A Generational Rant w/ some basic questions

Hey, Tyler.  Thanks for your plus minus minus math questions, jerk.  Two negatives don’t make a positive in the real world of money.  Then again it is possible if you’ve been accumulating a bouncing yet fundamentally sound stock every time it irrationally plummets.

Upon re-read, this is just a rant – but I do have some questions/topics and the Boomers need to hear this.  I want the comments, yours in particular.  I’m sure that this will start a range of conversations, and I have yet to see issues like this published – not sure if that shows lack of balls in 13r writing or Boomer publishing.  Like many of my generation, I struggle to know if I am sane in an insane world, or insane in a sane one.  Of course, we know it’s a pointless question – there is no real difference, just worthless comfort in the knowing.

I’m from the in-the-moment and learn-the-hard-way disposable 13^th generation:  Roe v. Wade happened in the middle of our birth years, we sat by our mothers watching movies about evil children, we saw divorce and mid-life crisis become the norm, we became latch-key kids raised by women telling us how to be men and care for a family, we started to graduate high school just as the incarceration rate tripled, and 6% more of us went to college than Boomers yet we make 12% less.  Gen-X was supposed to be a place keeper name, as they figured out who we were while they popularized cocaine and taught us about the coming ice-age.  Now we are known as the enigma “X”, and our children are the outright question “Y”.  We are not the X Generation; we are the 13^th Generation – with all of the success from pain and dissent of our Founder’s number.

I was in Costa Rica for two years, accumulating women and bad habits.  Then I was forcibly sent back here just in time to watch the market collapse and the country elect a Marxist.  The collapse was a burning of the “home for everybody” Carter/Clinton wood pile, lit by the torch of a mysterious (Soros?) 550 billion run at the Treasury window.  The election was an act of free men voting for a black descendent of slave owners in favor of government mastery, ironic. 

About a third of my parents’ wealth was lost just as they retired plus they got hit with health issues.  I started to trade muscle cars upon my August 2008 return, then nobody could afford toys and I got ran over by an econo-box as a pedestrian. 

I’ve been reading a lot for the past year, mainly about finance and politics.  Being bedridden for months, and now facing an amputation, all I can do is read – so I’ve done my best to learn and help my parents rebuild their wealth.  They’ve regained about 2/3 of their losses, and I’m trying to get them to move from equities to hard assets now.  It seems that a few rental properties, with 2/3 cash down and 15yrs fixed at 5.5%, would provide shelter against inflation while generating monthly positive cash flow beyond PITI.  With a five to ten year horizon, the houses should yield a profit in terms of real dollars.  I worry about the dollar collapsing, the growing number of foreclosures, and the pending commercial real-estate collapse.  Is the purchase and rental of houses like I describe above a wise move, a coward’s fear of risk, or a bear in denial of a bull? 

On 2/23 I spread out nearly $10K of my money equally over T, ETP, NKE, WINN, BAC, DVN, IGF, and PBR – it has grown 77% to well over $17K in the past six months.  I think that it has played out and I will cash in this week.  Since March, I have been playing the daily New York Casino with another three thousand; I made two thousand for myself and another thousand for TD Ameritrade.  I think the nearly $8K yield was just lucky timing in a bear rally, and my real learning came from the casino.  These things helped me learn as I helped dad with his money.

Help me understand why government controlled companies with terrible fundamentals like C, CIT, FRE, FNM, AIG and so on, skyrocket due to DC BS or some screaming has-been bald pundit?  I made money on those daily run-ups, but don’t get it and wonder if I have been part of the problem.  Help me understand why a solid speculative bet like SVA, (first to test H1N1 vaccine, first to get expand production, first to get orders, first to produce) drops nearly 10% from today’s $5.31 opening to a $4.80 closing – after announcing EPS of .14 vs. the estimate of .01 this morning.  Heck, the $4.80 is lower than the $4.90 opening yesterday when they announced positive vaccine trials.  I don’t understand how SVA can go from $4.90 to $4.80 after two such great announcements.  I bought SVA months ago for the first time at $2.40, selling at highs, buying up more shares in the lows, and thereby accumulating shares with house money – I have held steady for the past two weeks, but have I been part of the problem?

And, Tyler; WTF is going on at Wall St. and Pennsylvania Ave.?  It seems that they are working together to pump and dump the entire economy!  They get rich, and we get ripped. They expend their control and profit by collapsing then confiscating businesses.  We lose businesses and jobs, and then can’t fund start-ups to replace them.  Millions more of Americans become dependent on Washington Deceive Capital monthly.  I have learned enough of the basics from you guys to see the unbelievable market manipulation, propaganda, and outright deception.  It appears to me as engineered to force our dependence on government; i.e., the Marx & Engels plan for chains we can bereave in.   

Ultimately, this mess will be my generation’s to clean-up.  I want to know if the Boomer’s 40-year Woodstock party is over, or if I can make some more money while they drink the last few beers and smoke the roaches.  Please help me understand what’s going on.  It seems like I should cash in my chips, find shelter in a vacant building on Paper Street, and start making soap. 

Congrats on the new site, good job.