I know this is a review board, but sometimes it's fun to share ideas.  With the US stock market crashing these few days, anyone have some experience with buying stocks?
Any suggestions?

I will start.

Certain sectors have taken a big hit, like energy, airlines, cruises, hospitality, etc.  I think these are all still good value in the long run.

Any thoughts?

The safest bet would be to monitor the number of cases, distribution of test kits and speeches. Once the number of cases start going down, the slowest, but a consistent one to rise, would DJIA that is at 21,200 at time of this writing. going back to near 30,000 is almost a 36%. It will be slower than other but the smoothest of all.

Most blue chip tech stock like Amazon and Microsoft going back to their January prices would also mean about 35% rise. You'd be safe with a lot of stock. The window for gains has definitely not passed yet.

I wonder if more people have ordered stuff from Amazon or Alibaba now that they want to avoid going out. Would surely reflect in their earnings.

The only good that will come out of this is if
Trump and Pence both got the virus and
Nancy became president  

Lots of bargains right now, but might drop a little further.  If you're buying long term you can dip your toes in a little.. can alwasy buy more on the way down/up. Those shops like Amazon, Costco etc might see a bump in earnings now.. but dont forget people that bought like 20 stacks of toilet paper, 20 packs of frozen food, etc. probably wont be buying it again for a while lol.. not saying they're bad stocks btw, just a random thought.  

Trying to time the markets is hard enough for the professionals. Specially when much of the short term price movement is heavily influenced by the algos. For the past few sessions, there has been forced selling by many funds for redemptions and at times when markets are up, shorts are covering.

A better approach is to value the business by understanding it and buying only when Mr. Market is in depression and is offering an attractive price. I understand that most people don't have time to do it or they simple don't want to put the effort to go through hundreds of pages.

Many of the big names in the indexes are still not yet attractively valued. But yes, there are attractive investments to be made in this environment if you've a long term horizon. Like AerCap, Capri Holdings, Swire Class B, Malaysia Airport, Tosnet, INFOvine, Charle, Tianneng Power, HK Economic Times, Lung Kee, Sun Hing Vision, Kanamoto, etc.  


I don't want SFC spooking around in this forum. So just a disclaimer. I am may have long or short positions in all of the names that I have mentioned. This is not an investment advice. Please do you own research before you buy or sell anything.

I think you mentioned Airlines - be careful. Airlines industry has (surprisingly) low barrier to entry and hence low barrier to exit. If the situation persist, a lot of them will go bankrupt and you lose everything.

Let's visit this post by the end of the year, and maybe sometime middle of next year as well.  I'm not an expert in finances or stock market, BTW.  I'm in the medical field, LOL!  But here's the starting point: of some favorites:  

Boeing (BA) - 175 -
Carnival (CCL) - 19.5  
Macy's  (M) - 7.4
Aurora Cannabis (ACB) - 0.77
Wynn Resorts (WYNN) - 70
American Airlines - (AAL) - 15.8
Halliburton (HAL) - 9.4
Occidental Petroleum (OXY) - 15.4
Southwest Airlines (LUV) - 38
Bank of America (BAC) - 20.8
Cisco (CSCO) - 34
Ford Motors (F) - 6.25
MGM - (MGM) - 18.9
Gilead (GILD) - 69.5
Pioneer (PDX) - 70.77

I think airlines, Boeing, Carnival Cruises, energy stocks, casinos, car manufacturers, banking and cannabis are all good prospects.  Let's see how they do in a few months.   

[ Last edited by  jeffzeke at 15-3-2020 10:08 ]

I feel just knowing what to look out for makes a lot difference. There are stock that are blowing up throughout the year but we only hear about them at the end of the year list of best stocks.
Other than some stock that will just gain back whatever they have lost, I'm looking at 2 to benefit from the lockdown and panic.
There's Netflix (NFLX), who I believe will get a lot of viewership when people are locked in homes. perhaps a lot of new subscribers as well. I know that in the long run, Disney+ may throw Netflix off the throne, but right now they have the most content. Also, they are set to report earnings on April 15.

There's The Clorox Company (CLX), has a lineup of household cleaning products. it is also a basic supply company that is in a lot of homes in america and across the globe. The CLX has ALREADY risen, and down a bit in after market trading, but I feel that is a good buy. Not a long time before some banks and fund issue a bullish rating and adjust  their price for CLX. CLX reports earnings on May 6.

*I own stocks in CLX as of this writing.

Current situations both professionally and personally has led my SO & I to have discovered a niche market in China (potentially) we have started to invest a little time and money into researching this niche..

I am not telling you twats what it is yet

Have a guess, see if any of you can get it right. Tell you what, if you do.. I will reward you 50K point

Netflix is a great one, they are also developing some type of app for people to share and watch on their phone for 2 pounds per month or something like that, so their stock will go up

Telling people that you have a billion dollar idea and asking them to guess what it is, is probably the best way to solicit new ideas for free!
Joking aside, here is my submission:
The epidemic is going to end soon in China but the aftermath is that everyone in China will be wearing masks. When I moved to Hong Kong in 2007/2008 I remember being quite surprised to see so many people wearing face masks in public places. That was of course the aftermath of SARS. Now, the same in China for the next few decades. At the same time, the Chinese government has already invested hugely on face recognition as a mean of state control. Face recognition does not sit well with face masks. At the peak of the epidemic, when you go through the e-channel in a Chinese airport, you still need to take off your mask and position your face in front of the camera, after touching the fingerprint scanner that has been touched by millions of people. When two opposing needs collide (government wants to see your face, people want to hide theirs), business opportunities always come. Whoever comes up with a CCTV technology that is compatible with face masks, or face masks that are transparent, will be the next billionaire in China.
Second point. Medical professionals in Hong Kong, or "unprofessionals", are the only people in the world who went on strike during the epidemic. Even the French have the decency not to strike at the time of national crisis. China is watching. Anyone who can blackmail the country because of their apparent indispensability will be regarded as the enemy. So, my guess is any technology that can replace nurses and doctors will be heavily embraced in China. In fact, AI, even at this early stage, has already beaten human doctors in diagnosis and it will only get better and better. Sensors can replace many of the works currently done by nurses. What are left are menial jobs that can be done by relatively unskilled workers. This is exactly what a government wants.
So, there you have it. All the best to your business venture. The only thing I envy you is that you have a SO to go on this journey with. I have no one.

A sanitised glory hole service with social distantcing   

Transparent face masks is bloody genius.

From what I remember reading AI got more wrong than it did right.

@austin, now I have two genius ideas haha

I just read the other day (IIRC) China got facial recognition with masks on up to around 95%.. without the mask is like 99.x% or something crazy.

Yes something like that and that's why they
know the identities of more then 50% of the
masked protesters in HK … when it's time for
payback it's going to be loud and clear

I exited the Market in January when I hit my 2020 year end goals and had no regrets as it hit new heights and really no regrets now.

Close to getting back in but now will reflect on one Billionaires wise words for you all, BTW the $hit hasn’t even started wait till death rates start climbing in four week

Opportunities come infrequently. When it rains gold, put out the bucket, not the thimble"

Diversification is a protection against ignorance. It makes very little sense for those who know what they're doing."

It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

Italy: cases continue to increase as does deaths and driving lockdowns across EU,  unemployment and business activity will continue to drop.

US:  very late lockdown and press is having a field day with shortages hospital resources  and POTUS can’t bully and position lies to defeat a virus like he can opponents, corporations or other political narratives.   Only four states moved to lockdown when the whole country should be shut down, unemployment will skyrocket so things will continue to get worse.  NYC and SF Bay will be like Italy in four weeks

The economy isn’t even close to hitting bottom, figure easily another 20-30% (SP500 say 1600-1800) before the value matches the fear and then time to get greedy

[ Last edited by  Tybear at 22-3-2020 13:02 ]

I thought I would post something here after a while of getting more information.  I don’t work in the financial industry but my line of work does get presentations from economists which gives us the US and global outlook.  The short answer is that the economists cannot confidently model how the world economy will look until everything shakes out and if there is a second COVID-19 wave.  As everyone knows, local businesses drive all commercial/service economies as the end of the supply chain, and that part of the chain is not working right now.  

The current modeling as of 2 weeks ago has the US projecting to have up to negative 30% GDP next month and an unemployment rate of about 18% nationally by mid-summer if not sooner.  This will be the second highest percentage since the 1929 Great Depression.  The 2008 Great Recession will pale in comparison to what COVID-19 is doing.

Each State will have different unemployment and GDP impacts.  We have seen the PRC’s GDP dropped its projection from the earlier 5% to 6.8% and this is consistent with the world economy looking at negative 7% GPD by end of 2020.  Certain economies will be harder than other and COVID-19 is moving a like wave all over the world with infections, outbreaks and deaths all varying times.  

They reminded us that the COVID-19 impact is not as simple as a closed business reopening and getting government financial assistance.  It is how much of the workforce and consumers will need more time to physically and emotionally recover to be able to got to work and rebuild is a question no one has an answer to.  What is the level of consumer confidence going to be in a COVID-19 world, especially if there is no vaccine or antibodies that can fend off re-infection?  There is no answer for that yet either.

The economists all this warn that their modeling will change as well as everyone else depending on how things keep playing out.  They may improve or get worse.  The economic timeline is dependent on the pandemic, which unlike other recessions, which it is largely driven by the financial industry.  Most typical recessions you can figure out what the financial industry options are toward recovery.  A disease does not care about the economy and there no proper way for all us to respond to it.

What does this mean on buying into the stock market?  The previous posts correctly hit on the key sectors to put money into stocks that will grow fast in response to the pandemic, such as healthcare.  In a bad economy, I use oil, gold and long-term bonds as my indicators of where investors are going.  Oil and gas drive the world economy and prices are very poor for obvious reasons.  There are millions of barrels in the US that has not been put into the market because of the shutdown.  This means the even after things reopen, oil and gas should stay low until those in storage starts to empty rapidly.  To me higher gold prices means investors are looking for a safe harbor and gold has not jumped very much.  Long-term bonds have been in discussion about this reverse bond yield as a recession indicator, but COVID-19 made that as an indicator moot.

The US stock market has been subject to a lot of spot trading on people to turn a quick dollar but that will slow down at some point.  The Federal Reserve Bank has purchases trillions of dollars in bonds considered high risky to help keep money moving through the economy and that is helping to keep the US stock market from seeing a massive dip like March 23rd.  The goal of the Federal Reserve Bank is to do anything it can to prevent a depression and create assurances on debt.  If there is a massive debt default throughout private and government sectors, you will see a depression that may make 1929 look tame in comparison.

I have been told that the US $2.2 Trillion CARES Act is one of four major economic stimulus packages coming out of Congress.  They may package them into bigger bills or break them up in smaller ones depending a series of factors.  The $350 billion in aid to small businesses was consumed inside of 10 days and Congress is trying to work out something between $250 and $500 billion new aid for small businesses.  I am projecting Congress will spend $4 trillion directly into the economy or about 18% of US GDP.  This will be the biggest increase to the US debt in history and is borrowing at a rate we have not seen since World War 2.

The EU has approved is COVID-19 package, which will send positive signals to their stock markets.  They EU still need to figure out a massive economic aid package for its member nations relatively soon.  Both Korea and Japan have economic aid packages in the works.  The world’s top economies should have more than one economic aid package before the end of the summer.  I am worried about more than a few big economies and whether the government can lead them out of this crisis.  

Is it a good time to buy stocks at all?  The answer is if you have extra money for long term investment, then yes.  There are no clear indicators right now of when things will rise or drop, so just buy if you can spare the money then you should.  If you are doing retirement planning for twenty years from now and you have stable income, this is a good time to put more money in.  

As always, speak to your financial advisor.  They will tell you to ride it out, but the question is what should be riding right now.  

I am hoping for another update in May about what the next set of modeling may look like.

Gentlemen,

I have moved to all cash.  Timing the market is nigh impossible.  There is time to buy after the market hits bottom.  So be prudent and wait for the event.  If the market moves up instead, there is time to buy because the recovery will be long and slow on average.  Letting the volatility drive impulsive buying or selling is for the small timers unless you control one of the key algos driving the market.  Good luck and do not, do not, be greedy.

Always been a fan of just investing consistently up or down. More so when things are down.