Investment Question

[rsingh6675]

Investment Advice Please,
I am 60 year old. About one & half year back, I put money in Dodge & Cox Fund (DODGX). The value has gone down to -65.6%. Should I leave the money & hope that it will go up or move it some other fund (or Funds)? Help Please.

[W2R]

I moved your post from our Forum Administration section to the Fire and Money section, where it may get more responses.

I am so sorry to hear of your loss in the market. Perhaps you can tell us a little more, so that we can give you better advice. For example, what is your overall asset allocation? Is this a large or small part of your assets? Are you retired, or still working?

[LOL!]

If this fund is held in a taxable account, I would strongly suggest that you do some tax loss harvesting. Presumably you do not hold just this single fund. You should learn about asset allocation and decide what your asset allocation should be, then fulfill it. I would guess that means selling this fund and using the money to buy something else.

[rsingh6675]

Thanks. It was my retirement money (Tax deferred IRA). I invested over $400K & it is now $150K. I was planning on retiring soon & now I don't know how long it will take to be even.

[cardude]

Quote:

Thanks. It was my retirement money (Tax deferred IRA). I invested over $400K & it is now $150K. I was planning on retiring soon & now I don't know how long it will take to be even.

Sorry to hear about your financial loss-- most of us here share you pain.

Can you live on what you will get from Social Security at age 62? What are your annual expenses? Any other investments?

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rsingh6675 Thanks. It was my retirement money (Tax deferred IRA). I invested over $400K & it is now $150K. I was planning on retiring soon & now I don't know how long it will take to be even.

Do you really mean you invested $400K, or do you mean it was $400K at it's peak?

With a tax deferred IRA, I'd assume the money went in over a long period of time.

-ERD50

[rsingh6675]

I transferred my Lump sum money in June 2007 and was foolish enough not to get out.

[al_bundy]

unless you are going to move it to a different asset class like commodities, i'd leave it in there. three things can happen

we have a nice rally this year like we did in 1930 and you recover most of your losses and then another fall

this is the bottom of this secular bear that started in 1997 or 2000

the end of the USA is coming, the market will keep dropping and it doesn't matter what you do

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by rsingh6675 I transferred my Lump sum money in June 2007 and was foolish enough not to get out.

But you can't put a lump sum into a deferred account, can you?


WISER Women - Lump Sum Pension Payment

Oh, OK, I guess you can.

Hmmm, (struggling to find something positive to say...).... that bites. Sorry.

OK, what's done is done (fill in favorite cliché). Only two things worth doing - learn from the past, plan for the future (I guess that's a cliché, too, but a good one).

First, it wasn't necessarily foolish to not get out (but it sure would have been nice). Buy & hold is a strategy, not a guarantee.

But one problem I see, DODGX appears to be all stocks, no bonds to cushion a downturn. Now, if you were OK with a 100% stock allocation with this money, then you just have to accept the risk (although a straight index fund would have done a bit better). If you really wanted less risk, a balanced fund would have been more approriate, like VWINX (Wellesley..... that's been drummed into heads around here ). That didn't suffer as much, but also does not have the upside potential. Also, dividends are not reflected in that chart, so VWINX would look even better with those.




As far as future, looks like al_bundy covered those options.

Good luck, hang in there.

-ERD50

[LOL!]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! ....You should learn about asset allocation and decide what your asset allocation should be, then fulfill it. I would guess that means selling this fund and using the money to buy something else.

This advice still applies. What are you going to do to learn about asset allocation? Reading a few internet forum posts is not going to cut it.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! Quote: Originally Posted by LOL! ....You should learn about asset allocation and decide what your asset allocation should be, then fulfill it. I would guess that means selling this fund and using the money to buy something else. This advice still applies. What are you going to do to learn about asset allocation? Reading a few internet forum posts is not going to cut it.

Good point, LOL. I kinda skimmed and missed the second part of your post after you mentioned "taxable account".

No right or wrong here I guess, but I would think long and hard about changing Asset Allocation now that we are down so far. Dang future is so hard to predict, but IF we have some return to normalcy, *that* is when I would adjust the AA.

But if this is a matter of not being able to sleep at night, ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

-ERD50