Your 401k

December 25, 2018, 02:51 PM

old rugged cross

Your 401k

quote:
Thanks to yesterday, we can update this to the equivalent of both a Corvette Grand Sport convertible and Mazda Miata in ‘18.

Oil & gas stocks got hammered (2.7 to 3.4 percent single day losses).

I am just glad I have my eighties and 2000's Toyota 4wd pickups for retirement. Ain't a sports car guy anyways.

December 25, 2018, 04:18 PM

mikeyspizza

I'm hurting bad like everyone else. I had been 100% cash for about 2 months fearing something like this, then went all back in on Oct 5, the first or second day the market was down several hundred points.

Luckily, I don't need to draw on it, and am 5 years away from mandatory IRA RMDs.

December 26, 2018, 08:00 AM

Amurr

Should be buying today if you have cash and a long term time frame.

December 26, 2018, 12:35 PM

lude4life

Sale time! Buy more!

December 26, 2018, 04:14 PM

radioman

Dang. What a difference a day makes. Well, at least it was up big time today.

December 26, 2018, 05:28 PM

nhtagmember

last I looked I was down over $30k

but I have at least 10 more years before I want to start withdrawing anything, so I'm not going to panic about a drop in the bucket time

all of the companies in my portfolio are sound

its the market that is swinging, not the performance of my stocks

however I have a bit of cash and might buy some additional stock next week if its still a good buy - need to do the analysis of them and that means library time

December 26, 2018, 05:56 PM

sjtill

My portfolio was up >6%. Today.
Dow up >1000.
Volatility, thy name is programmed trading.
Wish we had a word of wisdom today from JAllen.

December 26, 2018, 06:58 PM

Bytes

quote:
Originally posted by sjtill:
Wish we had a word of wisdom today from JAllen.

Yep, he had a calming tone in his posts. The big swing today reminded me of the 2008 2009 debacle. There were swings of +-1000 points in the Dow for a day. A much larger percentage in those days but this does not seem good to me.

December 26, 2018, 08:02 PM

Graniteguy

Happy to say I exited the market completely a few weeks back. Sunk it all into a Navy FCU 3.8% CD for a few years until the dust clears.

I am going to enjoy not giving a shit what the market does for the next 3 years.

December 26, 2018, 08:02 PM

sjtill

A clip from a WSJ article on the magnitude of programmed trading:

quote:
Today, quantitative hedge funds, or those that rely on computer models rather than research and intuition, account for 28.7% of trading in the stock market, according to data from Tabb Group--a share that’s more than doubled since 2013. They now trade more than retail investors, and everyone else.

Add to that passive funds, index investors, high-frequency traders, market makers, and others who aren’t buying because they have a fundamental view of a company’s prospects, and you get to around 85% of trading volume, according to Marko Kolanovic of JP Morgan .

“Electronic traders are wreaking havoc in the markets,” says Leon Cooperman, the billionaire stock picker who founded hedge fund Omega Advisors.

Behind the models employed by quants are algorithms, or investment recipes, that automatically buy and sell based on pre-set inputs. Lately, they’re dumping stocks, traders and investors say.

“The speed and magnitude of the move probably are being exacerbated by the machines and model-driven trading,” says Neal Berger, who runs Eagle’s View Asset Management, which invests in hedge funds and other vehicles. “Human beings tend not to react this fast and violently.”

Behind the market swoon: the herdlike behavior of computerized trading