The stock market is broadly down about 20% in 2022. Bonds are down, too. For most people these are where they invest for the future.

"Experts" predict everything from an imminent disaster to an imminent upswing. We might be on the edge of global depression, or not.

What do you predict the markets will do, and what are you doing about it?

Question:
What will the stock market do?

Choices:
We are pretty much at the bottom now
There's another ~10% down before the bottom
Probably another 20%-30% down
The markets are going to drop much much further

Question:
When will the markets bottom?

Choices:
The bottom is happening now
The bottom won't be in for about a year, then it will start going up
It will be 2 or more years before the bottom

Question:
What is your plan for now?

Choices:
I'm trying to ignore the markets, keeping to my existing plan
I'm staying aware but not changing much
I watch closely, making changes as needed
I'm waiting for the right moment to make big moves with my money/investments

 

I think we are at the bottom now. Hopefully, the Republican congress reverses a lot of the free money bills. Looking forward to the rebound because my 401k makes me sad.

My thoughts - If things were good right now, I'd say that the DOW and the S&P are actually overvalued by about 10%, while the NASDAQ is about right. The problem is that things are not 'really' good right now. They say that 'the market' is forward looking and it doesn't like uncertainty. Well IMO, the outlook of both of those perspectives doesn't look very good at all right now! Looking at the Market Summary graphs for all of the the major indexes, each one looks like an EKG. They shouldn't look like that, and in good times they don't! I can see the market dropping another 20-30% (maybe more) before it bottoms, and hopefully rebounds. Time will tell...

Gird your loins folks. It’s going to be a shaky few years. Inflation is going to get a lot worse.

We won’t get back to 2% inflation for at least a decade, if ever in my lifetime

It will go up and it will go down, just like every other year. Impossible to predict. Dow was only down 8 percent while overall market slipped 19 percent. Bonds will do well with an inverted yield curve.

I believe in a couple of years from now we'll look backward at today and realize how good it still is relatively to where we're going.

But it's certainly been a bunch of good times prior to this.

My true opinion about markets, I assume you mean stock exchange, is that it's the gambling field, and I dabble lightly.

Traditionally wealth is better held in tangible assets I can hold and poop on. I stick with those. Everything can be taken from you, but its more difficult for people to steal your land, food, guns, and gold than it is to change a quick rule and just claim your stocks are now no longer yours.


But, hey, I'm a weirdo stashing stuff all over Alaska and fortifying for the long haul.

The markets will climb, as they always do.

Yes, there will be bumps in the road, but it will continue to rise, IMO.

Wealth is for the taking these days. Meaning your wealth. The means to accomplish that is becoming more diverse all the time. The stock market is also ripe for manipulation.
I think we are at least a few years and some hard times from getting back to a legitimate viable market if we ever get back to one.

M2cw, ymmv!

We're headed for a crash the likes of which no one under 90 has ever seen.

quote:

Originally posted by AKSuperDually:
Traditionally wealth is better held in tangible assets I can hold and poop on. I stick with those. Everything can be taken from you, but its more difficult for people to steal your land, food, guns, and gold than it is to change a quick rule and just claim your stocks are now no longer yours.

This is where I am. Cash, gold, silver, and no debt.

My prediction is that the DOW goes under 20K by the end of next year. It's fixin' to get real ugly, and I'll be damned if I'll have my wealth tied up somewhere where someone can take it with a few keystrokes.

I've invested in Hill's Brothers coffee cans and a shovel.

quote:

Originally posted by FenderBender:
We're headed for a crash the likes of which no one under 90 has ever seen.

That's exactly when I plan to get back into the market...Right after that!

I stay with Dogs of the Dow/Dividend Aristocrats with some tweaks and hunches thrown in. I want the companies I own to pay me every 3 months and have a long track record of never missing/decreasing % payments and making regular dividend increases.

These are uncharted waters and as others have mentioned, hard assets and a well stocked pantry may be all that matters.

Predictions are hard. Especially of the future.
—Yogi Berra (and others)

You can't time the market, and you can't pick winners and losers.

Optimized asset allocation with a long term outlook is the only thing that works consistently.

Diversify, factor in age, forward timelines to withdrawal, & individual risk tolerance.


There are peripheral factors to financial well being. Those could be as mundane as insurance, health savings accounts & debt reduction/elimination.

Until dark pools operated by hedge funds are eliminated, the market will be manipulated. We will continue to be financially controlled and suffer for mistakes made by market makers. Hedge funds try to short stocks and cause a seemingly failing business to go bankrupt. If they succeed, they pocket profits by not paying back for the shorted stock of the failed business. If the business prospers, the hedge funds lose by having to continue to pay borrowing fees on the borrowed stocks. Retirement, and other accounts, invested in the hedge funds diminish. This is just an opinion formed after research.

Ask him-

No one knows.

quote:

Originally posted by Tejas421:
No one knows.

Well, while that’s 100% accurate…

It doesn’t mean we don’t seek to craft intelligent forecasts, dynamic plans and firm actions. (Or at least, in this household we try; not sticking my head in the sand.)