What do you think is a good investment now?

Alpaca farming.



Worst case, you can still make yourself a warm sweater, and then eat the alpacas.

Myself.

Edjumacation and stuff.

Countrywide, the largest mortgage lender, is at like $5.00 a share right now. That's got to be a deal in someone's book.

It's rumored they will declare bankruptcy.

Indeed. Never let an alpaca near your credit cards.





Oh, you mean Countrywide.




Never mind.

I've been keeping my eye both on AMD and The Bloeing Company.

With BA there's a lot of legitimate worry built in. Having worked in aerospace, and looking at the fact that the 787 hasn't even flown a single test flight, I get a vibe that somebody has seriously, massively F**CKED UP. When they get their act together, if the composite thing handles crash tests, etc., there could be some money to be made. Not on a AAPL magnitude, though.

Anyone have any thoughts on AMD?

Look at investing in global mutual funds. For example, countries like India where the relaxation of foreign investment in the stock exchange is being enjoyed thoroughly by hedge funds and the large investment firms abroad. Your rate of return is much higher than investing in a stagnant economy.

It is a dangerous time to invest. I think that no matter where you invest you need to insure you have some sort of hedge against inflation because while the U.S. Dollar is a reserve currency and one we worry about depreciating quite a bit, there are no other currencies in the world that are not fiat. Every government is playing the paper money game and so it really comes down to which government lies the least. I know this sounds like a suck position and it is one. You note a lot of bad variables coming down the road here and what I want you to realize is that it likely isn't possible to traverse them all and keep the net-worth number going forward. Sometimes all you get to do is grab a bigger piece of a less expensive pie and then when things rebound, it is worth even more than before.

If you've been following the fed, you will note that they have dumped loads of dollars out there and even worked with other banks to insure the dollar hasn't been dumped. It still could be of course but as I'm fond of saying, you can turn the United States into Argentina, but those who attempt this end up being the Philippines. They can basically tolerate a slight negative return for now or take massive huge negative return when attempting to dump it.

A lot of good investing involves being a bit contrarian, at least in my view. You can Google and there were a number of articles recently noting that the Chinese economy was overstated by forty percent in size. To me this shows how BRIC ROW cannot save the U.S. from recession. We are going to sneeze, the world is going to catch a cold. We are going to have a bout of stagflation for a while.

I'm looking for things that cash flow for me, hopefully and possibly in inflation adjusted currency. I've grabbed some Citibank(C), HTE and ABR along with cash earning interest. I hear a lot of played up talk about dividends being cut but I think a good chunk of that has already been priced in to companies that pay a good dividend and also I think it partly scaring off the sheep so others can jump in.

I've also been and I am still invested in real estate. Sure it is hard watching the net-worth number drop for now, but the properties I have cash flow and will continue to do so whether we live in inflationary, deflationary, dollar destroyed or whatever other times we live in. I'm looking to probably purchase another apartment building in 12-24 months.

I think it very important to have something paying you when the chips come down with regard to an economic downturn. A downturn by definition is basically a game of attrition. We are all going to see who can hold their breath the longest and the ones who can get to stay in the pool.

In rentals for example, I am seeing loads of houses on the market right now. Because I bought at the low end of the market, I can still under price these new landlords (home owners who can't sell) while providing better service AND still making more each month. This will probably be the first time in several years I cannot raise rents. However I can survive this because I am not the guy going -$200 to -$1200 a month on a house. Does it suck to still keep making the same amount when there is clearly inflation evident. Absolutely but my homes aren't the ones going back to the bank and if I can tighten that belt properly in terms of savings, I'll be buying those houses and apartment buildings from that bank for pretty cheap in 12-24 months. When the flush times return I'll have even more properties to give me an even more massive net-worth and when the lean times return after that, I'll be even better set up to survive yet again in terms of cash flow.

A lot of this is abstract. I hope it made some sense because it is some hard stuff to wrap your head around at times.

A few weeks ago Motley Fool suggested Dolby Labs. Sounds like a good investment, actually.

http://laurencehunt.blogspot.com/200...per-ounce.html


Now, there are a lot of reasons why this won't happen...

One being that it starts becoming child's play to mine it our of the oceans once it gets above $1,200/ounce. Which was a similar problem back in the 80s which is why it never broke $900. Well, that and a few other issues.

Lockheed Martin.

Dropping dollar makes C-130s, F-16s, and JSFs that much cheaper to allied militaries. Israel has just gone deep for JSFs. Plus, it seems that the USA is going to need to be replacing their F-15s with pricey F-22s at a faster than expected rate.

I think AMD is a poor investment. Why not consider Intel?

AMD is having awful problems with the phenom, barcelona roll out. Even looking beyond that, the market in cpus is growing in mobile chips. Sales of laptops are expected to surpass that of desktops soon. AMDs chips in this area are weak and Intel owns this space. If MIDs take off Intel will further distance themselves from AMD.

I sure someone can find a reason to like AMD, but it doesn't look good to me. My 2 cents.

Well if SDW followed his advice, he would have made a pretty penny today. Countrywide denied the bankruptcy filings, Bernarke spoke and then Bank of America is rumored to be purchasing. The stock went up something like 50% today.

Bought some BAC during the recent drop. If the dividend is safe, it should do very well when the turnaround occurs.

Cashed out my Vanguard account a month ago.

I moved all of my money into CD's, bonds, and Money Market accounts. Although its a pain to keep up w/ this many MM accounts due to the protected limits by the US gov. Also, I have been slowly buy gold just as a side project. As stupid as it sounds, I was buying gold bullion when it was around $400 and oz, its now over $800 and oz.

I'm waiting for the market to settle low and I will start back buying up.

Perhaps, but LMCO right now has an international cash cow on the JSF and C-130. The unexpected bonus for them is that the domestic F-15 fleet is 30 years old and is, quite literally, falling apart. Even the democrats won't let the Air National Guard go to shambles. It will be replaced with F-22's, and sooner than planned.

There's supposed to be some new biofuel coming out between GE/Boeing/SomethingIcan'tremember. They say it's very very green.

GE would be the more likely candidate, since they make a lot of the jet engines that don't spontaneously shut down . That was a mean pot shot. Anyway, GE train and plane engines are noted for their fuel efficiency. GE has a massive corporate agenda to improve efficiency and search for alternative fuels.

Bread, Beans, Bullets and Booze.

Who run Barter Town?

I am dumping my money into Aruba Networks. Take a look.

ARUN

Really? Thats neat to hear on this board. I'm a network admin and we moved away from the Cisco Aironet to Aruba.

Ask me how I like the product compared to the Cisco product.

P.S. We are not a small shop.

Thanks for the links Artman. I'm going to go invest in a gun now!

Neat little video with The Mad Money king and the Trump

http://link.brightcove.com/services/...ctid1380790704

So it seems Trump is selling $30 million pricetag apartments to people from abroad during this period of the "weak $$$"



Fellows

I am sure a person could find some good investments on this directory of "green" stocks:

http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/i...TOKEN=41238776

Fellows

Nobody is thinking of investing in AAPL (Apple) or MA (MasterCard)?

I invested in these a little over a year ago and have accumulated a small fortune. I simply opened an online account, payed some attention to the market, and bought on dips.

AAPL right now at $135 is a GIFT! Buy now because it will be back at $200 per share in no time!
MA just went up almost $30 to somewhere close to $210. I highly recommend both!

The great thing about you guys investing in AAPL, is that many of you know the ins and outs, being that your a part of this website's board. Thats how u make the money. You read rumors, evaluate patens and speculate. I myself purchased a bunch of AAPL stock back in mid 2006 because after a few patents posted on this and a few other sites, I felt I knew VERY confidently that an iPhone and a iPod Touch would come out. Guess what, I was right, and made a boatload of money! There is still TONS AND TONS of money to be made with AAPL over the next 5-10 years, especially in Options Trading.

Some of you guys should check out Options Trading. Thats a sick game, especially with AAPL.

real estate ... just before the market takes a dive

It gets hard to understand what is meant by a drop. The fed is basically tossing money out of helicopters in my view. This makes it much harder to figure out what the bottom will be due to inflationary pressure now banging against deflationary pricing.

As an example let us say that some property you have been looking at went from $100k to $400k in these oh so fast and free times. Let us further say that this property is now bank-owned and is being offered for $300k. Do I think that is the bottom? No but here is where it gets complicated. Suppose I thought the property would revert to the mean and as such would drop much further, possibly all the way to $125k-150k. The reality is that the fed is tossing loads of liquidity out there, the dollars is falling and as such we now have to guess what number of "Bernarke dollars" will be worth what would have really been $125k to 150k before. Will it be $200... $225... $250k...no one knows until the fed stops pumping.

No one can really know this but the fed. At some point the numbers will swing and that will be the bottom. There will be enough new money out there that suddenly people will realize that $2000 in todays dollars is really $1200 in 1998 dollars or so and we can figure out and price things accordingly. However for now we are just all guessing due to the fed completely giving up the fight on inflation.

So we have both more falling prices but also falling currency to account for when trying to determine a bottom. In California where I live, we still have another 15-25% to go from the prices of bank-owned properties. Non-bank owned properties can forget it for now. They still aren't close to real prices.

Don't go there on this board. Options trading is something that should not be pursued by the vast majority of people here - no matter how smart they think they are.

I read this thread just for fun.... some interesting opinions.

As for me?... This week I bought Apple, Intel, and Micron Technology. Long term holdings for me, I don't do the day-trading game... I just don't see them being anywhere but up a year from now.

Canned food and ammo...

I really wonder about commercial real estate. I've had a theory for a few years now that technology will reduce the demand for commercial real estate.

With internet distribution of goods there should be less demand for bricks and mortar store fronts. Also I know in my particular business that technology will soon replace the need for a transcriptionist. Therefore I won't need a room in my office for someone to do in house transcription.

I'm sure there are a lot of similar examples.

let's pool our money together and start a company selling carbon offsets!

I think Apple Stores and the fact Dell is moving into retail is a refutation of that. The store fronts will need to change though. The need to be solution providers and not just places where you stack boxes and push extended warranties.