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Old 07-26-2020, 08:56 AM   #21
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We bought VTI in March, bumping up our stock holdings by about 18%. As we have loans pay off and money come in it has mostly been going to savings accounts and CDs. We are now over 30% in cash, which makes me real nervous about the inflation I see coming. While the market seems unjustifiably high to me I have this illuminati/secret Scrooge McDuck cabal suspicion that those who hold stocks will be just fine while our bank accounts will get hit. But as all my "investing" is hunch and feeling based I'm driving blind.
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Old 07-26-2020, 08:56 AM   #22
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I'm with pb4uski above. I also feel just fine, except for a few aches and pains now and then.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:10 AM   #23
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We're fine with our 60/40 AA. I'd like to understand fund management. For instance, you buy the Total Stock Market Fund. Do the fund managers move companies in and out based on their success or failures? Say Apple has the highest number of shares in that fund then Facebook (or whatever) down the line. Then Tesla gets in the mix. Do fund managers rearrange the companies best suited for that fund? Since I don't follow the specific companies in funds, I hope fund managers do.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:11 AM   #24
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The only move we made was to trade bonds for cash. We rarely do any adjustments but I kind of like having cash now that I’m retired. We have about 65% in stocks which I feel are fairly valued at the moment.

I don’t really care about all the squawk about viruses, politics, etc. This stuff only causes worry and poor decisions.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:29 AM   #25
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I don’t really care about all the squawk about viruses, politics, etc. This stuff only causes worry and poor decisions.
+1

Politics / elections would be the last thing influencing my investment decissions.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:33 AM   #26
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I had my assets bucketized...........
I know it’s a mind trick, but it works.
Yep. The biggest flaw in using so-called "buckets" is believing you're actually doing something different than if you held exactly the same mix of investments but simply tracked your total AA. The fact you understand you're organizing (in your mind) your assets in a way that propped you up in times of decision induced stress, but you haven't actually done anything different with your investments, marks you as "getting it."

I do a tiny amount of so-called bucketing, but mostly for DW's benefit. We have enough cash equivalent funds at our local B and M bank that, when coupled with pension + SS, would carry us for 2 - 3 years. DW manages that and only looks occasionally at the bottom line of our brokerage accounts which I manage with an AA outlook. Keeps her from fretting about market variation. Keeps me from wading into too many day to day budget details.

Probably shouldn't call it a "bucket" approach. More like a tub and a thimble.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:37 AM   #27
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Lot of people sold in March or changed allocation strategy by reducing equity exposure. Most did not change their strategy.

How do you feel now about your decision?
If you sold or reduced equities when do you plan to get back in?

I will ask same question end of next month.
I didn't sell anything or change my AA. As usual I just did nothing except live off what is in my bank accounts right now plus SS+mini-pension. (I always withdraw the year's spending money from my portfolio right before rebalancing, the first week in January).

I haven't been posting my gleeful announcements of having more money in portfolio+bank accounts than ever before, because I thought maybe those posts were getting annoying to some people. On the other hand, why not be gleeful when we can manage it, during this awful pandemic? Let them eat cake. So here goes:

Last Tuesday, July 21st, the sum of my investment portfolio plus bank accounts was not just doing fine, but actually totaled MORE than I have EVER had in my entire life!!!!




I think that is pretty doggone cool considering the state of the world, and how the news media seems to think that it will crater the stock market. Seems we buy-and-hold'ers are doing just fine, thank-you-very-much.

Another thing I like about doing nothing, is that it takes very little effort and fits in with my retirement lifestyle and philosophy.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:44 AM   #28
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I think that is pretty doggone cool considering the state of the world, and how the news media seems to think that it will crater the stock market.
I don't see media doing anything to "crater" the stock market.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:47 AM   #29
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I don't see media doing anything to "crater" the stock market.
I wasn't clear about what I meant by "it". I did not mean the media; I meant the state of the world. The news media seems to think that the miserable state of the world (pandemic, riots, etc) will crater the stock market. And let's be real - - other than one initial blip back in February, it HASN'T.

I think such beliefs are based on the idea that we can predict with complete accuracy what the market will do. And I don't know of anyone who can do that. If they could, they would be fabulously wealthy and probably would be living on their own tropical island away from the world, or something like that, and I would speculate that they might not be working every day as a journalist.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:50 AM   #30
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.......
I feel a lot better about having very little in equities now.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:55 AM   #31
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As usual I just did nothing.........

Another thing I like about doing nothing, is that it takes very little effort
Pretty much our strategy, as it was in 2008 - 2009. I've allowed our AA to drift a bit towards equities and am holding more cash equivalents and short term instruments inside the fixed portion, but that's about it. 50/45/5 (or so) has drifted to 54/35/11 as of COB Friday.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:55 AM   #32
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I wasn't clear about what I meant by "it". I did not mean the media; I meant the news. The news media seems to think that the miserable state of the world (pandemic, riots, etc) will crater the stock market. And let's be real - - it HASN'T.

I think such beliefs are based on the idea that we can predict with complete accuracy what the market will do. And I don't know of anyone who can do that. If they could, they would be fabulously wealthy and probably would be living on their own tropical island away from the world, or something like that, and I would speculate that they might not be working every day as a journalist.
Once Fed announced "unlimited" QE everybody (including News) realized that large US companies will do just fine.

They will soon electronically print another 2-3 Trillion dollars Lot of it is sitting on big banks balance sheets. It will be interesting to see what happens to value of dollar if that money finds its way into the peoples hands. Dollar already significantly declined vs other currencies.
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:59 AM   #33
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Yea once Fed announced "unlimited" QE everybody (including News) realized that large US companies will do just fine.

They will soon electronically print another 2-3 Trillion dollars
I refuse to get into a partisan political discussion.

I was talking about the NEWS MEDIA which still predicts the market is getting ready for the biggest crash since the Great Depression. I don't think you, or the news media, or even people like Warren Buffet can predict what the market will do or why. Well, except in retrospect. Everyone's a genius when it comes to predicting things that have already happened. .
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Old 07-26-2020, 09:59 AM   #34
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The "W" word, uttered on July 26, 2020? Oh, my!

As to the question, back when it was in Wuhan only, I said to myself "this is going to sweep the world and have a big impact". Not formally, but I decided I was going to ride it out with my existing asset allocation targets. That's what I have done.

But in the first down draft (not this upcoming one, caused by the "W" word), I sat down and wrote an essay about changes I could make and directions the market could take. I wrote it because I really couldn't remember what I was thinking at Wuhan only time, and wanted a record of my thinking at that other moment in time. The upshot was that I couldn't stomach the possible eventuality of breaking my stick with the AA rule, then have the market go against that move. So I did rebalance (and the volatility made it more challenging), but stuck with the existing target AA.
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Old 07-26-2020, 10:01 AM   #35
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Except, if memory serves me correctly, there has been pretty high historical correlation between W2R posting and market crashes.... that is my signal.
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Old 07-26-2020, 10:02 AM   #36
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I don't see media doing anything to "crater" the stock market.
W2R didn't say the media was doing something to crater the stock market. She said "the state of the world, and how the news media seems to think that it will crater the stock market." I agree with her. I frequently hear/read the media expressing the opinion that relations with China, internal political turmoil in the USA, COVID-19, aggressive special interest groups, etc., all have the potential to abruptly alter the investment markets.
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Old 07-26-2020, 10:04 AM   #37
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The "W" word, uttered on July 26, 2020? Oh, my!
It was an image so it doesn't count.
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Old 07-26-2020, 10:54 AM   #38
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I'm with pb4uski above. I also feel just fine, except for a few aches and pains now and then.
+1

I only sold within IRA and ROTH accounts (due to tax reasons), and only those things that were pretty close to the Feb highs , off by about 10%->12%.

Yes, a little FOMO regret as those same things are higher than Feb, and if I had sold them now I'd have an extra 30->40 K (big approximate).

We are still in the market with taxable accounts and 401K, but are now more conservative from our 85%->90% stock allocation. It was a great run for the last 10 yrs, so now it's ok to be more conservative.

I actually feel calmer when I hear the market drop some %, I don't even look.
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Old 07-26-2020, 10:54 AM   #39
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For the most part, I held and it feels good.

I trimmed a little from our equity holdings since the market recovered; we are now at 45/55. My one regret is that I didn't convert more to our Roth IRAs. I made 2 conversions in March each for 10% of our 2020 planned conversions. The market came back so fast and has stayed up that I wish I would have been more aggressive. Then again, the year's not over.
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Old 07-26-2020, 12:42 PM   #40
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I'm good; I did some minor tax loss harvesting and cleaned out a couple of tax-inefficient holdings around the bottom. I'm about at target allocation now. Unless the bottom falls out again, nothing to do now but sit back.
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