True, but I can try to dump as much money in for as long as I can. I lost out on years of accumulation--but doing something now will sure beat doing the alternative (doing nothing and feeling sorry while doing that). 20 years at over 20% income to retirement, I do believe that will net me something.
You are correct and if you do some reading, searching, one of the best investing strategies is "value" investing, you could, some do, even beat their peers. Heck it was made Warren Buffet who he is.
Just because many stocks are at sky high valuations, there are many companies that are and many other companies not yet in a favorable light as the high profile stocks.
You could go real safe and choose, based on history some good mutual funds or look for value stocks or at least learn about value investing.
IF and when the market goes down you will be in a good position, to even buy more shares of your companies if you wish.
Example, as highlighted in Barrons (I think this past weekend)
The darling of Wall Street, gets all the press Tesla selling at over 500 times earnings vs GM selling at 6 times earnings. If the market gets trashed where do you think you will lose...? Heck, What about the people who paid over $700 a share for Tesla only a few months ago? Already lost up to a third of their money. I didnt own either one, though GM is on my mind.
Wells Fargo and the bank stocks in general got trashed last year. I started buying Wells Fargo at $42 a share in March 2020 and purchased more of it every single week for the last year all the way down to $23 a share and all the way up to $42 a share just a month or two ago, Now just holding and stopped buying, moved onto accumulating shares in an international fund, thinking maybe the world will start exiting Covid by the end of this year.
Boring old Walmart, Purchased $90 a share in 2019 now around 140 and was up all last year through the pandemic
TMobile, great CEO over 100 Million people have access to their 5 g network now plus rolled out wireless home internet. This year they are adding access to 2 million more people a week across the country when all of last year, its competition like Verizon only added access to 2 million people the ENTIRE YEAR OF 2020. See the scale?
NONE of this post matters, others have done far, far, far better then me but we never know what the future holds and a lot of this high profile stocks taking off to the moon is being in the right place at the right time. No different then people playing lottery tickets.
If you start off sticking to value investing, learning as you go, you then may find some "value" in companies that are on the cutting edge of something and get in early with a small part of your portfolio for the speculative part.
The stocks I mentioned above I do still own, I also have another account with funds. I am thinking about switching things up, we will see.
I am at at the preserving capital part of my life without taking on too much risk, last year I was feeling awesome great when the market was getting bashed as well as almost every stock and yet, I was still up at the time this was happening.
There are many who do better and many more who lose all their savings and I am just giving you a small period of time of investing as an example of my preserving capital and doing far better then bonds or bank interest with what I feel is acceptable low risk.
Once you can value invest, without question you will find companies with great promise that you can put some speculative capital into.
Ps you will always hear about people doing great, rarely when they are doing poor. You have a long time to go, maybe not the right time at this point but picking up a property where the tenants pay everything is a nice thing to have in retirement.
It cost you almost nothing, tenants pay for the property and when all paid for, you have real property and real real estate to keep collecting on or to sell off. Its the gift that gives forever and someone else paid for it!
I never made a fortune in the market, I use the market to make money on my money far better then any bank, but my wealth (thank god and my retirement) comes from income on real property, paid for in full decades ago, set in stone, small building, mix of commercial/residential, triple net lease, heck haven't even been there in a decade, just collect the rent. If I sell value is up roughly 400% in a bad year. But no need to sell because the rental income is high enough that return on equity is more renting then if if I sold and put in a stable fund.
Anyway, many people become rich the old fashion way, investing in a real property and having someone else pay for it by renting it out to them.
One thing for sure, is the ground we all walk on will always be there (just dont buy oceanfront (ha ha)
