Investing (aka GameStonk and other gambling events)

Saw a news headline today that people who bought in march are now richer. Checked the depot: yup. Unfortunately I hold off on the 2nd and 3rd purchase because I thought it would go even deeper and probably missed the right point after that.

I bought some VTI like 60 days ago that is up almost 30%. I wasn’t really trying to market time, but I’ll take it.

I bought at just under DOW 24k (IIRC - somewhere close to that) and my next targeted purchase was DOW 18k. I guess I should have had one in between the two.

This seems a little misleading as “trading” implies riskier behavior than just “investing” some of your windfall (which would be quite reasonable for most people in these income brackets).

At this point they’re just gonna ignore the emperor’s lack of clothes until everyone dies.

“Optimism about blah blah” = wishcasting. I guess it’s hard to get people to acknowledge things when their net worth and retirements is tied up in not acknowledging them.

I did the exact same thing (think I bought at 23,800 when it was on the way back up). Missed out. Should have got in at 20k. Lol market timing.

I still feel like we’re going to see another significant dip when a second wave hits, but what the f do I know? Nothing makes sense.

I got very lucky and pulled the trigger on a rebalance transaction that executed at the close on 3/23, literally the bottom. It was agonizing at the time, but the ghost of John Bogle told me to “stay the course”.

Actually I only get half credit since the transaction should have been double the amount to rebalance properly but I didn’t have the guts for that.

I made my annual purchase in the last week of February before the Canada tax deadline, so I’m down 14% on that investment. Got unlucky with timing buying right before March.

I currently have about 40% in cash since I just unloaded a few stonks (MSFT, AMZN, DGX) that were at their all time highs. No idea what to do now.

I’d really like to give it at least 2 more weeks to see where this inflection point is going to turn. But stupid-ass market is gonna rally for no reason apparently.

I still think it’s going to go down past March lows as all the economic impacts play out, but FOMO is real.

I did a great job buying in about 20% of my 401k at S&P 2400 and another 20% at the absolute bottom but then sold them around 2750-2800 on the way up expecting it was the dead cat bounce

I did pretty much the same thing after the financial crisis - frittered away a lot of the gains I would have had.

It would be super typical to pull your money out in case the opening up of the quarantine backfires, watch the number of infections and deaths rocket up, and then to see that the market went up 25% or something.

When I pulled back out at 2750 I was convinced it was the right move and told myself that I’m prepared to watch it go up over 3000 if that is what happens but it sure is tough now that it’s playing out, especially when it keeps going up on basically no positive news.

Then we have a negative news event and it seems to drop 2% at open and recover by end of the day. Just seems like the opposite action we should see in a bear market.

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My current 401k portfolio is split as follows:

Vanguard Bond Mkt - 5%
Vanguard Institutional - 25%
Vanguard Mid Cap - 28%
Vanguard Small Cap - 27%
Vanguard Total International Stock - 15%

Overall Risk assessment of “Aggressive” according to the website. I’m 30 years away from retirement; any opinions of I should make any changes? I’m currently at -2% return since 5/26/2019; which is mostly irrelevant.

What is Vanguard institutional? Is that an index fund?

Just eyeballing this, I would say it looks a little overweight to US. You might want to move a little US small cap to global small cap or emerging markets if you can.

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Seems fine. But if you’re going to tilt towards small cap like you are I’d go with a small cap value fund like VSIAX. My US equity exposure is something like 50% VTSAX and 40% VSIAX and then 10% REITs.

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Yeah the only two things that matter to the market are:

  1. Are we shutting down the economy again?

  2. Are people consuming?

I agree with this. I don’t know what the normal recommended allocation is, but I do know that the USA is doing way worse with this crisis than most other places, especially Asia. I feel like the move is to allocate more than usual towards international the closer we get to ATH here without having resolved our crisis. I’m not doing that yet, though, fwiw.

Of course that’s similar logic to what had me allocate to QQQ on Friday, and while I still think it was the right move, it did cost me… VOO +1.46% today, QQQ ever so slightly down. I still think it was wise, though.

As for emerging markets, my gut instinct is to avoid it. Like, Brazil is a big emerging market right? They’re neck and neck with us in this crisis… On the other hand, they are way less likely to have a long shutdown from here on out than developed countries that are well-run.

So maybe the move is heavier than usual on both int’l and emerging?

But is the market acting rationally for #2? Is consumption at a level or soon to be at a level that justifies equity prices?

I am out of the USA so maybe I am seeing it wrong but I assume consumption has to be way down even with “open for business” being declared

Even if you’re being totally passive about it, the US is less than half the global market cap so I generally wouldn’t make a portfolio with far more than half the equity being US. To put a finer point on it, if you want higher risk/reward out of your equity because you’re younger then it probably makes sense to go to global equities instead of smaller cap US equity. To whatever extent one believes in portfolio theory, there should be a diversification benefit to going outside the US to chase additional risk premiums.

Counterpoint: STONKS STONKS STONKS

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