I don't know fellas, things may just be going on sale. I won't quit my normal retirement contributions, but I'm not parting with my cash just yet.

Yeah... I think I'm going to hold out longer before putting my cash to work. With the announcements like the NBA and NCAA events, I think there will be more red days to follow, with more panic to ensue. Of course I could be totally wrong. I'm definitely not an expert nor did I sleep at a holiday inn last night. lol

Your guess is as good as anybody’s!

As long as this is on the news 24/7, we aren't at the the bottom. Powder staying dry here...

In 2008 we were heavily into High Yield Bond funds and got hammered relentlessly. I can still remember the feeling of just getting kicked in the stomach continually for doing nothing wrong. It soured me horribly on the market as a whole and it took a lot of prodding by GW and you guys to get me back in.

This time around, I'm much more confident in our choices and see the forest through the trees so to speak.

I'm more concerned about the safety of ourselves (and others mainly). Have 3 sets of friends and relatives with plane tickets bought to go somewhere that are heavily considering their options. One is a couple in their late 70s leaving on a 6 week (bucketlist) trip to Australia next week. Those are the HARD decisions that will have to be made.

trickeling in buys on good equities that are way down buyt I am still up 100% or 200% on ..

and adding cash so I be ready to fire when ready

I agree. Sadly i think we have more drop ahead.

More time to research and buy. A lot of quality on sale.

There is always a sale, but the one ya'll might be looking for is not on yet. It's time to put on your 2008 glasses (we're all that old, right?) and cinch up your out-of-date harnesses . . .

Yeah, I'm a bummer, but all need to begin seeing the collateral damage that will come from the actual economy and what it is about to become. Save some money, and leave some toilet paper on the shelf for your neighbors.

Get outside and breathe in an open space. Invest in good beer and exercise. I did this by riding my bike to a local brewery in the all-too-rare sun yesterday. It was perfection . . . money and energy well spent. :headspin:

^^^^true dat

Maybe a dumb question but, i'm completely ignorant to this stuff..
Would y'all recommend putting a hold on my company 401K paycheck contributions for the time being to have more cash available or just keep taking the deduction and making the contributions. I'm doing a 20% contribution at this time.
thx

It depends....

Age?
Do you have 6+ months liquid for an emergency right now?

I personally plan to keep buying monthly, but I may adjustment my risk level in my accounts. I don't retire for 22+ years.

No one knows how much more of a pull back will continue, but I'd recommend continuing to contribute to your 401k so you can nibble back in at the lower prices.

I partially missed out on the run up in 2019 b/c I moved majority to safer cash/bond funds, but started buying a couple muni bond funds this week that are yielding 5% dividend tax-free and down to historical lows.

Something to watch for
 

Executive / company buy backs..

This is what the genius airlines have been doing for years (partly to inflate their stock prices, so as to make it seem like they didn't suck as businesses) . . . for years of profits like never before. Remember how airlines used to go broke all the time, and the gubment would step in? Great financial management always leads to being broke, right? Oh, no problem, the gubment has an extra $100 billion to put them back in chargeyoutodeathforeverything mode again (once the virus thing loses its grip and toilet paper is freely purchaseable again).

As for bonds, refer to The Big Short (book or movie). Look forward to a sequel, as the same great investment strategy never stopped, however it is now joined by packaging of super-high quality car loans on $80k pickemup trucks people could totally afford.

Beer is the only answer. Next week does not look good from this distance. :D

Futures are down tonight stmilus bill stuck with the Dems plsyomg politics .. tomorrow is going to be a big slide me thinks

So I realise the whole point of 5his tread is not to try time the market ..... however bargains are prime for 5he picking... so I haven’t sold anything... I haven’t slowed down my automatic investments or my 401k ... but I am trickling in opertunistic buys

I would Max out your 401k to what your company matches right now

It's not about timing the market, it's about gauging buying opportunities

Strengthening your positions or getting good names cheap is what it's all about right now

I've been stashing a little bit of cash all last year and now I'm buying chunks here and there, generally as good companies go ex dividend or when they dip as they pay their dividend if I missed the window

Most of my positions are red right now, so holding fast

Don't panic sell guys, but double check your companies free cash/cash flow if they don't have the money to go a while without good revenue then it might be time to do a tax Harvest

Company only matches 100% up to 3%, then 50% up to 6%, i'm putting in 20%

Good job! Just make sure it's in a diversified portfolio within that 401k. If you're young and have many years left, also make sure you're not in too conservative of a fund.

OLD.. 57.. most of it in a 2035

As a beginner, I was thinking playing around with TD Ameritrade. Any of reason not to use them over one of the best there...E*Trade, Robin Hood, etc.? It appears they all require a linked bank account. Is this risky?

I'm with Fidelity and couldn't be happier. I'm not a trader though.

The linked back account is so you can transfer money into your brokerage account. No reason it's not as safe as anything else. Just remember, your brokerage account is not FDIC insured so don't be slack with the password and user name information.

So, if I were you, I'd contribute up to your employer match limit

Then the rest of money you are stashing I'd put in a retail investment account. Generally 401ks don't have very great options and if you ever need that money there is penalties for taking it out

But it's up to you, BUT it would be pretty hard not to out perform the funds in your 401k

I have an E trade and a Fidelity account, both with linked accounts

They have really high quality security measures and two step authentication, really no reason to be worried

I can't really speak to the newer trading apps like M1 and Robin hood though, I'd be leery of using them only because they aren't as established and like Robin hood glitches have happened

Keep in mind that many 401k plans offer a brokerage option that allows you to invest your pre-tax income with waaayyy less restrictions on what you can invest in. Usually they’ll allow everything a brokerage account will, although options are sometimes not allowed.

The pre-tax part is important! Your principle will be higher (compared to post-tax) and every percent of growth will be more impactful $ wise. Obviously you have to pay taxes eventually, so your personal situation might affect whether this is the right way to go. Personally, I will maximize my pre-tax contributions to get as much growth over the next 25 years, then do additional post-tax savings into a brokerage so I can have some savings where income tax is already paid (will still have to pay cap gains, qualified divs, etc).

TD Ameritrade has some of the best charting software out there (ThinkorSwim), and trading is free; executions are sometimes absolutely terrible, however. Robinhood is a pile of crap, unless you enjoy using your cell phone to throw money away. Etrade is nice, and it is also free, but it lacks a lot of what TDA gives you. My wife's dad really likes Fidelity, especially after his account got smoked in the last bubble; he learned to become more hands-on. There are zillions of other brokers out there . . .

"Playing around" usually means losing money, pretty much all of it. Another of the benefits of TD Ameritrade is that they offer a ton of free educational resources online (with quizzes!), through their secure platform; YouTube also has a treasure trove of educational content, but much of it is trying to sell you crap. You can open an account at TDA with nearly nothing, so it is a good choice overall, even if the money you put in just sits there for a year (for free).

Over the past decade, the free information on this stuff has improved exponentially. It's a perfect time to learn and watch (and better understand why so many others are losing or making money right now).

Lateral-G "QUOTE OF THE WEEK"
 

Week ending March 27, 2020
:trophy-1302:.....goes to rustomatic.....:trophy-1302:


Robinhood is a pile of crap, unless you enjoy using your cell phone to throw money away.


Thank you Paul.

I finally made a few trades yesterday. Got rid of some dead weight, picked up a new stock and added to some other well performing holdings.

I missed getting a few more as they were running higher than my offer and missed selling one as it ran lower than my ask. This just reaffirmed to me I was making the right choices. We'll try again Monday on them

And with that, I am officially out of the oil business...

I had held onto XOM and KMI for the past few years mainly for the dividend...but this latest deal with Russia and OPEC was the final straw.

There are way too many other companies out there on sale right now to keep these on board.

It was interesting to watch closely while making the trades, the stocks I wanted I kept chasing up while the stocks I was selling I kept chasing down. This told me I was doing the right thing and I finally just made it happen.

Good riddance oil, now I can feel good again about buying sub $2.00/gal gas...

Fundamental changes.

I'm long and my funds and stocks are being watched by a very small broker.

And cautiously optimistic. Strange times, strange times indeed.

Oil is strange. Were gonna need it and the demand for it is ever increasing despite what the stocks tell us. it's bad now but the economist reports I read is the electric cars and buses all need the recharging (caption obvious) but where is that energy coming from? Solar= not enough, Nuclear=everybody's scared. Oil=easy, not sure.
I'm not heavy in oil, other than some divi Chevron stock.

I've thought about the same thing, Lance. I'd loose a lot for sure, but I feel I could recover if I put the money elsewhere. What's happening with oil is definitely weird. It's this crazy substory within the craziness of the Coronavirus issues.

Come on, Mike. Demand for oil is in the toilet; nobody is commuting to work. Shale crapped out a few years ago, and surpluses are happy, i.e., the supply side is fat, and the demand side doesn't care at all. Oddly, the oil sector has been up the past couple of days, but that will probably be over on Monday, much like the recent banking/hedge fund stock trend represented by mortgage-backed security scuzz trying to fix up their balance sheets while everyone was/is dropping (mortgage-packed) bonds like toxic waste.

Dividends are in a funny state now, too, as they have become yet another cost to cut. I got one last week for holding a gold ETF for like four days . . . it only paid for one beer, but it was swell, nonetheless.

On a fun California note, it is interesting (should be alarming) how Tesla is in bed with PG&E on a central coast solar/battery farm thing (in the midst of the largest utility bankruptcy ever). Too legit to quit, those folks . . .

Happy shelter-in-place weekend, dudes!

It reminds me of an analogy: The time to buy is at deepest pessimism. You make me want to buy oil! HA

Soooo........Tesla bails out PG&E?....takes over their infrastructure?.................. A naïve question probably.
Could you expand on this please Paul?

+1 on happiness for the weekend.

Stocks
 

Guess who is betting on US stocks? The whole world. Europe, Asia, Mideast and every one else. It's going to be a wild ride but we the US are the only solid bet in the world.
Oil? Trump had a few words with the Saudis yesterday. Pretty much said if they flood the oil market all of our Navy ships and any military assistance is gone. Same for all the other Mideast oil producers. Let Iran shut down the gulf and see where oil prices go. If that happens there will be a drilling bonanza in the US like you have never seen before.
Bet on the US. That's where my money is at.

Have not been here for a while but would like to catch up with this thread 👍

I was bound and determined to take advantage of this Covid19 pullback in the market, since I was laid off and had no cash to spare during the 2008 recession. I threw what I could into a Blue Chip mutual fund in late March and am up 25% so far. Wish it could have been a larger purchase but I consider it a moral victory. Figuring I’ll take some profit to pay for the bathroom remodel I’m doing and keep maxing out my 401k contributions. Luckily my job is safe this go-round, so I’ll be a buyer no matter what the next few months might bring.

Agreed that dividend stocks aren’t quite as attractive in this environment. Nobody is hesitating to cut their dividend like they were when Greg was extolling the virtues of dividend hunting.

I did the same, threw in what I could and am happy I was able to do that much. I still think there will be a pull back once quarter two results come in. If I'm right, I'll buy more then.

I picked up a lot of quality on the dip. Google, apple, some others. I still hold too much cash but I'm still not convinced another dip is in our future.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

election Year
 

all politics aside. If trump is not elected in November expect a major decline..
The street loves his "Pro business" approach..

How about that 1860-ish point drop in the Dow today, dudes? We're in new territory as of this year with the markets (and that market disaster, Robinhood). I get fearing the future, but do we have to fear hobbies, recycled air, and gangs of internet trading cults who can kill your day with a crappy service outage?

The future is fun! :smiley_smack: