You should to match your investment to your time-horizon and risk-tolerance. I know those are financial jargon, but it would be helpful in your situation. Assuming this money is a necessity in 10-20 years, the going long equity is fine - but you need to be able to take a deep breath during market downturns, not sell. But seemingly your tolerance is more conservative. For your equity position buying a single index may be okay (not my typical recommendation), but think about implementing some type of fixed income/alternative investment for the downside ballast.

Makes sense given the recent market movement. Heck, if you had checked performance of your holdings near the end of February in 2018, you would have most likely showed a YTD loss. Intra-year losses are normal - even during the incredible years.

Small cap exposure is a great tool for added diversification, but putting all of your money into this can be a recipe for disaster - depending on several factors. The risk measures of small cap suggests higher returns relative to large cap and mid cap, but with higher risk comes the potential for more losses. All of my portfolios tilt small cap and value, but these tend to make up 15% of my overall allocation.

Without looking at the actual numbers, I read both charts as while the particular fund (small cap) outperformed the S&P500 benchmark over 10 yr it underperformed it over the last 5 yr.

Yep. It always matters exactly where you buy into the market. Buy and hold for me.

I'm usually that way but i have no problems paying taxes on capital gains when it's warranted. It's one of the ways you get cash for the next buy.

Joe, if you sell now, that means you need to be able to correctly identify the real bottom (which may be yet to come . . . but might not). How good were you at identifying the peak?

At this point, you haven't lost anything, you still own the same amount of shares that you did before. If you sell now and then fail to identify the real bottom and buy higher later, then you've lost shares. Of course, you already know all this and are lying awake at night thinking about it like I am.

As one data point, I bought a bunch yesterday. Valuations were such that it seemed like a good value and it also seems like there's a lot of emotion in the market from a buildup of bad news. I had previously sold last January when the valuations were looking idiotic and emotions were reversed. I spent much of 2018 in agony as no further obvious (to me) buying opportunity arose and I sat on a pile of cash feeling stupid as the market made its run from Feb to Sep. Now I don't feel quite as stupid, but I don't feel smart either.

I suspect that just buying and holding would be a lot better for my mental health. It obviously pays off in the loooooonnnngggg run and can even weather things like '08.

BTW, if I had perfect information, I would invest in lottery tickets instead of stocks/bonds.

I just bought a new pair of running shoes and am taking lots of long runs to get high on endorphins. I recommend this.

For fun I bought some ultrashorts on December 6. Since I'm chicken, they are only 10% of my holdings and only in one account. SDS and SIJ.

Maybe next time I buy more.

Welp. I'm close to being flat for the year. Took out a long position on SDS that helped offset the hits a bit.

Good news is this volatility is admittedly good for business on the brokerage side. Bad news is my inbox and voicemails are a raging dumpster fire :(. if you need me, i'll be working on my Miata.

My retirement accounts are kicking ass!

My personal investment accounts, getting crushed. Market has not been kind to me in Q4.

Volatility and long on SDS would probably result in some kind of heart failure for me. Markets go up and down. Double bears go up and then delete all your money the next day.

This strategy is not going well.

Now down 16.7% from where I bought in.

In the same timeframe, @sixshooter , VSMAX is off by around 25%, illustrating the downside to small-caps.

Someone convince me not to liquidate first thing Wednesday, and convert to SDS.

I'm having trouble convincing myself that, at 17%, the market is finished panicking. The last time I clung to that belief, I wound up watching it go down all the way to a nearly 50% hit.

That said, I acknowledge that it's impossible to predict the future.

Sorry Joe. After all the brave talk . . . I bailed.

Seems to be a bear market now.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...7d342531ea.png

I don't see the influences that caused this abating in the near term (only exception being the return of institutional investors after the New Year), so I'm just going to chill for the holidays and lick my wounds.

Yeah, I'm out. Just placed a market order, we'll see what it executes at tomorrow morning. That's another $20k gone.

Will probably buy SDS tomorrow.

Now that the price is down it is a great time to buy, not sell.

Unless the price continues to go down considerably, as seems to be the present trend. That makes it a good time to sell, and then wait to re-buy later.

In theory. Studies show people, especially non-professionals, are pretty bad at this timing and end up underperforming the market even when they are investing almost entirely in indexes. Pick an asset class that fits your risk tolerance and stick with it. Rebalance quarterly. If your stomach turns from short term volatility you are either overestimating your risk tolerance or you need a Xanax.

Its sucks, but Im just going to roll through it like always.

Also, professionals are pretty bad at timing markets too. Building a market portfolio is always the answer unless you know how to cheat (like building an infrared laser computer network all over wall street).

Thought I'd leave this...

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1ef3ff80cb.png

Ahem.

Yeah, I'm now re-thinking my previous position...

Here's a good rule . . . whatever I do, do the opposite. I've now discovered that I am the sole market catalyst.

I'm a registered broker in the industry for the last almost 5 years, been trading for the better part of 10 years and even I can't time the market lol. Anyone that says they have the secret sauce is full of shit. You can however make somewhat educated "guesses" based on the technicals/fundamentals of a position, execute and hope for the best.

Keep in mind, most traders are emotional and instead of sticking to rules and a system, trade on feelings, which makes the market akin to a hormonal teeanger who's parents dont get them. Even when disciplined traders stay the course with their strategy, they're still fighting against an often illogical market that in many respects is driven off emotion.

See, this is my problem.

Fighting against an illogical market is what me got me into trouble in '07. So I swore that the next time the herd panicked, I'd go along with the flow.

That's not worked well the past two days.

This probably wont help anybody with their stock portfolio, but its an interesting read:

Article for you in case you aren't keeping track: Three straight weeks of gains in the new year on Wall Street have erased nearly all of 2018’s losses. It’s the best start to a year since 1987..

I follow a different method than most with 100% self directed stocks (no bonds or ETF's).
80% of the total dollars invested equally spread amongst high quality stocks in search of long term diversification (AMZN, AAPL, HD, V, BP, GS) that I only review each quarter to decide how much to hold/put/call.
The other 20% is in speculative growth, which is where I have actually have made most of my money.
What I am looking at is money that falls thru the cracks of the big buyers/sellers that buy & sell in baskets.
The theory being that when the big guys push the sell (or buy) button they are actually not doing individual stocks but specific amounts of various groups of stocks that somebody puts into a single basket.
When the decision happens to sell energy (for example) there might be 20 individual stocks in that basket that get sold off as a group.
This tends to make smaller cap stock prices swing short term more than the large stocks in that same basket.
I watch for big volume sell days where pretty much everything in the market is moving down as this tells me the big guys are all hitting the sell button.

Latest example of this was back in October of 2018 when the market peaked then started selling off until some time in December with lots of volume and lots of downward pressure.
I was watching WPX since it made it up to a hair over $20 in October before the entire market did the dump.
By December it was down below $12 with no good reason other than the overall market dump and the price of Oil dropping from the 70's to the 50's.
Set a trigger and bought a position at about $12.25 but it continued dropping so I doubled my position when it hit $11.
It continued dropping to high 9's but it never hit my next trigger so my current position cost is break even at about $11.80
Currently it is in the low 12's but my sell trigger is for $18.25, which should happen when crude gets back up to over $70 hopefully before the end of 2019.
The Russians and Saudis have indicated they will be cutting supply in order to get the price back up to that level and they have the focus and discipline to make that happed as they have proven in the past.
Another possibility to raise crude prices is supply disruption (Venezuela?) or news headlines that indicate potential supply problems.

It works real well for me but is not for people who are not willing to do homework and have a list of potential smaller stocks in baskets to watch for opportunities.

Update for April 16 2019; The price on WPX is currently just above $14.50 so it is climbing nicely.
Haven't sold any yet because I am still happy with my $18.25 sell trigger.
Being up 22% in 4 months is a really nice cushion to let me sleep at night while waiting for the next few months.

For all the MT.net traders out there, looks like most of the big box brokers out there are going to commission free models (E*Trade, Fidelity, TD, Interactive, etc..). It's worth checking to make sure your accounts are reflecting these new pricing plans.

Been watching the DJIA / S&P 500 lately, as has everyone else, I am sure.

With respect to the very true fact that attempting to time the market is generally futile, I can't help but feel that there is going to be a very good "buy" opportunity coming up. Whether it'll be in days or months is going to be the tricky part.

Yes of course there will be.

But everyone also had their cash in the booming market and now does not have any purchasing power for more stock.

Unless they were already sitting on cash reserves in the record market for some reason.
or bear funds.
or double bear funds
or triple bear funds

I always keep cash on hand.

And I'd actually been seriously contemplating a double-bear buy, but didn't quite have the nerve to pull the trigger.

To me; any time it is down 30%; like today; the market should be considered ON SALE.

However, my cash reserves exactly match my goal level for the non-volatile bucket of my imminent retirement, so I have to restrain myself from buying.

The main thing is DO NOT SELL your market indexed mutual funds. HOLD THEM. Selling now is how you loose money in the stock market.

Relevant...


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...029448326.jpeg

I've done pretty decent swapping between short and long positions over the last week or so. The market hasn't seemed to sustain losses of 8% or more over the following trading day; and during the weekends, governments don't take any major economically stimulating actions, but the virus does continue to infect and kill at an exponential rate.

I was uncomfortable today on whether the market would go up or down, so remained in cash. We were fairly flat today. I'm hopeful that we'll see a few percentage gain tomorrow in which case I'll hold a short position over the weekend.

I'm holding what I've got for at least 20 years until I start moving more towards bonds, so this isn't a big deal to me.

I’m very much in the liquidate other assets (I.e. sell race car and other superfluous things) stage so that I can buy in with as much cash as I can in the next month or two.

Not gonna worry about timing it perfectly.

I am very recently LONG on a couple stocks I wasn’t planning on being long on. Have to hold now though...

Stock tip... ask your Senator what they did!

Moved $100k cash into the brokerage account today.

Now, we wait.

As a broker, fuck the last 6 months. As a trader, I'm up about $41k this year. I'll call it a wash lol

I am almost all in on silver and gold mining stocks. Whoever wins the election, they are going to print and debase the currency. Gold and silver will be relatively more expensive as a result. Oil and Tobacco companies look cheap as well, but nothing is a sure play with the election turmoil.

Hard for me to not sell some VTI shares (market indexed ETF).

Not sure if anyone here has been following the reddit induced GME (Gamestop) madness, but it is an interesting view into short squeezing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetb...he_wreckoning/

I am new to investing in individual stocks and am just following along to learn, but the whole GME fiasco seems pretty wild to me. I am thinking at $40 GME is not a smart buy. However, the recent director appointees look promising (co-founder of Chwey Ryan Cohen is one of them). Anyone with more individual stock experience have any thoughts or advice?

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...f519721577.png

Looks like the time to buy was before the hype and subsequent run up in price. You missed the window.

r/wallstreetbets might be my new favorite place on the Internet.

The GME story is really interesting. We have a group of thousands (tens of thousands?) of small “retail” traders trying to short squeeze the big old guard. GME is like 140% shorted which is insane.

Basically, a small group of David’s are trying to squeeze a couple of Goliaths and it’s damn intriguing.

The saying "if you are hearing about it in the news, you're too late" comes to mind here. But at the same time, Gamestop has made some decent moves lately that make me think they might actually succeed. Either way, I am following along to learn as much as possible.


It is pretty wild and that subreddit is out of control.

The way the small stocks go on the market these days reminds me of a bunch of women hanging out together.

They all shop at the same stores and buy the same style of clothing while paying very little attention to the worth/cost of each item they buy.
When they hang out in same bars bars they go to the bathroom in groups and give thumbs up or thumbs down to the same guys and drink the same stuff and dance to the same songs.
When talking they reinforce each other's BS on most subjects.

For buying and selling in the market that group mentality will work until things turn negative and they lose whatever amount of money is in their trading account.

On the flip side I have seen how little the fundamentals matter these days but at least I have managed to make good money over the long term.

So after seeing JD8’s post here, and a couple other similar posts on another automotive board, I did some research and due diligence.

At the time I made the decision to YOLO a fairly significant amount of money (~10% of my total net worth) into GME. I figured it could either drop 50% or go up 500%, and that wasn’t a bad gamble as far as casinos go.


Meanwhile, GME is now almost $100/share pre-market after closing Friday at $65.



https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...004212169.jpeg



I might have enough free cash to race something other than Miatas after this is a said and done. Probably not though...

Happy to say that I did the exact same thing and so far have made some good money. As the WSB people say, to the moon!!

On a serious note, I think GME is a good long term play (not at these levels obviously). But once this craziness is over and things get back down to normal levels I will probably be buying some to hold long term.

Wow, that shit's moving. I hope you sold around the $140 mark. Down 50% in the two hours since.

No way...not selling till it’s over $400

Diamond hands

I haz them

I've got my limit sell set to $420.69

Yes and yes! I am treating this as an educated gamble and the money I put in is money I can afford to lose. I am not selling until I see minimum 500%+ returns.

I won't sell my GME until its worth more then TSLA. Come on Autist's, lets ride these TENDIES to the MOON!!!!!

This
























This is the way

I want to tell you guys "thank you for the stock market advice: I listened (mostly)"

Picked up GME at $115 yesterday. I'm in time zone +3 right now (southwest asia), so near midnight (10 minutes till the close) I sold half for $148, and eyeballed the chart. Set a buy limit at $110 and an extended hours sell limit for my other half at $240 and went to bed. I was pleasantly surprised when I woke up this morning (about 10:30p eastern) I've set new buy limits at $170 and $150, lets see how far we can drop once the big boys come back online at the open :-)

You need to be holding until Monday. The big squeeze has not been squozed. If you are selling before $420.69 you are not allowed in our Tendie club.

LOL - I got my share of the great GME Ponzii scheme of 2021. Cancelled my remaining buy orders, and I'm thrilled with the results :-) I hope you see it tick $421 before it's all said and done, and maybe I'll make some winning side bets.

Everyone should be cancelling those low meme limit sells so we don't face resistance there. I've got 1 limit sell over $600 to cover the cost of the rest of my stocks, then have all the rest set to $1420.69

Do you guys see yourselves as beating the large investors, caught in the Short Squeeze, or do you see yourselves beating the computer generated buys and sells?

Me, I'm not into Ponzi schemes.

I'm just trying to understand the old PUMP and DUMP going on.
DNM