Poll - Retired, Should I rebalance with this market?

[PatrickA5]

The idea behind rebalancing is to buy low, sell high. Stuff that has gone down can be bought cheaply, and vice versa.

This usually works well because stocks and bonds tend to move in opposite directions. So you could sell expensive stocks to buy cheap bonds. But this year, it's not working quite as well. Stocks and bonds are BOTH down. Right now SPY is down about 23%, and TLT is down 30%.

If they were both down the same amount, there would be nothing to rebalance. A 7% difference might make it worth the effort, but IMO it's not critical.

My cash bucket % seems to be moving up. Mainly because my stocks/bonds pecentages have been moving down. Not a good thing!

I suppose I should be rebalancing by spending cash to buy stocks/bonds. Can't seem to make myself do that.

 

[Lsbcal]

If I added money to stocks it would be when the SP500 moved to some technical level like above its 12 month moving average. Worked OK for me in 2009 when I rebalanced in June. You will not catch the bottom with this method and no guarantees of success either.

I actually reset down to a 60/40 ratio when the SP500 moved up to "just" down -10% for the year. Glad I did and should have gotten more aggressive at selling as is obvious now.