What are you buying today?

[writser]

It might be useful if you believe in some form of technical analysis / momentum trading (but in that case you should use a stop-limit instead of stop-loss order)

[Olmsted]

The idea of stop loss orders is imo ridiculous to begin with: why would you want to sell when something just became cheaper?

This assumes you know everything there is to know about the company.  While we strive to know as much as we can  - that's a strong assumption!  I can recall numerous instances where the stock price started marching steadily down before some bad news, then Boom!  - gap down 20%.  The hard part is discerning whether the "price action" is telling you that you don't know something, or whether the "price action" is wrong, and you should buy more.  I can certainly see the justification behind putting in at least a mental stop loss order as risk management.  Blithely buying more sometimes works, but information asymetry needs to be in your favor.

[John Hjorth]

Averaging down in OAO Gazprom ADR [OGZPY] for the last 5 weeks.

[stahleyp]

Averaging down in OAO Gazprom ADR [OGZPY] for the last 5 weeks.

I know pretty much nothing about Gazprom, but I did watch this the other day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84MsRuC-1l8

[Hielko]

The idea of stop loss orders is imo ridiculous to begin with: why would you want to sell when something just became cheaper?

This assumes you know everything there is to know about the company.  While we strive to know as much as we can  - that's a strong assumption!  I can recall numerous instances where the stock price started marching steadily down before some bad news, then Boom!  - gap down 20%.  The hard part is discerning whether the "price action" is telling you that you don't know something, or whether the "price action" is wrong, and you should buy more.  I can certainly see the justification behind putting in at least a mental stop loss order as risk management.  Blithely buying more sometimes works, but information asymetry needs to be in your favor.

I'am not saying you need to buy more. Maybe the stock does deserve to trade lower: but selling something because it just went lower is the opposite option, and doesn't make a lot of sense from a fundamental investing perspective*. And risk management is imo also a poor excuse. If you have so much exposure that you need a stop loss you should reduce your exposure right now! Not when it's too late.

* As part of a momentum trading strategy I can see the rationale for stop loss orders.

[Green King]

Averaging down in OAO Gazprom ADR [OGZPY] for the last 5 weeks.

Can you tell us how you know the reserves are real?

[John Hjorth]

Averaging down in OAO Gazprom ADR [OGZPY] for the last 5 weeks.

Can you tell us how you know the reserves are real?

No. From my point of view I haven't paid anything for my fraction of the value of the reserves because the discount on the OGZPY ADRs compared to BV/ADR exeeds my fraction of the BV of aquired/paid reserves [BV of Production Licenses/ADR].

[Ross812]

I've bought a bit of Bidvest in the $44-$46 range in the last few days...

[Palantir]

The idea of stop loss orders is imo ridiculous to begin with: why would you want to sell when something just became cheaper?

Visit the RIMM thread.

Intrinsic value is a moving target, like an ocean wave...

[texual]

I have not purchased any stock besides Microsoft this past year and a half. If I had any desire to average UP, I would buy a lot more MSFT. However I really like the gains and feel like buying here isn't going to work in my favor!

MSFT was a good investment in the mid/high 20's and I look forward to the dividend increases. I treat it like BRK.B, its a money market account that just happens to kick ass