Investing Strategies. What is your move?
- Thread starter PimTac
- Start date
And be wary of scams. A friend's mother is a greeter at Walmart because she invested all of her money in a "sure thing" that went to zero. Her husband was way more conservative (?!) and only invested half of his money in the same "sure thing". How would you like to have to do work at WM in your 80s? Their kids think they just like to work; they're too proud to say they're broke.
People should go to jail for scamming seniors but they just seem to get away with it.
There are rules of thumb like never investing more than 5 or 10% in any single investment no matter how good it sounds. A 5 or 10% loss would hurt but you could survive that. But a 100% loss - at least there's always Walmart.
PS There are no "sure things".
Timing is important, more so when you old.
If you invested in the Dow in 1929, your $ was dead $ for 25 yrs, until 1954.
If you invested in the Dow or S&P in late 2007, your $ was dead $ for 6 yrs, until early 2013.
If you invested in the NASDAQ in early 2000, your $ was dead money for 14 yrs, until 2014.
You ain't seen nothing yet (2022). The selling has been orderly (no panic). When the panic selling begins, a bottom will follow.
Lookup the term "dead cat bounce", last week etc.
Lookup the term "Death cross", occurred mid Feb 2022.
If you invested in the Dow in 1929, your $ was dead $ for 25 yrs, until 1954.
If you invested in the Dow or S&P in late 2007, your $ was dead $ for 6 yrs, until early 2013.
If you invested in the NASDAQ in early 2000, your $ was dead money for 14 yrs, until 2014.
You ain't seen nothing yet (2022). The selling has been orderly (no panic). When the panic selling begins, a bottom will follow.
Lookup the term "dead cat bounce", last week etc.
Lookup the term "Death cross", occurred mid Feb 2022.
Realized Gains are “sure things” verses Unrealized Gains that can quickly evaporate if markets head south.
Older folks need to lock in gains before a big downturn.
Good for you. XOM was trading around $20 at the time. ...now $90. Most people were afraid to buy then but are buying like crazy two years later. Did you sell ?
Sorry...I haven't heard anything
Those numbers are often reported. But I've also heard that they don't take into account dividends, which would have reduced the time to break even by quite a bit. I don't know what is the truth. Anyone?
My cousin always said it wasn't the crash in '29 that destroyed peoples savings, it was the extension of the crash in '31 or '32 after things seemed to be getting better that really did in investors. As a result, he never invested in stocks and was still a millionaire when he died. He just worked hard and was a good money manager.
I kept a substantial VDE holding and sold the the rest after a nice run up.
Bought more Oil / Energy / Natural Gas as Russia was building up military strength on Ukrainian border.
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Did you hear about the Prudent Warrior and the other tanker ?
All media is being hush hush about this.….. total radio silence.
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Just like today, few people had any real money in the market. Most people are invested in a 401K and have no idea what they own.
And yes, the crash was not the problem it was the failure of the Fed to prop up the economy to keep it funning and keep people working.
There was a lot of sketchy stuff going on in the 1920s. Pump and dump for example was common. And as always the little guys were left holding - well not much of anything. It should have been apparent to everyone that the market was far too high, but because the market kept going up everyone wanted part of the action so it kept going up.
And there was a lot of investing on margin. When you get that margin call how do you raise the required cash? You may be forced to sell. Or your broker will sell for you. And if a lot of people are forced to sell, prices will be driven down further.
The current rules may not be perfect (and I'm no expert on that) but they are a lot better. And the market still overshoots on the way up and on the way down.
In regards to the 1929 crash the Fed was still relatively new and as mentioned had no control or oversight on the markets.
America (individuals & corporations) have never been more leveraged up (margin) and in dept than they are today.
I'm 65 now and have been retired since I was 51. I was able to do this because I saved a lot of money by living well within my means and I learned how to make money in the stock market with these savings.
I'm a bull at heart (glass half full). I usually don't have much staying power/conviction to go short. But because of what's been going on in America and the world the last 2 yrs, I now have the nads to go short with conviction.
In March 2020, when everybody was running for the exits (plandemic), I stepped in and bought stocks, all kinds of stocks. Made over 6 figures in 2020.
Towards the end of 2020 I could see the insanity, so I sold everything and went all cash and started mainly short date put option selling. Its like selling insurance. The seller (me) of the cash covered put hopes the buyer doesn't need the insurance, thus doesn't collect, and I keep the money (premium). I made 6 figures doing this in my 1st yr (2021). They were all bullish bets
By the beginning of 2022 I quit making bullish bets in all but 1 sector (oil & gas).
If the federal reserve chickens out and stops raising interest rates and starts buying assets again (like I expect them to do), inflation will skyrocket even higher and I'll go long many more commodity stocks and/or sell the short dated put options. And, I'll short anything else, especially tech.
So far this yr (2022) I'm doing well selling short dated bullish put options in leveraged Oil & Gas ETFs like XOP, ERX, GUSH.
I'm doing even better shorting the tech sector by selling monthly puts options in the leveraged inverse etf like TECS.
Happy trading/investing!
I'm 65 now and have been retired since I was 51. I was able to do this because I saved a lot of money by living well within my means and I learned how to make money in the stock market with these savings.
I'm a bull at heart (glass half full). I usually don't have much staying power/conviction to go short. But because of what's been going on in America and the world the last 2 yrs, I now have the nads to go short with conviction.
In March 2020, when everybody was running for the exits (plandemic), I stepped in and bought stocks, all kinds of stocks. Made over 6 figures in 2020.
Towards the end of 2020 I could see the insanity, so I sold everything and went all cash and started mainly short date put option selling. Its like selling insurance. The seller (me) of the cash covered put hopes the buyer doesn't need the insurance, thus doesn't collect, and I keep the money (premium). I made 6 figures doing this in my 1st yr (2021). They were all bullish bets
By the beginning of 2022 I quit making bullish bets in all but 1 sector (oil & gas).
If the federal reserve chickens out and stops raising interest rates and starts buying assets again (like I expect them to do), inflation will skyrocket even higher and I'll go long many more commodity stocks and/or sell the short dated put options. And, I'll short anything else, especially tech.
So far this yr (2022) I'm doing well selling short dated bullish put options in leveraged Oil & Gas ETFs like XOP, ERX, GUSH.
I'm doing even better shorting the tech sector by selling monthly puts options in the leveraged inverse etf like TECS.
Happy trading/investing!
https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/New_Home_Page/datafile/histretSP.html
^It's not the Dow but the S&P returns number includes dividends. There's a column for $100 invested at the start of 1928. If you move the $100 start date and end in '53 that $100 has grown to $356.88, about 5.2% annual growth, based on this dataset.
I agree, but also if its all coverted to a cash account, inflation can eat it too.
Stocks in the US hit bottom in 1931–1932 because of a cascade of big bank failures in Europe, particularly the Austrian bank Creditanstalt. But even before those, the Dow had been steadily sliding downhill after a dead-cat bounce in late 1929–early 1930. At the bottom the Dow was down ~90% from the pre-crash highs in 1929. Look into charts of Dow closing figures from late 1929–1933 to see all this.
The European bank failures are often cited as one reason German voters enabled Hitler to come to power in 1933, but in turn the US crash had been a catalyst for the problems with the European financial system. Even then we had crude globalization.
The European bank failures are often cited as one reason German voters enabled Hitler to come to power in 1933, but in turn the US crash had been a catalyst for the problems with the European financial system. Even then we had crude globalization.
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