<p>Razorsharp…you can call your brokerage firm and ask them what time your FB order was filled. Ask for a time and sales…so you can see if the price is out of line.</p>
<p>Doct, I understand. </p>
<p>I am not happy with the INTC puts I sold. I probably bought the stock around 27.70.</p>
<p>Msft might be ok…but the market…I don’t know which way it is going to go…</p>
<p>I did not sell Aapl puts this time. I had a dream Aapl was going to trade 530… And I believe in dreams.</p>
<p>[Facebook's</a> Closing Bell Price - CNBC](<a href=“http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000091261&play=1]Facebook’s”>http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000091261&play=1)</p>
<p>So doct…now you tell me…</p>
<p>I short the intc may 28 puts for .30.</p>
<p>Now…the stock is 26…</p>
<p>What do I roll to?</p>
<p>The near term 28 calls are probably close to zero…</p>
<p>Ok…I am going out to dinner.</p>
<p>I expect a great answer posted here when I get back.</p>
<p>12,000 before 13,500</p>
<p>"I short the intc may 28 puts for .30.</p>
<p>Now…the stock is 26…</p>
<p>What do I roll to?</p>
<p>The near term 28 calls are probably close to zero…</p>
<p>Ok…I am going out to dinner.</p>
<p>I expect a great answer posted here when I get back. "</p>
<p>Are you religious? If so, perhaps you should start praying. The 5/25 28 put is 1.93 - 1.96. The 7/21 28 puts are 2.42 -2.45 or ~.5 more than the 5/25 puts. If you get assigned, your cost basis is 28-.3-.5 = 27.2. 26 looks like support for intc so maybe we’ll get a bounce back. It is a good company with a good dividend. Also you can buy intc puts, spreads whatever to protect your potential position at 27.2 and define your downside - maybe a combination call and put spread. I know this all sounds crazy but I’ve had a rough day with this stuff as well. I was furiously making those other trades at 12:15 with a presentation that I had to give at 12:30 over my head and meetings continuously until 5:00 without the ability of watching the market over that time or doing anything.</p>
<p>Ok…</p>
<p>I am not really happy about those alternatives…I am not blaming you…</p>
<p>But there aren’t very good alternatives…</p>
<p>Having to make presentatations and not being able to watch the markets when trading options is not ideal. :)</p>
<p>I had poor access to trading options today and yesterday…and I did not find that helpful; although, intc…has had a bad couple of weeks…so maybe it would not have made a difference.</p>
<p>I really don’t want to lock myself into a position for up to 2 months for .50.</p>
<p>The stock can obviously move down a lot more than .50 in 2 months.</p>
<p>I am going to think about what I want to do…if anything.</p>
<p>It kind of cracks me up…
We buy stocks to get a 2.5% yield…and then the stocks drops 10 percent.</p>
<p>I don’t know. I just find that amusing.</p>
<p>[Morgan</a> Stanley made big bet on Facebook | Reuters](<a href=“http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/19/facebook-morgan-stanley-idUSL1E8GIER020120519?feedType=RSS&feedName=financialsSector&rpc=43]Morgan”>http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/19/facebook-morgan-stanley-idUSL1E8GIER020120519?feedType=RSS&feedName=financialsSector&rpc=43)</p>
<p>There are some stock that selling weekly puts makes sense and others it doesn’t. intc is a low price stock and selling weekly puts doesn’t seem to work as well as is also the case with msft. intc barely closed above 29 at its peak, so selling 28 puts was probably quite risky. Perhaps you could have bought it back when it was nearer 28 instead of waiting? It works much better with spy and iwm which can usually be rolled out to the following week particularly if you don’t wait until the last day or when it has dropped below the strike price.</p>
<p>Facebook lost, and I’m happy about it. What rational and educated individual would buy a stock with a 125 P/E and no clear source of revenue? It’s all bullsh-t; Facebook is trying to make a few extra billion by capitalizing off of hardworking individuals who buy into the idiotic hype and don’t understand the world of stocks. But hardworking individuals don’t own the money - the rational investors do, and most of them aren’t touching this insane stock.</p>
<p>In my personal world, I bet a lot of money on Sodastream, which has just been ridiculous lately. Rationally, this stock should be WAY up. As a company with booming growth and sound fundamentals (it has absolutely KILLED estimates in the 5 quarters it’s been around), it is amazing and absolutely sickening that this stock has a forward P/E of 12. I’ve so far lost a lot of money on the stock and am hoping for a rebound, but it seems that there’s an extremely irrational sense of pessimism built into this stock that’s going to last for at least the next couple of months. Not to mention the shorts (80% of float - !?!) who are just drowning it.</p>
<p>This week I’m getting into some TPX. It very clearly wants to go back up to $60, but the overall market pessimism isn’t letting it. A good week for the overall market will get it from $46 to $55 pretty easily. You heard it here first, folks.</p>
<p>How did Facebook lose? All those insiders hit the motherlode, it was the retail investor who got ’ defriended’ , thought they would get the IPO price and a quick,large pop in price…oh well, gamed again by the professionals…the casino at Wall street is open folks, ;)</p>
<p>Here is the error people make:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>you are not a day trader (unless you are), and you have no business playing with them.</p></li>
<li><p>If you believe in FB, buy it the way people bought coke or mcdonalds or GE, back in the day.</p></li>
<li><p>The IPO is there to reward the initial investors, the people who took a risk on an unproven product. These people got their reward. </p></li>
<li><p>Why should there be millions in simply coming in and buying a stock? Or in getting positioned in a situation where everyone else is doing the same?</p></li>
<li><p>Do you understand that risk/reward really is risk/reward. There is no risk in a stock price which has been overseen and pre-vetted by 33 banks. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Why did anyone think they would make money on this? </p>
<p>I think the problem is that people do not understand how this works is more similar to how it has always worked than it is to how it was for a few anonomolous years during the 80’s and 90’s when the bubbles were being engineered by Greenspan, who adored a bubble. Some day they will write Greenspan’s history as “Bubble Economics.” But, the bubble has popped. It’s over. there is a leak in it and no matter how many airy dollars they pump into things, it’s not going to blow back up again.</p>
<p>So, if you believe in FB, you can still buy it, put it in your portfolio and hang onto it for 20 years, the way people used to do. </p>
<p>Speculation, in this government riddled game is silly guys. Buying companies you believe in is not speculation in the same way. People who play this game are buying property right now. Look at what is going on in the high end real estate market in NYC. </p>
<p>It’s all like starting over. Take a look at what your depression-era grandparents would have done. Do that.</p>
<p>Doct…1109 is a good post…</p>
<p>Intc is a poor stock to sell premium. The premiums are just too low most of the time.</p>
<p>Yeah…and in retrospect…selling puts that are only about 3 percent out of the money…after the stock has been strong for several months…has pitfalls. I kind of knew that already. But…I did it anyway. I probably should have just bought them in when the stock got close to the strike price.</p>
<p>Like I said earlier…if you sell premium for .30…you can’t lose 1.50.</p>
<p>Phuriku…do you use sodastream’s products?</p>
<p>Many stocks have gotten crushed in the last month or so.</p>
<p>TPX has been crushed…but it did have a great run…
Why did it sell off so much?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I did and was even polite (I think) to them. They have changed the trade to show that I sold at a little bit over 42. Thus, I made about $200 on the trade. I can’t wait to short this sucker. The FB float will increase by about 55 percent in 91 days. Unless they report record earning in the meantime, it will go down down down. </p>
<p>I wonder if the FB will mark the bottom of the market decline or a short term top or something else. I suspect FB served to create a favorable environment for stocks and now that that is gone, maybe the market will go down further.</p>
<p>A lot of people that bought FB in the IPO did not want the stock. They just wanted to flip it to the public.</p>
<p>FB was priced too high…and the company sold too many shares. In the private markets before the IPO…I guess people were buying FB with close to a $100 billion valuation. I wonder if that played a part in the IPO valuation?</p>
<p>I know a couple of wealthy people that “trade” ipos intensely. I am sure there are many people like this.</p>
<p>One guy thought he was going to get 3,000 shares…but he got 30,000 shares.
Another got 80,000 shares. </p>
<p>The guy who received 80,000 shares usually keeps the ipo stock for a little while, but when he saw his allocation…he got the hell out.</p>
<p>I don’t like ipos. If they are great deals…you don’t get much stock. If they stink…you get plenty.</p>
<p>Ipos have a poor track record. And I don’t trade enough to get much of the good issues anyway.</p>
<p>My 75 year old aunt…who is very conservative, wanted to buy FB. That is a red flag.</p>
<p>Razorsharp…</p>
<p>I am happy for you.</p>
<p>FB is not going to build confidence in the markets.</p>
<p>dstark, I am sorry you have had such a rough week. It is very very tough. Day and ST trading is a very very difficult thing to do these days.
My read on the FB IPO:
- FB and IBkrs were greedy/opportunistic to raise both size and price… Always a chance of overdoing, causing a loose deal.
- Bad luck on timing: JPM debacle roiling markets, casting doubts on strength economies… Loosened up shares.
You win some, you lose some on these kinds of gambles if are a flipper. - Huge size of deal bunged up the trading technically, which is a violation of a principle of fair trading- the ability to know price right away.</p>
<p>I am not equipped to watch it carefully myself (and thus am not a ST/day/options trader), but next week will be very interesting for the overall market, and for the trading of FB. We are long a variety of securities,and we also took some painful losses this week, and they were primarily market-driven. But, hey, so were most of our losses in 2008.
I am glad we are not a month away- that would be 2 short weeks from the end of the quarter- I would be worrying about window-dressing sales going on to cover up/reduce equity exposures by June 30 (tail wagging the dog)… As we have a month and a half to go, the markets have more time to absorb this.</p>
<p>Why did FB choose to be listed on NASDAQ? to be in the same league as AAPL?
Would the NYSE be more equipped or less to handle the volume of FB?
Why does it have a two-letter ticker on NASDAQ?</p>
<p>LT/fundamentally, who knows how to value FB?!
I like to compare it to Amazon which is certainly was and in most ways is still a perplexing of beast , but has proven to be a pure market-share aggressor, with value in getting the “land” before most others, and may have substantial competitive advantages and value, if not actual earnings.</p>
<p>Does FB really have a competitive advantage? A franchise? Is it positioned in a special way to profit from or grow off its past successes? Is the huge number of members going to keep growing? If so, is the growth to less attractive or more attractive segments? Is the FB name or brand worth anything without this share of the social network market?
Has FB created any barriers to entry to competitors?
Are there any social network/communication systems or technologies brewing out there that will obsolete or just grow bigger than FB?
Can FB innovate and grow internally or does it have to pay crazy prices for other brilliant concepts? Or is buying things for crazy valuations really the best strategy as paying high prices for acqns is not dilutive due to FB’s crazy valuation, and it is a way to create barriers to competition and entry the fastest way, keeping the acquired co’s from competing and away from competition?
Is there something brilliant (a la AAPL or BRK) going on at FB, so we should we just trust FB?</p>
<p>I was most worried earlier this week when I read that some large corporate advertisers cut back on their ads on FB, claiming they are not effective… </p>
<p>How dependent is FB on getting more and more private info from its members to be successful?
Could FB charge a fee or something for membership?
How, besides advertising, can FB mine its huge obvious asset, the membership?
How can it continue to grow it?
nd are their any other valuable things about FB?</p>
<p>Look, I am a capitalist, and am glad somebody (whoever it really was!!) invented something and has profited from it. I am not too happy about the social impact of the product… but overall FB is good for the US economy.</p>
<p>I do worry that Silicon Valley is becoming a formulaic place is an ironic way (they are drinking each other’s kool-aid and the VC kool-aid), and they are a bit out of touch with reality (yes, I know it can be a great thing to think out of the box!) Ego can obscure reality; success breeds complacency.
Getting back to basics can be a good approach, as thinking out of the box can get a little too out of touch! It is always a balance.</p>
<p>And then there is the issue of a 28 yr old with a definite style running this huge company.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Amazon has this great cloud service too which you don’t hear much
about but it does power a lot of apps. I buy stuff from Amazon and
think of it as a retailer but it’s a cloud company too and cloud
operations at a lot of companies have made some nice profits. I think
that some of Amazon’s experiments do have value - their repeat sales
stuff is interesting. I can buy toothpaste cheaper than anywhere else
including shipping if I do it on a schedule so I am trying it out. I
don’t know if Amazon makes any money on it but if it does work out,
then I will add other products to the schedule and perhaps they can
make money bundling things. I imagine floss, dish detergent, laundry
supplies, windshield wiper blades, etc. would be on my list. I am not
interested in owning Amazon because I feel that I can’t understand the
company and its products but they do seem to be one of the more stable
internet companies.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I do not understand Facebook but I know people that use it to keep in
touch with their family and friends. My extended family uses email and
the phone to do this. Perhaps we aren’t as well-connected but being
super-connected uses up some of your time.</p>
<p>Facebook clearly has the mindshare and competitive advantage (who still
uses MySpace?). Google seems to have failed in this area. Apple is
mostly into private (one on one) messaging right now. No idea as to
what Microsoft is doing.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>They have the network with the most people and people communicate over
networks where people already are. Our family uses Google Chat for IM
and most other things so we’re locked in because the people that we
communicate with the most use these tools. If I wanted to use
Facebook, I’d have to convince everyone in my network to use it and
it’s unlikely that I’d put in the effort unless there was an
incredible amount of value in doing so. At this point I don’t see that
value.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>The tech media (and Steve Jobs) has been talking about the post-PC era
for a few years. This is the migration to phones, tablets and media
players. I don’t agree that we are in a post-PC era but it’s clear
that people are using non-PC devices to do computing - especially
social and entertainment computing. One of the advantages of the PC
platform is the large screens where advertisers could place big and
annoying ads on the screen because there was so much room to share
with the free content.</p>
<p>This isn’t true on phone devices. The commercial apps that I run have
a very small amount of space for their ads so that they are not terribly
visible. I think that the ads are generally static too given the lower
level of compute horsepower available on phones - you don’t want to
kill the performance of your app with a compute-intensive ad.</p>
<p>So the trend of ads to support products and generate revenue on the
PC is giving way to the harder problem of generating ad revenue on
smaller devices. Facebook themselves admitted that this is a problem
for them.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Good questions. I don’t know enough about the company, culture,
management, etc. to make this determination. There are plent of other
companies out there that are already doing this that aren’t at crazy
valuations.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’ve only looked at Facebook pages a few times. In general, you just
follow the flow of the people in your network. It’s a long,
hierarchical list. If you want to know what’s happening in the lives
of your network, why would you look at the ads? I do click on the
simple text ads at Google and I do look at email ads that I get from
vendors that I do business with. The relationship marketing stuff does
work (Constant Contact is a business that makes tools to do this).
Relevance works - if I’m searching for tennis balls, put up some text
ads for stores that sell tennis balls in my area - not some completely
random ads for cars and restaurants.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Google+ would love that. Google can monetize their products without
charging for them.</p>
<p>Tons of good questions here. I was asked about Facebook a whole ago
(because people think that I know a bit about tech companies), and I
just said yuck (not Zuck). I don’t get it and I like to get it on the
stuff that I own.</p>
<p>BCE, thanks for your SUPER answers!!!</p>
<p>Yes, Amazon has innovated its space-domination strategy into the cloud, an example of how smart (and thus of value, trustworthy as you have put it) management is… And it is setting up physical fulfillment centers inside of bricknmortar retailers. Yes, Amazon could stumble, but it does seem to have a strategy and to execute it technologically and aggressively. ( FD-I do not own it, just comparing it to FB on some levels.)</p>
<p>Back to my earlier post, what are the no-brainer quality stocks you talked about a few weeks ago? Such as AAPL and NIKE…
Looking for solid dividend-payers, too!</p>
<p>My other holdings are Pembina Pipeline, Equity Residential and Whole Foods. Boring and mundane stuff.</p>