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Facebook IPO Profit: I was looking forward to the Facebook IPO for awhile just like many other investors. After watching other recent IPOs such as Linkedin, Pandora, Zynga etc I assumed that Facebook would also get a nice pop at the open. My goal was to get in the IPO, and then sell within minutes of the stock going live.

The only problem that I had was that it is not always easy to get shares at the IPO price. Luckily, I was able to pick up 1,000 shares with the discount brokerage E-Trade. As the offering grew in share size and price, I wasn't expecting to get a double like Linkedin and was just hoping for a quick 10-20% pop.

At 11:30 when $FB finally began to trade, there wasn't that huge pop that some were expecting so I sold my shares at $40.50 for a nice $2,500 profit. I honestly do not see Facebook being a long term investment, that is why I did not hold the shares for long.

They are currently valued at over $105 billion. In 2011, they had less than $4 billion in revenue. Unless they can find a better way to raise revenue and profit, I do not see how the company can be valued that high. They have a massive user base so there is some value there, but not anywhere near $100 billion. To put it in perspective, Disney is valued at just under $80 billion right now, and they have several cruise ships, theme parks, retail stores, and own ABC and ESPN.

Another long term concern that I have regarding Facebook is that more and more users are visiting the site on mobile apps, which currently do not bring in a penny of revenue. Until I see that Mark Zucherberg and company find a way to properly monetize Facebook.com and Facebook mobile apps, I will steer clear of it.

#78
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May 19, 2012 08:51 AM - Stocks-Profit - by RonnieM (man)

 

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$AAPL Apple profit when Steve Jobs announced his retirement. I have been following Apple for several years and I have noticed that each time that Steve Jobs either took a leave of absense for his health that the stock sold off between 5-10% in afterhours only to recover in the following days. It wasn't a big secret that he would one day in the near future step down from his position as CEO at Apple.

A couple days ago he finally did annouce this and the stock sold off like it did in the past. Since history tends to repeat itself, I bought shares at $358, expecting it to recover back near $375 or higher over the course of the next week. The next day I ended up selling half my shares at $368 and the other half at $373 for a really nice profit. It ended up being a overnight trade based on the news of Jobs stepping down.

Remember, history and trends are you friends when trading!

#11
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Aug 27, 2011 01:39 PM - Stocks-Profit - by trademaster (man)

 

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Netflix earnings took me to the cleaners. I decided to gamble and "play the lotto" when I picked up some shares at $283.20. I was hoping for another great quarter and for the stock to rally to $300. As soon as the market ended the stock took a nosedive. I sold and took a $28 a share loss while I held the shares for only about 90 minutes.

That is the last time I go gamble into earnings without doing some serious DD, and at least sell calls or pick up some puts as a hedge. That loss wiped out many good trades, very frustrating!

#10
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Jul 26, 2011 03:55 AM - Stocks-Losses - by stockman71 (man)

 

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Here is my story about a trade in $NFLX Netflix and I lesson learned in patience. Netflix was at around $246 on a Monday when I bought a weekly call option ($250) for $330. All technicals pointed to Netflix going higher for the week, the reason I bought the call.

By Tuesday afternoon, NFLX was still hovering around the $245 range and my call was down to $215 in value. I became blinded by the fact I was down close to 35% and $115. I sold the call only to watch NFLX not only cross the $250 mark, but rise to $265 by weeks end. The call option I bought for $330 was now worth over $1,500 2 days later.

I obviously would of sold it long before it hit $265 and banked a nice profit if I only had the patience and trusted my charts. Someone once told me that scarred money will never make money and that fact was never so real in my mind as that week. You have to have patience and trust the charts, something I am now working on. I hope this story will help all those that read it.

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Jun 24, 2011 03:49 AM - Options-Losses - by simplyben (man)

 

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AIG actually was a great trade in December of 2010. I was watching Citibank when the government announced that they were selling their stake in the company and I saw Citi pull back at first and then go up by a nice 10%. When the Govt announced that they were starting to sell their stake in AIG, I thought there was a good chance for it to do something similiar to what Citi did. At first it pulled back a little, and then it rose a nice 15% in the next 3 days (low $40s to $50) . It continued up to over a 50% gain in just a few weeks. It made for several great trades especially when they announced the warrant dividend. While there are no guarantees in the market, patterns tend to play out. It looked like a good risk/reward trade and it turned out to be one.

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Jun 22, 2011 04:21 AM - Stocks-Profit - by Kyle (man)

 

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