Sour grapes

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Dr. Galazkiewicz

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Did I just get sucked into a top during January? Having sat out the market all these years, I had recently read all the books recommended by the Bogleheads and all my friends were bragging about how much money they making. I was missing out. Now I'm down and it looks like the market is going to negative 5000. Will I owe money if it goes below zero?

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I put a lot in SPXL. Let's just say I'm not doing well.
 
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My parents and I just funded a 529 for my son. We've lost a decent amount of money in it.

My plan is to just ignore it and wait--it's not like I'm going to do anything with that money for about 18 years anyway.

Even people who trade for a living can't beat the market. They can't time the market, or pick the best stocks at the right time. But professionals are very good at remaining calm when others panic.
 
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You say you recently read "all the books" recommended by Bogleheads, but unfortunately I think you missed really important foundational points about investing. You did make a good decision, but these types of investments are known to fluctuate over time and it's best to consider them over the long-term (years and even decades) than to be concerned about what they do week to week and month to month. No, you can't end up owing money. The value of a stock can't go below zero. I encourage you to keep reading!
 
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I don’t know what you read if that was your takeaway. Read “The Inteligent Investor” by Ben Graham, set up a three or four fund automatic deposit portfolio on Vanguard, and don’t log in for the next 30 years.
 
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The trick to making money is consistent investment in index funds. Put the money in and wait. A lot of people did what you did prior to the 2008 crash, then pulled the money out post-crash when if they'd just waited and continued to invest they would have regained their losses and made a substantial amount of money
 
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Ride it out
What if the market drops by 67%? That means I would have to go up 200% to get even. That could take a couple decades at 7% CAGR. I'll be a crusty ole hag with one foot in the grave by then. If I discount for inflation then the money I just put in will never be seen again. Gone forever. To the sea. Just like the song.

[my nest egg] Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea
To the sea

Till it's gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore
 
What if the market drops by 67%? That means I would have to go up 200% to get even. That could take a couple decades at 7% CAGR. I'll be a crusty ole hag with one foot in the grave by then. If I discount for inflation then the money I just put in will never be seen again. Gone forever. To the sea. Just like the song.

[my nest egg] Keeps flowing like a river (on and on)
To the sea
To the sea

Till it's gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore

What if it drops? So what. Unless you are looking to withdraw for retirement in the few years following, it will inevitably regain value again.

In 2008 the market dropped about 50%. For example, VTI (a Vanguard total market index ETF) was valued at $72.57 a share in December 2007. It reached its low point in Feb 2009 at $36.81 a share. The most recent value is now $139.25. It took about 4-5 years for the money to regain its original value, but it's gone steadily up since then. If you took your money out because you were scared you lost big. If you left it in, you came out ahead.

VTI Interactive Stock Chart | Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF Stock - Yahoo Finance
 
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I put a lot in SPXL. Let's just say I'm not doing well.

Also, why are you choosing SPXL??? That fund has a horrible expense ratio (0.94%). Is this in a 401k or a regular taxable account? If it's in a taxable account, I'd seriously look into moving it to a low cost provider (Vanguard, Fidelity Spartan funds, some Schwab funds) to allow you to better save your money for retirement.

You need to be in passively managed index funds. I read an article on that fund and it said that it's not a good type of fund for long term investments.

Top 4 Leveraged S&P 500 ETFs for 2018
 
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What if it drops? So what. Unless you are looking to withdraw for retirement in the few years following, it will inevitably regain value again.

In 2008 the market dropped about 50%. For example, VTI (a Vanguard total market index ETF) was valued at $72.57 a share in December 2007. It reached its low point in Feb 2009 at $36.81 a share. The most recent value is now $139.25. It took about 4-5 years for the money to regain its original value, but it's gone steadily up since then. If you took your money out because you were scared you lost big. If you left it in, you came out ahead.

I succumbed to FOMO like a schmuck. Got tired of hearing colleagues bloviating about their 401ks.

Should I sell on next rise and wait for crash?
 
I succumbed to FOMO like a schmuck. Got tired of hearing colleagues bloviating about their 401ks.

Should I sell on next rise and wait for crash?

So when is the next rise? When is the next crash?

This is called timing the market and it just really doesn't work. Keep your money in a passively managed index fund.
 
So when is the next rise? When is the next crash?

This is called timing the market and it just really doesn't work. Keep your money in a passively managed index fund.

But I'm hearing from a lot of very smart guys that say the markets are over-valued. I'm just now getting exposed to people that I've never seen on CNBC. A couple forum members from Financial Samurai tipped me off to macrovoices and realvision podcasts.
 
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But I'm hearing from a lot of very smart guys that say the markets are over-valued. I'm just now getting exposed to people that I've never seen on CNBC. A couple forum members from Financial Samurai tipped me off to macrovoices and realvision podcasts.

Do they know the day it will crash? No. Do they know when the crash has reached its lowest point? No. It just doesn't work. Sure you might get lucky a time or two. You're just as likely to time it when you think there is a crash and it turns into rally after you sold. Or you buy when you think it's at a low, but then it continues to sink.

What Experts Say About Market-Timing vs. Stay-The-Course - Bogleheads.org
 
Do they know the day it will crash? No. Do they know when the crash has reached its lowest point? No. It just doesn't work. Sure you might get lucky a time or two. You're just as likely to time it when you think there is a crash and it turns into rally after you sold. Or you buy when you think it's at a low, but then it continues to sink.

But can't we go by valuation metrics like Hussman uses? Those CAPE adjusted ratios or whatever he uses? It seems we should be price sensitive.
 
You should invest consistently and not try to time the market. This isn't a casino, you shouldn't be trying to get rich quick.

But does invest consistently mean being oblivious to value?
 
But can't we go by valuation metrics like Hussman uses? Those CAPE adjusted ratios or whatever he uses? It seems we should be price sensitive.

The basic investment package to optimize your investments with good diversity consists of:

Total stock market index fund
Total international stock market index fund
Bond index fund

You mix the percentages based on your risk profile. A good rule of thumb is 110 or 100 minus your age is the amount of stocks and the remainder in bonds. If you are more risk tolerant, lessen your bond percentage. Right now I have about 15-20% bonds. Of your stock, you can about 20-25% as international with the rest as domestic stock funds.

Set it and forget it. Rebalance once a year if necessary. Contribute when you can. Don't take money out because the market goes down.
 
But does invest consistently mean being oblivious to value?
Yes. You put X dollars in per year, consistently, forever. If you want to play by adding money above your base investment that's fine but statistics have shown that over 90% of people that attempt to time the market underperform vs index funds overall
 
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The basic investment package to optimize your investments with good diversity consists of:

Total stock market index fund
Total international stock market index fund
Bond index fund

You mix the percentages based on your risk profile. A good rule of thumb is 110 or 100 minus your age is the amount of stocks and the remainder in bonds. If you are more risk tolerant, lessen your bond percentage. Right now I have about 15-20% bonds. Of your stock, you can about 20-25% as international with the rest as domestic stock funds.

Set it and forget it. Rebalance once a year if necessary. Contribute when you can. Don't take money out because the market goes down.

But I hear people saying the real bubble is in bonds and that they really aren't inversely correlated to stocks. Bonds and stocks went up together and will come down together they warn. I think it was a Chris Cole interview I got that from. He predicted the recent vix crash and says that's only the beginning as this "implicit short volatility trade unwinds." I don't know what that really means but he sure sounded like he knew his stuff.

I wish I knew of this stuff before I read all those Boglehead books. I feel so stupid.
 
But I hear people saying the real bubble is in bonds and that they really aren't inversely correlated to stocks. Bonds and stocks went up together and will come down together they warn. I think it was a Chris Cole interview I got that from. He predicted the recent vix crash and says that's only the beginning as this "implicit short volatility trade unwinds." I don't know what that really means but he sure sounded like he knew his stuff.

I wish I knew of this stuff before I read all those Boglehead books. I feel so stupid.
The only stupid thing is what you are doing which is ignore the most safe and sure way to make money

Pick a low expense passive fund (ideally one of those target retirement date funds) and just put ina lot of money forever
 
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For the most part, yes. You are investing in passively managed index funds (or should be). You can't be chasing actively managed funds. Past performance is not indicative of future performance.

The only stupid thing is what you are doing which is ignore the most safe and sure way to make money

Pick a low expense passive fund (ideally one of those target retirement date funds) and just put ina lot of money forever

Passive indexing is another bubble I hear about. The concern is that too many investors are doing it. Too many people are price insensitive. This explains why apple, google, and netflix keep going up. It's insane. I rather use active management and not be tied into these baskets.
 
Passive indexing is another bubble I hear about. The concern is that too many investors are doing it. Too many people are price insensitive. This explains why apple, google, and netflix keep going up. It's insane. I rather use active management and not be tied into these baskets.
You’re going to think I’m mean here, but your recent performance is an example of why your current strategy is ill advised
 
You’re going to think I’m mean here, but your recent performance is an example of why your current strategy is ill advised

I think I'm going to take my losses here and sit on the sidelines. I've got more research to do. I'll make it back and then some after markets turn bearish.
 
Passive indexing is another bubble I hear about. The concern is that too many investors are doing it. Too many people are price insensitive. This explains why apple, google, and netflix keep going up. It's insane. I rather use active management and not be tied into these baskets.
Except that's wrong, because indexes track the market and the only way for the index to be a bubble is if the market is also a bubble. Actively managed funds very rarely beat the market over a ten year horizon. Basically stop thinking like a gambler and start thinking like a buy-and-hold investor. All of this advice you hear about bubbles etc is wrong as often as it is right, and crash predictions are far more often than not wrong (a bond market crash has been predicted since as early as 2010 yet has failed to materialize, for instance, costing people who listen to such nonsense a ton of money).
 
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Except that's wrong, because indexes track the market and the only way for the index to be a bubble is if the market is also a bubble. Actively managed funds very rarely beat the market over a ten year horizon. Basically stop thinking like a gambler and start thinking like a buy-and-hold investor. All of this advice you hear about bubbles etc is wrong as often as it is right, and crash predictions are far more often than not wrong (a bond market crash has been predicted since as early as 2010 yet has failed to materialize, for instance, costing people who listen to such nonsense a ton of money).

Yeah, but what these guys like Chris Cole say is that the markets haven't crashed yet because of all the intervention by central banks. They've created the "everything bubble". Cole says that if true price discovery isn't allowed in the financial arena then the stress will show up as civil strife. Isn't the recent vote in Italy evidence of that? The student loan crisis? Talk of basic guaranteed income?
 
Yeah, but what these guys like Chris Cole say is that the markets haven't crashed yet because of all the intervention by central banks. They've created the "everything bubble". Cole says that if true price discovery isn't allowed in the financial arena then the stress will show up as civil strife. Isn't the recent vote in Italy evidence of that? The student loan crisis? Talk of basic guaranteed income?
Can't help you when you're buying into sensationalist crap like that. Garbage in, garbage out.
 
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Yeah, but what these guys like Chris Cole say is that the markets haven't crashed yet because of all the intervention by central banks. They've created the "everything bubble". Cole says that if true price discovery isn't allowed in the financial arena then the stress will show up as civil strife. Isn't the recent vote in Italy evidence of that? The student loan crisis? Talk of basic guaranteed income?

I have no idea who Chris Cole is and frankly, don't care. The key to long term investing is passively managed index funds. Bonds are included because they are less volatile compared to stocks. They may go up and down but by lesser amounts. If interest rates go up, then bonds will likely increase in returns as well. For a long term investor, you don't care if the fund goes up today and then down tomorrow. You want to see the overall trend of years to be going up. Set it and forget it.

If you take all your money out of the market, that's certainly your decision, but you'll be missing out on all those future gains you'd be getting with your money in now.

For instance, I put money into an IRA (technically my parents did) based on a summer job I had back in college. That money has increased 450% since that time (around 20 years or so). That money went through the crash of 2008. But I didn't care because it's worth more now than it did before the crash.
 
Can't help you when you're buying into sensationalist crap like that. Garbage in, garbage out.

It's not sensationalist. Cole is a hedge fund manager. He made a killing being long volatility last month.
 
I have no idea who Chris Cole is and frankly, don't care. The key to long term investing is passively managed index funds. Bonds are included because they are less volatile compared to stocks. They may go up and down but by lesser amounts. If interest rates go up, then bonds will likely increase in returns as well. For a long term investor, you don't care if the fund goes up today and then down tomorrow. You want to see the overall trend of years to be going up. Set it and forget it.

If you take all your money out of the market, that's certainly your decision, but you'll be missing out on all those future gains you'd be getting with your money in now.

For instance, I put money into an IRA (technically my parents did) based on a summer job I had back in college. That money has increased 450% since that time (around 20 years or so). That money went through the crash of 2008. But I didn't care because it's worth more now than it did before the crash.
If rates go up, bond funds will lose value more than gain income.
 
It's not sensationalist. Cole is a hedge fund manager. He made a killing being long volatility last month.

Would you trust Warren Buffet?

Warren Buffett Just Revealed the Best Investment Most People Can Make

Warren Buffet said:
Buffett's logic is that someone who invests in a S&P 500 index fund, by definition, will match the market's performance.

On the other hand, "active investors" as a group will also deliver average investment performance over time -- that is, some managers' investments will do well, and others won't. However, when you add in the cost of actively managed investment options, particularly hedge funds, the result is that the average hedge fund will underperform the market.
 
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He's very likely just as much of a hack as the rest of them. But you don't make money off of investing advice without having the appearance of authority, whether that appearance is deserved or not.


But that one year he scores big by being contrarian more than makes up for years underpreforming. Kinda like Taleb. Sit 98% treasuries and 2% in options. 6 out 7 years the options expire worthless, but the 7th year comes in big. Moreso than what a passive indexer would make in 7 years.
 
And why is Warren overweight cash right now? He's being value-sensitive.
No, he's not. He has a very different investment strategy than you or I. He waits for big opportunities in undervalued companies to present themselves and tries to keep enough cash on hand to make massive investments as these opportunities arise. You can't truly invest like Warren because you lack both the insight and the capital. He doesn't play markets, he plays niches and always has. So I guess continue listening to all your hype and not making money- the same hype that made you invest while things are hot rather than consistently over time will burn you again and again.
 
But that one year he scores big by being contrarian more than makes up for years underpreforming. Kinda like Taleb. Sit 98% treasuries and 2% in options. 6 out 7 years the options expire worthless, but the 7th year comes in big. Moreso than what a passive indexer would make in 7 years.
Read the article, hell, read every study ever done on hedge fund performance. Generally they all perform worse than the market, on average. Stop listening to your feels and cherry picking wins and look at the data
 
No, he's not. He has a very different investment strategy than you or I. He waits for big opportunities in undervalued companies to present themselves and tries to keep enough cash on hand to make massive investments as these opportunities arise. You can't truly invest like Warren because you lack both the insight and the capital. He doesn't play markets, he plays niches and always has. So I guess continue listening to all your hype and not making money- the same hype that made you invest while things are hot rather than consistently over time will burn you again and again.

You might want to google Buffet and cash hoard. Doesn't he typically only hold 20B in reserve in case a deal pops up. He's got over 100B now. Why not buy something? Because there is no value anywhere.
 
Read the article, hell, read every study ever done on hedge fund performance. Generally they all perform worse than the market, on average. Stop listening to your feels and cherry picking wins and look at the data

We have a crisis every 10 years or so, And each is bigger than the previous. Why not be patient and wait for price to come to you? There will be a sale.
 
You might want to google Buffet and cash hoard. Doesn't he typically only hold 20B in reserve in case a deal pops up. He's got over 100B now. Why not buy something? Because there is no value anywhere.
You do you and ignore every bit of practical investing advice out there. This is a common mistake amongst physician investors- they assume "I'm highly intelligent, I can outperform the average." It is why physicians, on average, severely underperform in their investments, as they ignore practical and proven advice for trying to blaze their own foolish trail
 
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You do you and ignore every bit of practical investing advice out there. This is a common mistake amongst physician investors- they assume "I'm highly intelligent, I can outperform the average." It is why physicians, on average, severely underperform in their investments, as they ignore practical and proven advice for trying to blaze their own foolish trail

I'm not trying to outperform. I just want to buy value and avoid a big drawdown.
 
“I don’t want to burn my hand on the stove, I just want to not not put my hand on that red circle”

Take Amazon for example. As that stock continues to go up w/o splitting, liquidity dries up. What's going to happen on a pullback when passive ETFs have to rebalance. Who is going to absorb a big block order of a stock in the 4 digit zone?
 
But that one year he scores big by being contrarian more than makes up for years underpreforming. Kinda like Taleb. Sit 98% treasuries and 2% in options. 6 out 7 years the options expire worthless, but the 7th year comes in big. Moreso than what a passive indexer would make in 7 years.

From the link I gave above:

Warren Buffet said:
Only one fund manager, Ted Seides, took the bet and chose five "funds of funds" as his picks. The first year tracked for the purposes of the wager was 2008, so 2016 represented the ninth full year. Buffett detailed the year-to-year performance of each investment thus far, and the results aren't even close.

The S&P index fund has returned a compounded average of 7.1% per year -- a total return of 85.4% as of the end of 2016. On the other hand, the collective performance of the five funds-of-funds has been dismal. The total gain of 22% represents just over one-fourth of the return of the S&P index fund. So, barring a miraculous year for the hedge fund industry, it looks as if Buffett and the charity he selected to receive his winnings will be victorious at the end of 2017. In fact, Seides conceded the bet shortly after Berkshire's annual letter discussed the bet's current status.

Over a 9 year period, the S&P500 index fund went up 85% compared to the 22% of the best hedge funds that Ted Seides picked. Buffet has given instructions that should he die before his wife, that their investments will be in index funds.
 
Take Amazon for example. As that stock continues to go up w/o splitting, liquidity dries up. What's going to happen on a pullback when passive ETFs have to rebalance. Who is going to absorb a big block order of a stock in the 4 digit zone?

In VTI, Amazon consists of 1.73% of the overall stock. It could totally disappear and have a very mild impact on the overall fund. That's why an index fund is better than individual stocks. It spreads the risks out across the whole fund.
 
From the link I gave above:



Over a 9 year period, the S&P500 index fund went up 85% compared to the 22% of the best hedge funds that Ted Seides picked. Buffet has given instructions that should he die before his wife, that their investments will be in index funds.

There's a feedback loop in which the growth of passive has taken away all the alpha opportunities active could take advantage. This trend will continue until there are no more funds to flow from active to passive. Then you have a problem. Without that persistent, price-insensitive bid from passive funds what will happen to cap weighted indices then?
 
We have a crisis every 10 years or so, And each is bigger than the previous. Why not be patient and wait for price to come to you? There will be a sale.
You don't know when the sale will be or how much it will be for. That's why people fail at properly timing markets on a consistent basis. Rely on the law of averages, not being the doctor that does better than most hedge fund managers, because let's be honest, you're not that good
 
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In VTI, Amazon consists of 1.73% of the overall stock. It could totally disappear and have a very mild impact on the overall fund. That's why an index fund is better than individual stocks. It spreads the risks out across the whole fund.
But what about the other FAANGs? All these vanguard ETFS have nearly the same top ten holdings. Can't you see why the cap-weighted indices have gone up non stop? It's this stupid passive philosophy.

Ask yourself would you buy AMZN by itself at these levels? Think about it.
 
You don't know when the sale will be or how much it will be for. That's why people fail at properly timing markets on a consistent basis. Rely on the law of averages, not being the doctor that does better than most hedge fund managers, because let's be honest, you're not that good

The credit markets give you a warning. Stocks always figure it out last.
 
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