Would you buy real estate in Ukraine right now?

[justadude]

Good question. I suppose I could/should extend my time horizon. A buddy of mine recommended an individual stock. I'm planning to start messing around with day trading with small amounts.

OK. Contact me when you have time.

[justadude]

I think my favorite type of house I've seen for sale in Ukraine would be what appears to be called a cottage. To me it's a townhouse. You can have a garage and a yard for the dogs. This one is a bit pricey at $180K, but you can find cheaper versions for less than $100K. Pretty amazing I think. Just dreaming at this point.

https://www.olx.ua/obyavlenie/prodazh-kotedzhu-IDEVrnW.html#59c53df199;promoted

[justadude]

I found this to be very informative, even if it is an advertisement for real estate legal services:

https://tinyurl.com/y2keq223

[andrewfi]

I gave the idea of trading a look. Something to consider: when you look at the various trading platforms you will see a notice about the proportion of the users who lost money through using their tools. I didn't see one that claimed a lower than 79% loss rate.

On that basis, you'd be better off sitting ina British pub playing the fruit machines!

[justadude]

You may be right. I started trading with Etrade two weeks ago. One of the most important things I learned was how to set a "stop loss". It's a sell order that is triggered by a predetermined downward movement in price on whatever you're holding, stock, monetary exchange, etc. With a $1000 investment I made $48 on my first trade, including fees, in a couple of hours. Then I made 3 more trades since and have managed to turn my initial $2000, which I had set aside for this experiment, into $1988. Again this is after paying all fees. 

In the last few days I found out about websites that suggest particular trades. I have tried one called chartmill. It gives you stock picks aimed at day traders  and suggests prices for entry, selling up and stop losses. It has an explanation for why it believes a particular stock is a worthwhile bet, including history on the stability of the entity and how it has performed against competitors. One question I'd ask would be "why would they give this information away?" The sight I've joined sells advertising and also has a system where you need to buy points if you've exceeded a particular amount of usage.

I have no problem with them monetizing their knowledge and in fact it seems prudent to be weary of those who provide stock picks completely for free, unless it's just friends on a forum.

[andrewfi]

Check this out: https://www.thebalance.com/is-it-possible-to-make-a-living-trading-stocks-3140573

Over the course of this year I have seen a return of over 15% on my investments. I didn't do any of the work. Every single person who did as I did has had the same return. Of course, I could lose it, or see a much smaller return in the future. All that I do is choose my risk level and avoid the urge to tell the manager to sell when prices fall.

Unless I thought that I knew more than the team managing my portfolio, and I don't, there's no way that doing it myself makes any sense. To do better than my fund management I would have to be in the top fraction of 1% of traders. I'd have to have the money to burn while acquiring the requisite skills, I'd have to have the right temperament to handle the work. Worst of all, I'd have to be the best trader in the world in order to be able to overcome the losses incurred while learning how to actually make money.

Obviously I don't know how much money you have to invest, or trade with, but if you hope to live off the proceeds you need a lot of money and an unfeasible amount of good fortune because it will not be skill that gets you any profits you acquire.

If I were you, I would talk with a proper financial advisor, look at real options for almost all my money, keep a small amount to play with and live within my means.

[justadude]

Check this out: https://www.thebalance.com/is-it-possible-to-make-a-living-trading-stocks-3140573

Over the course of this year I have seen a return of over 15% on my investments. I didn't do any of the work. Every single person who did as I did has had the same return. Of course, I could lose it, or see a much smaller return in the future. All that I do is choose my risk level and avoid the urge to tell the manager to sell when prices fall.

Unless I thought that I knew more than the team managing my portfolio, and I don't, there's no way that doing it myself makes any sense. To do better than my fund management I would have to be in the top fraction of 1% of traders. I'd have to have the money to burn while acquiring the requisite skills, I'd have to have the right temperament to handle the work. Worst of all, I'd have to be the best trader in the world in order to be able to overcome the losses incurred while learning how to actually make money.

Obviously I don't know how much money you have to invest, or trade with, but if you hope to live off the proceeds you need a lot of money and an unfeasible amount of good fortune because it will not be skill that gets you any profits you acquire.

If I were you, I would talk with a proper financial advisor, look at real options for almost all my money, keep a small amount to play with and live within my means.

All good points. No I don't hope to make a living off of this. It's kind of a hobby at this point and I have a lot to learn.

I have hired a couple of financial advisors in the past and have interviewed others. The question I usually ask is: Will you contact me from time to time to suggest adjustments to my portfolio based on changes in market conditions? The answer is generally standoffish or inconclusive.

I think there are some very brilliant mutual fund managers. But many of them saw their funds lose 50+% of their value between 2008-2012. Meanwhile, financial advisors told their customers to stay put. I believe the fund managers were more between a rock and a hard place as the fund will stay in the market for which it's perspective states. However, advisors should have put in circuit breakers/stop loss orders for their clients and moved them into cash positions. 

15% is great and you beat the market by about 3% according to my figures. I'll take 3% above the market in any good year. However, I don't want to be within 3% either side of a market that's going down 10% per year, which has happened.

I'll also readily admit that knowing how long to leave your circuit breakers "tripped" before re-entry is easier said than done. For example, who knew in 2009 that 2009 wasn't the bottom?

I've got a lot to learn, and I don't plan to do anything too risky, but I'm glad I've learned about the stop loss so far. The basic idea is that you buy a stock with a good set up, then you put in place two sell orders, one on the high end and one on the low that limits your losses. Theoretically you can't lose big portions of your portfolio this way. An exception would be if you bought a stock that is not heavily traded, one that is not very liquid.

On the other hand, you can continue to erode your trading portfolio. Incidentally, the trades I made this morning put me back in the black for the $2000 I've allocated to this experiment. I don't know where I'll go from here, but I have another buy for tomorrow morning and after the market opens I'll put in the sell orders as described above. Microsoft, if anyone's interested. One thing I know is that it has been messing with my anxiety problem, and that might be enough reason to stop messing around with it.

To be succinct, your plan is probably better than mine!

[Guile]

I have a finance background and have done stock trading in the past personally and professionally.  It is a fool's game.  You won't beat the market and your emotions will hinder you.

Build a solid long term portfolio, stock indices, bonds, REIT, maybe 5-10% cash/gold, bitcoin etc.   Then don't touch or tinker with it.  Look long term.
5 to 10 year horizon and further.  You can rebalance annually depending on your risk tolerance.

Remember most financial advisors are there for the commissions and once they get it they don't care how your portfolio performs.

[andrewfi]

Guile is right.
There's two things that enable profit from trading (as opposed to investing):
1) knowledge
2) timing.

While I never invested or traded professionally or as an amateur, I had a good training as part of my university studies.
No 'normal' person is ever going to have that knowledge, the knowledge that informs strategy and decision making. Then, in the real world, you're never going to have access to the knowledge about businesses and markets that a professional has as the result of being part of a team with a lot of money supporting the information processing. The guff that Cufflinks pastes here as 'news' for which he pays, is always outdated, often by weeks or months. Basing decisions upon such info is madness. The sellers usually push such info as part of a pump and dump operation designed to take money out of the pockets of mugs and into the bank accounts of charlatans.

Then there's the timing. There's no way that amateurs can get executions carried out as fast as the pros. It might be the microseconds that come from having one's servers connected directly to the market's servers by microwave links or that information is delayed by a few minutes, hours, days or in Cuffy's case weeks. Either way, a mistimed decision costs money.

That's why I pay 1% to the folks who take care of my money. To be honest, the chances are that those of you with pensions have much more money tied up than I. I don't have a pension. But the compounding returns are getting to be a worthwhile amount and if the global economy does not implode, given another few years, I will be seeing enough money to take an income and along with my real estate, go and sit by my pool in Spain. That's not something that could be said to be true of pretty much anyone who is engaged in short term trading on their own behalf.

If you gotta do it yourself, follow Guile's advice. Invest don't trade. And do so in relatively low risk investments with enough diversification to minimise your downside - albeit at some inevitable cost to your upside. Making less profit than was possible is much better than losing your starting capital!

[NS1]

two answers, I would not buy Realestate  in Ukraine, even though the deals right now are very good.
2 reasons, one I am not there to keep an eye on things. 2nd I don't have someone there I would trust as a partner.
Simple you need to be there or have a trusted connection to watch your investment. Likely both.

Investing, I have been doing stocks for years, with decent results. average over last 10 years 8.5%
I rarely do anything short term, requires far too much time and normally quite a bit more risky.
Even investing takes a lot of work and at best is still a guess. To research a stock, unless exceptionally
well known is a fair bit of time.

I know a few people who did it for a living, now retired, told me reading material alone
is 4-6 hours a day, 7 days a week if you want to be serious.

[Guile]

The other thing with trading is you gotta hold loooong to really get gains.  Amazon was at about $1 in the late 90's.  Who knew it would hit $2000 and dip slightly.  That's a 2000x gain but you needed to hold for 20 years and not be tempted to sell.  Say you put $5000 in, that's $10 million today.   So if you have 50k lying around pick 10 stocks and hope 1 hits a million.

Many others went bust though.  Yahoo, Netscape, Apple (up and down)....Google has done well.  Tesla is volatile, same with Netflix. 

If you want to sleep at night throw it all in an S/P 500 or Dow Index and collect the dividends.

[msmoby]

Sure.. You seem to have forgotten Black Friday.

Those investing in Property could invest and live in the investment.

[andrewfi]

Not quite sure what moby is thinking of here. Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, was really bad for everybody who sold into the dip. That's what amateur traders did. Of course, back then amateur trading was much less of a thing as purchases had to go through a stockbroker meaning that small-time investors tended to be investors rather than gamblers. Those who bought on the dip will have done really well, those who held will also have done well. Those who sold into the dip lost a lot of money.

If moby is thinking of the Great Recession from 2007, well, given that I was writing about the coming event ages before and why it was going to happen, I think that it is likely that professional managers were not too surprised by what happened in the US. However, a quick look tells us that those who didn't sell have done pretty well. I can see that my funds, where they go back to 2009, have been showing good returns year on year.

March 2009 was the lowest point for the FTSE which has doubled in value since that date. The S&P in the USA has quadrupled in the same period. Not too many real estate investments will have performed as well over that period, although, of course, rental incomes will, as with dividends, even out the picture.

A point that is missed by many, is the effect of dividends. When dividends are reinvested they even out price fluctuations - but that's not something that applies to trading. Investors who hold their stocks can choose to get the benefit of reinvested dividends.

For private individuals, the typical 'sufferers' when market prices fall are those who have little choice but to sell or those who are reliant upon investments as an income. That's usually retirees who may have little choice about when to sell because they cannot change their retirement date, or must rely upon drawn down income for living expenses.

A trader or personal investor welcomes a dip as an opportunity to buy cheaply. The effect is twofold, by regular purchasing over time often called dollar price averaging or price averaging, one evens out the effect of market fluctuations, and secondly, one can emphasise purchases in a dip in anticipation of future increases. Those bargain buys will compound value into the future.

Personally, I now have cash on hand that can be dropped into purchases after market falls. The danger is that one can hold cash for too long losing the benefits of investment. I have a trigger set that means when ISA time rolls around again, I will drop the maximum into another stocks and shares individual savings account (ISA) for its tax benefits. Those tax benefits will more than outweigh any likely losses from not having my money invested.

moby's brief 'reminder' is a very good example of the kind of thinking that makes amateur trading so dangerous. As my advisor seems to like saying, because he says it often, the most important part of his job is to dissuade clients from selling when markets, or the funds he is connected to, dip because that's how people lose money.

Here's a really good look at the events of 2007 and onward: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007 Worth noting that for investors, the stock market crash created some very profitable opportunities for investors, notably in the field of commodities.

***For USAians, an ISA has some similarities to a 401K plan in that it gives deferred tax advantages. Typically, a saver pays income tax on the profit from investments when they are withdrawn. With an ISA, this does not happen and there is no taxation within the scheme so reinvestment takes place without deductions for taxes. Where dividends are withdrawn, these are also received tax-free up to £2000 with appropriate deductions above that level. Dividends reinvested remain tax-free, no matter the value. As with a 401K, there are limits to the amount one can invest in any given tax year, currently £20,000.***

[Guile]

Sure.. You seem to have forgotten Black Friday.

Those investing in Property could invest and live in the investment.

Pretty sure you never worked in the finance industry lol.

[Guile]

Don't forget the 2000 dot com crash, the 2008 financial housing crisis, asian collapse, Great Recession. it's easy to tell who knows and who doesn't.

Homes as an investment are not always the best.  Ask people in the USA this past decade who went under.

[andrewfi]

Don't forget the 2000 dot com crash, the 2008 financial housing crisis, asian collapse, Great Recession. it's easy to tell who knows and who doesn't.

Homes as an investment are not always the best.  Ask people in the USA this past decade who went under.

No home that one lives in is an investment.
Renting out a home that one does not control is not an investment.

I have done the residential letting thing, never, ever, again thanks! I know that some have done so much better than I managed, but it was a nightmare for me.

[Guile]

I could never be a landlord. too much crap to deal with. and tenants have legal rights even if they trash your place and don't pay rent. It is hard to evict them.  I'll take my dividend and interest payments from stocks any day.  The other thing is capital gains and dividends are taxed far less than housing unless it is your primary residence.  Don't know about the UK.  Good luck trying to buy even a 1 bed flat in London now.

[Steveboy]

I would never let anyone invest money for me (If I had any)

You need to look at it like this any wiz kid (Crook) who wants to invest your money would need to show his own personal investment portfolio and you would need to see several million CASH in his bank (Well he is a wizzes kid so he must have this?) I would also want to see his property portfolio with a full check the property is in HIS name with no charges or debentures on it.. If he cannot provide that he can get lost..

If he has got that then you need to think some thing is strange here going on? Why would some multi millionaire whizz kid want to help a no-body??

As for investing in stocks and shares its a mugs game unless your already a multi millionaire and have plenty of cash to also loose..


"Bricks and mortar" Is the only investment to make nothing else...

As for investing in any other buggers business that's a no no also unless you got millions to loose.. but some people are lucky, look at the guy who invested 5000pounds in Body Shop as a start up.. some are lucky most loose..

[Steveboy]

I could never be a landlord. too much crap to deal with. and tenants have legal rights even if they trash your place and don't pay rent. It is hard to evict them.  I'll take my dividend and interest payments from stocks any day.  The other thing is capital gains and dividends are taxed far less than housing unless it is your primary residence.  Don't know about the UK.  Good luck trying to buy even a 1 bed flat in London now.

Yes but even if they shit on your carpets, trash the fridge and smear the bathroom in cat shit.. your place is still going to be worth more in the long term.. and other than a revolution or war your place is till going to be standing in 30 years time how ever much they trashed it..

[andrewfi]

Commercial real estate is a slightly different matter, on the whole, tenants have more incentive to look after the premises and can be more readily kept to their agreements.

Having done both residential and commercial, I know where I stand.

Steveboy, I don't know about Russia, but in the UK, investment management in shares and funds of shares is a very highly regulated business. As long as one is not greedy, stupid, or both, then one need not worry too much about being robbed. One can check the data for the investments and make informed choices.

The other issue is that of liquidity. One cannot easily go to cash with buildings. With my investments, I can withdraw cash within 10 days and the instruction to do so is almost instant in terms of execution. In most respects, it is like taking money out of the bank. OK, you're gonna say the only bank you trust is the pile of banknotes stashed under your dirty underwear in the bottom of your wardrobe - but I am less cynical than you.

[msmoby]

Andrewfi,


Tell us about the yield on Commercial rents in - say - the UK over the last 15 years ... Tell us about business rates payments and if they have gone down and how long one can get 'relief' for an unleased / empty premises


I can think of quite a few folks that may have lost out in the late nineties and late noughties who are still quids in ..

IF one buys a house and one lives in it ...  or you rent the same house  - over a period of say 20 years - where has one lost money doing the former ?  ( I am not referring to second homes / buy to let )


Take your time

[Steveboy]

Commercial real estate is a slightly different matter, on the whole, tenants have more incentive to look after the premises and can be more readily kept to their agreements.

Having done both residential and commercial, I know where I stand.

Steveboy, I don't know about Russia, but in the UK, investment management in shares and funds of shares is a very highly regulated business. As long as one is not greedy, stupid, or both, then one need not worry too much about being robbed. One can check the data for the investments and make informed choices.

The other issue is that of liquidity. One cannot easily go to cash with buildings. With my investments, I can withdraw cash within 10 days and the instruction to do so is almost instant in terms of execution. In most respects, it is like taking money out of the bank. OK, you're gonna say the only bank you trust is the pile of banknotes stashed under your dirty underwear in the bottom of your wardrobe - but I am less cynical than you.

I only trust myself...

If any thing goes tits up I only have myself to blame..

OK, you're gonna say the only bank you trust is the pile of banknotes stashed under your dirty underwear in the bottom of your wardrobe - but I am less cynical than you    well kind off..

Not bank notes they could go up in ashes if a fire comes! Gold!

[rosco]

Tell us about the yield on Commercial rents in - say - the UK over the last 15 years ... Tell us about business rates payments and if they have gone down and how long one can get 'relief' for an unleased / empty premises

Personally, I'm looking at a 20% rental yield and full rate relief on my units.

[msmoby]

Personally, I'm looking at a 20% rental yield and full rate relief on my units.

Hmm, who was the guy who told us about a good profit on a pop up shop ?

WHY do you think such short term lets are available ?

[msmoby]

https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-business-rate-relief/exempted-buildings-and-empty-buildings-relief


"Empty properties
You do not have to pay business rates on empty buildings for 3 months. After this time, most businesses must pay full business rates."