Stock market

[FrozenInTime]

Recent drop cut me bad. I'm glad I have enough time left to ride it out. I'm changing my strategy, going to start investing in ammunition (I have lots of smoke poles), investing in some livestock for food, lots of seed so I can grow my own brewing supplies with flour as a by product, etc. We almost had enough to pay off our home loan, not now. Guess swmbo is now going to have to work a few more years. Wish I could, but I can't. This was not supposed to happen until later this fall.... caught a lot of us with our shorts down.

[Pudge]

I have heard it said that people spend more time planning their next vacation than they do planning their financial future. No expert here (by far), but I tend to agree.

Nobody plans to buy a house when the prices are at their peak or panics and sells when the housing prices tank... although that is EXACTLY what we tend to do with investments.

I'm currently all in stocks essentially in a mutual fund. It isn't diversified at all. Bonds at roughly 2% seem like a solid and secure way to slowly lose money when you consider lost interest potential combined with inflation. I'm staying "all in" until I'm firmly inside a 10 yr window of my retirement... which I probably am. At that point, I need a complete strategy overhaul.

Anyway, riding this thing out is by far the best plan. If you believe prices overall will be higher 10 yrs from now, you need to be investing. If you aren't, now is a great time to get in. These are discount days on Wall Street.

[Dawg LB Steve]

Give it a couple of weeks F.I.T. it will be right back.

[Chuck N]

Do you ever notice how these "corrections" always seem to happen in the middle of the month or at the beginning of the week?

I would like to think that I'm like most working Americans who are putting their money into a 401(K) or an IRA or Roth in that I have my automatic payment going into my Roth on the first of the month. And most working Americans have their payment deducted from their paychecks at the end of the pay week. This means that most of our portfolios are going to get raped by the down-turn but by the time we are going to put more money into the market we will have missed the lowest prices and the best opportunity to make the most money.

As much as I agree with the belief that the stock market is the best place to save for my retirement I still don't trust it to be on the "up-and-up" and firmly believe that there are a few VERY monied people who have a VERY strong influence on the market and use that influence to fleece our annuities and mutual funds every now and then to make even more money while we have to slowly climb back up with the rest of the market to get to where we were.

[bpgreen]

Do you ever notice how these "corrections" always seem to happen in the middle of the month or at the beginning of the week?

I would like to think that I'm like most working Americans who are putting their money into a 401(K) or an IRA or Roth in that I have my automatic payment going into my Roth on the first of the month. And most working Americans have their payment deducted from their paychecks at the end of the pay week. This means that most of our portfolios are going to get raped by the down-turn but by the time we are going to put more money into the market we will have missed the lowest prices and the best opportunity to make the most money.

As much as I agree with the belief that the stock market is the best place to save for my retirement I still don't trust it to be on the "up-and-up" and firmly believe that there are a few VERY monied people who have a VERY strong influence on the market and use that influence to fleece our annuities and mutual funds every now and then to make even more money while we have to slowly climb back up with the rest of the market to get to where we were.

In almost all cases, it takes at least a few days from payday until the day the 401(k) money is invested. There are a number of reasons for this, but it does take time to get it all done, especially for smaller companies. In some cases, it's really fast and may even happen on payday, but more often, it takes some time. They actually have up to 15 days to get the money to the plan trustee (IIRC, 20 years ago, it was 90 days). So the date/day of the week when 401(k) money gets invested in the market is really pretty random.