Poll: Stay the course or Sell it All. May 2020

[rodi]

It was suggested a poll be posted

 

[aja8888]

I'll go first. At 77 years old with a very ill DW.......we have enough and we have limited our equities to under 20%. Right now, we are at 11% and will add the other 9% when the time is "right". The rest is a mix of municipal bonds, CD's, and cash. No debt either.

No stomach for a big paper loss with maybe 10 years left.

 

[Montecfo]

Stay the course....thousand points of light...
Stay the course

 

[Aerides]

I am voting pie because i want to just changed the sizes of the slices of the pie.

 

[rodi]

I always choose pie.... Preferably pecan.

 

[foxfirev5]

Staying the course. Being prediabetic i avoid pie.

 

[statsman]

Staying the course, albeit misleading.

 

[RunningBum]

Sold a bit of equities. Was right at my AA, now I'm 5% short.

 

[REWahoo]

I voted stay the course, but I did make a slight reduction (4%) to the equity portion of our AA, now at 27/40/33.

 

[braumeister]

No change to my plan of 50/50 AA, but the market magically adjusted it to 38/62. I was very impressed.

No hurry to rebalance but I'll happily do that in time. I have no problem with buying a rising market, and I'm fine with missing a bit of gain during the bottom.

 

[eytonxav]

I reduced equity by 10% back in March (some of that was due to markets decline) and will hold at a 30/70 mix.

 

[Dash man]

I offloaded stocks like RCL, BA, O and a few that were harvested for tax losses. Put some additional cash aside, but also added to AMZN, C, MAIN and CMG.

 

[Mr. Tightwad]

My 457 has been in stable value for about 15 years, now earning 2.3%

My taxable account is 100% stocks.

My Roth is 100% stocks. I haven't changed anything in those.

I did buy 45k of SBUX at 54 and 4k of SPG at 50.75 in March.

Also collecting rent from 3 tenants who have fully paid their rent.

 

[frayne]

Staying the course, I've been to this dance before.

 

[NgineER]

45 and 43. Sold off 60% in February and another 20% in March. Will go back to 80% equities at some point.
Collecting a paycheck plus rent from ten units. No delinquencies yet.

 

[racy]

Staying the course, again... Not a fan of turning paper losses into real money losses.

 

[pb4uski]

Sold out in March as my portfolio drifted down towards what it was when I retired at the beginning of 2012 but after withdrawals for livings expenses, paying cash for a winter condo, replacing a one-car garage with a two-car garage with a bonus loft. While down from end of 2019 I still had substantial capital gains... enough to use all of my 2020 Roth conversion headroom... but negligible taxes this year.

Currently about 47% in CDs that have a weighted average yield of 3.31%, 11% in preferred stocks that yield about 5.75%, 4% in SWAN and the rest in short term federal and muni funds yielding about 1.5%+/-.

Watching and waiting to see how things sort out. I believe this will be worse than 2008/2009 but not as bad as the Great Depression.

Will go back into equities eventually but probably via options rather than direct investment.

 

[Dawg52]

Although I sold I'm actually staying the course.....conservative. But I'm more conservative now.

 

[neihn]

I dialed it down to 25/75 - it was 50/50. Lost 30% paper profit from last year. It is ok.

 

[rk911]

I always choose pie.... Preferably pecan.

peach. staying the course and buying.

 

[GoodWishes]

I voted for stay the course. The stocks we own (mostly tech) are doing well and actually went up so we are at 70% equity now which is higher than what we would like. We might slowly rebalance.

 

[easysurfer]

I'm staying the course. Not going to touch my AA until Jan 2021 which is when I regularly rebalance .

 

[Midpack]

Stay the course, no brainer. I did in ‘87, ‘00 and ‘08-09, why change now? There’s a correlation between stay the course and FI, so this is not a typical audience for such a poll. I’m glad.

 

[COcheesehead]

I planned for this type of event since 2015 knowing I was retiring in 2020. I bought laddered bonds out 7-8 years plus from my retirement date. Dialed back equities over the last few years. Plan to slowly add back into equities over the next few years as bonds mature. Kitces’ rising equity glide path model. Now I just let my plan work. I really don’t have any concerns.

 

[USGrant1962]

Other.

I planned to stay the course, but this market has me dumbfounded. I did a rebalance on the way down when it hit my rebalance band and the didn't work out so well as the market continued down. Seeing that, I kind of froze up and did not rebalance again around the V bottom.

With the bounce, I've decided to do a bit of market timing and dumped my REIT and small/mid-cap positions, which I think are riskier than large cap U.S. for a while. So I'm down around 40/60 AA vs my target of 58/42. I cannot imagine another down-leg not happening as Q2 earnings roll out, but who knows. I hope to re-invest in equities over the next six months. I know, hope and change is not a plan.

None of this affects my FI status as even at the deepest drop I was over 100% in FIRECalc, so it is perhaps all noise.