What does it mean when James Dimon of JP Morgan sells 32 million dollars worth of JP Morgan stock?
All I know is that is not good…
The Dow ended the day down more than 155 points down in the red after flopping around all day. The metaphor is of a fish out of water kinda fits. Don’t get caught out high and dry.
So the day ends in a somewhat mild/moderate red screen. I wonder how long before we descend like a staircase.
Cal
It means they sell when stock price is high, hang on to the cash and wait a while, and then buy low. Like a certain South African-Canadian-varmint billionaire's brother did with a certain stock. Laughing all the way to his broker's and then to the bank.
The oldest trick in the big business book. Amazing to me that so many suckers who aren't in on the game, fall for it.
It's good (and it can be useful to many) to not forget how artificially levered the stock market is, or can be, or could be. Insider knowledge is worth gold. A lot like the money market which the banks deal in, some say maybe with the assistance of their politician friends who leak useful information to them. Dollars go up one day, they sell high. They go down the next week, they buy low. Up again, they dump their holdings. On and on, ad nauseum, ad nauseam, ad profitable. Here in AUS the big banks are especially good at this. But they keep it all quiet.
As for retirement, like Cal I found it can be the best time of your life. Every day is Christmas to me. But it has to be pre-planned and then maintained with care and diligence. And an eye to the future.
Old I may be, but I find I have more than enough time to do everything I want. My secret is to plan to use my time to its best advantage. Busy time, quiet time, relax time, active time, activity time. And nap time.
At age 63 and into a good career (as a design architect-planner with my own agency) I stook stock of my life, and realised how little funded or prepared I was to take the big step when 65 hit.
For two years I bit the bullet. Saved every dollar I could. Loaded up on $1 and $2 coins in jars in the pantry. Did a stock take of all I owned. Saved like mad. Took my gross salary down to a lower tax level by contributing more to my pension fund, which I also stuffed with all the spare cash I could get my hands on. At 65 I took a lump sum tax-free payout when I hit the Retire button. - unsure if this is okay to do in the USA or Canada, but it can be legally done in AUS - and banked it at 5%. Not greedy, 5 is good enough. Compounded it even builds up.
At 65 I sold out and pulled the plug on so-called career. Spent the next six months at home, or close to, fixing up things, getting rid of surplus photo gear and collections I no longer wanted to have and in fact hadn't given any attention to for years. Planned my first return trip to Asia. And got caught up on things I had neglected while putting in a hard slog at the orifice - sorry, I meant the office.
Missed absolutely zilch of anything and everything in my so-called career. The day I walked out of my office with my sale cheque in my hand, it was as if my 20 year career had never existed. A glorious moment in my life.
But then I never defined myself in terms of what job or career I had. Tried hardest to be only me, myself and I.
These days I buy and sell items (moderately) and I earn a small but respectable amount from stock photo sales and other photography. I'm a sort of specialist in what I photograph, so my markets are quite stable if also quite small.
I'm careful to keep my earnings sufficiently low to not hit the level of income which would mean diminishing my government pension, which in AUS reduces by 50 cents on every dollar earned after you go over a certain amount.
Now I live well on a carefully planned budget far lower than what I used to spend on daily things when I was designing. Gone are the cafe lunches, the $6 coffees, the $20 cocktails, the champagne splurges. Now all gone, vamoosed, vanished - and not at all missed.
It helps me to think that I'm on the borderline breadline. That keeps me from throwing away $$ at frivolous stuff. I still buy things (= mostly photo gear) for the fun of it, but I do it knowing that I'll make $$ on it when I eventually sell. Not a lot, but enough to notice the difference I've accumulated as a modest profit.
As Cal shows, it can be done. My life is so much better now, than being on the hamster wheel and throwing away good money at... what?
As always, only my thoughts. Writing this and remembering that YMMD...
