Which is probably a good idea. People that are emotionally impacted by market downturns should probably look at their account once on their birthday or something like that.
I don’t look at my accounts all that often, but when you know the general amount that sits in them, and see -5% in a week, or -15% in a quarter, that math happens in your head. But I never trade as a result of that mental math.
In fact this month marks just about 1 year since I significantly increased my after-tax contributions. Same amount goes in every Monday. That money’s taken a beating but hopefully I’ll be happy a few years from now that I got things on sale.
I admire everybody’s unwavering faith that the market will always eventually go up.
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What other choice besides copium do we have?
You can dedicate your surplus funds to charity and then throw yourself off of a bridge once you are to old or infirm to work.
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https://twitter.com/tobi/status/1570791158691012610?s=20&t=zjyaR_y7C7EqLfUVEylSRg
This is making my brain break. “Here’s your total compensation amount - how much of that do you want to get in cash vs. equity?” Umm, all of it?
More details here:
Why should a company decide for you how much of your total reward should be in the form of cash vs equity? This makes no sense. Now, our employees can choose exactly how they want to allocate their total reward.
Indeed! Why should a company even decide what your total reward is?
In the video it does seem like you get a 5% bonus for equity or options, so there is some incentive to not take cash but it would be interesting if the equity was like a 15% better than market price which seems to be what most companies are doing in their Employee Share Purchase Plans. Otherwise
My Top Three Tips for Ignoring Bad Feelings During Market Downturns
- Count the number of shares instead.
- Realize that it’s just funny money until you actually sell, which is probably some time in the >10 year future.
- Just contribute so much that your accounts are actually up on the year.
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Point 3 is impossible for me because I am so wealthy (or, more accurately, just old so my account is high relative to my wage rate). I accept your sympathy, naturally. Maybe I’ll start a GoFundMe.
On point 1 another good framing is to just look at income (i.e. dividends). I treasure my monthly dividends and if the market crashes my dividend may go down but it’s still a positive number, which makes me feel all warm and tingly.
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markets are so efficient fedex is down 20 percent
In fairness that was a big miss and logistics stocks have gone up a lot since 2019. A lot more than could be justified by any increase in the size of their operations. They just made a lot more profit because the rate environment was great, and now it isn’t.
The only thing to do is adjust based on your time horizon. If you really have 20+ years this is a blip. If you’re closer to retirement and losing money you’ll need sooner rather than later then re-allocate. I’m pretty numb to this stuff… just maxing my 401(k) and DCAing SPY/QQQ in my taxable account whenever I have a few bucks.
If it never comes back we’re all fucked anyway.
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We arent fucked, we just have to adjust lifestyles a bit.
Have to move to eating generic cat food instead of fancy feast.
I don’t think we’re gonna get the same kind of returns that happened in the past, it sure looks like west (and definitely europe) isn’t gonna be dominant by far.
well relative anyway (ie if the currency collapsed stonks would happen)
I agree 100%. There’s no better option though so just gotta see what happens.
how high do interest rates need to get before a 60/40 or 70/30 portfolio start to make sense again?
Fuck if I know. I won’t be touching bonds for a while.
re: point 3, hopefully I’ll be there in a couple years. This year was also a little bit of an outlier as I reallocated a portion of a house downpayment fund to the market after we decided to not purchase a house this year.
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