Anybody here Investing in securities, stocks, bonds, whatever?

Ash, your question made me go back and look, and it seems I made a mistake. Somehow I misplaced the decimal point in my calcs on Haliburton. I in fact Shorted HAL back in 2010 and lost $740.77. Not the $7,407.00 I originally thought. So my loss was due to betting against HAL. Thanks for asking the question. Now I feel like a dummy.

Like most beginners I made some stupid decisions getting into the Wall St world. I had about $1200. in a savings acct earning about a 1/2 percent annual interest rate and I felt I should be able to do much better than that where I could make the decisions instead of a bunch of suits who didn't even know my name. There was a very well known brokerage firm near where I worked so I decided to go there and open an account. I was assigned to an AE (Acct Exec) named Keven. We had a nice little chat and he handed me a glossy brochure with about 24 companies they were profiling for investors. I can't prove it, but today I believe it was a list of stocks they owned and wanted to get rid of. I went home and studied the co's on the list and found one which fit my observations for the future direction of the economy. I was living in Northern NJ and for years people had been moving away from the urban area of NY & NJ. They were going north to upstate NY, East out to Long Island, South to Florida and West to PA.

There was a co on the brochure located in PA that catered to these people fleeing the city. It was a REIT Real Estate Investment Trust. Of course I had no idea what exactly they did but I felt it would be very clever to invest in a co which was in front of the wave of humanity seeking the country life. Kind of jump over the wave and wait or them to come to me so to speak. So, I went all in. I put my life saving into this Co's stock. I subscribed to the WSJ and every night I would check the closing price of my investment. I even got some graph paper and created a graph of the results with a ruler and pencil. No internet at that time. Well, the line on my graph went from the upper left to the lower right. Not what I was expecting or more accurately, hoping for. By the time my nest egg lost about 75% of its value I couldn't take any more and dumped it. My $1200 was now worth $300.

Several years ago yahoo had a message board where you could talk about investing as much as you want. It was a pretty lively place with people talking about their best and worst moves in the market. I used to hang out on there for hours discussing investment ideas. Then yahoo took it down for some reason, I guess it was taking too much of their time & resources to maintain. I kinda miss the banter that went on. Now I feel like I'm living in a cave with no one to chat with.

I'm actually thinking about investing in mosquito netting. Know anyone?

Might be a good time right now as mosquito season is just about over and the manufacturers are probably cutting staff. People usually don't think about mosquitoes until they are getting stung.
See, this is exactly the kind of stuff I'm talking about.

Sorry Ash but when I see the word "Derivatives" my brain starts to melt. I like to keep it simple.

Keep an eYe on Elon Musk & anti-5g..

I got clobbered in 08. I felt my best bet was to just walk away from the table. It was a smart move on my part.

These days I'm strictly into CEF's (Closed End Bond Funds). They don't bounce around as much as stocks and they usually pay a nice dividend. Then there are another class of Bond Funds which invest in Municipal bonds which don't pay as high a Div but the Divs are not taxable. Any Capital Gains however are taxable like if you make a profit on the trade like buying it for a dollar a share and selling it for 2 dollars, you must pay the tax on the gain.

I am invested in the largest multi mineral finds in 100 years and that is in the north of my Province with one of the Metals on the Critical list. Chromite. It is a penny stock but........
Chromite turns to ferrochrome. Ferochrome to Stainless Steel. The company I am in has solved the transportation issue and has a revolutionary process for refining that has been Patent approved and uses NA Natural Gas and a catylist and other ingredients instead of an electric arc furnace. They are also sitting on the best spot of chromite due to it's minimum 90 million ton chromite deposit at 37% ore but it is located in the same location as a very nice nickel find owned by a different company. BHP(the worlds largest mining company has made an offer to buy the other company. I say goodbuy
So Anyhow the soon to be new Mining district is nicknamed The Ring Of Fire.