CF stock

Being that CF stock has been dropping as of late,will you be buying more shares or selling shares you may have?

First off, CF does not have stock. They have Partnership Units.

And if I had the money, I'd love to buy when the units got under $15.

Wasn't FUN recently trading at $30 a unit?

-Sam

I continue to buy a few units each month through my Sharebuilder Account. Considering how volatile the market is right now it's not much different than many stocks.

However, Six Flags stock closed below $1 today. I have tons of the stuff. I'm just riding it out to see what happens at this point.

If you want to know what the units have been trading at, look at the chart.

Everything has been tanking lately. FUN has underperformed the market in the last year, though I can't think of a good reason other than the Paramount acquisition, and maybe the failure of Geauga Lake.

Most investment types say that now is a great time to buy, because everything is on sale. Many suggest against buying specific stocks though, and instead suggest mutual or index funds.

But another way to look at FUN is on the return in terms of the distribution. At the closing price today of 16.69 and an annual distribution of 1.90, that's an 11% return.

Of course, the key is that they continue to offer the distribution at that rate. I can't imagine they would without unitholder revolt.

I can think of a couple more reasons:

1. In a recession, families have less disposable income to spend on leisure activities like amusement parks.

2. Higher gas prices mean families can make even fewer trips to these destinations where they have less money to spend anyways.

These observations are easily deducible to shareholders, who must decide whether they think FUN stock is going to go up relative to the market, or down. Obviously, they've decided.

Oddly enough, I think Ensign Smith nailed it right on the head. Shareholders are buying into the hype.

Not so oddly enough, I think there's a good chance shareholders are mistaken.

This summer's numbers should be interesting.

Thanks Sam for correcting me :)

I beleive they were trading at close to $35 in 2004,they are now near $16.50

Im a Six Flags shareholder, but I think that Im going to pick up some more stock because its probably the cheapest stock out there.

Based on how the chain has been going downhill and becoming the new SF, I would expect the price will eventually get down to the dollar SF share price so buy it then !

I have never bought stocks or partnership units and I was considering buying into both CF and SF. How do I go about doing that?

Don't.

Seriously.

If you have no idea how to even buy a stock, you have no business owning one---unless you like just throwing your money away. Those might both be great buys, or they might be very poor, but you need to decide that for yourself, and that's going to take some research and time to learn what you are doing.

In the meantime, I'll second Jeff's recommendation for an index fund.

http://www.fool.com/school/basics/basics04.htm

*** Edited 7/11/2008 1:55:29 PM UTC by Brian Noble***

www.sharebuilder.com is an easy way to do it, but there are other ways too.

Lord Gonchar, I should hope it wouldn't be *that* odd . . . ;)

I kinda understand what you are getting at, Brian. However, how will I ever know anything about buying and selling or owning stocks if I don't give it a try?

I've had some before in a 401k, but that was handled by an outside company.

Um, research?

No, I understand that part.
Maybe I took the tone of your post incorrectly. Now that I read it again, you're not saying don't ever invest. Just not until research is done. Thanks for the advice.

I bought a couple dozen units way back in 1999 because I thought it'd be fun. Sadly it was about all I really put money into other than a 401k (I was a 20-something not thinking about retirement). I bought a little here and there, then a couple of years ago stopped buying it or any other individual stock in any kind of quantity (I have token fractional shares of stuff I like, like Apple and Google just for fun). It's too much work to watch all of those companies individually. Index and mutual funds have people who do that for you, and by diversifying the money around to different things, no one company tanks the whole fund.

I will say this though, letting the FUN distribution roll back into more units grew my count into over 250 units over time. That's $475 a year just for holding on to it. If I were to do it over again, I probably wouldn't buy it like I did, but now that I have it, it's not hurting me.

Rule #1-- never invest money in any stock, mutual fund, bond, etc. that you "need." Don't use your car payment, mortgage payment, food money, etc. and hope you're going to make a quick bundle on it. That's not investing, that's gambling. And you usually lose.

Rule #2-- after you follow rule 1 and invest money you won't mind losing, don't click on the stock every 5 minutes to see what it's doing. Investing should be a long-term exercise, not a daily one.

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Rye.D.Ziner said:
Based on how the chain has been going downhill and becoming the new SF, I would expect the price will eventually get down to the dollar SF share price so buy it then !

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Why would you do that? If the company is not doing good, why buy shares in it? Just because you think they are going to rebound, doesn't mean that company is going to rebound.

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Spinout said:

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Rye.D.Ziner said:
Based on how the chain has been going downhill and becoming the new SF, I would expect the price will eventually get down to the dollar SF share price so buy it then !

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Why would you do that? If the company is not doing good, why buy shares in it? Just because you think they are going to rebound, doesn't mean that company is going to rebound.

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But if you think they're going to, you stand to make a lot of money if you're right. If you do your research and think a stock is undervalued, you buy it. That's the fundamental theory behind investing in stock.

A company not doing well and its stock price being low are not the same thing.

*** Edited 7/11/2008 6:47:08 PM UTC by SupermanFan1***