I reduced my 401k allocation back down to only the match (5%). I keep debating whether to max it or just do the 5%. I’m probably going to have to help my sister out a bit. If they shut down all construction my job doesn’t look near as good. Wife is a teacher so no way she is getting let go. I’ve got about 5 months of expenses saved. Decisions decisions…
This is pretty reasonable IMO. You don’t want to give up the employer match, and the extra cash might help. If it makes you feel any better about your decision making I think you’re in the right track.
Yep. Steve Mnuchin needs more influence… let’s do this!
Why are leveraged oil ETFs down today (sorry Wichita) when crude oil price is breakeven/slightly up?
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He wouldn’t be my first choice. 
I assume because they are some type of weighted portfolio of futures and longer looking futures are probably down.
At this point I am just going to hold and if I lose it all/most of it well it was money I had to gamble on something, oh well.
I’m pretty sure all available data/evidence suggests that dividend paying stocks do no better or worse in the long run, but right now it is hard to look at dividend yields like Exxon (11%) and Wells Fargo (8%) and not think those are phenomenal investments.
I’m sticking to my index funds though. Head over heart.
A dividend yield is not like a bond coupon or an interest rate though. Your net worth does not go up when you receive a dividend check.
Maybe but refusing to pay dividends often leads executives to instead blow money on overpriced acquisitions of their competitors, because they have to do something with the money and running a bigger company means more compensation for them. So arguably it can help prevent the money form being wasted on worse uses
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Agree. My intent is to caution people against thinking an 8% dividend yield is equivalent to an investment that offers an 8% return.
Soooooo many people think this. I get asked it all the time from friends.
IDK maybe hold some cash in reserve so you’re not begging for a handout 2 weeks into a crisis?
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Congress will bring the heads of the airlines in front of them and give them a good tongue lashing by god.
If they’re not sufficiently contrite, or if they flew on a private jet, Congress will make them go away and think about what they’ve done for a week.
Then Congress will bail them out and personally make each one of them several hundred million dollars in the process. Lesson learned.
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The stock market isn’t crazy. You know what’s crazy? The oil market. It is going up and (mostly) down 20%+ every single day!
I’m looking for stocks like this when I jump back in. But you have to think Wells Fargo is still rotten from the top down and another scandal is very live, no?
suzzer,
There’s like infinite research in finance that individual investors have no real ability to identify outperforming individual stocks. When you jump back in, just buy a diversified index fund with a low expense ratio.
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If we get another stupid Friday rally I’m going to be really tempted to load up on a 3x inverse SPY ETF. GAMBOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL
Not really what I meant…
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I know I sound dumb on here but you don’t have to give me the basic boilerplate advice. I’m well aware of all of it. I just don’t always do it.
Near the bottom of the financial crisis - Bill Fleckenstein - a guy who trashed the dotcom bubble the whole way up - finally closed his bear fund and put a big chunk in MSFT. I followed suit and got back in the market at the same time. But I didn’t follow his lead with putting it in MSFT and forgetting it. And it cost me a ton.
I might still put some in index funds - but individual blue chips have a good track record with bouncing back quicker than others. I have more faith in a well run company than the aggregate of companies. You look at MSFT right now, it never falls as much as the market and it rallies more on a good day. People are fleeing to quality. It just feels like it has more buoyancy than the overall market to me.
Before the crash I was in half index funds (small cap, big cap, international, emerging markets, etc) and half tech blue chips and Quest Diagnostics as a hedge (healthcare, I know it’s a well run company because I worked there, best performing stock in the 2001 down market dotcom crash). Eventually I’ll probably go back to something similar.
Btw Quest is tanking right now. Must be they’re not delivering on enough testing or something. Could be a great opportunity at some point.
Thoughts are my own, I fully acknowledge there’s a reasonable chance I’m just a monkey throwing darts, etc.
But how does that make me, a poor overworked and underpaid executive, more money?