Any Stockpickers out there?

Should sit tight on my hands today, but given the ARE dividend cut, I satified my urge to stuff some of that hole and bought some more UNM today. Still have lots of cash to deploy, but don’t have many companies currently in my buy territory. Unum is, and today’s dip was an excuse to scratch an itch. :wink:

Now Unum is a close 2nd to my largest (dividend payout) position: SPG (another REIT I bought at too high a price originally).

Don’t worry, it is real estate. Historically this performs a (very) little bit above inflation.

I hold real estate stocks, don’t know exactly why, because I hold real estate. But mine does not pay dividends except that I can make all the noise I want…

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Here I am clicking 1M, 6M, 1Y, 5Y trying to find some green. Even went down while taking the screenshot:

Edit: meant to be a funny post.

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I bought some when I started picking stocks, but sold a slice again recently.

Just checked: in my dividend portfolio since 2014 at around $25, then bought more at 44, 49 and $60, last buy was this year, I think I did document the trade in my thread.

Go Cisco. Although my network engineer friends do not like Cisco. But Cisco gifted a lot of gear to the technical schools all around the world and that have seemed to work.

Anyhow, for my mechanical dividend strategy only cash flow counts, and that was always OK. It is still on “buy”, even for that price. But the position did grow too big to buy more at the moment. Who knows, maybe a nice market dividend next year, we will see.

BTW: new 52-week highs in my Portfolio: PFG, OIS, CSTM, CAT, MT, CIB, DLTR and CMI

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LULU jumps 10% on announcement that CEO will step down.

It must make you feel bad as CEO when this happens.

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Finally sold a slice of CMI. Always hurts a bit cutting the flowers, but in the past 20 years Cummins has never been as highly valued (from a P/E perspective) as these days.

Part of the capital gain realized will go into this year’s 3a, with the rest I dunno yet.
Need to update my buy list first.

His parting gift:

(he clearly should have sold more in green instead of red)

Especially when during your tenure revenues tripled…

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Anybody have experience taking long-term short positions? I hope to move part of my portfolio into short positions and want to better understand the risks. Say I size my positions very conservatively, pick shares with sufficient volume that have low short interest. Not penny stocks, and I have a stop loss set.

I’m not bothered if the share price jumps by 10 or 20%, since I’m sized conservatively. I want to understand the “catastrophe scenario” where the share price doubles or goes 10x in after-hours / pre-market, due to low volume or manipulation. If anybody has a short % in their portfolio, how do you deal with the long tail risk? (I don’t want to use put options)

One problem with IBKR is that they don’t pay you interest on short positions until after 100k.

Short futures might be a more capital efficient way.

They all went extinct.[$]

Kind of like the opposite of survivorship bias … :wink:

More seriously: I would only short via Puts (that you buy). Obviously limited upside, but also limited downside (the price you paid for your Puts).


$   Except for a few famous ones not on this forum afaik.

I’m interested in going short on mid-caps that either don’t have options or have no volume in their options. I read about some people maintaining a fairly balanced long:short ratio in their portfolio, and wondered how they sleep knowing they might wake in deep debt to their broker. But maybe I overstate the risk…

edit:

did some more reading and maybe I need to look at hedging with calls after all

I see. Sounds like tough luck.

Maybe worth its own topic to discuss actually shelling short shares as I think most (if not all?) stock pickers in this topic are long only.

I have no real practical experience shorting (bought a few 2+ year out way OTM Puts on TSLA a maybe 4 or 5 years ago, still think the company is worth shite, the Puts expired worthless, I learned my lesson).
The people who short professionally are super specialized expert boutique companies and two in the past year or so exited their business, Jim Chanos (Kynikos Associates)[$] – of Enron fame – folded this year, and Hindenburg research earlier this year as well, IIRC.
While there’s a few left, I feel like this is the Golden Age of Fraud and it’s a tough time to short. Also, even for the less prominent frauds companies perhaps overvalued, you need entire teams to do in-detail research, to handle publicity (spin doctor your short thesis in the media) and you’ll still face massive criticism. Maybe the latter isn’t a problem in your case as you’re only planning to take small positions.

Anyway, good luck and God bless you!


$   Kynikos Associates aka "The Cynics' Partnership".

Means “buffoon” in Greek. The guy is Greek :wink:

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I could not find a single methodology that gave me an edge shorting stocks. I tried quite a few and did decades of tests. I need a reliable way of mechanically trading my ideas and for shorts I just could not find any.

The big short sellers usually find some kind of fraud that is not already known to the public, then short and then publish what they know. But then, one of the most successful shorties, Hindenburg, went out of business this year for unknown reasons.

I would start with some well known rules for detecting fraudulent or creative bookkeeping, like the M-score or a few others. Then try them out put it into filters and rules and find a money management for shorting them. Don’t forget, you will have to pay the dividend too.

Good luck. I chose the easier way, long only.

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To all you dear stockpickers:
What is you preferred way (ideally without subscription/login) to visualize stock development of dividend stocks (assumed you reinvest all dividends)?

I could find several US-based websites, but they didn’t have the Swiss stocks I was interested in (common ones, like the big 10 of CHSPI).
Just a plain chart with some simulated value (e.g. start 10k in 1995, how did it develop since then). Something like this, but just for CH stocks (and ideally not as shitty looking as that): DRIP Returns Calculator | Dividend Channel
That must be a very common request, but somehow I seem to be missing sth.

Not entirely sure I fully understood your requirements, but Goofy-AHI answers as follows ((pseudo-)fast mode, 2ish free requests per day):

Free (for one portfolio): DivviDiary (divvidiary.com)

E.g. for UBS I see:

It does also provide looking at a price chart but I don’t think the price chart includes dividends and dividends reinvested.

The Overview table (screenshot above) however allows you to enter with CHF x (you can select your main currency, mine is USD) at entry date x.y.z. and select to reinvest dividends, an end date, and see your total return as well as your CAGR.

Paid option: FASTgraphs (with international stocks) (fastgraphs.com)

Also gives you only really a table overview. Here’s the one with dividends reinvested (for a randomly selected timeframe):

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A chart that includes dividends. For free you can get this at tradingview.com

Here a sample of IBM compared with SP500 with and without divi and where to change that setting:

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Yes, perfect, this is what I was looking for. Thanks!