2019, the year you couldn't lose money if you tried

[Fermion]

Due to one very bad investment I was barely in the positive for the year. Never investing in an individual stock again.

Those darn weed stocks?

 

[aaronc879]

Those darn weed stocks?

Oil actually.

 

[dixonge]

I prefer to maintain a consistent risk profile.

During the dot-com crash I learned that my stock-picking technique was just riding a bubble, and had no ability to minimize my losses. Fortunately I was just beginning to dip into the market and my portfolio was small.

During the subprime crash I mostly avoided the fallout by being in derivatives, playing the edges with option spreads, iron condors, etc. It was all great until it wasn't. I learned that my risk tolerance was a bit lower than I had thought. I stayed out of the market for awhile, missing a good bit of the early rise in 2009.

Now that we're retired and drawing about 2/3 of our eventual pension/SS income (and spending spending less than half of that) we're all in on equities (RSP) and riding out the corrections like pro surfers. I can fault no one for having a risk tolerance profile figured out and allocating appropriately. Corrections will come, do what you have to do to see them through...

Market corrections

 

[audreyh1]

Thanks for the market corrections graph. I thought there were at least 4 but didn’t remember all 6 and forgot about 2015/2016 having a “double dip”. IMO anything down more than down 15% counts as a “serious” and we’ve had 3 of those since 2009.

 

[street]

^ I remember the 2016 dip. I was retiring and people were saying it is the worst time to retire the markets is going to crash. Well, it was to late to turn back and things turn in my favor. Lol

 

[PatrickA5]

The last time I thought I "couldn't lose" was 2000/2001. Loaded up big time on WorldCom, Enron and a whole bunch of can't lose dot.com stocks. I won big time on the tax side of things - had loss carryforwards for years!

Been in boring mutual funds ever since.

 

[PatrickA5]

^ I remember the 2016 dip. I was retiring and people were saying it is the worst time to retire the markets is going to crash. Well, it was to late to turn back and things turn in my favor. Lol

I retired from megacorp in July, 2008. Couldn't have timed it worse. Fortunately, DW didn't want to follow me in retirement, so we didn't have to sell stocks at the lows and could continue to add more over the years.

 

[Car-Guy]

It was impossible to lose money this year

Unless you bet on pot stocks

Hard to make money with oil stocks this year too.

 

[lucky penny]

Due to one very bad investment I was barely in the positive for the year. Never investing in an individual stock again.

Those darn weed stocks?

Oil actually.

I own XOM, which was up all of 9 cents a share this year. But at least there's that dividend!

 

[Markola]

I don't care about maximizing long term returns. Steady 50/50 is good enough for me. Much less year-to-year volatility yet high enough equity exposure to beat inflation in the long run.

50/50 is the comfort zone I’ve settled into, too, after starting at 100% equities in my twenties, dropping to 80/20 in my early 40s and progressively down to 50/50 in my mid 50s. The graph above shows only stock values but if one also showed a 50/50 mix and looked back 20+ years rather than 10, we’d see that when stocks periodically plunge, there are moments when the two lines nearly touch, so I figure I’ll avoid some drama and ulcers waiting for it to almost even out in the wash anyway.

 

[UnrealizedPotential]

In 1999 I had the get rich quick fever. I was soon cured of that when one of my stocks went to zero. Luckily I lost only 5K. Then in 2008/2009 my portfolio was down big when I was in 100% stocks. I recovered from that . My asset allocation is 51/45/4 as a result of those two experiences. I am not tempted at all to raise my stock allocation during this stock market rise.

ETA-my personal experiences have led me to believe that Ben Graham was a very smart man.

 

[Fermion]

I did really well in 2019 playing around with biotech (130% gain in one account, 150+% in another account and 127% in my Roth). I predict that 2020 will be a bad year for biotech because of politics. There is still money to be made but it will be tricky. I may try and find another sector. I am a bit sad.