My taxable account lost $4500 since last week

You should have sold before the collapse, but yes, SELL ALL NOW!

For what it is worth, I am a few years from retirement. My net worth in the last few days has fallen the equivalent of 2 years current salary and about 3.5 years current take-home pay.

As humans, we are prone to anchoring bias. We cannot help but compare our current portfolio relative to where it was at its recent highs. Market corrections hurt, but the market is currently at a point that it is higher than where we started Jan. 1st. If you told me at the start of the year that the S&P 500 would be up 3.62% on the year as of Oct. 11th, I would have been OK with that return.

Collapse? Not happening. Must be a crat. Ups and downs. It is the market.

909087 wrote:

Collapse? Not happening. Must be a crat. Ups and downs. It is the market.

Collapses are indeed what happens when you cut taxes and increase spending. But that's ok. When the Democrats win the House and Senate this year we can blame the collapse on them, and the poorly educated will believe us.

Signed - Trump and the pussies like McConnell and Graham.

Your salary must not be very much...

Gosh, you are over exposed to the most overvalued elements of a ridiculously overvalued market. I am assuming you need this money liquid over the coming months? What were you thinking?

@909087 wrote:

909087 wrote:

Collapse? Not happening. Must be a crat. Ups and downs. It is the market.

Collapses are indeed what happens when you cut taxes and increase spending. But that's ok. When the Democrats win the House and Senate this year we can blame the collapse on them, and the poorly educated will believe us.

Signed - Trump and the pussies like McConnell and Graham.

Haha ... sounds like a Dumbocrap who can’t believe their Gestapo tactics didn’t work for once on the usually compliant RINOs.

Kavanaugh on the bench baby! The rule of law prevails for at least a little longer against the leftist, fascist mob.

W. Buffett wrote:

Your salary must not be very much...

Its all due to the conniving George Soros out to sow despair so he can personally make a profit of our currency.

W. Buffett wrote:

Your salary must not be very much...

In the past week, the S&P 500 has lost roughly 6%. Let's say 'The Big Loser', who is close to retirement, had $4,000,000 in the stock market last week. A 6% loss would mean a loss of $240,000, putting their salary at $120,000. Perhaps that may be low to the average LR user, but I'd be pretty pleased with it.

I doubt it. Someone with that much money close to retirement would be more risk adverse.

This is the way of the market. And this is coming from a guy who is invested in ETFs and Cryptocurrency.

It goes up and down, but over time things will balance out and you will profit. You just have to have patience.

buy low /sell high. This is why you should always DCA, and never throw a huge lump sump at it, but byy a little over time.

If you can, buy one bitcoin, seriously. This is a coin that is capped at 21 million coins in circulation ( there will be no more than that), and the human population is 7.5 billion. So think about that. Supply and Demand will be in full effect. Bitcoin was at 314.00 in 2014. It is at 6500.00 as I speak, and had an all time high of 20,000. Think about that.

losing 4500.00( based on your worth) is no big deal in the market that will have highs and low. Whatever you invested in look at its full history chart, and you will see its lows and its highs. So your loss is impermanent.

mathguy96 wrote:

W. Buffett wrote:

Your salary must not be very much...

In the past week, the S&P 500 has lost roughly 6%. Let's say 'The Big Loser', who is close to retirement, had $4,000,000 in the stock market last week. A 6% loss would mean a loss of $240,000, putting their salary at $120,000. Perhaps that may be low to the average LR user, but I'd be pretty pleased with it.

Your mathematical reasoning and deduction is very close actually. My actual numbers are all a bit higher, but you are in the ballpark.

In 2008-2009, I was 90% equities. Rode the market down to its trough and lost many nights of sleep (literally) along the way. Stayed in the market and added to my positions at lower prices. My portfolio rebounded and then some, as my equity positions are up 300+% since the market bottom. At the time, I had set a goal to be able to retire early and or at least be financially able to walk away by age 45-50. Today, my portfolio is around 75-80% equities. Most of my retirement assets are indexed. My taxable account, where I hold individual stocks, is 30% cash sitting on the sidelines waiting for opportunities and because the market valuations have been a bit rich for the last couple of years.

To the poster saying that someone close to retirement would not be this heavily invested in equities.... Well, I am.

I have more than enough to live the same lifestyle in retirement if I walked away today, even if the market were to correct 20%. Actually a better lifestyle in retirement as I won't be working. At my age, I still have 40+ years of life expectancy. There is no need to be conservative with that type time horizon. In addition, a lot of my portfolio will pass along to my kids, so the horizon of my estate is even longer. What percentage of equities would you allocate to a portfolio with a 75 year time horizon then? Given that inflation is ticking up, the Fed is raising the Fed Funds rate, and last week, the long end of the Treasury yield curve started finally increasing, would you really want to be holding bonds right now? Go to cash or money markets? Good luck keeping up with inflation which is running at 2.5-2.8% (depending on which indicator you look at). I'm comfortable with my equity position even if we see a further correction over the coming weeks.

Companies will begin Q3 earnings releases next week. It is very likely that forward guidance for 2019 is not going to be a positive sign for the market coming up against tough 2018 comps post-corporate tax rate cut. I expect substantial volatility the next few weeks of earnings season.

So nobody answered my question except one possible troll... Would you sell now or stay the course and keep buying?

Futures are looking good right now, so at least wait until the end of today.

Stay the course

If someone near retirement has more than $4 million in liquid assets and, presumably, no significant debt, why would he or she be taking any significant risks in the market?

ohia wrote:

Stay the course

James Cook's motto.

Stay the course.

And I don't really understand the risk averse junk that other guy was talking about. I hear it all the time that you should take more out of equities as you approach retirement. But when you crunch the numbers, there is no reason to be "risk averse." As you approach retirement, most people plan to pull 2.5-4% from their accounts annually, and still have a very long horizon for investing. I have yet to find anything that beats the SP500 over a 20-year window over the past 125 years, so why ever move money out of it? Even if you retired at the top before the great recession and pulled 4% through it, you'd be beating any "risk averse" investment right now after 10 years.

If U have wrote:

If someone near retirement has more than $4 million in liquid assets and, presumably, no significant debt, why would he or she be taking any significant risks in the market?

Because "significant risks" in the market don't exist. They are a myth.