Staying the Course?

[Midpack]

As simple as possible...

 

[Notmuchlonger]

No I purchased some more funds..

oop poll just showed up

 

[al_bundy]

cashed out early june, was thinking about buying in today but the market didn't stay up

 

[Ronstar]

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

 

[audreyh1]

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.

Audrey

 

[CuppaJoe]

... 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.

 

[FIREd]

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.

 

[Marquette]

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.

 

[W2R]

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.

 

[theHundt]

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.

 

[CyclingInvestor]

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.

 

[laurence]

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?"

 

[Rambler]

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...

R

 

[al_bundy]

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

 

[StJohnsWood]

Buying like crazy now so in 15-20 years I can say boy wasn't 2008 a great time to buy

 

[Dawg52]

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?

 

[73ss454]

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.

 

[Eagle43]

Like the guy said who fell out of a 30 story building: "So far, so good."

No change. Staying the course.

 

[ziggy29]

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.

 

[Moemg]

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.

 

[retire@40]

I'm buying equities and REITs. I haven't sold anything since the Clinton years when I sold some long-term bonds after interest rates dropped and I realized a large capital gain on them.

I do all my rebalancing by purchasing with new money.

Sure, I'm taking a beating right now in the market, but I'm sure it's mostly a give-back of unrealized gains than a loss of principal. I'm still adding more every month to my net worth than is being taken away. I can go back to working full-time and overtime to add even more..........nah.

 

[Running_Man]

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?

My concern on DVY is that by the time the financials hit bottom and have driven DVY down, they will be replaced in the index for having cut their dividends. It is less of an index and more of a mechanical trading system from what I have read on it's stock selection. I spent a little time looking into the timing of when a stock is changed but I don't think they are actually eliminated from the Dividend Achievers until they actually cut their dividend by which time it has long since been priced in.

 

[DangerMouse]

We are 45% cash and have been so for years so it's not been quite so terrifying to see the markets plunge. I must admit we are sleeping better at night to know that nearly half of our portfolio is earning 8%.

New money in the market this year has been funded mainly thru 401k contributions. I maxed out before I quit my job, DH is almost done for the year. Other than that we probably invest another $3k a month in mutual funds and individual stocks thru DRIP plans. No plan to change that at this time. However, we did perform a review of our individual stocks recently at cut loose a few.

 

[RunningBum]

Staying the course, but it's not easy. As the bad news and gloomy outlook in the media continue, the downward trend gains momentum, but I'm also worried about being among the last to sell, and not getting back in quickly enough, so I'll grit my teeth and hang on.

 

[aida2003]

As much as it can be painful we continue DCA'ing in 401k's and RothIRA's into mostly equities. We also continue taxable DCA'ing. However we sold two 'dog' DRIP plans after reading that it's GOOD to do tax-loss harvesting. In return I hope BUD deal will be closed by YE, so the 'dogs' would offset gains on BUD.
I'm considering to re-open the same 'dog' DRIP plans and invest the left over money after the sale and see how we'll do then. This is part of our 'fun money' so it won't hurt very much if we lose (and learn that we're bad stock-pickers), but maybe we'll win .