How to See - Surfing the Market

So, of course, I'm kicking myself over Tesla. It did a morning dip, only as far as $677, however, and has turned up again, which is great, if you own it. It also leaves me with $4,500 better spent on other things (we missed our first IPO chance, for which we're saving $2,000 of that, but there's still the post-debut dip to buy).

The market, however, is doing great, our fund is doing well overall, and my whole account, even better.

My whole account is what I am posting about here. I want to point out an important lesson in how to check your account and not overreact. Easy for me to say, I chickened out of Tesla yesterday at the worst possible point in the day to do it.

Lessons. You're learning, I'm learning. Here's what I know:

My numbers have looked freaking terrifying for about a week, and would easily rate as nerve-wracking for the week preceding that. As of yesterday's close (remembering that we did not own everything that has contributed to my $2,700 gain as of this time today at the opening bell yesterday, so we cannot simply add that to $161) Plug Power was off more than $1,300 (by that reckoning, which oversimplifies) and Bumble nearly $1,100.

But, what are our feelings about these two companies? First of all, Plug Power, whose transaction history corrupts the informative value of that 'gain/loss' number, given as a single value, is at a double-down point, I called it clearly yesterday. Even before reading the prediction from that other blogger yesterday, I continued to have faith that it would, at minimum, return to that $66 price target before Christmas.

And Bumble is one of my previous experiments with IPOs. I missed the first spike (by bidding too low on my limit orders), then I bought into a mini-dip that was probably the real natural IPO dip. This month's tech rout, however, struck well before the price had caught back up to even. I might have included Bumble in our shopping spree yesterday, but I had no confidence it would take the same bottom as the sector, so I held what I had, believing firmly that it, too, would come back sooner or later, but I could not recommend buying.

My point, here, is to not see that big red number and go "Holy $#*!, F--- my life!" You know that there is money in your portfolio that will happen, barring global catastrophe. Its unrealized capital. Don't forget to take the big red marks on fairly reliable brands in a similar light. Temporary losses. Now, I ought to have taken my own advice under a higher-pressured situation yesterday, but we're learning...

So, should we buy one of these stocks, now, with our would-be Tesla money? Considering it...but, no. You miss a wave, you can stare in at shore for the next hour thinking about how you'd have ridden it, or you can drift back out and get ready for the next set.

Teladoc does tele medicine. Tech market surging back, pandemic. Sold. Pintrest, we talked about it yesterday, still hasn't popped. I'll take some.

Hmm. Baidu, maybe, PayPal maybe, Hilton...also no. Stryker medical devices? Wayfair retail website? Closer. Facebook. Square.

Zoom.

So that's it. $2,500 split between Teladoc, Pintrest and Zoom. I think my conservative mind is telling me to put $500 on Teladoc, the lowest name-recognition brand of the three, but I'm going to do $500 on Pintrest, I think because I expect steady gains of a sort to encourage 're-ups.'

So that's it. We're back in the game. What about Tesla and $4,000/share? How long to get there and what's the buy price? There's gonna be another buy opportunity. In the meantime, let's make the best money we can, one board catching waves along an endless beach.