Trading

Well, I've been playing on the market for a little while now, and I'm not sure if I know more than when I started, or less.  I've seen some pretty tricky moves by companies to boost their stock price, only to do a mass sell that triggers a collapse a day later.  Things move pretty quickly and theres a good amount of money involved.  Sometimes you really have to act right that day in order not to lose out, cause its gone the next.  Other times selling too quick means you miss out on a good climb.

I've tried dollar cost averaging which sounds really good, but you have to remember that it only applies to a healthy company, and you have to stay with it long enough to see them go upwards eventually.  It doesn't apply to dying companies like Yellow Pages or RIM - if they are gone, so is your investment.  I suckered myself into thinking that YLO would come out on top sooner or later, but their 30c shares are currently now 7c shares and not much of an outlook for improvement.

Everyone is talking about Apple stock - I bought some too at when the craze was starting up.  I went up with them from about $500 or so, to about $580 and I sold.  I didn't want to have too much riding on them in case everyone screaming about how it will go to $1000 was wrong.  There are a lot of people out there saying lots of things - you really have to be careful whose advice you take or what news source you read.  In the end they are all guessing.  Sure they are educated guesses, but there are no guarantees - anyone could suddenly have a downturn in sales or a lawsuit, or even some exec suddenly deciding to sell off a massive amount of stock, triggering a slide.  Right now, Apple is sitting at about $627, and the stock's been floating around $600-$630ish for about a month now, and is definitely not the surefire, you-can't-lose stock that people were making it out to be.

Here's another fun one - Zynga, that I've alluded to a couple of time already.  I bought a bunch of their stock on the news of buying the Draw Something game.  The stock shot up nicely, $12 became $13, then the CEO or CFO or someone at Zynga sold off a crapload of stock - bam, the stock tumbled down to $11, and now is kind of half in half out at $11-$12, $11.56 at the moment actually.

I also picked up some Netflix stock a while ago - After it crashed from 120 to about 80, I picked it up, thinking that in the long term, with their expanding markets, they should do well.  However, analysts were screaming that Netflix is doomed, they wont survive, and the stock dropped further down to about $60. This was after a harrowing ride of 70s-90s for a while, and the stock was "reassessed" to be worth $60.  I eventually sold it, disappointed.  Now, it's back up to $110-120 range with everyone saying how great they are.

What the fuck man?  Basically the lesson I took from this is that I can't believe any of the shit I read on the market news, unless it's a fact, like "someone sold x" or "stock x went up 20 cents today".  I have to stop reading the "Apple is going to reach $1000 by the summer!" type of news and read instead about what day the iPhone 5 is coming out, and if they are having any manufacturing difficulties, how much heat the Windows and Google phones are giving them, then decide on that.

My last set of trades haven't been so good - I was trying to make the high-volume trade ratio for the quarter and I tried out some tech and software stocks.  However tech is not doing so well and all the ones that people were talking about on the news as 'recommended' have been pretty shitty so far.  Maybe it will turn around in the fall when titles are coming out and they are actually selling games, rather than right now where they are pouring money into development and not selling anything.  I guess this would be a good time to "buy" since they are dropping.  Then when the games are out and the revenue is coming in, pick a good time to sell the boosted stock.

In the meantime though, anything I sell will be at a loss, so I probably have to hang on to them and keep an eye out for developments.

Upsen.

Syndicate

It's a pretty dead time for new releases it seems.  Diablo 3 and Ghost Recon 4 are some time in the next couple of months, but we've been left rehashing all the old games from the end of 2011.  I never got into Mass Effect since it was mostly single player, so I didn't really notice Mass Effect 3 come and go.

I've been playing some Syndicate, that's the only thing that's relatively new.   It came out in February, and was a pretty good take on the whole cyber dystopia thing.  It's "generic" but I'd think anything that takes place in a such an environment would be considered "generic" nowadays.

They have some interesting mechanics where you have to do hacking and fighting at the same time, with enemy troops and drone robots that have shields and other defenses that need to be hacked and disabled before you can hit them.

I also liked the way the characters didn't just move around like they were on caster wheels - there are definite footfalls to the motion, and you move in discrete steps, yet it's not awkward whether you move fast or slow.  Maybe it's just an illusion of some type, but it really worked for me.

Also very cool are data overlays on your weapons - you get your bullet counts and functions listed next to your guns, instead of being an actual readout display - very clever and fits the milieu, with everyone (who is anyone) being chipped to see data.

Also, its a co-op game for it's multiplayer aspect!

The only things I don't like about the game is that:

One, it is too short.  The campaign is kind of fun but short singleplayer.  There are lots of multiplayer maps, but there need to be some more soon, since they are starting to wear thin as the central aspect of the game.

Two:  You can get every power in the game half way to maximum level.  At that point, all the different agents you play with, some specced for fast hacking and repair, some specced for armor or extra damage, start looking all the same.  Sure you can pick different application software to load, but the chip upgrades really would have given us a bit more... variety in agents.  Weapon upgrades are pretty good too, but they are sort of like the chip powers too - you will basically upgrade all aspects and not just some aspect, no strategy involved.

Three - and this is a common thing I dont like in general about online multiplayer no matter the game - NOBODY SAYS ANYTHING.  I could be playing with AI drones, geez.