This is why I am glad I am mostly in cash...

[Karloff]

As most of you, these last few days have obliterated my portfolio. I am down roughly $40K, which for me is significant. I had only started investing about 6 years ago, with a long term portfolio goal of monthly dividend income.

But even then, I remained mostly in cash. Due to fear, ignorance, lack of full comprehension of the market, risk-aversion... Pick one or all of the above.

In the past, I always told myself "The market is at an all-time high... I can't wait for another 2008 so that I can go all-in!". And this was another reason why I accumulated a lot of cash.

Well, we just went through something similar (although I was not invested in 2008 and I have no real first-hand experience to make such comparison) and guess what? I am in full panic mode.

But I have not sold anything... yet.

I am in my early 40's, with about $500K in cash (earning nothing, I know...) and $100K in the market... which is now more like $60K.

Unfortunately, most of my holdings were high dividend plays that have now been severely beaten. But my largest holding is T.

As of this writing, I am almost paralyzed. I could drop 50K in the brokerage account today and buy things like Amazon, Netflix, Apple, etc... but my anxiety and fear are paralyzing me. I do not believe there has been a similar situation in the past that we can use as reference. Way too many variables are combining in a deeply negative way.

For those who went through 2008, please share your stories of fear, anxiety and panic. Did you sell? Did you stay in? Did you do anything at all? What would you recommend somebody in my shoes do at this point?

 

[Which Roger]

I stayed the course in 2008-2009. Adjust your asset allocation so you can sleep at night, then stop fretting.

 

[Dawg52]

I didn't load up the truck but I held my nose and rebalanced(more than once) during that period. Wasn't easy tho.....

 

[Montecfo]

Did not sell in 2008. Have not sold anything here. Was buying yesterday.

Your money is made at these buy opportunities in my opinion. It is hard to buy but you have to hold your nose and force yourself, in my view.

Stocks I bought in early 2009 made a tremendous amount of money. But very hard to pull the trigger at the time.

Stay Fully Invested.

 

[pb4uski]

In 2008 I was a couple years away from retiring and was planning to retire in 2010 when I was 55. I was like a deer in headlights... paralyzed since it was the worst market conditions of my lifetime... but I stayed the course... I didn't sell anything and I kept my retirement account contributions the same. I ended up retiring at the end of 2011 rather than at the end of 2010 but due to other factors since by 2010 the markets had recovered.

In retrospect, I wish I had more courage in my convictions to rebalance and sell bonds and buy stocks back then... I would be much richer today if I had.

FWIW, I think you are way too conservative in some respects (AA) and way too aggressive in other respects (individual stocks rather than index funds).

It sounds like your individual stocks have been pounded worse than the overall market (40% vs ~22% for VTSAX) since you have been on the wrong side of diversification risk by holding individual stocks.

From what you wrote, I would sell all the individual stocks and immediately reinvest the proceeds in a broad based stock fund like VTSAX or similiar fund or ETF. Then I would decide on an overall AA target... probably 100/0 or 90/10 given you age.. and then value average your cash into stocks over the nex 12 months.

So using your numbers, your portfolio today is $560k... $500k of cash and $60k of stock... that is 11/89. Let's say that your target ends up being 90/10... that would mean that ultimately you want $504k in stocks or an additional $444k. I would probably put $100k in over the next week or so and then the remainder ratably over the next 11 months. Or something along those lines. Or one could make an argument to go all in now and ride the bear.

In any event, at some point in the future... year end 2020 or a year from now... you want to be at your target AA.

 

[latexman]

In retrospect, I wish I had more courage in my convictions to rebalance and sell bonds and buy stocks back then... I would be much richer today if I had.

After yesterday, I was 6% off my target AA of 60/40. I just got done ordering the exchanges to rebalance. Most will execute today, two exchanges will take two business days.

 

[ER2B]

I did some nibbling yesterday but I just have this gut feeling that this carnage is far from over. No guts no glory I guess. Who am I to know.

 

[calmloki]

I tried to be smart in later 2008 and buy a great dividend paying stock that was on sale big time: BofA had been at $53 and was now only $30. I bought. and it dropped. I bought more at $26 or so, as the sale was getting even better. and it dropped. Think I bought one last time at $16 because surely it couldn't keep falling and you are supposed to buy low. And it kept falling. Think I bailed out around $4-5 with a big loss I got to write off against income for years at $3000/year. And BofA climbed back up, getting over $34 recently.
Stung, and stayed out of the market through a number of very profitable years. Now I accept that the masses will do what they do and I'm a bad judge of what that will be. Also; everyone, en masse, has way more money than me and it's dumb to try and bet against what they do. So now I buy VTI and don't sell. Yesterday VTI was crushed and it was still almost 30% higher than when we bought four years ago.
We aren't living on the stock market money - selling stock for groceries now would hurt bad - and over time the human race has done better and better and stocks have gone up. Not going to repeat my dumb mistake and bet against that human progress. That said, we also have a bunch in CDs and savings. And rental income. Multi-legged stool.

 

[copyright1997reloaded]

As most of you, these last few days have obliterated my portfolio. I am down roughly $40K, which for me is significant. I had only started investing about 6 years ago, with a long term portfolio goal of monthly dividend income.

But even then, I remained mostly in cash. Due to fear, ignorance, lack of full comprehension of the market, risk-aversion... Pick one or all of the above.

In the past, I always told myself "The market is at an all-time high... I can't wait for another 2008 so that I can go all-in!". And this was another reason why I accumulated a lot of cash.

Well, we just went through something similar (although I was not invested in 2008 and I have no real first-hand experience to make such comparison) and guess what? I am in full panic mode.

But I have not sold anything... yet.

I am in my early 40's, with about $500K in cash (earning nothing, I know...) and $100K in the market... which is now more like $60K.

Unfortunately, most of my holdings were high dividend plays that have now been severely beaten. But my largest holding is T.

As of this writing, I am almost paralyzed. I could drop 50K in the brokerage account today and buy things like Amazon, Netflix, Apple, etc... but my anxiety and fear are paralyzing me. I do not believe there has been a similar situation in the past that we can use as reference. Way too many variables are combining in a deeply negative way.

For those who went through 2008, please share your stories of fear, anxiety and panic. Did you sell? Did you stay in? Did you do anything at all? What would you recommend somebody in my shoes do at this point?

It isn't a binary decision. Right now, you are 89% cash, 11% equities. So why don't you start to buy a little, then wait, buy a little, then wait....

If you are wrong and the market continues to fall, you still have most of your cash.

But your current plan, while perhaps safe from falling equity prices...is not safe. Why do I say that?

1) If the market continues to fall at the same rate as has done for the last couple of weeks, in a month *EVERYONE* and *EVERY* financial institution will be wiped out. Your cash will be meaningless because the country will be in shambles.

2) Given that 1) is something that almost everyone would like to prevent, government will do everything they can to prevent it. So what would they do? They would close the banks, nationalize whole swaths of industries, and they would "print" money like there was no tomorrow. There is nothing stopping them from pretty much instantly giving everyone "money". So what would the result of this be? Well, I would say massive inflation....and thus your $500K in cash is meaningless.

Hope I made you feel better!

OK, back to my first statement - it isn't a binary decision. Have a plan to slowly work your way in. If the market goes down, you still have most of your cash reserve. If it goes up, well at least you have a bit more invested.

 

[OldShooter]

... For those who went through 2008, please share your stories of fear, anxiety and panic. Did you sell? Did you stay in? Did you do anything at all?...

Been doing this since before the 1987 crash. Have never sold. Didn't do much buying because we've been at 100% equities pretty much the whole time. Each time something like this happens, it's easier for us to ignore it than it was the last time.

For this one, what DW and I do is to follow the gyrations and laugh. We were at 75/25, age 72, when this current excitement started. Our fixed income "bucket" has enough to support our needs for five years or more, so we have plenty of time for the equity side to recover.

... What would you recommend somebody in my shoes do at this point?

This is a great opportunity for you to buy equities up to what your AA calls for. Then stop looking at the market. Stop reading market stories. Stop watching ignorant talking heads. Check back in a couple of years to see how the ride ended and (almost certainly) to add up your profits.

An alternative would be to buy a target date fund. Remember, though that the date does not have to match your planned retirement date. There are no target date police who will check this. Buy a later target date if you want to be aggressive (which would be my call). Buy an earlier target date if you want to be more conservative. I am not keen on these for myself but they are a valuable and angst-free tool for novice investors.

 

[Freedom56]

In the summer of 2007 I shifted my portfolio to 100% treasuries and stable value funds in my 401K at the advice of a friend from my university days who worked for Credit Suisse wealth management. He notified me that they were moving their high net worth clients out of equities and corporate bonds. He wouldn't tell me the details of what was going on. I informed a lot of my colleagues and some followed my lead and also moved int stable value funds and treasuries. People joked about my paranoid move, as the market continue to rise through November 2007. Then it started to unwind. Yes the market came back, but consider that mine and other's starting point from 2009 was much higher than those who suffered major losses.

After Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, and Schwab updated my bond prices and including trades I made yesterday, I am now down 0.6% YTD including coupon payments. I flipped some preferred shares that I bought yesterday for a quick gain. My portfolio is now 17% money market and 83% corporate bonds and CDs. With rates quickly going to near zero and the yield curve almost normalized, I am buying more fixed income securities during this panic fire sale as I expect the money market yields to drop very soon to about 0.40%

I prefer to actively manage a portfolio and time my purchases and sales. There are some serious structural problems in the equity markets. On one end you have some trillion dollar market cap companies holding up the S&P 500 and at the other end you have some energy, retail, and industrial companies that have been nearly wiped out. Depending on the response to the pandemic and the effectiveness of the containment, the market will not go anywhere until there is clear evidence that this is behind us. The market has yet to price in the extent of damage to business and productivity as we move through this. It will no doubt accelerate the retail apocalypse that has been progressing for several years.

 

[Whisper66]

As of this writing, I am almost paralyzed..... I could ... but my anxiety and fear are paralyzing me. I do not believe there has been a similar situation in the past.......

Maybe investing is just not worth it for you. But recognize people usually say "it's different this time" whenever the bear comes around. And honestly, each bear is different Mr Market eventually rebounds.

For those who went through 2008, please share your stories of fear, anxiety and panic. Did you sell? Did you stay in? Did you do anything at all? What would you recommend somebody in my shoes do at this point?

In 2008, I was still working and had regular income. Was 90+% invested in equities. Had no concerns at all. Just kept investing any extra money when it was available. Never changed until ~2014 when I got near retirement. Then started lowering my asset allocation to 70/30.


I am now in retirement so no paycheck anymore. I was 60% equities before the drop and net worth down maybe 15%? due to the drop. Doesn't bother me at all. In fact, I've been trying to get motivated to sit down and buy some in this bear market. But so much other fun stuff to do.....

 

[OldShooter]

In the summer of 2007 I shifted my portfolio ...

@Karloff, there are thousands, probably tens of thousands of well-written and sincere stories like this one. Among them, you can find any prediction that you like. Some of the predictions will be right, but we don't know in advance which ones.

Another thing to remember is that while @Freedom56 apparently guessed right and made some money, the people who guess wrong are not boasting about it in public postings. So you get a very skewed sample of history.

Nate Silver's "the signal and the noise" has a very good chapter on economic forecasting. Mandatory for investors, IMO.

Nassim Taleb, in "Fooled By Randomness" also provides some very good insights for investors. In one of his books, too (I don't remember which one) he talks about "silent evidence," referring to the problem that only the winners are heard from. The story he uses to illustrate is this one from Cicero:

"Diagoras, a nonbeliever in the gods, was shown painted tablets bearing the portraits of some worshippers who prayed, then survived a subsequent shipwreck. The implication was that praying protects you from drowning.

Diagoras asked, “Where are the pictures of those who prayed, then drowned?”
​

 

[ERD50]

....

I am in my early 40's, with about $500K in cash (earning nothing, I know...) and $100K in the market... which is now more like $60K.

Unfortunately, most of my holdings were high dividend plays that have now been severely beaten. But my largest holding is T. ....

I could drop 50K in the brokerage account today and buy things like Amazon, Netflix, Apple, etc... but my anxiety and fear are paralyzing me. ...

For those who went through 2008, please share your stories of fear, anxiety and panic. Did you sell? Did you stay in? Did you do anything at all? What would you recommend somebody in my shoes do at this point?

Relax. To answer your last question, like many others, maintained my AA, rebalanced once. Did not sell, bought.

Number One: Forget individual stocks, use a broad index like VTI. Volatility upsets you, and individual stocks will be more volatile than the total market.

Number Two: Perspective! How long have you been investing? It isn't helpful to get excited about drops from peaks, because if you were investing all along (as we would all recommend), you would have been investing at much lower prices along the way, and you would probably still be ahead. IOW, even after this drop, an equity position would be higher than cash if it was built over more than just a few years.

If you can't accept that volatility is part of the price you pay for growth, then you will likely have to accept that you will need to work an extra 20 years or so to build up a large enough portfolio to sustain you. That's just the way it is, you can't escape it.

So get back to a an AA appropriate for someone in their 40's, or pay the price in other ways.

-ERD50

 

[ERD50]

In the summer of 2007 I shifted my portfolio to 100% treasuries and stable value funds in my 401K at the advice of a friend from my university days who worked for Credit Suisse wealth management. He notified me that they were moving their high net worth clients out of equities and corporate bonds. He wouldn't tell me the details of what was going on. I informed a lot of my colleagues and some followed my lead and also moved int stable value funds and treasuries. People joked about my paranoid move, as the market continue to rise through November 2007. Then it started to unwind. Yes the market came back, but consider that mine and other's starting point from 2009 was much higher than those who suffered major losses.

After Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, and Schwab updated my bond prices and including trades I made yesterday, I am now down 0.6% YTD including coupon payments. I flipped some preferred shares that I bought yesterday for a quick gain. My portfolio is now 17% money market and 83% corporate bonds and CDs. With rates quickly going to near zero and the yield curve almost normalized, I am buying more fixed income securities during this panic fire sale as I expect the money market yields to drop very soon to about 0.40%

I prefer to actively manage a portfolio and time my purchases and sales. There are some serious structural problems in the equity markets. On one end you have some trillion dollar market cap companies holding up the S&P 500 and at the other end you have some energy, retail, and industrial companies that have been nearly wiped out. Depending on the response to the pandemic and the effectiveness of the containment, the market will not go anywhere until there is clear evidence that this is behind us. The market has yet to price in the extent of damage to business and productivity as we move through this. It will no doubt accelerate the retail apocalypse that has been progressing for several years.

@Karloff, there are thousands, probably tens of thousands of well-written and sincere stories like this one. Among them, you can find any prediction that you like. Some of the predictions will be right, but we don't know in advance which ones. ...

+1

Freedom56, it sounds like you've been out of the market the entire time since the summer of 2007? If so, you are far behind, even after this latest dip.

-ERD50

 

[ckelly78z]

If fear keeps you from making a strong financial move, at the best possible time, with cash that you have on hand (waiting for just this opportunity), you should forfeit it all to a FA, and pay his fees, to be able to sleep at night. This volatile market is not for the week handed, or indecisive.

You do understand that the $500K cash that you kept out of the market for the last 6 years could have EASILY, doubled, but more likely tripled in that time while invested in sound/safe/low risk stocks ?

 

[Freedom56]

@Karloff, there are thousands, probably tens of thousands of well-written and sincere stories like this one. Among them, you can find any prediction that you like. Some of the predictions will be right, but we don't know in advance which ones.

Another thing to remember is that while @Freedom56 apparently guessed right and made some money, the people who guess wrong are not boasting about it in public postings. So you get a very skewed sample of history.

Nate Silver's "the signal and the noise" has a very good chapter on economic forecasting. Mandatory for investors, IMO.

Nassim Taleb, in "Fooled By Randomness" also provides some very good insights for investors. In one of his books, too (I don't remember which one) he talks about "silent evidence," referring to the problem that only the winners are heard from. The story he uses to illustrate is this one from Cicero:

"Diagoras, a nonbeliever in the gods, was shown painted tablets bearing the portraits of some worshippers who prayed, then survived a subsequent shipwreck. The implication was that praying protects you from drowning.

Diagoras asked, “Where are the pictures of those who prayed, then drowned?”
​

I didn't do any guessing. I was tipped off by an financial industry insider who knew that there was a problem coming after Bear Stearns was trying to bail out a few of their funds. They looked at the composition of many collateral debt obligations and mortgage backed securities and saw what was coming and got their wealthy clients out while telling the average retail investor to stay invested.

This time however, I'm using my own Doctor at UCLA and my brother (also a Doctor) to guide me on what is really going on with this virus. Both work at major hospitals in large cities. Be assured that many on Wall Street are contacting hospitals around the country to determine what is really going on.

 

[Freedom56]

+1

Freedom56, it sounds like you've been out of the market the entire time since the summer of 2007? If so, you are far behind, even after this latest dip.

-ERD50

I didn't say that. when treasury yields started to tank, I shifted to corporate bonds that were still selling at distressed prices. I also bought preferred CEFs that were trading well below their underlying asset values. We also bought a condo in South Florida that was selling at 22 cents on the dollar and has more than tripled in value since our purchase. I don't buy and hold equities or passive funds of any kind. I have been actively buying short term corporate notes since yesterday morning as funds were liquidating. You have to ask yourself what kind of moron sells an investment grade 2 year note with a YTM of 5.5% of a very profitable technology company when treasury yields are so low. Somebody need to fix the trading software that these passive bond funds use to raise cash.

 

[OldShooter]

I didn't do any guessing. ...

Sorry. I'll rephrase: "@Freedom56's source apparently guessed right ... "

@Karloff, here is a way to think about it: If @Freedom56's source was actually able to make reliable predictions of the market, why was he/she stuffing themselves into a suit and commuting to work for Credit Suisse in a building where the windows didn't even open? If there are actually people who can make reliable market predictions, they are certainly not working for a living. Probably they are sitting on private tropical islands sipping from glasses garnished with orchids and making a few trades once in a while when the checkbook gets low. Personally I don't think there are any such people, but if there are you can be sure that we will never see them or be able to take advantage of their skills.

 

[ziggy29]

Thing is, if I went to all cash in late 2007 or early 2008 and stayed there, I'd be behind where I am now, even after the 2008-09 devastation and the recent carnage.

So I agree there is a "sleep at night" factor to account for, and we each value that differently. But this is hardly a financial argument for staying in cash long term.

 

[Retire2013]

Did not sell anything in 2008. Bought more mutual fund shares during 2008-2009.

 

[Freedom56]

If @Freedom56's source was actually able to make reliable predictions of the market, why was he/she stuffing themselves into a suit and commuting to work for Credit Suisse in a building where the windows didn't even open? If there are actually people who can make reliable market predictions, they are certainly not working for a living. Probably they are sitting on private tropical islands sipping from glasses garnished with orchids and making a few trades once in a while when the checkbook gets low. Personally I don't think there are any such people, but if there are you can be sure that we will never see them or be able to take advantage of their skills.

Short answer, he did it for the money. Salaries of wealth managers in large firms are pretty phenomenal when you include the bonus. He didn't predict anything, Credit Suisse had some good fixed income research analysts who saw what was coming and got their wealthy clients out while telling their retail investors to buy. He also retired a few years before I did and lives in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. It's not a tropical island but not a bad place to live. The story about Credit Suisse getting their wealthy clients before the 2008 bear market out was written in the press.