Ladies,

this should be the official stock trading thread. Who is trading investing in shares / options / futures / certificates ?

What do you advise people to do? What are you investing in? What do you expect the market to do? Do you have a strategy? What could be the next big thing according to YOU!

I will start with a very controversial thought: Apple share will fall soon. The iPad is selling below expectations (800k short) the iPhone is facing serious heat from Android and soon WinMo 7. The iPod (mp3 players in general) are in decline soon since phones will do the trick.

And the way the share increased in the last years it is my bet that the bubble bursts soon.
So I bet money on falling prices of Apple shares (Long put).

I subscibe the the Warren Buffet share market philosophy: find companies that are undervalued, learn all about them and invest a large amount in them (or at least as large as you can afford) and hold on to the stock for a long time. Hence I wouldn't go near Apple even if their latest devices were a roaring success, because Apple stockcan pretty much never be under valued again. In fact Apple stock (like MS stock) can really only every be valued about right or over valued, thus you'll never get massive gains (like 3-5x your initial investment within a year).

I am learning too.

I'm reading a book about candlestick charting and short stock's.

Do any of you have advice to someone completely new to it?

wire me all your money and I'll show you.

On a more serious note, I am curious about this as well. I don't want to become a real investor or a stock person, I just find it to be interesting because its very different to what I've been studying, I'll be happy read all your experiences and stories, maybe I'll try myself when I have spare money.

Sure, I know a bit about short stock.

For those who don't know, Short stock is essentially betting that the stock will go down. If it does, you make money (for free essentially), if it goes up you can lose (in theory) infinite amounts of money. What you do is go to person X who has a lot of stock in Company A and ask to borrow their stock with a promise to give them all back. You then sell those stock to person Y. You hopefully watch the the stock drop, buy replacement stock and give it back to person X netting all the profit. If stock goes up you have to pay out of pocket the difference.

My advice, stay away unless you have serious time to invest in researching stock. That means for the average person with a day job you don't have enough time to research stock to do something so risky. Buy & Hold can return good investments (10% a year or more if you pick a good stock), but you just have to be a little more patient. If you have to ask tips about short stocking on a videogame forum then you probably shouldn't be doing it.

I am interested but i don't think I will be trading anytime soon.

@topic

The only "stock" i have is with my retirement company. I've been researching stock for a while and have come to the conclusion that I want to invest in at least 1 technology that I know (Electronics and computers) and in one DRIP.

I plan on setting my son up with a DRIP account in JNJ because they pay good dividends and I believe they have plenty of room to grow in developing nations and people are getting older which will increase how much money is spent on medical supplies. While I don't expect large fast gains, they have given good returns over the last 10 years. DRIPs also allow him to deposit $25 at a time with no additional fees, which will be something he can afford. I want to use the account to teach him about stock as he gets older. I'm doing this because I realize that had I invested all my savings as a youth I could have been a millionair by now

I have some shares of Optimus (CD project is part of this group) banking on good increase after release of Witcher II.

did you think of looking for a cyclical trend to the apple share before you placed your long put? Just saying cause 3 years ago I did a study on the stock and there was a definite christmass effect on it... (and it was going up and up and I wanted to invest on it but had no money :x).

No, it is just my oppinion. I think Apple relies heavily on very few products, but unlike Google or MS, people might stop buying / using these products pretty fast.

Windows is a synonym of PC OS. 90% market share speaks for itself. Same with Office as long as every job in the office requires knowledge about MS office, MS should be fine.

Google is the startpage for millions of PCs worldwide. When I do to university and open the browser, google pops up. There are alternatives to google, but people don't want to use it, they are just fine with the standard search engine.

Apple relies on iphone and ipod. This is something that can change really fast. People are not saying: I had a iPhone 3Gs and now I will get an iPhone 4, without even thinking about other devices. Ask Sony with the PS3 from PS2. And the current Apple shares are so damn high with such high expectations and it is only build up on 3-5 products (iPod, iPhone, iTunes, iPad mainly). This reminds me of the new market rush (.com bubble) 2000 / 2001. The iPad did not take the world by storm like the iPod or iPhone did. Apple and analysts surely hoped for something more successful (4.2 million sold in the past 3 months, that is just 700k more than the PS3 :D) It is profitable, but not enough to warrant the high price the stock is sitting on now and not enough to satisfy the out of control expectations for Apple in the future.

So I think about buying Puts on Apple.

This is just MY OPINION. That is the beauty of trading.