[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Luggage

Ge, knew it was a loser when welch started going on talk shows touting himself and how good he was with sigma 5 etc. Well he was the only good one has he made a lot of money for himself but not for investors. They're a whole business has crashed and burned excluding airline engines

Exactly, it illustrates the danger of longitudinal integrations of random, unrelated businesses.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Boomer

I had never heard of a reverse split until I ran across the 1-for-8 that GE did recently. My grasp of the market is untrained and limited. But a reverse split sure looks like smoke and mirrors to me, a desperate move.

GE was founded in 1892, in Schenectady, NY. In my hometown, GE there was one of the companies that was the place to work. (GE & PG had always been the places to be.) What happened to GE under bad leadership was awful. It also illustrates how important it is to keep an eye on individual stocks you own, no matter how old and established the company is.

Jeff Immelt started as CEO at GE in 2001 and got outa Dodge in 2017 — with his 200 million in retirement pay. (I wonder if that 200 million was in GE stock.)

Now, Immelt has written a book, Hot Seat: What I Learned Leading a Great American Company. . .What a smarmy title — sure, he led it — right off a cliff.

There is an interview done with with Immelt, in February, on CNBC. If interested, you can find it with a Google. It is a part of CNBC’s Behind the Desk series. The interview leads with “Former GE CEO Jeff Immelt on his controversial legacy: ‘I don’t want to hide.’ “ (Geez. Maybe he should.)

Boomer

I guess he was the Jack Welsh that followed Jack Welsh. I wonder who was more greedy? And who has the most books turning up in THRIFT stores?

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

I get a kick out of watching my Intel a few times every year, or when the company makes the news. But yes my grandmother was a financial genius. She and my grandfather lived in near-poverty while he was finishing dental school. He came from a family of 11 kids, several of whom were dead by the time he was old enough for college. The remaining siblings all chipped in to cover his tuition; he was the first to graduate from a college in this country (his parents were immigrants).

Every cent Papa earned, was immediately turned over to Gogi (my grandmother). She pinched pennies like a boss. Papa was a dentist during the depression and would receive chickens (sometimes alive, mostly butchered), tree-trimming, car repair, etc. in trade because people in his town couldn't afford to pay for him to treat an abscessed tooth. So they didn't have a lot of money. What they had, Gogi would save, and then invest.

By the time they had both passed, over a million dollars in investments, insurance, and other assets, was split between her three children, 6 grandchildren, and several charities including a sizeable donation to Tufts medical school, where he received his doctorate.

So we grew up - not wealthy, but understanding wealth, understanding what it means to have, and to not have, money. It is part of our family history and heritage to appreciate it, even if we don't end up working in the financial world or doing investments of our own.

Great story! Amazing how back in that generation many, many brothers and sisters died before reaching even age 10. No wonder back then families NEEDED to be very large. Women MUST have been baby factories in addition to all their other family and civil duties. Note : My intention is to praise women, not the reverse. I am glad that women have "come a long way, baby"! No wonder that most women are superior at multitasking than most men.

[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by Boomer

Before anyone starts explaining to me that a stock split does not mean the stock you own is worth more, and that a split means only that you have more shares at half (or whatever the ratio is) of the pre-split price, I know that.

But there is a psychology to a stock split. Stock splits can let in the small, individual investor and stock splits can be educational.

Apple’s 4-for-1 split, in 2020, has been followed by its 52-week range of $103.10–154.72, closing yesterday at $153.54. Apple dropped, at first, after its split.

Procter and Gamble (a behemoth that has been belching out dividends for 131 years and increasing those dividends for 65 consecutive years, with the most recent dividend increase at 10%) has not split since 2004.

PG’s most recent 10% dividend increase probably included a bow to the bears. Every time I see those ads, I cannot help but think of how those highly paid PG advertising people hit upon using bears in those ads. I don’t really know why bears -- I can guess though. . .but I digress. . .back to stock splits. . .

PG is not known to take the investor on a rocket ride. I have casually observed that it tends to bubble around in about a $5 range and then decides to go on to hang out in the next $5 range – but my observation is casual, certainly not professional and could no doubt be argued by somebody with a formula or whatever. But I don’t obsess about it. I just keep thinking PG needs to split again. The share price is higher than it has ever been. But they don’t ask me. (sigh)

I just read that GE is doing a reverse stock split. I had never heard of such a thing. The collapse of GE stock was sad to see. It was once a boring, old, dependable investment. I can remember a 3-for-1 split years ago when its times were good. But then came the dividend cuts, etc., etc., etc.

And, now, GE has announced this reverse stock split thing. My first reaction was that a reverse stock split seems analogous to a codpiece -- like men wore in the time of Shakespeare.

Back to the psychology of a stock split -- that companies used to do more often when the stock price had been increasing for a while. . .

When a share price comes down due to a split, it can be a good time to jump in as an individual investor – if you are comfortable with owning the company because you understand what they do, and how and why they do it, and whether the future of the company looks solid. . .

And when a stock splits, it could be a good time to buy a few shares for a child or grandchild so they can watch and learn about this thing called the stock market.

I have read that stocks are not splitting like they used to because companies find a higher stock price to be prestigious. I have also read that the finance industry leaves the small, individual investors out because – who needs ‘em.

Perhaps the logistics of stock splits are expensive to a company and they do not have to do it anymore because investing styles have changed so much. . .

Investing styles have changed a lot this century. There are fewer investors who like to choose their own stocks. Index investing is very popular. Financial advisors are everywhere now. The internet has given us the chance to do our own thing, but making stock choices is not for everybody. The days of squinting at the print in the daily newspaper, and watching stock prices roll across the screen on the evening news, and paying a broker are long gone, so. . .

Maybe stock splits don’t happen as much because investing styles have changed so much. Who knows.

But getting back to that thing I have about stocks as an educational tool for younger family members, one of Warren Buffett’s famous quotes applies. . .

“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

Boomer (who is not a financial professional and could be just some retired high school teacher who thinks about stock stuff)

I can imagine Warren Buffet saying that IF enough people had planted enough trees a long time ago, the US might NOT be experiencing record forest fires in California, record heat in the Gulf of Mexico, and record rains and flooding in NYC.

[rsmurano]

This is an interesting thread. A lot of people talk like they know something about stocks and there comments point out that they really don’t. Comments about jack welsch and about apple stock are bogus.
There are many people that deserve making $350M a year and a hell of a lot more if THEIR company is doing well. You want to compare apple against let’s say Tesla, people buy Tesla because of emotion (stupid) and people buy apple because of innovation and earnings.
When a CEO make millions a year and millions when they leave a failing company, blame the board, not the ceo. Have you heard of Golden parachute before for top management? Who initiates this? The board.
As for stocks, if you invest right, you shouldn’t look at your earnings on a frequent basis because many people make emotional rash decisions depending on a few days/few weeks.
I’ll bet that the people who held on to ge during its downturn thought it will come back, they were greedy (pigs get slaughtered in the market).
Take the emotion out of investing: put in trailing stop loss orders.

[manaboutown]

Originally Posted by coralway

Very much like the concept of splitting to bring new, and presumably younger, investors into the market and increase liquidity. As a kid back in 1986, I was walking past a Computer Factory store one day in NYC and in the window seeing a little machine there playing a game of ping. Thought it was pretty cool, had never seen anything like it. I had seen an IBM machine that ran DOS, the firm I worked for was buying them and putting one in our offices. But, I was kinda liking this little machine I saw in the window at Computer Factory playing games. So, I walked in, and a little while later walked out with an Apple IIe, disk drive, cable and monitor. On a whim, a few days later I logged onto my Fidelity Brokerage account and purchased 200 shares of Apple stock, at a price of $2.86 a share. The entire investment cost me $578.95. The stock split in 1987, 2000, 2005, 2014, and 2020. I have never sold a single share and, needless to say, it has been very good to me. The splits lowered the price per share, but brought more buyers into the market, that drove up the price again. Nowadays, you can buy fractional shares of a security, a feature not available just a few years ago. Again, it increases market liquidity, and that's the point.

Your Apple story warmed my heart. Thank you for it. Peter Lynch of Fidelity bought into some trendy stocks his daughters "discovered" by shopping their stores and buying their products. He did well by them.

My lucky buy was a few shares of Berkshire Hathaway in the mid to late 1980s at about $3,000/share, now BRK-A shares, way before B shares were issued. Berkshire comprises about a third of my portfolio. Apple is now Berkshire's largest holding. Ironically I bought Apple for the first time ever a few years ago, not long before it split. I wish I had bought more! lol

My father was trading the "nifty fifty" back in the day. I remember him calling his broker from the our home early in the morning in NM, two hours behind east coast time. The first stock I ever bought was Colt Industries. I held it for a only short while. Stocks were never of great interest to me and I got into real estate investing, on the side buying various securities over time but not in sizable quantities as a way to park some of my cash reserves. My greatest goof was getting caught up in what amounted to fraud, commodity options. Goldstein, Samuelson, Inc - Wikipedia. I briefly traded commodities and broke even on it all but found it was too stressful.

[Boomer]

Sometimes I watch Consuelo Mack's WealthTrack, her weekly half-hour show on PBS. She is a business journalist who gets some interesting interviews.

I don't watch it every week. I record it and then check the topic to see if I want to watch it.

In early July she interviewed Jeremy Grantham who thinks we are in a bubble of epic proportions and explains why he thinks that.

A couple of weeks ago, she interviewed Jason Zweig who writes a column for the WSJ with the same title as the book The Intelligent Investor written by Benjamin Graham, who is said to be the father of value investing. Zweig talks about Graham's influence.

This week's show is about emerging markets -- about which I know nothing and probably won't watch it.

Last week was about shareholders who choose individual stocks to buy and hold.

I like her show because it covers one topic, each show, half an hour, just a snapshot, nothing esoteric, nobody yells. It's a short show that gives the viewers a little something to think about.

If WealthTrack sounds interesting, you can go to wealthtrack.com or Google Consuelo Mack. You can find a list of past episodes and if any grab your attention, you can watch them on YouTube.

Just a thought.

Boomer

[Boomer]

. . .

Dear Moderator, as a housekeeping, tidying-up chore, please delete this entire space where I deleted my post. I tried reporting myself to ask that this be done, but I guess it has not been picked up yet. Thanks.