Accidental Market Timing

[donheff]

DW has two retirement accounts from her former employer: a 401K and a smaller account that operates under the same general rules but was funded through some other arcane mechanism. We decided to roll the smaller account into the 401K to make re-balancing simpler going forward. We gave the plan administrator the go ahead last Wednesday or Thursday assuming the transfer would get accomplished overnight. Instead the smaller account went to $0 and the proceeds went into limbo. The administrator explained that it would take 1-2 business days to move the funds into the 401K

You can see where this is going. The transfer was made at COB yesterday investing according to our preset AA. The liquidated stock portion of the old account bought more depreciated shares in the 501K and we saved a quick $15K that my spreadsheet tells me would have evaporated. It could just as easily have gone the other way with some positive event kicking off a rally. Wonder whether I would have posted that.

 

[Sunset]

Luck is a super power.

 

[pb4uski]

Well done!

 

[SumDay]

I had something similar happen when we moved one of our 401(k)'s to a Vanguard IRA. Full disclosure: my superpowers are not always 100% accurate.

 

[NW-Bound]

Accidental or intentional, if you gain or lose less, then it's all good.

The only difference is that if it is intentional, you will be tempted to do it again.

 

[ponyboy]

meh...market was down less than 4% yesterday. absolute peanuts in the grand scheme of things.

 

[yakers]

Reminds me that a couple years back I made an aging (?) mental error and bought some shares I was trying to sell So quickly unwound the deal, got warrened by Wells Fargo about 'day trading' but ended up $22 positive for the 20 minutes.
Trying not to do that again, more careful now and maybe simplyifing portfolio to avoid aging mental facilities.