So a guy I work with flew to Las Vegas last Friday to attend the Fury-Wilder fight.  He was supposed to come back Monday but we haven't heard from him.  

 

A fool and his money are soon parted.  

 

 

Did he not come back because he bet on Fury or Wilder though? LOL

All I know is the Saudis sure love Tyson Fury, and at 2 million estimated buys, so do a lot of other people.

On 2/26/2020 at 10:13 AM, DarkandStormy said:

Did he not come back because he bet on Fury or Wilder though? LOL

 

He showed up on Thursday.  He clocked in at 7am then went back out to his car and was spotted at McDonald's. 

 

I'm not making this up. 

I lost my login to my 401k portal awhile back and so just let it do its thing.  This week I called the place (Pension Corporation of America) and they gave me a new login.  I was shocked to see that their software had automatically rebalanced my stuff in high-fee mutual funds and a high-fee REIT of their choosing.  They of course assume that the average chump isn't going to know anything about fees - a quick scan of the 30~ investment options showed that Vanguard Admiral was the cheapest, by a long shot, but the others were often 5x as expensive.  

 

Anyway, we all need to resent that this mega-scam is allowed to continue.  Not only does Wall St. know that 50% of Americans will never understand stocks, it knows that only a slim percentage of those who do understand fees.  That's why there is so much Fake News being spread by the likes of Rush Limbaugh regarding Social Security - of course Charles Schwab, etc., want you to be forced to go through their for-profit administration of retirement savings.  

 

Anyone ready to pile in after the downturn or waiting it out?

13 minutes ago, ck said:

Anyone ready to pile in after the downturn or waiting it out?

 

Just wait it out unless you have $100k in cash sitting around that you didn't have sitting around back in October, in which case I wouldn't hesitate to put it all in a broad index fund.  It's impossible to time the bottom just like how it's impossible to time the top. 

 

Where things could get hairy is if this actually gets a little real then home buying and selling will start to get goofy.  In the inefficient market will become even more inefficient than usual. If it gets really bad the banks and title agencies and county recorders will be understaffed which will make it hard to get qualified and in some cases purchase contracts will expire.  

Another fun day in the equities markets.

6 minutes ago, DarkandStormy said:

Another fun day in the equities markets.

 

Don't sell, ever.  

3 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

 

Don't sell, ever.  

BUY!

On 2/28/2020 at 9:07 PM, jmecklenborg said:

I lost my login to my 401k portal awhile back and so just let it do its thing.  This week I called the place (Pension Corporation of America) and they gave me a new login.  I was shocked to see that their software had automatically rebalanced my stuff in high-fee mutual funds and a high-fee REIT of their choosing.  They of course assume that the average chump isn't going to know anything about fees - a quick scan of the 30~ investment options showed that Vanguard Admiral was the cheapest, by a long shot, but the others were often 5x as expensive. 

 

 

What is your recourse, if any, in this case? It's not "churning" if it only happened a time or two.

On 2/28/2020 at 9:07 PM, jmecklenborg said:

I lost my login to my 401k portal awhile back and so just let it do its thing.  This week I called the place (Pension Corporation of America) and they gave me a new login.  I was shocked to see that their software had automatically rebalanced my stuff in high-fee mutual funds and a high-fee REIT of their choosing.  They of course assume that the average chump isn't going to know anything about fees - a quick scan of the 30~ investment options showed that Vanguard Admiral was the cheapest, by a long shot, but the others were often 5x as expensive.  

 

Anyway, we all need to resent that this mega-scam is allowed to continue.  Not only does Wall St. know that 50% of Americans will never understand stocks, it knows that only a slim percentage of those who do understand fees.  That's why there is so much Fake News being spread by the likes of Rush Limbaugh regarding Social Security - of course Charles Schwab, etc., want you to be forced to go through their for-profit administration of retirement savings.  

 

 

They sold assets of yours without your permission... That's super sketchy and you might want to try to fight this. They'll say it was some default setting. 

 

I've been lucky that every place I've worked has offered 401ks with a good selection of low fee index funds. One place had a Schwab 401k where we could literally buy anything - stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, futures, options - available on their platform. The owners of the company were investing nerds so they liked it. There's a lot of crappy providers out there though.

^I don't have a huge amount of money in the account so it wouldn't have made much of a difference - at most $1,000 - and that would be hard to prove.  I talked to my dad about it and he said it's a widespread issue with 401k management companies. 

 

Here is the scope and breadth of the investment choices:

 

 

 

 

So you were in one or more of the Vanguard funds (probably not the International) and got put into the Cohen&Steers REIT and the T Rowe Price target fund I'm guessing?

The target date funds have a pretty good reputation as low cost and no frills.... And the vanguard funds on there are the old standbys ... Who knows what all that other stuff is though.

Edited March 6, 20205 yr by mu2010

20 minutes ago, GCrites80s said:

So you were in one or more of the Vanguard funds (probably not the International) and got put into the Cohen&Steers REIT and the T Rowe Price target fund I'm guessing?

 

Correct. 

 

Whatever that real estate fund is might be an out-and-out scam. 

49 minutes ago, mu2010 said:

The target date funds have a pretty good reputation as low cost and no frills.... And the vanguard funds on there are the old standbys ... Who knows what all that other stuff is though.

 

Target funds used to be known as all low-load funds since they change everyone in the same year bracket into different asset classes and funds as time goes on. But as they gained a reputation as "set-and-forget" funds among the general public some needlessly raised management fees. They became the "Well, duh!" option when people were presented with a plethora of other options that the average person didn't understand.

5 hours ago, GCrites80s said:

 

Target funds used to be known as all low-load funds since they change everyone in the same year bracket into different asset classes and funds as time goes on. But as they gained a reputation as "set-and-forget" funds among the general public some needlessly raised management fees. They became the "Well, duh!" option when people were presented with a plethora of other options that the average person didn't understand.

 

That's a shame, yeah, when I did most of my reading up on stocks 5 or so years ago, I had read they were typically low fee.

Also, I'm going to pay closer attention to this thing now that I have a working password.  In particular, I wonder what is going on with "Schwab Bank Savings".  I currently have $246 in it, for unknown reasons.  It's possible that Schwab is floating all of these retirement contributions through its bank so it can enjoy a status that it wouldn't otherwise.   

22 hours ago, DarkandStormy said:

Another fun day in the equities markets.

 

Rinse.  Repeat.

^ I'm still buying

5 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

Also, I'm going to pay closer attention to this thing now that I have a working password.  In particular, I wonder what is going on with "Schwab Bank Savings".  I currently have $246 in it, for unknown reasons.  It's possible that Schwab is floating all of these retirement contributions through its bank so it can enjoy a status that it wouldn't otherwise.   

 

Like the "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" is the lobby or waiting room for your money before it goes to the actual funds

1 minute ago, GCrites80s said:

 

Like the "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" is the lobby or waiting room for your money before it goes to the actual funds

 

I have an independent IRA which has none of this mischief.  At the beginning everyone assumes that they would only do an independent IRA if they max out their 401k.  Then you get into it and realize why a lot of people only contribute to their 401k beyond their company match after having maxed out an independent IRA.   

18 hours ago, mu2010 said:

 

They sold assets of yours without your permission... That's super sketchy and you might want to try to fight this. They'll say it was some default setting. 

 

I've been lucky that every place I've worked has offered 401ks with a good selection of low fee index funds. One place had a Schwab 401k where we could literally buy anything - stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs, futures, options - available on their platform. The owners of the company were investing nerds so they liked it. There's a lot of crappy providers out there though.

 

Most 401(k) plans offer this, but you often have to sign up for it separately after enrolling in the basic 401(k).  There will be extra steps to sign up for a "self-directed" account.  I had this at my old law firm with Prudential (highly inefficient, not recommended, but I wasn't on whatever committee determined who would manage retirement benefits), and my wife has been at one employer that uses Fidelity NetBenefits (in which case the self-directed account will be called something like BrokerageLink, and was very easy to use and definitely what I'd use, fees permitting, if I ran my own business).

On ‎3‎/‎6‎/‎2020 at 2:51 PM, DarkandStormy said:

Rinse.  Repeat.

 

More fun.

Good day to buy, I suppose.

I don't get why people are flipping out.  We have merely returned to the level the market was at 12 months ago.  

 

Everyone has a friend who obsessed with gold and other metals.  Sure enough, my "gold" friend is out there on Facebook today making all sorts of gloom-and-doom predictions.  

1 hour ago, taestell said:

Good day to buy, I suppose.

 

Question I was asking my wife this morning is how low will Oil stocks go before people start piling back on...?   I don't know where the bottom is but safe assumption that we could be back to $60/barrel in less than 12 months

21 hours ago, taestell said:

Good day to buy, I suppose.

 

I am inching back into an S&P500 index fund. This may not yet be the bottom, but I think it's close.

The market might close up 2-3% today, a day after losing 7%.  Your gold friends all missed out on what might be the year's entire gain.  

 

People don't get that the market going up half as much as it just went down is a huge deal.  They can only think about the down.  

18 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said:

The market might close up 2-3% today, a day after losing 7%.  Your gold friends all missed out on what might be the year's entire gain.  

 

People don't get that the market going up half as much as it just went down is a huge deal.  They can only think about the down.  

 

To be fair, 2008 also had a lot of "big gain" days.  It's just that the severity of the extreme days going down far outweighed those.

 

If you are consistent in your investing and not (over)reacting to market blips - i.e. trying to time the market - you're much more likely to come out ahead in the long run.

The Dow is nuts today.  up 1,000 to down 100 now up 200. This is crazy. 

 

1 hour ago, jmecklenborg said:

The market might close up 2-3% today, a day after losing 7%.  Your gold friends all missed out on what might be the year's entire gain.  

 

People don't get that the market going up half as much as it just went down is a huge deal.  They can only think about the down.  

 

In real-people investing horizons, 2 days is not that much greater a sample size than 1 day.

 

I have not bought a single share of anything on the downturn yet.  I also have not sold.

 

My last trading activity of any kind was on 2/13 and my last serious moves were on 1/22.

 

The Stock Market is Tanking.  Do Nothing.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/dont-touch-your-stocks-during-coronavirus-crisis/607672/  (Note: Readers get 5 views per month ... or 5 per day if they use an incognito Chrome window, just saying ...)

 

ETA: The S&P dropped almost 50% during the Great Recession.  It's been more than 10 years since then, long enough for people to have forgotten that it's possible except in a kind of distant-theoretical sense.

 

I was just starting my investing life in 2008.  I got in at the worst possible time, fortunately with just the tiny amount of money needed to open a Roth IRA at Fidelity.  I rode it down.  And I made some rookie mistakes that cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, though I've still got nothing on @surfohio (https://forum.urbanohio.com/topic/15108-personal-finance-investing-thread/page/9/?tab=comments#comment-940231), since I was only a sophomore in high school back then.  This includes money left on the table from not buying when I should have and money left on the table from selling too early in the recovery, i.e., selling when I should not have.

 

And yet for all the money I left on the table, the returns from the few good decisions I did make have been strong enough that I'm sitting pretty well even after the recent pullback from 29,000.

 

Trading on the noise is for people with quantitative degrees from MIT backed up by the some of the best privately-owned supercomputers in the world.  Normal humans cannot beat Renaissance Technologies and Renaissance's own strategies.  And study after study shows that even professionals cannot time the market anywhere near as well as those professionals think they can time the market, nor can they even generally do so as well as passive index investments "time" the market by accident.

 

In hindsight, the best market-timing move I've made in 12 years of investing was completely by accident.  I sold SeaDrill (SDRL) in 2013 as part of cashing out for the down payment on my house.  It collapsed shortly afterward.  Then again, I also sold Panera (PNRA) for around $185 at the same time, for more of that down payment, and it was acquired a few years later for around $313, so my hindsight-genius was literally immediately offset by my hindsight-blindness.

 

Dollar-cost averaging into durable long-term performers, predominantly American ones, is your friend.

 

I've done far better than my mother (who taught me the basics of investing starting around my senior year of high school) over the past 12 years in large part because she had vastly greater international exposure than I did (Brazil, Russia, China, Australia, Canada).  I've done better than my best friend, also an investor, in part because he's been playing short-term timing games (short-term shorts on Tesla, for example, which I rank up there with coronavirus Patient Zero or live fallen power lines on things I'd touch) and I've been doing practically nothing.

 

^ I think most people are investing the bulk of their money for a long horizon (retirement.) I invest the same amount on a regular schedule in the same few ETF's. My horizon is till long enough that I'm better off not trying to time it and just ride out down turns.  I have a small percentage of my portfolio that i "play" with. That is invested in some individual stocks and some crowdfunded real estate.  My "play" money is not a big deal if I take a loss. 

I've had boatloads of cash on the sidelines for a long time and thought I needed to stop that.  So after the first 5-8% dip I put a significant amount (15-20%) in the target retirement funds without thinking much.  Now I'm kind of regretting that as I feel we're just getting started with the repercussions of the virus.  But I certainly can't time markets well - except AMD, which I bought at 1.80 ? - so maybe I'm just going to cost-average in if it's keeps going down.  But right now, it's so manic, who knows what to do. 

I'm fairly ambivalent about my own investments, which of course have taken a tremendous dive as has everybody's. But this will pass, and things will eventually stabilize.

 

But I am very nervous about my parents. They're 80 and 79, on fixed income,  and live and die by the markets. That has definitely been preoccupying my worries lately.

I bet it will keep going down for awhile... It was already more or less artificially pumped up, now it's got to adjust. I'm lucky I am only 32, but it's crazy how much the stocks have dropped.

 

Everything Don gained in the last two years is going to be wiped out. The stock market isn't some magic voodoo, everything adjusts at some point.

 

*I honestly believe it might even drop to 23,000. It went from 29k to 25k. Now, think about how many people aren't going into restaurants, sporting events, pulling out the market and holding, oil prices, etc. Probably the true level is 25k but it will dip more. I don't think it's at the bottom. Maybe I am wrong!!! I am not a financial analyst!

Edited March 10, 20205 yr by IAGuy39

I think it could easily hit 23K, I'd say could get down to 19/20K if earnings season brings pain and the virus doesn't get contained.  Selfishly, I'm hoping it does - would be a good entry point.  But I agree for older folks, this is rough.  It's why I always thought it was crazy to advocate for retirement accounts tied to markets - too much potential for catastrophe and too complicated even for well-informed people to make the right decisions consistently.  You may tell people to not panic, but it's much easier said than done when your life savings is at play. 

With interest rates so low the only way to get actual return is in equities, including real estate. 

I wanna see the tech bros suffer.  

Okay we ended March 10 up 5% after dropping 7% on March 9.  Where my gold bros at?  

 

 

23 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

The market might close up 2-3% today, a day after losing 7%.  Your gold friends all missed out on what might be the year's entire gain.  

 

People don't get that the market going up half as much as it just went down is a huge deal.  They can only think about the down.  

 

23 hours ago, DarkandStormy said:

To be fair, 2008 also had a lot of "big gain" days.  It's just that the severity of the extreme days going down far outweighed those.

 

Perfect example of why (over)reacting to any single day or two of the market is silly.  Now we're back to Monday's levels and potentially heading to a new 52-week low.

 

If you're a short-term trader, you're freaking out.  If you have a longer horizon (20+ years) then this shouldn't matter.

On ‎3‎/‎10‎/‎2020 at 7:15 PM, jmecklenborg said:

Okay we ended March 10 up 5% after dropping 7% on March 9.  Where my gold bros at?  

 

Whoops.

 

Stock markets just closed their worst single day of trading since 1987.

^Gold hasn't fluctuated significantly in price in almost 10 years.  

 

 

On ‎3‎/‎12‎/‎2020 at 4:06 PM, DarkandStormy said:

Stock markets just closed their worst single day of trading since 1987.

 

Then bounced completely back in 24 hours.  This is crazy-crazy.  

Can't stop buying the dips

Hey my 401k is off in corporate land, but my Robinhood account is ready for fresh money from my savings. Let things sink another 20% and profit!

23 hours ago, jmecklenborg said:

Then bounced completely back in 24 hours.  This is crazy-crazy.  

 

Yeah, markets are wild. I saw Bitcoin dropped 50% in 24 hours.

 

Have a feeling volatility is here to stay until there's stabilization with covid-19.

On ‎1‎/‎30‎/‎2020 at 12:35 PM, DarkandStormy said:

I mean, yes, trading one stock alone is always incredibly risky.  And I don't have the risk appetite for it.  But for your 5/15 timeline, I'd look at, maybe a $500 put (costs about $20 right now). 

 

Should...should I get into trading options? lol

 

TSLA closed at $361 yesterday and they're far outpacing the market in their downward trend over the last month.

Well, it's up 11 percent today. Hope you bought some!