How much have you made in the Stock market in the past year? Post success stories here.

[cbdo2007]

[ProleNoMore]

1. $ 0 - Have Been Out Of The Stock Market For Three Years

eom

[ChairmanAgnostic]

2. I got a set of 6 pair of stockings

from an online place, they are wool, insulated, and comfy in both winter and summer. That is about the only market I would trust these days.

[Blue_In_AK]

3. We lost a bunch before we took the money out June '08.

Now we're in money market or something -- I don't really understand this stuff -- and we've made a little back, but we're not ready to get back in the market. I'm boycotting it until the employment situation improves.

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. Z E R O (actually, my IRA is still below where it was when I rolled in my 401K)

[yellowcanine]

5. I have not looked at my quarterly statement for at least a year so I do not know.

Maybe I will peek at the end of year statement just to see how much my wife gets if I get run over by a truck in 2010 (info I will keep from her of course. No need to give her any ideas)

[dmallind]

6. I must be consistent and say, technically, nothing, but the current value of my portfolio is up

Just like a home valuation that fluctuates, an equity investment that fluctuates only makes you money when you sell and I have not done any selling.

However the overall value of my portfolio is up about $175K in the last year and down only $75K from its peak. I also took advantage to significantly lower my cost averaging by injecting extra money at the artificial lows of sub 7K in the DJIA (I kept it simple and bought DJIA index funds, so for once the Dow itself is exactly relevant) and that's gained me an additional $20K or so so far.

Since my equities investments are money I expect not to need or touch for 20+ years, I no more actually made money last year than I lost any the year before, but since nobody listened to that answer last year (and only idiots get out of the markets during a panic) I'll expect those people to agree I really made gains this year (as if I can expect intellectual honesty from such folks).

[cbdo2007]

22. Excellent choice on the Index Funds.

That's where all my money sits while I'm researching other stocks to jump into and out of. Are you just in a DJIA fund or have you tried the Double the Dow funds as well?

[dmallind]

47. This one was just straight DJIA. I'll move it soon I think into a midcap value fund. NT

[pitohui]

63. down "only" 75 K from your peak

i like your honesty

at least you'er aware you're not really winning

most players at this game are simply w.out a clue


folks, when you're down "only" 75K, do DUers really earn this much that you have $75K just laying around to gamble with or do you honestly understand that this is YEARS out of your life you never get back???

[JackRiddler]

7. Is this discounting for the decline in the dollar?

And after subtracting the long-term tax bill (or inflation) due to the bailouts for the criminal class?

And accounting for my unemployed family members and neighbors?

Fuck the stock market.

[vadawg]

55. for me the weak dollar has helped any losses ihave sustained on the market

though my my pension plan and 401K are stock market based, my main retirement cashflows are benefitting due to the weak dollar...

[NeedleCast]

8. If the up trend in the market continues I'll have had a solid year

Wishing Citigroup would get back to 10-15/share. I think it'll happen but I'm waiting longer than I'd like. I bought a few hundred shares a $.98/share, and a few hundred more at $2.56/share. Its hovering around $4.25/share now. I think I'll wait a least another 9 months to see where its at, as I'd like to avoid capital gains tax. Did VERY well on Principal financial this year.

Overall, at age 35, the dive in the market was a blessing in disguse for me as my 403(b) investments are buying a lot more shares than they would have been if the market had stayed at 12,500-13,500 range.

[cbdo2007]

21. Yeah, Citigroup was one of my big winners this year

I got in at $.98 also with a couple thousand shares as this was practically a no lose situation. I sold at just under $3.00 when it was sitting just sitting around there forever. If anything sits around the same price for more than a week when I've already tripled my price I just get rid of it and sleep easier.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

26. So YOU won huh? It's all blood money

At first glance, all of these projects have one thing in common: they damage what’s left of the world’s forests and, by contributing to fossil fuel burning and deforestation, they contribute to the worsening of global warming. But dig a little deeper and they also share a startling denominator. All were made possible through financing by the world’s largest financial institution, Citigroup.

Cut to billboards around many major U.S. cities.

“Who would you rather impress? Your accountant or your children?”
“Make sure all the pictures in your wallet aren’t of dead presidents.”
“Be independently happy.”

These are slogans from Citigroup’s new $100 million advertising campaign. The tag line is “Citi — Live Richly.” It is the juxtaposition between these two presentations of one corporation that is at the center of controversy over the role that the Citigroup plays in financing the fossil fuel, mining and logging industries.

A growing environmentalist campaign is insisting that Citi’s record of financing the fossil fuel, mining and logging industries around the world is fundamentally incompatible with the company’s massive public relations initiative to present itself as the avatar of personal financial security for consumers. Citi-financed projects, say environmentalists, are promoting environmental insecurity — not only damaging local ecosystems, but undermining the livelihood of communities around the world and threatening the well-being of people across the globe through climate change.

...

http://multinationalmonitor.org/mm2002/02april/april02corp1.html

Across downtown San Francisco, nearly every Bank of America and Citi ATM was shut down this morning as swarms of activists covered over 70 ATM’s with “Global Warming Crime Scene” tape and “closed” signs denouncing investments in coal that are killing our climate. Many customers enthusiastically took flyers, shocked to learn that their banks are using their money to invest in environmental destruction.

A few hours later, a roving band of people in Haz-Mat suits featuring the Citi logo with smokestacks billowing climate-destroying gasses took to San Francisco streets. At 4 different Citi locations, people entered the branches educating customers about Citi’s dirty investments in the coal industry. “Die-Ins” were held inside branches and “global warming crime scenes” were announced as banks shuttered their doors.



http://sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Coal_Finance_Day_of_Action

[cbdo2007]

28. If you do any of the following: live, eat, drive, drink, breathe, sleep, walk, shop

You are supporting many, many companies that do horrible things every day. Sure, it probably makes you feel good to shop somewhere that advertises themselves as wholesome or "green" or pro-union or whatever, but as the current banking collapse should show you, even those companies get their funding, insurance, etc. from all of the horrible companies you think you are avoiding.

So good luck to you with your pointing fingers at individual news-makers for whatever random reason has popped up today, but you are supporting them every day just as much as any of us who are making money along with them. We're all supporting them, some of us just do it smarter than others.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

29. Disturbing rationale

Guess that helps you sleep at night knowing the stock market is the epicenter of exploitation and economic imperialism.

You do know that right?

[cbdo2007]

32. Oh give me a break. Either you live in a bunker and have never visited the outside world

or you support the Stock market and many of it's companies every single day.

Get over yourself and whatever you think you're standing up for by throwing your dollars at them all day ever day and then bashing them with your other face.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

33. You're lying

to yourself.

If you invest in the stock market you support the worst of the worst of predatory capitalism.

Now don't take too much time checking the ticker as the forests are hacked down for your profits.

You're actively involved in plunder. Knowingly. Some if us actively work against it. Big difference.

[A HERETIC I AM]

36. You typed out that response on a fucking computer....

made almost entirely out of PLASTIC which comes from petroleum and that plastic is made in plants that look like this;


That plastic takes centuries to degrade.

You're lying to yourself. If you invest in the stock market you support the worst of the worst of predatory capitalism. Now don't take too much time checking the ticker as the forests are hacked down for your profits. You're actively involved in plunder. Knowingly. Some if us actively work against it. Big difference.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocrite">A Link for you

What a complete and utter load of bollocks

Please climb down from that high horse you're on before reality bucks you off flat on your ass.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

37. Yeah so

You heavily invested?

For you:

[A HERETIC I AM]

38. I suppose you're unwilling to admit..

even the slightest but of hypocrisy in your responses to cbdo2007, right?

As he said to you above, "Either you live in a bunker and have never visited the outside world or you support the Stock market and many of it's companies every single day."

It's incredibly sanctimonious of you to condemn someone for investing in the stock market while doing so on a device made cheaply available to you ENTIRELY because the stock market exists.

[Lucky Luciano]

42. The dude is a self-righteous megalomaniac.

Hope things are well with you.

[A HERETIC I AM]

44. Yeah, bud...I'm good.

If I remember correctly, I think I saw you post a while back that you got on with another firm, right?

Hope it's fun for you and all is well.

BTW, Your post #41 is funny as hell

cheers

:toast:

[Hannah Bell]

45. sure he is structure arbitrage aka lucky luciano. nice equivalence.

[MilesColtrane]

56. Your tax dollars have just as much, if not more blood on them.

Unless you're willing to tell Uncle Sam to fuck off come April 15th, you have no moral soapbox from which to preach.

[Statistical]

9. 36.5% for 2009 YTD.

Mostly selling volatility to those willing to gamble with it.

Bad news is volatility is declining rapidly so the easy money is mostly gone.

[NeedleCast]

12. Thats been a bummer for small investor like me

Seeing companies like Citigroup sitting at a dollar a share was nice and I could afford to buy a lot of it at that price.

[Lucky Luciano]

41. Vol is fun to trade around.

Vol of vol just picked up a bit, so the vol trade can get interesting again. Now if you could just tell me how to price and accurately hedge an option on realized variance, I would be very thankful.

[A HERETIC I AM]

43. ...

:spray:

[Agony]

59. Yeah i LOVE my VIX too!

and fuck those unlucky poor fuckers i got my piece of the fucking pie man

[unhappycamper]

10. About -$250,000 (401K)

And that is why I'm still unhappy.

[sharp_stick]

11. Right now I have a solid year going

I'm pretty well set up I think in some decent high growth areas. I was lucky enough to move out of stocks into a money market before everything went all to shit and I jumped back into stocks last February/March.

[gmoney]

13. I've been holding Apple stock for a while now

It's up substantially since I bought it, and has gone from about $85 at the start of the year to over $200 today, but it peaked at about $200 at the very end of 2007, so you tell me.

[cbdo2007]

19. Excellent move w/ Apple

Everyone watching knew this one would recover big time and it'll probably be one of the best stocks of the next 5 years.

[Warpy]

14. Not as much as I "lost" last year

but the net worth on paper is getting back up there.

What I haven't lost is the income from it, and I guess that's a success story. I've really expected to take a hit as the economy has slowed down, but it hasn't happened as yet.

[frebrd]

15. I've avoided the stock market since 1987. eom

[cliffordu]

16. Welll...I went to buy some cheap detergent, some emergent nation got my load

Thank you frank zappa.....

Oh, yeah, not a frikking dime

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

17. Zip. I bailed when the handwriting on the wall went neon.

And, I'm not about to invest in the new bubble.

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. zero. I was too chicken to get back in.

I bought back in yesterday. Just in time for the other half of the W, no doubt.

[optimator]

20. all "success" requires someone to lose

same thing as a Las Vegas casino, the house always wins.

[Statistical]

27. Not true at all.

GDP has risen, productivity has risen, industrial output has risen.

The whole larger slice of a pie or grow the size of the pie theory.

[mullard12ax7]

23. I'd like to thank all the Goldman Sachs workers who each made $700,000 bonuses

Thanks for rigging the markets so deluded and self-congratulatory political hacks can brag about how much money they have and claim it's because of the wondrous "free" market that never collapsed, never needed bailed out and is as healthy as that steroidal guy in all the ads I see here.

[morillon]

24. Zero, on purpose.

I deliberately cut loose anything remotely related to the stock market in 2006 and haven't gotten back in. I want nothing to do with it anymore, even though I made a nice sum of money there from the late 90s to the mid 2000s. I have come to *loathe* the stock market, and I don't want to make money from it or contribute to its continued existence, certainly not in its current casino atmosphere.

[safeinOhio]

25. Total up about 25%

All my mutual funds are either even or down a little. The stocks that I invested in are way up. Bought 1000 of Ford at $1.82 up to about $8.20. Bought shares in a mining stock that is up 50%. I am really a little over even on the 2 shares I bought a month ago of Bershire Hathaway, but, looks like those 2 shares are going to be 100 shares now. More than half is invested in bonds and CDs, they just stay between 3 and 5%. As inflation was down a little over 1% last year, I can add that 1% to the 3 and 5. Had purchased American Gold Eagles and some bags of pre1964 silver in 2006 and they are doing great. Retired and don't gamble as much. Never bet the farm, just a few 100 shares or 4 or 5 grand. Now taking 10%/year out of the IRA.
Best investment was paying cash last year for a bank owned home. Would be hard to lose on it and I love it. Single with no family and now I have a 4 bedroom 3 bath beautiful home.
Seems to work best for me....when every one else is selling I buy. When they are buying, I sell.

[Warren DeMontague]

30. BURN the heretic! BURN! BURN!

BURN!!!!!!!!!!!!

:popcorn:

[Lisa0825]

31. I just got in the market in early March, and...

I have increased the value of my account by over 36% since I started in March, despite losing some ground in October. I have half in a "fund of funds" and I am trying my hand at trading biotechs with the other half. I have 10 stocks that are awaiting FDA approvals, so with some luck, my account could grow a lot in the coming year if I made good picks!

(edited to recalculate)

[martymar64]

34. You get better odds in Vegas playing13 Black.

The Stock Market is just one big casino for the rich to squander our pension funds.

Fuck Wall Street! I hope someday it burns to the ground.

[ohheckyeah]

35. year to date returns have been great

New World Fund® — A year to date return 49.82%
New World Fund® — C year to date return 48.89%
Investment Company of America® — A ytd return 23.87%

The problem is we didn't have a lot invested.

[rollingrock]

39. The stock market is a glorified casino

for every winner, there are 10 losers.

your odds are better in Reno or on the Vegas strip.

[Statistical]

46. A complete falsehood.

Got a cite for your 1:10 ratio. How many loser for each winner in Reno or Vegas?

If wealth was static (i.e a fixed sum of wealth in the world and it never increased) then stock market would be a 0 sum game.
Even a 0 sum game is better than Vegas which is a negative sum game.

However wealth isn't static it grows each year.
The whole grow the pie vs bigger slice of pie scenario.



Over a 20 year period no matter when you invested in an S&P5600 index fund it returned 7% to 19%.
The longer the timeline the closer one will reach the average return

Here is another way to look at it


Depending on when you started investing your 20 year returns varies dramatically but it is positive. Equities are a long term game.

The shorter the timespan the more volatility in average returns however the longer it is held the closer to the mean you reach (because each individual year good or bad is less important)



While most people won't be invested 100 years they can easily be invested for 50 years. In the last century regardless of when you invested (1910-1960, 1930-1980, 1958-2008) the overal return stayed in a very narrow range of +-3% from the 10% mean.

[cbdo2007]

51. For every 10 losers there are 10 people who didn't do their research.

That's all the stock market is, it's something you learn about and you apply the knowledge you've learned and you'll come up a big winner.

I'm not sure you even understand what "odds" are if you claim casino odds are better than stock market odds. Maybe you could ask your math teacher tomorrow to give you a quick lesson after first period.

[quaker bill]

62. The stock market is not an atm

Lots of people who had every reason to believe they knew what they were doing, and even have the degrees to back them up, still lost money in the crash.

Personally I am up quite a bit YTD, but I do not do tax deferred investing, like a 401K. I want the freedom to pull all my money out when I feel the need to, without tax penalty. So, I pay the taxes on the money, then invest. Overall, over the last 20 years I have easily earned 5 times the principal invested. That being said, my current exposure to the stock market is modest. During the Bush administration, it made more financial sense to pay down my mortgage, as my savings in compound interest easily beat the potential earnings in the market.

Currently, even in this down market for real estate, I am very much right side up on my mortgage. It is still by far and away, the best investment I have ever made.

[flvegan]

40. Roughly 325% gain.

Seriously. Bear in mind, I bought in on one stock this year as a total gamble with fun money that I wouldn't have been upset to lose, but I knew I wouldn't, even if I had to hold it for a few years. My 401k isn't doing as well, only up maybe 1.5%.

Thank you, Ford. Good American company, making me good American dollars.

No, I'm not giving a dollar amount.

[NNN0LHI]

48. What made you go with Ford stock if you don't mind me asking?

I was too scared to do it myself.

I will regret that until the day I die.

Don

[flvegan]

49. Total gamble.

When it hit just around $1, I thought that there was just no way in hell Ford was going to be worthless and stay that way. I considered GM at the same rough time as well, for the same reason, but they were just all over the place, unorganized, etc. Plus, I'm a car nut, so I figured that if I was going to crap out, it might as well be on a car stock. It went better than expected. I hoped for maybe $4 and then that would be it. Like I said, it was money that if I lost it I would've been upset, but not like rolling the dice on my life savings.

[cbdo2007]

50. It wasn't a "total gamble" for many of us. To anyone paying attention it was clear

that Ford was going to come out of that a big winner while GM was going to be the one to falter.

That's how the past year has been with many companies mentioned here: Apple, Ford, Citibank, as well as hundreds of others...the lows we saw at the beginning of the year were highly artificial and aside from a total global civilization meltdown, they were all going to recover very, very well.

Good job with the Ford stock!

[RagAss]

52. It's in my book..."How I made $30 Dollars in the Stock Market"

[Liberal_in_LA]

57. lol n/t

[Crabby Appleton]

53. I'm about $1000 below where I was 2 years ago in my 401K

had been down about $50,000 at its worst.

[ShortnFiery]

54. ...

:puke:

[MilesColtrane]

58. I haven't made anything, even though my stocks are up 45% from last year.

They are beginning to get close to where they were a year ago.

[JackRiddler]

60. Jump, you fuckers.

[pitohui]

61. why? the uptick this year doesn't make up for the huge losses of the previous 8 yrs

people live only so many years and having huge losses over multiple years and then one uptick (which of course doesn't get you back to what you had before you ever invested) doesn't make up for anything

sure i could stand here and yell abt how i'm up 40 % in the market for this year...but the truth is i've lost a lifetime of work and can never retire

the same hard truth that is facing most americans who have a memory span that goes beyond a few months

you don't lose everything and then focus on how you came back and earned 40 percent this year on fucking nothing

every co. that went bankrupt, that's people wiped out that will NEVER get the $$$ back, that will NEVER get their life's blood of work back

bankruptcy is just a management tool for the elite, so they don't have to actually pay us anything for years/decades of investment