Going all in, anybody with me?

[Beer-man]

Essentially sat out the 2008 recession as I was young, scared, and had an unstable job for 4yrs.
Now my job is very stable with the ability to work as much OT as I want. Have nearly 500k in funds between IRA’s, 401k’s, and a brokerage. The brokerage was started in early 2018 and is our emergency fund invested in vanguards conservative 50/50 fund.
As of 3 weeks ago started slowly DCA’ing the rest of our savings and current extra cash flow into VTSAX. When the market drops 2 days in a row I put more in. The greater the drop the greater the investment.
We are mid 30’s, 3 young kids, wife is SAHM. I enjoy working but am simply striving for FI by 40ish. Emergency fund will be credit cards and then cash flow or taxable account if needed.
Anyone else going all in? Nervous but want to trust the process and think I’m finally mature enough to tune out the noise and trust people smarter and wiser than me.

 

[cooch96]

I’m in as far as I am willing. I believe my overall AA is about 91% stocks. I’m not going to leverage or do anything exotic.

Good luck!

 

[Car-Guy]

I'm a gambler, but not that much. I have been buying, and I'm holding, more than I usually do in the past few weeks. I'll continue to buy until I hit my self established limits of equity investments. (or use up/invest all of bucket #2)

 

[big-papa]

I will continue to invest per my IPS. No difference between today and any other day.

- Regular deposits monthly from my paycheck, bonuses (when they happen), tax refunds (when they happen), company ESPP and RSU cash outs. Deposits always directed towards bringing my AA back to it's target.
- Sticking with my asset allocation and rebalance when thresholds are crossed - Approx 60/40 with the stock portion being extremely tilted with SCV, MCV, EM, and Int'l Small and bond being Intermediate US treasuries. A separate TIPs/Ibond ladder is set aside to augment SS when I turn 70.
- No market timing. It doesn't mean that there aren't some methods out there that do a decent job of limiting losses. I've backtested most of them. But I find I simply don't have the time/willingness to spend doing it. So I found an AA I'm happy with and can live with.
- TLH when it makes sense. Right now it does for me, so lots of activity in that area.

The only cash I keep around is enough in my checking account to pay bills. Between that, credit cards, and a couple of days to sell some shares if needed, emergencies can be taken care of. Don't believe in the concept of "dry powder" if by that somebody means "uninvested" cash lying around waiting to be invested based on a trigger that forecasts future market movements.

 

[mrfeh]

Set your asset allocation to something you can stomach and stick to it. Don't try to time the market.

 

[perez99]

If the funds are being invested for retirement purposes, then I would not even blink. go "all in" with close to 100% stocks, using a diversified index funds, and then close your eyes to it for the next twenty years...

 

[big-papa]

Essentially sat out the 2008 recession as I was young, scared, and had an unstable job for 4yrs.
Now my job is very stable with the ability to work as much OT as I want. Have nearly 500k in funds between IRA’s, 401k’s, and a brokerage. The brokerage was started in early 2018 and is our emergency fund invested in vanguards conservative 50/50 fund.
As of 3 weeks ago started slowly DCA’ing the rest of our savings and current extra cash flow into VTSAX. When the market drops 2 days in a row I put more in. The greater the drop the greater the investment.
We are mid 30’s, 3 young kids, wife is SAHM. I enjoy working but am simply striving for FI by 40ish. Emergency fund will be credit cards and then cash flow or taxable account if needed.
Anyone else going all in? Nervous but want to trust the process and think I’m finally mature enough to tune out the noise and trust people smarter and wiser than me.

Your method of waiting for 2 drops in a row to put more in reminds me a little bit of what somebody over on the Bogleheads forum does. Go over there and look up "RBD" or "Really Bad Day" from a poster whose handle is "livesoft".

 

[Nick12]

Essentially sat out the 2008 recession as I was young, scared, and had an unstable job for 4yrs.
Now my job is very stable with the ability to work as much OT as I want. Have nearly 500k in funds between IRA’s, 401k’s, and a brokerage. The brokerage was started in early 2018 and is our emergency fund invested in vanguards conservative 50/50 fund.
As of 3 weeks ago started slowly DCA’ing the rest of our savings and current extra cash flow into VTSAX. When the market drops 2 days in a row I put more in. The greater the drop the greater the investment.
We are mid 30’s, 3 young kids, wife is SAHM. I enjoy working but am simply striving for FI by 40ish. Emergency fund will be credit cards and then cash flow or taxable account if needed.
Anyone else going all in? Nervous but want to trust the process and think I’m finally mature enough to tune out the noise and trust people smarter and wiser than me.

Timers in the market and panic sellers are far and few. I auto invested regardless of shares prices monthly for the past 30 years. Recently retired at 51 and look forward to new adventures and volunteer opportunities. The times I put more $$ in market is when I get my annual bonus, income tax money and annual raises. If you are disciplined to live on less your mindset and lifestyle will be a mirror image. Make sure your $$ works harder than you do. Happy New Year!!

 

[audreyh1]

My rebalance triggers have fired after the past couple of down days as my equity exposure is well below target. I usually rebalance in January, and I will still do most of it then, but I did buy some equities on Xmas Eve as I was so far behind.

 

[tulak]

I think the market can still go down more. I dropped my equity exposure by a marginal amount a couple of months ago. Now I’m waiting for a bigger drop before upping my equity exposure. The drops we’ve seen so far haven’t been deep enough, imo.

 

[NYEXPAT]

I was about 20% equities (fully hedged), This morning on the dip I opened up the hedges for the Santa Claus rally. After NYE I will reset the hedges and probably get myself net short by a few %.

 

[gstillson]

How are you hedging?

 

[W2R]

Anyone else going all in?

I am not at all certain that the market is down even half as much as it is going to be down. I hope your "all in" strategy is not too early. Timing is everything when one is market timing.

Either way, I am going to stick with my plan, which is to rebalance back to my desired 45:55 AA one week from today. Meanwhile I'm just sitting here at the sidelines watching.

 

[Cassius King]

Not going all in, but am nibbling here and there at Berkshire below $190.

 

[NW-Bound]

It has been painful, but the market being down 20% is nothing like what happened in 2002-2003 and 2008-2009.

The P/E is driven down by this downdraft to be 20% lower, which makes the market a bit less expensive. But if the future earning is also projected down 20% from the earlier expectation, then it all cancels out. No words on that yet. The future is never certain.

As a retiree living totally on his assets, having no pension and not yet claiming SS, I cannot afford to go all in. If I had enough to live on 2%WR and if the market crashed as hard as it did in the earlier recessions, I might drive my stock AA up to 80-90% (never 100%). But at this point, the risk/reward is not yet right for me to go much above my current AA which is already higher than that of most retirees.

 

[easysurfer]

Set your asset allocation to something you can stomach and stick to it. Don't try to time the market.

+1.

IMO, the all in sounds too much like the folks who put all the chips on Red or all on Black in roulette or put all in on a Super Bowl game.

Yeah, you might ended up winning big, but also you might crash and burn .

 

[gstillson]

I am eyeing Celgene again because 2020 earnings are supposed to be around $12.50 a share and it is trading for $58

It does have some problems in in late 2022 with patents but could still easily be in the PE6 range by then after hitting PE3.5 in 2020.

I mean this compares to some other stocks in the market who celebrate at PE40

 

[NYEXPAT]

How are you hedging?

I use a reverse index fund to hedge my individual stock holdings. It is far from perfect and requires occasional twerking! The advantage is I can move in and out (across 5-6 accounts) in under a minute.

 

[NW-Bound]

Not going all in, but am nibbling here and there at Berkshire below $190.

I have owned BRK for many years. Usually, I do not look at its finance thinking it is a stable stock, and would rather spend time looking at my more volatile holdings.

Recently, saw that its trailing P/E was in the single digits, implying that it was a bargain stock. But then, checked further to see that its forward P/E was doubled its trailing P/E. And I recalled that Buffett said that BRK was able to realize a huge one-time gain from the corporate tax change.

The forward P/E of BRK is currently a bit more than that of the whole S&P 500. I think there are better bargains out there.

 

[Moemg]

I have some cash in my brokerage account from the ECYT buy out so I am waiting for another hot tip.

 

[gstillson]

I have some cash in my brokerage account from the ECYT buy out so I am waiting for another hot tip.

Wow! That went from like a dollar and change to $24 in a heartbeat. Grats!

 

[NYEXPAT]

I was about 20% equities (fully hedged), This morning on the dip I opened up the hedges for the Santa Claus rally. After NYE I will reset the hedges and probably get myself net short by a few %.

Worked like a charm!

 

[NW-Bound]

I closed out a few call contracts this morning, and made a few more hundred bucks.

Small change compared to the 6-figure gain today due to the crazy market going up which requires no work on my part. But if my trading makes me money, however little, instead of costing money, I am OK with it.

 

[Moemg]

Wow! That went from like a dollar and change to $24 in a heartbeat. Grats!

My favorite tip of 2018 !

 

[masongoodwin]

Whether anyone work for a pre-IPO company or one that has gone public newly, you might be speculating what that means for your stock options. The fact is there are many things that can happen to your stock options after an IPO as an employee you should be aware of them.