This current market....

Theseus said:
now 1.75% return on the guaranteed funds looks pretty fabulous.
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Exactly. I paid off a $188K mortgage last year at 5.5%, and that seems like a great investment too. Working on another $160K to be paid off by FIRE date next year.

Of course, this may be the market correction we all laugh about in a few months. (I think Japan has been waiting to start laughing at their bear market)
 
Theseus said:
By design, we've got several years worth of funds earmarked for withdrawals in cash or guaranteed (low yield) funds. Up until recently I was not sure if that was smart or not... now 1.75% return on the guaranteed funds looks pretty fabulous.
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+1

In the same boat, cash available for several years.

I had been wondering about the wisdom of lots of cash but I am not doing so any longer. It reduces stress significantly.
 
W2R said:
I'm scheduled to DCA part of the money from selling my house last month, on Wednesday. Hmm! Looks pretty good to me. :D But then again, with my luck the market will bounce back with a vengeance by then. :ermm:

Either way, that's the plan.
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The whee-oracle of e-r.org has spoken! Watch out for Wednesday! :LOL:
 
Carl Icahn put up a video. He talks about a bubble in high yield bonds (and other stuff - sorry for that).

Carl Icahn

You may like him (or not), but he is a smart guy.
 
CNBC -- yes I know, I know -- said there is capitalmpreservation going on.
 
Totoro said:
An "financial" newspaper out here hit new lows last week: first they were claiming that the market would fall once the Fed raises interest rates. Then, when the Fed didn't raise rates the markets fell anyway.

Now they are claiming the markets are falling because the Fed didn''t raise interest rates :confused: (supposedly it indicates a weak economy etc ..)
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There's some truth to it. The market did not tank until Yellen gave a press conference explaining her reason for not raising interest rates. I did not listen to the entire speech, but it scared people into thinking "maybe the Fed knows something I don't". Then, they sold.
 
Still a roller coaster, including Friday being the biggest swing in 4 years.
 
Voila, this vehemently volatile index, vivified by the VIX, is vexing even veterans.

It is truly taxing the tenacity of the trembling types.
 
Totoro said:
Voila, this vehemently volatile index, vivified by the VIX, is vexing even veterans.

It is truly taxing the tenacity of the trembling types.
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Fear not. First class forum followers will fathom this feckless frustration with flawless fortitude
 
Remember that "fooey" is a 5-letter word. :cool:

Anyway, this market is schizophrenic. One can't predict whether it is coming or going. I guess I will just keep doing a bit of short-term trading on the side to pick up a few hundreds, if not thousands, here and there, while maintaining my AA of 60% stock.

I won't go "all in" until people cry that the market is a rigged game, and they swear to keep their money under the mattress from now on.
 
NW-Bound said:
Remember that "fooey" is a 5-letter word. :cool:

Anyway, this market is schizophrenic. One can't predict whether it is coming or going. I guess I will just keep doing a bit of short-term trading on the side to pick up a few hundreds, if not thousands, here and there, while maintaining my AA of 60% stock.

I won't go "all in" until people cry that the market is a rigged game, and they swear to keep their money under the mattress from now on.
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I'm not sure its ever not schizophrenic. And I've certainly never succeeded at predicting whether it's coming or going. Thus my 50/50 with a wide rebalance band that keeps me from doing a lot of wiggling and ziging and zaging that amounts to a tempest in a teapot.

It's worked for a 13 year ER so far (well not ER anymore since I turn 65 this month) and the pot is over twice what it was then (not inflation adjusted though) A world class crappola market in between notwithstanding.
 
The market is usually just mildly neurotic. If it is constantly in a bipolar disorder and has huge swings, then some people will get used to it and learn to make good money off it. And I hope to be one of them.

Buy, sell, buy, sell. Rinse and repeat. Of course I am trading just a few percent of my portfolio for kicks, but it is fun as long as I win or at least do not lose too much. :)

While the S&P went up 1.83% today, in Europe several countries' indices went up 3% to 4%. What changed? Well, maybe it will be all taken out the next trading session. We'll see.
 
NW-Bound said:
... I guess I will just keep doing a bit of short-term trading on the side to pick up a few hundreds, if not thousands, here and there, while maintaining my AA of 60% stock.
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If you can pick stocks well enough to make a few thousand 'on the side' in this market, why aren't you leveraged to the max and making 10's of thousands?
 
Because I know that I cannot be right all the time, and do not want an error to cost me too dearly.

One's bet size should correspond to the probability of winning, and since the market has roughly 50/50 chance of going up or down, one can never go all in or all out. But after a big run up, the market will have a bigger chance of going down than up, and after a big loss, a bigger chance of going up than down. So, instead of 50/50, it may be 48/52. Hence, my incremental short-term bets are placed on that small chance, on top of my long-term holdings which I do not trade.

And talking about making 10's of thousands per day, if I were more certain of how the market would move, I could make that kind of money trading a bigger percentage of my stash instead of just a couple of percent of it. I would not go on margin for more leverage. That's for fools.
 
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IBB taking a dump again. Down 3.2% right now. There should be a way to make money here if I only knew how far it will go and the direction. Is that too much to ask?
 
NW-Bound said:
I guess I will just keep doing a bit of short-term trading on the side to pick up a few hundreds, if not thousands, here and there, while maintaining my AA of 60% stock.
Click to expand...

But if you're sure you'll make "hundreds, if not thousands", you sound pretty confident with play money... Maybe not so much though?


NW-Bound said:
And talking about making 10's of thousands per day, if I were more certain of how the market would move, I could make that kind of money trading a bigger percentage of my stash instead of just a couple of percent of it.
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Well, yeah, if we were all more 'certain' of what the market will do, I think we'd all make a lot of money :LOL:
 
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hesperus said:
But if you're sure you'll make "hundreds, if not thousands", you sound pretty confident with play money... Maybe not so much though?
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I did not elaborate on how much money committed, how many trades, and over how many days it took to make that few hundreds or a couple of thousands. ;)

Writing calls or puts gets me that few hundreds or a few thousands easily as Fermion and Utrecht have been doing also. Now, it takes stocks or cash to back up these options. One commits capital in the order of 100X the amount one expects to win in a couple of weeks. This is the most conservative play.

Another way to make short-term trades is to wait for the right time to play the more volatile ETFs. One can get 10% return in a week, but the timing has to be right.

Well, yeah, if we were all more 'certain' of what the market will do, I think we'd all make a lot of money :LOL:
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Of course not. Somebody has to lose. :)

I was replying to a poster who talked about leveraging to make 10K's on each short-term trade, and pointed out that leveraging is not necessary when one has a 7-figure portfolio. What I need is "certainty" to commit more money to these short-term trades, or to go out further on the risk/reward curve. ;)
 
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Fermion said:
IBB taking a dump again. Down 3.2% right now. There should be a way to make money here if I only knew how far it will go and the direction. Is that too much to ask?
Click to expand...

And I sold calls on my 300 shares of 3X bear biotech ETF shares (BIS) too soon. Left a couple of $K's on the table. Darn!
 
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