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View Poll Results: Are you staying the course so far (and in the foreseeable future)/
I am maintaining or increasing my equity holdings 209 90.48%
I am slowly/rapidly decreasing my equity holdings moving to cash or other safer holdings 22 9.52%
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Staying the Course?
Old 07-14-2008, 06:40 PM   #1
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Staying the Course?

As simple as possible...
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Old 07-14-2008, 06:42 PM   #2
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No I purchased some more funds..

oop poll just showed up
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Old 07-14-2008, 06:49 PM   #3
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cashed out early june, was thinking about buying in today but the market didn't stay up
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Old 07-14-2008, 08:39 PM   #4
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For the last few years i didnt invest in equities (other than my 401k) because I thought the market was overpriced. Now I'm starting to invest periodically
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Old 07-14-2008, 08:44 PM   #5
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I was crazy enough to rebalance last friday (which meant selling bonds and buying equities). I'm sure I'm too early, but my life is just too busy to keep checking my portfolio balance and my "rebalance trigger" fired good. My total portfolio is down >13.5% from it's peak last October.

If the market goes down a lot more, I guess I'll be rebalancing again, but if it doesn't I won't be taking any action and now I can go do other things and not pay much attention until (unless) the market drops twice what it has so far.

FWIW, one of the fields in my rebalance spreadsheet is how many years expenses are covered by my cash+bonds allocation. Last Oct it was 16 years. Now it's dropped down to 14.3 years. I guess if it drops below 10 years I might be tempted to sit tight and stop rebalancing. We'll see how low that number gets during this bear market.

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Old 07-14-2008, 08:51 PM   #6
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Quote:
Originally Posted by al_bundy View Post
... was thinking about buying in today but the market didn't stay up
Way to go, Bundy; if the deal gets better, cancel the plan.

As for me, didn't vote because it would distort the facts.
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Old 07-14-2008, 08:53 PM   #7
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I always maintain a fairly conservative asset allocation (65%-70% stocks) and so far I have been able to comfortably handle that level of risk without surrendering to panic. I am buying pretty much only stocks right now (mostly small caps and emerging markets lately) in order to bring my AA back to about 70% stocks. I am also buying some REITs. The only time I bought bonds this year was during the rebound in April-May.
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Old 07-14-2008, 09:33 PM   #8
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We'll put $4k into the market this month, just like every month. and then another chunk into our cash reserves, just like every month. I did make our AA more aggressive a while ago.
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Old 07-14-2008, 09:55 PM   #9
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I made a plan and I'm sticking to it pretty well. I have been slowly DCA'ing into the equity portion of that plan from my windfall money, and I have continued doing that at the planned rate.

So far, so good. Since much of my money has been in cash/MM/bonds while I slowly move into equities, I have only lost around 2% and I have made that up (plus added extra) from my paycheck.

Also, gotta say it... "Pssst!! Wellesley" is 30% of my nestegg.
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Old 07-14-2008, 09:57 PM   #10
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I'm in the same boat as Marquette, although my engine is a bit smaller :-). I put the same amount into cash reserves and investments every month... I'm almost completely in small caps for my roth and taxable account and it's been pretty brutal, but I'm only 31 and that's the level of risk that I've chosen. My 401k has held up much better but it's still not pretty.

By brutal I mean that I did something silly the other day and looked at how much my average stock was off it's 52-week high... and the AVERAGE % off was around 50 I didn't buy any of these at the 52 week high and am still ahead on some, but that was painful to see. I've only been buying individual equities for about 4 years, and it's been a wild ride thus far.
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Old 07-14-2008, 10:55 PM   #11
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Almost 50, retired almost 2 years, still 100% individual stocks
(since 1993), so I guess I am "staying the course".

Down 7.6% for year, but earnings and dividends keep going up, so no worries.
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Old 07-14-2008, 11:00 PM   #12
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Moved another 6k+ into equities this month, staying the course. I'm 33 so I'm looking forward to "Gee grandpa, you bought into the S&P when it was trading at 10% of it's current number?"
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Old 07-15-2008, 06:00 AM   #13
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Dumped a bunch of cash into stocks yesterday, ordered before market opened, lost a bundle, but will keep dca'ing as it goes down. I think the saying goes, "what goes down, must come up" by Newton Isaac, or was that the other way around....this dyslexia can get you into trouble when buying stocks...

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Old 07-15-2008, 06:30 AM   #14
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Quote:
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Way to go, Bundy; if the deal gets better, cancel the plan.

As for me, didn't vote because it would distort the facts.
the futures are down big today and everyone is expecting the world to end, i think we may finish up
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Old 07-15-2008, 06:40 AM   #15
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Buying like crazy now so in 15-20 years I can say boy wasn't 2008 a great time to buy
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Old 07-15-2008, 06:42 AM   #16
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Just heard some dude on Bloomberg say he thinks the market will decline another 20%. Jimmy Rogers says Fed is screwing up big time and markets will pay the price even more. Hmmmm.........wish I had listened to some of these guys earlier.

DVY owners, have you sold or holding? Contains a ton of financials. Hard to see financials doing anything for quite sometime. What are you guys buying that say you are buying?
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Old 07-15-2008, 06:52 AM   #17
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I'm in DVY at $69 and holding, still get a dividend.

I also hold a bunch of financials and holding so far.

Dawg, don't quit on us now.
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Old 07-15-2008, 07:04 AM   #18
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Like the guy said who fell out of a 30 story building: "So far, so good."

No change. Staying the course.
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Old 07-15-2008, 07:32 AM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dawg52 View Post
Just heard some dude on Bloomberg say he thinks the market will decline another 20%. Jimmy Rogers says Fed is screwing up big time and markets will pay the price even more. Hmmmm.........wish I had listened to some of these guys earlier.
The problem with listening to them earlier is that sometimes they are disastrously wrong.

Rogers himself has moved to Singapore and is urging everyone into commodities and such.
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Old 07-15-2008, 07:36 AM   #20
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I'm holding but after this is over and I hope it's soon I'll probably go a little more conservative . I'm at 70% stocks and 20% bonds . I'll take it down a notch to 60/40.
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