Stock in the Park Chains

Do people tend to hold much of it these days? I have a bit in Six Flags and I am wondering having done pretty well in my Disney stuff prior, to take another look at that.

Disney is very interesting to watch, the roller coaster continues. This article on fool.com is an interesting piece reflecting on Disney's current position as it dips below $100 again.

United Parks is a bit of a mystery to me, so haven't really given that much thought.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool index fund investor. I never invest in individual stocks, because I assume the person on the other side of the trade knows more about it than I do.

I bought a few SIX shares just for fun coming out of the pandemic, along with other hospitality things, figuring they had nowhere to go but up. I was wrong. But yeah, normally an index guy, and getting hammered the last two weeks. Are we great again yet?

Don’t own any individual stocks but I hold a total US and total International Stock Market mutual fund so I both don’t own, and own every public amusement park company in the world.

Sold every US stock, fund, 401k, all of it in the past few months, moved everything international or stable. Cannot help this country in any way at our current juncture.

Congrads on guessing right once, but good luck on the much harder guess to come, when to get back in. It’s far better to just stay the course, nothing that happens in the next 3 months to the financial markets will change my belief that stocks will be priced higher 20 years from now.

Timing the market is incredibly difficult (and very unlikely).

Avoiding the market’s downs may mean missing out on the ups as well. Seventy-eight percent of the stock market’s best days have occurred during a bear market or during the first two months of a bull market. If you missed the market’s 10 best days over the past 30 years, your returns would have been cut in half. And missing the best 30 days would have reduced your returns by an astonishing 83%.

https://www.hartfordfunds.c...XtICGOB4pg

Found that while I was looking for the annual study of market/investment versus investor returns.

https://www.ifa.com/article...erformance

Many investors being their own worst enemies and realizing returns that are under market returns.

Yeah, trying to exit and reenter never really works. And I've learned this in unexpected ways. For example, a big chunk of my comp at MSFT was equity that vested annually. I'd push like 10% and sell the rest. And I was not unreasonable, because it was kinda stuck at $23 or something at the time. Well, look where it is now, and consider the dividends. It has wildly outperformed everything else I have.

I had about a thousand bucks worth of FUN that I cashed out when the pandemic hit. It came in handy, but it wasn't very profitable. I would have been better off putting it into my savings account.

I have a few shares right now. (...Checking Robinhood app...) Looks like I would lose about $25 if I cashed it out right now. That's crazy, because one share is only about $35 right now. And I only buy shares when they are low. I guess it's pretty low right now. Maybe I should buy some... LOL It kind of reminds me of playing slot machines at the dog track. Swipe your card, push the button, lose money.

Jeff:

Yeah, trying to exit and reenter never really works.

I may or may not find this out - I moved a big chunk (about a quarter) of my 401k from equities to cash-like instruments a couple weeks ago. Fortuitous timing as far as the recent decline, but when do I decide to get back in? In 2008 I was thinking I should move to cash, and didn't, and that's OK because I almost certainly would have missed the recovery.

(In fairness - I was probably over-exposed to equities given my age and stage of life, so it's not clear whether the shift was risky or just overdue.)

I mean, if you get back in right now, I guess you'll make a little money in the long run, but only if it stabilizes. Not a strong start to the day. I gotta stop looking.

I try to keep my allocation decisions limited to what, and try to avoid making proactive decisions about when.

The what is simply my current portfolio allocation. I base that allocation more or less on the "risk tolerant" end of the range suggested in Elements of Investing. I am at 80-20 now in my mid-50s, and over the next 20 years want to slowly go from there to 60-40. For now, I am doing that by directing all current contributions into low-fee bond funds. I will combine that with an annual re-balance if I'm not pretty close to the ballpark at the end of each year. I am coming up on my first re-balancing now. If it had been a month ago, I'd've sold some stock index funds and bought bond indexes. After the last week, I'm pretty close to spot-on.

I have made a different decision about the when only twice. Once was trying to be clever during the Great Recession, and I was too clever by half, so I never did that again. The other was when I moved from a 100-0 allocation to 80-20 a few years ago; I did that by stepping the change over 10 months, moving two percent per month. I did that to spread out the risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have no idea if that was "smart" or not; I did not go back to check.

Owned Six Flags and Cedar Fair stock before, holding onto my Disney stock. Not a savvy investor and sold most individual stocks and bought ETF and REIT. Investments are all held in retirement accounts.

I had Six Flags when it went bankrupt but didn’t lose much. Bought when it was dirt cheap. I’ll look every now and then to see how the price is doing. Honestly, not sold on the merger. An analysis predicts a cost savings of $120 million by the end of 2026.

Bought and sold Cedar Fair stock at different times. Did okay, but really good after buying during the pandemic. About a 100% gain in a year and sold it. Liked the gain and sold it. Probably could have waited longer.

Bought and sold Disney. But hard to sell for sentimental reasons. The price would slowly creep up and quickly fall.

So what I am rambling about? All about timing, luck or knowledge, when to get in and get out. Again not a savvy investor, but I have better gains in other investments. I let the pros manage my investments and not having to worry about stocks getting hammered (ie. Boeing and Chipotle). Spend more time I reading the latest theme park news and playing some OpenRCT2.

Looks like anyone thinking about getting back into the market can wait at least another day.

Indeed ... What a mess.

GoBucks89:

wait at least another day.

Waiting until Trump is out, or has a complete rethink of all his policies. Gains or no gains I am not helping.

When a company like SIX can’t even promote a person into the VP/GM role at Cedar Point, the premier park in your company, after spending money on an internal program to prepare the next generation of VP/GM’s that should tell you all you need to know about their corporate leadership and if it’s a wise investment.

FUN and PRKS don’t appear to have any long term plan to increase attendance or revenue. They are just cost-cutting to keep the bottom line up and eventually that will lead to lesser attendance

They seem to just want to regurgitate the same customers as they just add high thrill rides and kiddie rides. They have probably maxed both of those out.

The schedules are currently shrinking instead of growing ( also to cut cost). Good investments have potential growth and these companies don’t appear to have much

Are the Cedar Flags park schedules actually "shrinking"? Or are they trimming an hour here and there from days where they've pinpointed that the operating costs were not in line with attendance?

Coming from the land of 10am-5pm BGT hours and 6pm and 7pm Universal Orlando closures, cutting some of the later closing times by an hour isn't a major loss.

Cedar Fair has not been smart the past five years since the pandemic as they began following a strategy more in line with the strategy of Six Flags over the past 30 years (outside of one season when Selim made his "Walmart to Target" comments and they abandoned that very quickly). Rather than take advantage of people's desire to travel at any cost, they gave away season passes for next to nothing and basically did away with their single day ticket buyers and group sales channel. As a result, per cap spending numbers have stagnated and not even kept up with inflation. When they merged with Six Flags, their debt more than doubled, but their revenues slightly less than doubled. I don't know all the details on when their debt needs to be refinanced, but interest payments are likely to be significantly more now than when they took on the debt. Inflation should make their debt appear smaller, but that only works if they've increased revenue to keep up with it and I don't think they have.

I think they have some opportunity for revenue enhancement at some of the big Six Flags parks like Great Adventure. I suspect they know this too, but I'm fearful that park in particular is going to have an awful 2025 season and they might pull its capital for 2026 and beyond. Great Adventure could probably be another flagship park. It could also be Geauga Lake 2.0.

Unfortunately, Wall Street is all about the short term and huge growth. I don't think the amusement industry is going to have huge growth going forward. It's fairly mature and really should be more of a dividend investment at this point. Attendance at the bigger parks is mostly topped out and the only opportunities for increased sales is with things like hotels and adjacent upcharge attractions, but in at least a couple cases, they're selling the extra land close to the parks. Their "strategy" is just all over the place and they don't seem capable of giving things more than a year or two to even take off before they abandon it and switch to something else.

As a fan and emotionally, I want them to do well. As an investor, I would not touch the stock.