How do you feel now? (4 Months later)

[RunningBum]

I'm fine. I went from 60% equity to 55% by selling off some losers and only partly buying back other stock funds. The recovery has me back to 57.5% stocks. If it keeps running, I'll be back at 60/40. It we take a big drop, I'll buy more stock to get it back to 60/40. For now being 2.5% off my AA does not bother me.

[iloveyoga]

I feel great. I already had a fairly conservative allocation, so made no changes. But I did realize that I really don't need to worry as we can easily live on our incoming pensions and SS. And no travel has certainly been a money saver.

[aja8888]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunset +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.

I only sold in my IRA so no tax consequences. Taxable is mostly CDs and a municipal bond fund.

I did buy into a bond fund (ISTB) in the IRA which is mostly treasury paper. I am going to be 77 soon and won the game so no sense gambling as I can't make it back if the equity market crashes for a decade or so. What's in equities now (15%) is a lump of SCHB and 7 preferred stocks. I'm sitting on a lot of cash and that's OK.

[jollystomper]

The only action I took was to do some tax loss harvesting. I got lucky as I did it near the March bottom and reinvested what I sold in a different area. The gain of the reinvestment has far outgrown the loss I took.

As I have mentioned before, I had always assessed, during "good" market times, what my portfolio values would be at 50% of the equity prices, and set my AA to be comfortable with that. The drop helped me confirm that I would still sleep at night.

During the time the biggest financial move I have made was paying off our mortgage. I have no idea how the markets will go in the "short" . But my own personal feeling is having no debt is a good thing, no matter what happens in the short run.

[OldShooter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TechLead ... How do you feel now about your decision? ...

I won't know for five or ten years. Then I'll be able to look back and see how things turned out.

My new favorite Buffett quotation: "Lethargy bordering on sloth should remain the cornerstone of an investment style."

[brewer12345]

I sold/shorted in January and February, still largely in cash and short term bonds. Fine and dandy. Wish I had jumped on gold, otherwise just waiting for the inevitable fallout.

[MRG]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski Except, if memory serves me correctly, there has been pretty high historical correlation between W2R posting and market crashes.... that is my signal.

More powerful than a pandemic.

[harllee]

I sold all my equities in May and I am sleeping well and feeling good about my decision. I may or may not get back into some equities some day (I am age 69 so I may decide not to). Personally I think we are in for major economic problems in the United States, we ain't seen nothing yet.

[calmloki]

Gee - thanks a bunch W2R. I'm busily trying to convince my gal to let me ease out of rentals and sell the hard assets that have done so well during all the various crashes. She is enquiring just what we are to put the property sale proceeds into that will make a fraction of what the rentals make. And now - now, as we are reviewing an apartment sale offer - NOW you pick to utter the big W~~~ word?

Duck and cover folks - Monday is coming and the voodoo queen augurs ill for the market!

[brett]

Stayed the course with no changes. Did the same on the last downturn and the one before.

I believe that a downturn is the time to buy, not the time to sell.

Not buying this time around, but not selling either. I know a few people who elongated their retirement plans by panic selling during 2008/9 lows, moving in to to fixed, and not enjoying the subsequent gains.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by calmloki Duck and cover folks - Monday is coming and the voodoo queen augurs ill for the market!

Stand down. Check who posted the "W" word...it wasn't W2R.

[calmloki]

But but but - post #27?

wonder if Walmart still needs greeters?

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by calmloki But but but - post #27? wonder if Walmart still needs greeters?

Hey, I'm doing my best here. Don't go fact checking me and screwing things up!

[kevdude]

Everything we had in equities stayed in equities. We had a fair amount still sitting in cash from a property sale last November, so I bought more equities at the end of February, the last week of March, and mid April. In June we decided to remodel our kitchen and baths so I sold out of Wellington (which I don’t really consider equities since it is a mix of stocks and bonds), which will pay for all of that, buy DW a new car later this year, and fund two years of tuition at Northeastern University for our son (we already had two years in a 529).

So, the net effect of all that is we have approximately the same amount of cash/liquid investments that we had as of the market highs in February. Well, except for that little $140k tax bill we just paid.

[Dash man]

We’re doing fine. We did some Roth conversions when this all started, followed by selling some equities in our taxable account to build up our cash a bit, but not too drastic a move. Some was tax loss harvesting and some was to buy into some stocks I thought would do better with pandemic. It turned out well for us. We also sold some to buy a townhome for my son and his family when they moved to be near us. Overall we’re very pleased with our situation and have enough in cash to last 5+ years.

[RVplusDog]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rianne 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.

For funds that track an index, no, fund managers do not choose the stocks. An example is VTI - total stock market. The Vanguard computer systems keeps the relative values of its holdings in line with the pertinent index. More info here: https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/profile/VTI

Similar strategies are followed for other funds and ETFs that are based in stock indices (VOO = S&P 500, for example). It’s my understanding that means that even if known stressors are approaching, the fund holds the stock as long as the index does.

This is one of the reasons that I divested about 75% of my equities from index ETFs in March, before the worst of the drops. Since then, I’ve built my own portfolio up, buying on dips, for stocks I like. It’s a lot of work. Thank goodness for Vanguard’s free trades, or I couldn’t do this. We are almost back up to our all-time high. I have just over 50% in cash, with limit orders set to execute on any upcoming hard dips. I’m really happy to have such a high percentage of cash at the moment, and I will welcome the addition of high quality stocks to my portfolio on any upcoming dips.

[street]

Wasn't March the lowest drop for YTD? Why would anyone sell in March with having the largest drop so far this year??

I didn't do a thing this time just like 3 bad times I went through in the last 40 years being in the market.

[MRG]

Fine. Moved 100k in equities to a 2% 3yr fixed annuity and then had a couple of cds mature. I splurged with some and have some in reserve. According to my attorney I'm going to get some settlement money this year, that's going to pay taxes. I am cautiously building a new niche equity with some play money.

Longer term I am fearful of pandemics. My great grandparents died off in the 1890s during a 5 year pandemic. What do I know?

[TechLead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by street Wasn't March the lowest drop for YTD? Why would anyone sell in March with having the largest drop so far this year?? I didn't do a thing this time just like 3 bad times I went through in the last 40 years being in the market.

I suspect people who sold in March expect even larger decline to come. Maybe it was panic selling. From past posts there is fair number of them.

Maybe they are right, maybe not.

[CardsFan]

It's the end of world as we know it, and I feel fine

No changes, beside the usual sells to raise cash for the next few years.

Realistically, our stocks are for long term use (legacy). Our bonds/FI/cash are likely more than we need. Slowly reducing equities by taking int/div and distributions as cash, and putting those in to Cd's/bonds.