How are your investments doing?

[DarkBlack]

Let me tell you something that has been brewing...the baby boomers are no longer the dominant voting block. Millennials are now the largest voting block, surpassing Gen X . They are falling behind milestones their parents have made at younger ages. This being the biggest...

They are going to start voting en mass to socialize the profits made by the prior generations as a way to stay equal. Keep an eye in New York mayors race. Also, the 401k machine is being held afloat by AI, once the real earning are priced in and can't be sustained, it's going to start slow and then all at once. See .com bubble for a recent example of how that rug pull goes. The flow of 401k money is decreasing with the adaptation of AI. The financial markets will change and there is a lot of paper wealth that will disappear.

This thread is a classic case study told many times over, that the paper wealth is not seeing what is coming. If you are 60+...get your money out of the market. There is huge forward risk on the horizon. Save in real assets, not paper assets.

I think even housing in 10 years will be a complete 180 from where we are now. They will have to bulldoze entire blocks to keep the value of housing from completely cratering. Demographics are changing very fast...

Plan accordingly...

Doom and gloom. The sky is falling!
There’s always been dire market predictions. The market has survived and persevered through the Great Depression, WWII, etc… I don’t think tomorrow is going to be a historical game changer

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I chased returns a lot when I was still working. Since then I have parked everything where I don't have to worry about it. I have been retired for 12 years, have no debt, and have not touched principle. RMDs are still running below earnings, which will change as I move into my 80s. I concentrate on value stocks and take unsheltered dividends as spending money. The wife and I both have SS and modest pensions with survivor benefits. Money is not a concern. Cash flow pays the bills. I have no debt. The house and vehicles are in excellent condition. My retirement plan is working fine.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

I don't agree with the philosophy that you don't lose the money until you sell. Regardless of whether an investment is up or down, the only thing that matters is your assessment of the future.

If my buggy whip stock is down 75%, it might be time to acknowledge that buggy whips aren't a growth industry and accept my loss. When my Exxon stock was down, I believed that oil would continue to be a critical resource for the world, and I rode it out.

When I retired, I started paying closer attention to my investments, and I learned that several of the financial terms don't mean what I intuitively think they should mean.

To me, "amount invested" means the money that I took from my wallet and placed into an investment. If that investment produced dividends, which I allow to reinvest, my wallet would say that those dividends are part of the investment return. Financial software says those dividends add to my "amount invested". This causes the calculated "return" and "% return" to be lower than I would expect.

When evaluating long-term performance, it is also critical to "show closed lots". This means that, even if you sell a bad investment, it will still show up on your portfolio report with a current value of zero, and it is still used in the overall performance stats for the portfolio. This can make a HUGE difference in the calculated return and % return.

Internal rate of return (IRR) is the value that makes the most sense to me. It takes into account all of the buys and sells and dividends, and it calculates the equivalent annual interest rate that would generate the resulting value over time. IME, the IRR is unaffected by the "show closed lots" setting.

I also find that the RATE of return (IRR) is much more useful than the % return. If I have an investment that has generated a 30% return, that might be great, or it might be lousy. If I've only had it for a year, that's great. If I've had it for 20 years, then that's not so good.

If you sell at a loss, Congress in its wisdom has socialized your loss. You can deduct a loss from your income to lower your taxes. If it's a big loss, you can avoid paying taxes for years.

 

[drssg]

If you sell at a loss, Congress in its wisdom has socialized your loss. You can deduct a loss from your income to lower your taxes. If it's a big loss, you can avoid paying taxes for years.

This isn't a political discussion.

Some people get hyper-focused on reducing their taxes, but it's tough to get rich by selling things at a loss.

 

[WM75Guy]

I chased returns a lot when I was still working. Since then I have parked everything where I don't have to worry about it. I have been retired for 12 years, have no debt, and have not touched principle. RMDs are still running below earnings, which will change as I move into my 80s. I concentrate on value stocks and take unsheltered dividends as spending money. The wife and I both have SS and modest pensions with survivor benefits. Money is not a concern. Cash flow pays the bills. I have no debt. The house and vehicles are in excellent condition. My retirement plan is working fine.

We are in a similar situation. Before we reach the age of RMDs I think we will slowly convert our traditional IRAs over to Roth IRAs. We will have to pay some income tax now but will save our heirs some tax issues, plus no RMDs for us. We will not have to use the IRA principal to pay the income tax.

 

[Fuddyduddy1952]

Let me tell you something that has been brewing...the baby boomers are no longer the dominant voting block. Millennials are now the largest voting block, surpassing Gen X . They are falling behind milestones their parents have made at younger ages. This being the biggest...

They are going to start voting en mass to socialize the profits made by the prior generations as a way to stay equal. Keep an eye in New York mayors race. Also, the 401k machine is being held afloat by AI, once the real earning are priced in and can't be sustained, it's going to start slow and then all at once. See .com bubble for a recent example of how that rug pull goes. The flow of 401k money is decreasing with the adaptation of AI. The financial markets will change and there is a lot of paper wealth that will disappear.

This thread is a classic case study told many times over, that the paper wealth is not seeing what is coming. If you are 60+...get your money out of the market. There is huge forward risk on the horizon. Save in real assets, not paper assets.

I think even housing in 10 years will be a complete 180 from where we are now. They will have to bulldoze entire blocks to keep the value of housing from completely cratering. Demographics are changing very fast...

Plan accordingly...

Nah...not us.
For what you're predicting to be true would mean the bankruptcy of everything we know:
Walmart, GM, Apple, all the oil companies, airlines, utilities, foreign investments that would make The Great Depression pale in comparison.
We've weathered many storms, the most recent this last April. We lost seven figures in one day. A good friend calls me up..."that's it! My entire life savings is gone! I'm selling what little I have left!". I advised not to do it, and I bought more. Hold tight.
I retired 12 years ago, he's 67 saying he will work until he passes.
Oh well...

 

[RSKY]

Nah...not us.
For what you're predicting to be true would mean the bankruptcy of everything we know:
Walmart, GM, Apple, all the oil companies, airlines, utilities, foreign investments that would make The Great Depression pale in comparison.
We've weathered many storms, the most recent this last April. We lost seven figures in one day. A good friend calls me up..."that's it! My entire life savings is gone! I'm selling what little I have left!". I advised not to do it, and I bought more. Hold tight.
I retired 12 years ago, he's 67 saying he will work until he passes.
Oh well...

You understand what I mean by 'you don't loose it until you sell it'.

A guy I worked with at my last place of employment had retired in his mid fifties. He and several others pulled everything out of their 401Ks and retirement funds, which was substantial, and gave it to a local "Financial Advisor" to invest. A couple years later it started dropping and he was loosing a bundle a day for months. Said it cost him $35k in penalties to pull his money out. Ending up loosing more than half the retirement funds that he had put away over the years. He was back working in the same factory five years after he had retired. Another supervisor told me that a couple of the ones that had invested the same as my friend and didn't sell were still retired and the fund or whatever they had invested in had come back and making money for them.

My friend panicked and sold when the fund was at a low point, so he lost half his investment. His buddies held on and waited and it came back up and started making money for them again.

I really don't know what he had invested in. If it was one mutual fund or whatever. But I know if the companies a mutual is invested in are solid then the fund will come back. May take a while, but it will.

RSKY

 

[CloverKnollFarms]

I'm not going to complain about a 26% gain in the past year.

I retired a year ago and I'm better off than I was when I quit

 

[MAX-24-Dean]

We really only have one direction to go, since the US dollar is no longer the worlds reserve currency. We are not servicing our debt and it looks like we aren't serious about getting it under control.
My investment are doing fine, Solar, Insulation, new windows and no debt.
Mutual fund is very liquid and it is doing fine too!

 

[Larry Caldwell]

You understand what I mean by 'you don't loose it until you sell it'.

A guy I worked with at my last place of employment had retired in his mid fifties. He and several others pulled everything out of their 401Ks and retirement funds, which was substantial, and gave it to a local "Financial Advisor" to invest. A couple years later it started dropping and he was loosing a bundle a day for months. Said it cost him $35k in penalties to pull his money out. Ending up loosing more than half the retirement funds that he had put away over the years. He was back working in the same factory five years after he had retired. Another supervisor told me that a couple of the ones that had invested the same as my friend and didn't sell were still retired and the fund or whatever they had invested in had come back and making money for them.

My friend panicked and sold when the fund was at a low point, so he lost half his investment. His buddies held on and waited and it came back up and started making money for them again.

I really don't know what he had invested in. If it was one mutual fund or whatever. But I know if the companies a mutual is invested in are solid then the fund will come back. May take a while, but it will.

RSKY

Warren Buffet says the best time to buy is when everyone is jumping out of windows. I think he's right.