn’t factoring in how bad Windows 8/8.1 was and is and I also didn’t factor in that the OEMs haven’t done a proper refresh for Haswell.</p>
<p>I think that 15% of something is better than 35% of nothing. And we hopefully get a bunch of jobs out of it though I think that those are coming anyways.</p>
<p>PBA is up nicely today. Apparently one of their competitors got sanctioned for a spill. PSEC is also trying to break out of resistance. It has popped above resistance a few times but was turned down each time. We’ll see if they can make it today. I’m a bit bothered by the Seeking Alpha article yesterday about a lot of MLP companies being Ponzi scams. I love the dividends but it seems too good to be true.</p>
They are going to get called away in several years. I