What’s in your portfolio?
Or is it time to buy now? Stocks and markets have dropped, so if you have retirement account, should you buy now or wait? Just curious.
Meanwhile, here’s a tale of how incompetence saved me an assload of money. My employer uses a processing company to handle all things payroll, to include retirement. These folks are completely incompetent. They will, without fail, screw up anything they are asked to do. They’ll either over do it or not do it at all or form a committee to do it that will then forget why they formed the committee anyway and that will result in them doing something else completely unrelated to the current task. Anyhoo, a bit back I rolled over an account and specified which fund I wanted the roll over to go into. After the market hit the shitter, I was scared to look. One day, I finally manned up and looked at the damage to discover that I had not only not lost any money but had actually received a fairly health rate of return. I checked the particular fund’s webpage and noted that it had lost a ton of money. I was confused as to how that happened. Turns out, they put my rollover in the wrong fund even though I specified. They’d put it in a municipal bond fund. So, I made some modest gains. Their incompetence saved me a chunk of change.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
I’ve taken the “head in the sand” approach. My last statement showed I broke even which is depressing as hell, but I’m actually more afraid to EJECT EJECT EJECT!!!! as that has a snowball effect.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
It’s impossible to tell where the market is headed. In the Great Depression, after the crash of 1929, stocks continued to tank during the early ’30s. But as long as you have faith in American businesses, there’s no reason not to continue to invest in them. If you’re a long ways from retirement (like me), this crash is wonderful, because stocks (which have the greatest potential for growth) are on sale. If you’re close to retirement, keep a healthy percentage of bonds, so that if things continue to tank, you don’t get burned too badly. Your upside potential won’t be as great, but that’s the trade-off.
November 14th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I moved some money into bonds and short-term Treasuries.
Agree with William about this being a buying opportunity, but I want to see prices even lower than they fell last month. I did buy some S&W stock last month at its five year low. It’s up about 60% now.
All this is inside my 401K retirement account. I don’t put the mortgage payment in the market.
November 14th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I agree with William. This is a once in a lifetime buying opportunity. If you have it to invest, you should.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Dollar-cost averaging means you’re buying more stuff at low rates…which is great unless Barry implements his 401(k) grab.
My wife shifted hers towards bonds but still has a significant percentage in stocks – I’m in stocks but my account is rather moribund since I’m not working and adding anything – it just has a re-balance feature.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
I don’t have large amounts of disposable income, but I’m still putting money in my IRA automatically each month. I figure I’m only 23, so right now couldn’t be a better time to invest.
I’d hate to be a baby boomer planning to retire right now though.
November 14th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
I lost 50 percent of what I had in my 401k. I bought into the bull that all those fiscal scumbags said about 10 growth a year and all that. I learned my lesson. Under the mattress or in a low yield, high security savings accounts. I wonder how long before my 401k will return to pre-recession levels.
November 14th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
My IRA mutual fund is averaging -20% over the past 12 months. My precious metals mutual fund account was balancing that out with +75% up until about two months ago, when it completely and utterly tanked, and is now averaging about -50% over the pats 12 months.
All said, Better Half and I have probably lost $50k in principle alone, not counting interest losses.
November 14th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
That said, dollar-cost averaging is my friend, and my monthly deposits to all of my accounts have continued unabated through these times…
November 15th, 2008 at 3:24 am
100% Fixed income for 401k and personal savings in cash, gold, and silver. Silver is sucking wind from the highs, but still beating the indicies YoY – everything else is flat or up. The only stocks to reach 52wk high was some metal company and shorts. My favorite I’m following is SKF – “twice the inverse daily performance of the Dow Jones U.S. Financials Index (the Index).”
You haven’t seen nothing yet. 8k is the small ridge we’re bouncing off and will soon continue the cliff diving.