investing for Income is becoming more important than investing for capital gains

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chuckanut I must admit that when the market was pushing -20% last year, I did nibble a bit by taking a small amount of cash and using it to hopefully enhance my future return. That's about as close to timing the market as I get.

rebalance more frequently. I refer to it as opportunistic rebalancing rather than market timing.... in fact, I just put in a couple opportunistic rebalancing trades a few minutes ago.

[NW-Bound]

Quote:

Originally Posted by pb4uski rebalance more frequently. I refer to it as opportunistic rebalancing rather than market timing.... in fact, I just put in a couple opportunistic rebalancing trades a few minutes ago.

On the surface, market timing is anticipating what the market will do. Rebalancing is reacting to what already happens. And I have been guilty of both.

But really, rebalancing is also market timing. You are expecting that the market or a sector or the relative valuation of stocks with respect to bonds will revert to the long-term mean.

And so, rebalancing is still a prediction of the future, although that is based in the past and not a pure speculation about something that has no precedent such as bitcoins.

[pb4uski]

I guess that I could describe my opportunistic rebalancing as trying to take advantage of minor market gyrations... I've done it both on the upside (more frequent rebalancing when I "feel" that the market is ahead of itself or has gone up too quickly) and on the downside (like when the market to a good dip after the Brexit vote).

[NW-Bound]

And I have done the above more often than most, along with LOL.

And the results have been mixed. But I have fun doing this.

[pb4uski]

It's easier for me because I don't try to track the results of my opportunistic rebalancing decisions.

[NW-Bound]

I do not track individual trades, because I make many of them through the years. Win some, lose some.

But each year, I compare my performance to buy/hold the S&P using roughly the same stock AA of 70-75%. Some years I did well, some years I did not. It was more than trading, but also the effect of picking individual stocks.

For longer periods, I would need to work out the effects of money flow in/out, and I did not keep good records of that prior to retiring.

Starting from when I had no earned income, I had to track everything better to avoid living under a bridge in old age. I have not sit down to do a detailed analysis with that data.

Some day, when I feel like it, I will do the above.

[OldShooter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NW-Bound ... But each year, I compare my performance to buy/hold the S&P using roughly the same stock AA of 70-75%. Some years I did well, some years I did not. ...

This could be misleading unless you are buying exclusively US large cap companies. I use the Russell 3000 or the ACWI as benchmarks because they capture everything.