Why I'm still against the "home ownership as wealth creation" philosophy

I've said it before and I will say it again:you want to show off how much money you want people to think you have "buy a house", you want to build up assets and wealth buy liquid items. What are liquid items:stocks, bonds, treasury: notes, bonds, bills;options, SOME commodities and raw material precious gems and metals.

Yes those things have fluctuating values but they are a lost faster and easier to sell than a house. Those who have read some of my past blogs talking about my portfolio will see what I mean. I talked last year about selling ford, now with a bank account attached to my brokerage account its at most a 5 day turn around between me selling the stock(if I do it at market value not a stop order which of course would require the stock to first hit my target sale price up or down) and the money being in my bank account ready to spend.
Also with stocks and other "smaller" liquid assets you don't need as much down and credit isn't that big an issue. If you have enough money to start the account they let you. While its better to buy in "round lots"(usually a stock order of 100 shares or multiples of 100) you could buy 1, 5, 10, 50 etc(and anywhere in between or above one of those numbers) as long as you have the money for the shares plus brokerage fees. Usually the brokerage fee is added per every X shares purchased PER order, so if you go over that share amount even by a share tack on another brokerage fee, if you make another stock order whether it be the same or a different stock tack on another brokerage fee.

Is it perfect no, I mean yeah gold, gems etc if you had a vault you could see and visit those but for most folks you log in to see your stock certificates. So yes if you wish to parade around your wealth you have to have a house or a car. What's wrong with saving up for those things? I mean what good is putting all of your money into something you don't actually own yet? Most trade able vehicles as long as it doesn't crater, expire, or self destruct whether it goes up or down you still own it. Miss a few car payments they take the car back and you don't get a dime. At least if a stock, right or warrant(different names for trade able vehicles) implodes if nothing else you get the tax write off.

I mean yes if you wanted to you could just hoard the cash in various bank accounts. Cash is always good and always king, so yes if you aren't worried about playing the casino game of investing its hard to argue with just keeping the cash on hand. Hell even IF you invest part of your portfolio should always be cash, money market account whatever always have cash on hand.

Yes you could also show off the piles of cash all Scrooge McDuck style if ya wanted to but flaunting isn't always safe. I mean hey I've never been one for flaunting so some of this is my own personal philosophy on life and the way this should go. I still say you want to accumulate something then accumulate it. Just you know lay off the debt for a little while, I could look up numbers and charts but I'm pretty damn sure anybody in america(and even a few of my international readers) knows someone who has lost a house or car. So some abstract number or series of numbers is unnecessary all you have to do is look around. Repo men and foreclosed signs are all around. Bigger isn't always better if you can't hold on to it

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Looking at my portfolio

I don't know when my last check in was so I'm not even going to ATTEMPT to claim a how many month journey this is. For all the stocks I had last year the 3 that remain are Sirius XM satellite radio, E-trade financial and FMCC(formerly freddie mac)

This is a recounting of stocks that I OWN and I OWN only this is not a recommendation for purchase nor do past gains foretell future results

One of these days I'm just gonna go ahead and figure out a macro for that, maybe make it flashing. Anyway disclaimer on the blog, yup disclaimer right up above okay anyway lets star with the "Homer"

SiriusXM Satellite radio(Siri:Nasdaq) for a stock that I took a chance on at .13 cents a share even being "down" today at 1.44(if I would have done this last week I would have been bragging about it being 1.55 a share but I forgot to do it again so meh a home run is a home run) but that's $1.31 a share more then I paid for it, more then a 1.00 a share in the money(how much I paid for the amount of shares I purchased + brokerage fees minus how much I would make if I sold it today). This was a long term investment when I made it, I got lucky there were no reverse stock splits(grr we'll talk about that with the next stock), the stock didn't cater and as it seems to be strengthening it's brand now my only decision is when do I want to exit. Personally THIS is what you hope for as an investor a stock to have made enough money that you aren't worried about how long you gotta wait to get your money back you just wait to decide how much profit you want to make.

E-trade financial (ETFC: Nasdaq) now some may see E-trade at 15+ a share and be like yay homerun, eeeeh wrong answer. Etrade pulled a reverse stock split a few months ago. A stock split is basically a company makes an announcement there are going to "dilute" the amount of shares they have out in the market. So for every share that already exists they are going to create X amount more. and X is the split so if it 2-1 for every 1 share of their stock you own you now have 2. Well a reverse stock split is the exact opposite, to STRENGTHEN a companies position (stock price) they are going to buy back X-amount of shares and eliminate them from existance. And anybody else who owns shares current holdings will be reduced by the amount of the ration, in etrades case it was 10-1. As the two links I provided will show it is all about the share price if a share price is too high(and the company wants more investors) they will divide their shares (thus as I said diluting the price) making it easier for people to buy more. If they have a low share price (or are being threatened with delistment basically being kicked off a major exchange NYE, Nasdaq, S&P) to make the share price look better the reduce the number of shares out their thus increasing the price. Doesn't add any value to me and just made it harder for me to cash in profits later if say I didn't want to COMPLETELY exit my position but I did want to profit take. So yeah it's up but it's not REALLY up.

Federal Home Loan Mortgage Company (FMCC: OTC bulletin board) Remember that delisting I talked about yeah it happened to freddy mac. The housing market deteriorated some more and while they aren't dead(benefits of being a government run publicly traded company *shrug*) lets just say all the people who made a boat load in the mortgage bubble are now asking for freddie and his sister fannie to be put to death. Now I can choose to sell(like I did with GM) and take another loss forward(though just like GM and ford that loss ain gonna be enough, I ain complaining the fact that I don't have enough loss to cover my  potential gains when I sell Sirius isn't a bad thing in my eyes) and be like oh well thats a couple whatever bucks down the drain(I don't have my purchase price sheet in front of me), or I can double down and hope it pulls a Sirius, or I can do nothing. I'm in a do nothing sort of mood right now. I mean yeah 100 shares at .36 cents is like 50+ bucks after I pay the commission on it which you know isn't terrible, but I don't see the housing market improving just yet(just like I didn't see it getting horribly worse either I thought it was gonna remain stagnant for a while so yes the market makes a genius out of you with one stock and a fool with another) so I'll have to be in a good mood to double down in the case of freddie, or even getting back into fannie(or both).

Technically thanks to Sirius my investment portfolio is way up(just like ford had done to it last year) so my spiel about "taking a chance" is already hedged but then again I haven't sold Sirius yet so all that money I am counting is still imaginary at the moment. Potential gains are potential gains, and call me greedy if you want but I'm not selling Sirius this year unless in the next month or so it gets north of 5 bucks. Okay Investment update blog done