I got a Margin Call on Silver Future position
When I first talked about “Margin Call” and explained what it means to my girlfriend she understood that someone will call me say something like this: “Peeter, thank you for your money. You don’t have it anymore.”The real truth is that no one calls you – just there is no asset anymore and no money also…I have had two earlier posts on this: Silver is going up 🙂 Background story about buying Silver So what happened?After writing “Background story about buying Silver” in some moment I changed to Silver future from SLV position. First I bought one Silver Mini-Future contract which was approximately for same quantity of Silver than I had in SLV before, so for 2500 ounces. Then it felt good and I thought – let’s take some more risk and I changed to one Silver Future contract, postion for 5000 ounces. So bacically to make it simple, I put 20 000 USD to my investing account and did these earlier mentioned deals. Today just some moments ago I have 4054,69 USD on my account and no position in anything. Couple of thing I didn’t take into account: Silver may go down in price. OK, I read a lot of articles about the price in future… and all those suggested rather higher prices… I even read a realistic article that the price should stay between 15 and 30 USD and hoped for 30 :-pAs long as Silver stayed above 15 USD I had enough funds to cover this position in my account. Today it went under… at least I see SLV price now 14,44 USD. I didn’t take into account that the Exchange NYMEX will lover the Margin needed… I went in knowing that it is 8000 USD and I thought that when my position is worth less it gets sold automatically. They lowered the Margin needed to 5000 USD and as I found out now it got sold automatically when I had 4000 USD left in my account. Good that I didn’t had any other assets on that account 🙂 I had no stop order on place… accually I even don’t know how to put this into place :-/ Now I can say this was a costly wake-up call. I better start learning more… At this point I have the plan to add some funds to this account and buy a new position in Silver Futures when Silver price will go over 14-day moving average or 200-day moving average whichever comes first. So I will at least have some kind of other strategy than buy and pray (Just kidding!). At this moment I’m looking this information at...
Housing Market Crisis Opportunity?
Last night I happened to catch an episode of “Larry King Live” which included a feature on the current housing crisis along with a panel of participants including Robert Kiyosaki, author of ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’, and Donald Trump. While the stats by now are known to most people – The Shiller Home Price Index was down 15.5% for April ‘08 vs April ‘07, and over 1 Million foreclosures have been filed with many many more expected, the real overarching questions were a) is this a good time to sell and if you have to sell then what can you do to sell, b) what do you do if you are a homeowner facing foreclosure, and c) is this a good time in terms of opportunities to buy and invest? The unanimous consent amongst the parties was pretty much as follows a) This is not a good time to sell obviously and if you do not have to sell then you shouldn’t. If you do have to sell then you can sell if you price your property appropriately. This means first of all IGNORE what other homes are listed for, the only thing that matters is what homes have actually SOLD for recently as a valuation bench mark. If you must absolutely sell then discount your home 20% below current market value and you will find that it sells very rapidly. The bottom line is that it is not that there are no buyers, it all boils down to the numbers. At our business we have been working diligently for the past 2 years, communicating to our sellers that the one thing that is more important than anything else in determining whether or not a listing will sell is price. We have some listings that have lingered without activity for a year where sellers simply refuse to face the realities of the market, and then other listings that are selling in a week, because in those cases the sellers are realistic and follow our advise. The Sarasota real estate market is what it is and if you ignore market realities then you simply will not sell. b) If you are a home owner in trouble the resounding agreement was that the very worst thing you can do is ignore the lender when you get your notice. Lenders do not want to own your home, and they are willing to work out loans with home owners and today you have a lot of leverage as a owner in renegotiating your loan. The only predicament today is unfortunately that lenders will not discuss your loan until you are at least a...
Indy Mac Bank Fails!
Federal regulators took over Indy Mac today. Check out the story! Less banks and less money in the capital markets means more money necessary for investors from private sources! View post:Indy Mac Bank...
Rich Dad’s 8 Core Values for Success
Robert Kiyosaki, author of the best-selling Rich Dad, Poor Dad series, shares tips for getting ahead in business. Find equal opportunities. Don’t be a victim of the survival-of-the-fittest technique. Make yourself marketable. Get a life-changing business education. Feed your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual needs. No, this doesn’t necessarily mean sitting in a college classroom. Get an education from life. Latch onto friends who will pull you up, not push you down. Protect yourself from negative influences. Find value in your network. The more people you can meet in business, the better. Develop your most important business skill. Communicate, communicate and communicate. Be a leader. Influence others by being a great teacher. Don’t work just for money. Work to build wealth, not money. Invest. Live your dreams. First of all, make sure you have dreams. Then make them a reality. You can be a successful businessperson and still make your dreams come...