45 years old, 3 teenage kids, recent $$ windfall, can i retire?

[nash031]

OP got whipsawed, I'm afraid. Not my fault. I wished him luck! The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves. [emoji3] I guess if he was lucky, he has close to the same amount as when he sold out, minus fees and taxes.

 

[LOL!]

Looks like a picked a pretty good time to move to an all cash position last week -- mostly based on intuition and clearly luck!
Now when to get back in , which is the 2nd and often harder part of the equaution!

The market was UP last week, so I suppose getting out on an up move is good.

A better time to go to cash would have been earlier this summer.

 

[Bnk1]

OP got whipsawed, I'm afraid. Not my fault. I wished him luck! The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves. [emoji3] I guess if he was lucky, he has close to the same amount as when he sold out, minus fees and taxes.

I didn't get whipsawed since I am still sitting in All Cash. I monitor the positioned I sold every day to track whether I am still ahead of the game or would have been better off staying the course.. As of the close on Friday, I am still ahead by $180k by going to cash taking into account fees, taxes, etc.

I'm expecting another test of the OCT 2014 lows over the coming weeks and it's highly likely we will blast through them to the downside... GLTA!


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[Bnk1]

I didn't get whipsawed since I am still sitting in All Cash. I monitor the positioned I sold every day to track whether I am still ahead of the game or would have been better off staying the course.. As of the close on Friday, I am still ahead by $180k by going to cash taking into account fees, taxes, etc.

I'm expecting another test of the OCT 2014 lows over the coming weeks and it's highly likely we will blast through them to the downside... GLTA!


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Futures deep in the red this AM -- clearly mkts are looking to sell rallies instead of buying the dips now and I expect that to continue until a retest of last Monday's lows and possible quite lower (174 SPY)


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[Bnk1]

Still sitting in all cash since my original post(s). Seems to have been the right move by saving myself $400k of paper losses.


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[Symbiotic]

If you're just going to roll in here and post whenever the market temporarily validates your timing decisions, I'm afraid your audience is going to head somewhere else...

 

[Bnk1]

Perhaps the audience wants a different perspective than the typical "buy and hold" or "set it and forget it"?


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[LOL!]

Still sitting in all cash since my original post(s). Seems to have been the right move by saving myself $400k of paper losses.

I like it.

But there seems to have been some wonderful trading opportunities that you have missed. You could have not only not lost money, but you could have made hundreds of thousands of dollars, too!

 

[Bnk1]

I like it.



But there seems to have been some wonderful trading opportunities that you have missed. You could have not only not lost money, but you could have made hundreds of thousands of dollars, too!

Absolutely - I tried to get short but ended up on the wrong side a couple times already...

But I actually bought SPY , QQQ, and IWM with about 25% of my cash at the close today. We had a decent retest of the non- flash crash lows around 187 so got long for a likely bounce.


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[LOL!]

Why those ETFs instead of VTI, VXF, and VBR?

 

[Bnk1]

Why those ETFs instead of VTI, VXF, and VBR?

Much more liquidity


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[Bnk1]

Well - that didn't last long .... moved back into cash 100% yesterday ;don't think we found our bottom quite yet...

 

[Markola]

History shows one certain way to make a small fortune through market timing: Start with a large fortune.

 

[Whisper66]

Bnk1 - I sure hope you have better luck than I have had trying to time the market. I learned my lesson twice in my investing life. Once when I tried timing the dot-com bubble and once when I tried timing during normal markets over a 5 yr trial period I gave myself. Bottom line is that for me, my market timing caused me a lot of stress with nothing to show for it. Have changed to one of those guys on the purple line in earlier graph....basically I buy and hold as a general rule. If I have cash, I try to wait for a good buying opportunity but I don't sweat hitting the exact best spot.

With you being close to retirement, I wish you the best. Make sure you are honestly evaluating your success and ensure it's worth the effort. After retirement, it's much harder to make up any big mistakes!

 

[NYEXPAT]

I bought the Monday low's at the close as well. I am also only looking for a ST bounce but will hold into next week if necessary.

 

[haha]

We have some very successful timers/traders on the board. Fortunately for us, they are rarely shy about sharing their success stories.

Ha

 

[hesperus]

Well - that didn't last long .... moved back into cash 100% yesterday ;don't think we found our bottom quite yet...

yawn...

OP, why not take a half million, go to a high stakes roulette table, and place it all on black or red? It's kind of the same game you're playing, but in this case you have a roughly 50% chance to double it, instantly! Seems much better odds than trying to beat the behavioral economics of a volatile market. Plus, think of the thrill you'll have.

 

[NYEXPAT]

I bought the Monday low's at the close as well. I am also only looking for a ST bounce but will hold into next week if necessary.

I sold mid morning about 150k of SPY (100k was bought a week ago) and 50k of some others including ACN, KO.

 

[Gary123]

Bnk1: congrats on your success. I understand your concern about putting a large amount of cash to work in the stock market. Stocks have had a nice 6 year sustained run really unprecedented to have a 6 yr move without a prolonged correction. Lots of flash corrections, but nothing that shakes weak holders.

My advice to you regarding stocks is to lengthen your time horizon. Don't look at daily charts. Look at weekly or monthly only. Then toy around with plotting a shorter term 10-20 period moving average and 30-40 period moving average on those weekly or monthly charts.

OR I would consider you investigate parking some of your IRA cash in preferred stock of a bank/utility/real estate (storage units) until you have a better idea of what you want to do with it. There is not a huge fluctuation in the stock price and dividend yields are 5-7%ish