Dow 30,000

[Ronstar]

Yes, and the cash in your wallet is only meaningful when you want to buy something at the store. It's just a number.

Exactly.

 

[Rianne]

Nice that the Dow is up there. But the only times that the Dow average (or stock price) is meaningful is when you buy and when you sell. It’s just a number.

Awwww! You’re missing a few important things....confidence, something to feel
Great about during these shitty times, the plans about traveling in the future and dream about dancing sugar plum fairies. Think about your mood when the Dow was at 18,000 less than a year ago. Honestly, I can seriously consider getting out right now, I could not consider that at 18,000.

 

[JDARNELL]

Yes, and the cash in your wallet is only meaningful when you want to buy something at the store. It's just a number.

I have an random number in my head that I would consider taking some off the table but I don’t know what I would do with it. I could pay off a 2.5% 30 yr mortgage but not sure why. I go to the store and I see less and less inventory each day and nothing jumps out at me to purchase right now just to buy.

CINC house and I were talking today about gifting more to our kids however they are not ready to handle it yet. We suspect we will have no major travel plans for 18 months.

I guess we will stand pat for now and watch what’s going on holding my breath every time W2R says “Wheee”. Lol

 

[audreyh1]

Levels make a difference to me because I rebalance! Usually early Jan.

S&P 500 closed at a new all time high as well.

I’ve noticed that interest rates creep up too just a bit near the end of the year. Probably folks piling into stocks for the Thanksgiving to Santa Claus rally. I like it because I’m usually rebalancing from stocks to bonds - knock on wood!

 

[38Chevy454]

Just happy to be riding the wave.....

 

[NW-Bound]

Today, the Dow goes up 0.83%, S&P up 0.88%, Nasdaq 0.70%, which is all good.

A closer look will show something more interesting. The Russell 2000 goes up 2.37%. Of course, small cap stocks have been hurting until recently. It's their turn to outperform, starting from perhaps 1 month ago.

Further more, today the FAANG stocks don't do well. They already had more than their fair share of gains. Can you say "sector rotation"?

What stocks do really well today? The long-suffering oil and gas stocks. Exxon which was kicked out of the Dow 30 a few months ago gains 3.66% today. Doing even better at 13.42% is Occidental. Or Conoco at 7.45%. Of course, these stocks still have a long way to go to fully recover.

Will this trend continue? Who knows? This is what makes following the stock market interesting to me.

 

[Lawrencewendall]

Wasn't sure where to put this. Looking for comments.

I have a fund (CLM) that makes up almost 9% of my entire portfolio. That is a higher percentage than most recommend. The kicker is that this fund has 171 different holdings (in the S&P500 where I don't have any other exposure) so I'm not really concentrated (in my opinion).

It pays monthly dividends and currently projected to produce >16% annually (after their high fee) based on current price and current dividends. I figure EVEN if it were to cut dividends by 50%, that still would be 8% (not too shabby).

About half my portfolio is in small and mid-cap (TSP S fund) with the other half in dividend-paying stocks/funds.

I'm getting ready to convert some funds in January from the S Fund to a Roth (trying to reduce RMDs) and looking for places to put it. I can't touch the conversion for another 4 years so I can afford to be patient.

The top 10 CLM holdings are:
Microsoft Corp
Amazon.com Inc
Apple Inc
Alphabet Inc
Johnson & Johnson
Mastercard Inc
Procter & Gamble Co
Berkshire Hathaway Inc
Intel Corp
Merck & Co Inc

Which still make up only 30% of the fund's holdings. Any insight from the wise minds here?

 

[OldShooter]

... I have a fund (CLM) that makes up almost 9% of my entire portfolio. That is a higher percentage than most recommend. The kicker is that this fund has 171 different holdings (in the S&P500 where I don't have any other exposure) so I'm not really concentrated (in my opinion). ...

No worries. People often misunderstand diversification. The number of fund names in a portfolio has nothing to do with diversification. Diversification is all about the aggregate stocks in the portfolio. "Fully diversified" means covering all sectors and holding a large number of different stocks per sector. Numbers like a minimum few hundred stocks get tossed around. Obviously, a total world fund with 7000 or so stocks is the ultimate diversification. Many will argue though that a total US fund with about 3600 stocks is adequate diversification. This is probably not the place for that evergreen debate.

It pays monthly dividends and currently projected to produce >16% annually (after their high fee) based on current price and current dividends. I figure EVEN if it were to cut dividends by 50%, that still would be 8% (not too shabby). ...

Two thoughts: First, if it sounds too good to be true ... (you know the rest). Second, why would you pay a "high fee" to have someone hold the S&P for you? Or to hold blue chip dividend stocks for you? If you have done well, congratulations, but absent tax issues I'd be dumping that one in a New York minute.

 

[Lawrencewendall]

Two thoughts: First, if it sounds too good to be true ... (you know the rest). Second, why would you pay a "high fee" to have someone hold the S&P for you? Or to hold blue chip dividend stocks for you? If you have done well, congratulations, but absent tax issues I'd be dumping that one in a New York minute.

I've been in this fund for over 6 years so it doesn't appear to be a flash in the pan. Part of the reason it became such a high percent of my portfolio is that due to reinvesting, it grew to where it is. Tough to walk away from something doing as well as it has.

The fee I never see. The dividend is net.

It's all in IRAs so taxes are mute.

Looking at CLM compared to S&P500 for 1,3,5,and 10 years from https://ycharts.com/companies/CLM/performance:

Thanks for the input.

 

[OldShooter]

... Thanks for the input.

No problem. I just have a different philosophy. I don't invest based on history, I invest based on data like the fact that historical performance has consistently been shown to not be predictive and that fees have been shown to be predictive. CLM has had a nice run, to be sure and you were lucky enough to have been along for the ride. Good for you. Those rides happen.

Interesting article here: https://www.morningstar.com/articles/946982/my-biggest-portfolio-mistake

 

[Lawrencewendall]

No problem. I just have a different philosophy. I don't invest based on history, I invest based on data like the fact that historical performance has consistently been shown to not be predictive and that fees have been shown to be predictive. CLM has had a nice run, to be sure and you were lucky enough to have been along for the ride. Good for you. Those rides happen.

Interesting article here: https://www.morningstar.com/articles/946982/my-biggest-portfolio-mistake

Thanks again.

 

[targatom2019]

WOW, what an awesome stock market year !!!!!!

 

[foxfirev5]

Living on the edge I just took .0001025% from VTSAX today.

 

[NW-Bound]

I've been in this fund for over 6 years so it doesn't appear to be a flash in the pan. Part of the reason it became such a high percent of my portfolio is that due to reinvesting, it grew to where it is. Tough to walk away from something doing as well as it has.

The fee I never see. The dividend is net.

It's all in IRAs so taxes are mute.

Looking at CLM compared to S&P500 for 1,3,5,and 10 years from https://ycharts.com/companies/CLM/performance:

Thanks for the input.

I never heard of this closed-end fund CLM, so out of curiosity, looked up its performance on PortfolioVisualizer and Morningstar. Both these sites have wrong or missing info (perhaps they had no dividend payouts), and show very lousy performance compared to your data from ycharts. I have every reason to think ycharts is right, because you would not be happy at all if what I saw on the other sites were correct.

I guess I have to be really careful with info from any Web site. Can't trust anybody.

By the way, CLM shows a bit better performance than the total market at this point, but the standard deviation is a lot larger. Too much beta, and not enough commensurate alpha for me.

 

[CSdot]

This market reminds me of 1999. I am up nearly 60% in my 401(k) in the past 2 years (as far back as my 401k company software allows me to compare). Over 10% since November 1st.

I love watching the growth, but the headache is going to hurt when the party is over and we wake up the day after this rally collapses.

 

[aja8888]

I love watching the growth, but the headache is going to hurt when the party is over and we wake up the day after this rally collapses.

........or the economy collapses.

 

[CSdot]

........or the economy collapses.

I was certain that was going to happen in 2008, but some how the nose drive was averted and the economy (and value of the US dollar) kept on chugging along. I, for the life of me, don’t know how this Ponzi we call the US dollar/economy continues.

Animal spirits I guess.

 

[W2R]

WOW, what an awesome stock market year !!!!!!

+1000
Unbelievable!! for the zillionth time this year, my portfolio+bank accounts exceeded the highest they have ever been in my life.



Surely we must be dreaming!

 

[RobbieB]

Yup. I'm making money faster than I can...

Blow That Dough -

 

[W2R]

Yup. I'm making money faster than I can...

Blow That Dough -

Me too, and it's great. Sure beats going through a down market.

 

[audreyh1]

I was certain that was going to happen in 2008, but some how the nose drive was averted and the economy (and value of the US dollar) kept on chugging along. I, for the life of me, don’t know how this Ponzi we call the US dollar/economy continues.

Animal spirits I guess.

The economy did get seriously hurt in 2008. There were massive layoffs, there were massive home foreclosures, many more people couldn’t get loans, a lot of industries stopped for a while. The recession was so bad it was called the “Great Recession”. You can just look at S&P earnings to see the huge drop in earnings for a while. It took many years to recover and the GDP was anemic most of the time. The US dollar held up because other economies were in even worse shape.

 

[street]

Man, things have been so good for so long it will be hard to see the down turn some day. Maybe it will never go south every again. Lol

 

[jazz4cash]

Man, things have been so good for so long it will be hard to see the down turn some day. Maybe it will never go south every again. Lol

It's a time to prepare for that downturn. Not exactly sure how to do that but I think I have way more than enough fixed income to ride the downturn out. In fact I plan to add some equities. It will still be tough to see the market go down.

 

[audreyh1]

It's a time to prepare for that downturn. Not exactly sure how to do that but I think I have way more than enough fixed income to ride the downturn out. In fact I plan to add some equities. It will still be tough to see the market go down.

I keep rebalancing and taking out the max annual withdrawal I can!!!

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

I don't pretend to understand what makes markets go up or down. What I do know is even though we had a rough start to the year, it rebounded so strongly I am at my all time high. It sure surprised me and continues to surprise me. Even the billionaires can't predict where the market goes, so it's a mystery to us all. All I can do is just roll with it, whichever way it goes.