Down goes the Dow

The stuff that did well, kudos for you to understand that those aren't the things to speculate with. I would simply ascribe more of your holdings to investment vehicles of that ilk, and ascribe less to speculative plays that are not only delivering sub-par returns for you, they are leaving you aggravated and annoyed,

Best to learn these lessons while you are an 'investing noob'. We all have.

Read a book or two on investing, too. I've found them to be surprisingly interesting, though I haven't read one in years.

Best of luck (but frankly, I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket)

I am literally a professional investor, I spend the whole day following markets, reading, making trades...and it took until age 45 or so not to do that. I am garbage at timing, single stock buying, etc. But I am quite good at allocating in a simple way and making changes around the edges.

Point is, you may be garbage, like 95% of people, at buying individual securities. If that is true, and it's probably true, the sooner you chill out and buy index funds, the richer you will be when you turn 67.

I wish I had learned this earlier. Time flies and you will run out of it.

Thank you and everyone for the advice. I'm 37 and have always done index funds until last year when I saw everyone making easy money. I did make a good amount with NIO and PLTR last year, but haven't had much luck since then. Now I wish I had stuck to index funds the whole time. It's hard when you see your friends and family 5-10x their money in a week.

I asked you guys if I should rollover my 401k a couple months ago, fearing a correction. I invested all of it right away as suggested. It did dip some but now it's up 13k already, so thanks for that advice.

investing noob wrote:

Meanwhile my sister in law, who honestly is not very bright, has made a killing this year from GME, AMC, doge, Tesla, SHIB etc. She and her husband think SHIB can go to $1. They don't know what market cap or PE ratio are. One day when Tesla tanked, I said Nasdaq is dipping because inflation rates rose and she asked "what is Nasdaq?"

This is classic. The markets today are one big crap show. I watch the open, and the close. In between makes no sense. The Fed meetings, hanging on every word. Funny really. Earnings reports all non-GAAP, and so many zero or very little EPS. You shouldn’t be surprised, every day investment narratives are promoted on the financial channels and electronic media that will in the end fleece millions. Reasonable voices are drowned out because they are bad for business. Sad, like so many things going on in this country.

Earnings Scorecard: For Q3 2021 (with 89% of S&P 500 companies reporting actual results), 81% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive EPS surprise and 75% of S&P 500 companies have reported a positive revenue surprise.

Just slightly inadvertently sold my MANA at about $2.96 or so. I sold it into ETH directly.

$15k profit on that one so pretty solid.

Should’ve just cashed out at $4+, I thought maybe the metaverse coins would get a quick meme pump. Might buy back in if it goes below 2.

I hate seeing small caps flounder after a pump when you could just cycle it back to ETH and get that steady crank.

Stocks crushing, glad I held on to TSLA. Contrarian bet VWAGY still going good.

How about those 7% iBonds? Worth throwing $10k in that becomes an emergency fund 10k after a year old holding?

Swaglord the realest 123 wrote:

Just slightly inadvertently sold my MANA at about $2.96 or so. I sold it into ETH directly.

$15k profit on that one so pretty solid.

Should’ve just cashed out at $4+, I thought maybe the metaverse coins would get a quick meme pump. Might buy back in if it goes below 2.

I hate seeing small caps flounder after a pump when you could just cycle it back to ETH and get that steady crank.

Stocks crushing, glad I held on to TSLA. Contrarian bet VWAGY still going good.

How about those 7% iBonds? Worth throwing $10k in that becomes an emergency fund 10k after a year old holding?

LoL it's posts like this that make it hard to stick to indexing.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

In my past profession I encouraged retirees who desired to travel not to wait. Health and infirmaries of age can halt plans.

It’s good to know that you gave at least some good advice to your clients. Unfortunately you ran up so much personal debt building up your faux image that you had to work until you were 70 and now your health predicaments compromise any traveling wishes you might have had. Hopefully your clients fared better.

How’s the ten year old Honda Accord holding up?

investing noob wrote:

Swaglord the realest 123 wrote:

Just slightly inadvertently sold my MANA at about $2.96 or so. I sold it into ETH directly.

$15k profit on that one so pretty solid.

Should’ve just cashed out at $4+, I thought maybe the metaverse coins would get a quick meme pump. Might buy back in if it goes below 2.

I hate seeing small caps flounder after a pump when you could just cycle it back to ETH and get that steady crank.

Stocks crushing, glad I held on to TSLA. Contrarian bet VWAGY still going good.

How about those 7% iBonds? Worth throwing $10k in that becomes an emergency fund 10k after a year old holding?

LoL it's posts like this that make it hard to stick to indexing.

few people post their Ls....just their Ws.

lots of Ls out there from trading that you don't hear about.

Good stuff. I think I posted last year about a bunch of GDX that I lost on. I had sold some earlier for good gain, but held onto a bunch too long. Good thing I sold it, though.

In this case I would say agip is giving decent advice for the everyman, among which I include myself. I have had “skill” in avoiding every major drawdown, and “luck” picking individual vehicles—but I should make clear that I’m not putting 80% of my net worth into a gamble on individuals. If I did, I would be a billionaire today...and possibly destitute tomorrow!

Really, for individual plays, you have to consider the money gone. But, nobody ever made it really big by buying diversified funds. Nothing wrong with being a boglehead, though.

Heck, we’re even going to max out on those ibonds this year and next, and maybe 2023, depending. Many thanks agip, I had no idea, nor did anybody I know. I told a friend about it and he laughed at me, saying that was chump change. Maybe so, but it’s MY chump change. I look at it this way: if 40-60k is a lot to you, the bonds are good because they are low risk—and if 40-60k is nothing to you, then who cares? The hassle of buying and administering them is absolutely minimal. I am going to use them to maintain USD cash equivalent exposure—and if I never use it, I will help defray the cost of some kid’s schooling in astrophysics/cosmology, or maybe Russian lit or ballet😁.

If such fields still exist in 25 years’ time, that is.

Thanks agip.

agip wrote:

investing noob wrote:

LoL it's posts like this that make it hard to stick to indexing.

few people post their Ls....just their Ws.

lots of Ls out there from trading that you don't hear about.

Anyone in particular you have in mind?

Something you might find interesting.

S&P Global Reported ( GAAP ) TTM EPS estimates for the 4 quarters of 2021 from 1 year ago.

3/31/2021 was $113.03 ( Actual was $128.20 )

6/30/2021 was $131.05 ( Actual was $158.76 )

9/30/2021 was $135.61 ( Actual with 82.8% reporting is $175.99 )

12/31/2021 was $143.15 ( Current est is $192.48 ; more on that below )

Comparison from 6 months ago.

6/30/2021 was$150.48 ( Actual was $158.76 )

9/30/2021 was $162.29 ( Actual with 82.8% reporting is $175.99 )

12/31/2021 was $176.94 ( Current est is $192.48 )

3/31/2022 was $177.76 ( Current est is $199.07 )

6/30/2022 was $182.83 ( Current est is $200.43 )

9/30/2022 was $188.02 ( Current est is $202.59 )

12/31/2022 was $193.11 ( Current est is $208.56 )

agip wrote:

investing noob wrote:

LoL it's posts like this that make it hard to stick to indexing.

few people post their Ls....just their Ws.

lots of Ls out there from trading that you don't hear about.

Per esempio

Amazing what $4.3 Trillion can do in just 20 months.

IBONDS:

just did my 5 minutes of due diligence, and like the Mas, we will be a biting on the iBonds, maxing out this year and for the foreseeable future years.

Too bad the limit the yearly max.

Thx, for the tip.

One more thing to do before the end of the year.

Re; iBonds: I'm real happy I could give an actual piece of advice that is taken up by y'all

You are very welcome.

Mostly for my colleague Igy: I've been calling clients for whom iBonds might work...it's been a great experience. I'm literally recommending they send their money elsewhere, away from my management. Which they immediately recognize as unusual for someone in this business. But on the other hand, it's only $10,000 or $20,000 per year so even if I send money from their accounts with me too fund iBonds purchases, it's not really material to me as a loss of income. But I feel good about it and I'm hoping my clients will recommend me to friends and family partly based on this. Sort of a marketing strategy that helps the clients.

Anyway, it's been fun.

agip,

Good on you. In similar situations I encouraged clients to take the pension benefit when it was in their favor, or keeping old Series E Savings Bonds when the rate was way superior to market. Like you alluded to, good for the soul as well as Karma.

Igy

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

agip,

Good on you. In similar situations I encouraged clients to take the pension benefit when it was in their favor, or keeping old Series E Savings Bonds when the rate was way superior to market. Like you alluded to, good for the soul as well as Karma.

Igy

Isn’t that common sense?

It’s kind of unbelievable thinking about a bond on which the basic rate is zero—but it can be redeemed after a year, and if the yield ends up being totally crap then one only has to wait 3 months to sell, and won’t have lost anything if held for less than 5 years, except the opportunity cost of those 3 months. And the yield for that mandatory one year looks to be ok, unless they make some insane CPI fudge 6 months from now.