Is the Van Halen reunion over?

More of a Van Hagar guy?

rd

You have to go through "Millennium Trust" to set it up as a Roth account (or other retirement vehicle).

https://www.mtrustcompany.com/

Are you certain this wasn't a taxable event?

Anyone catch FREDS??

Yes... I checked it all out before preceding. I had to set up the Roth with Mellinium Trust prior to rolling funds from the existing Roth.

Question for KPG and some other talking heads in this thread? How do you feel about the Quantative Easing that was done for 6 years that ended in August 2015? The Feds printed $6.1 Trillion bucks....in essence kicking the can down the road so to speak so things didn't crash on their watch. Now it's all coming to a head and IMO ready to pop at anytime. Where should an average investor have their retirement savings? Will the bond market crash first? Causing a stock market collapse later? Just curious to hear what everyone thinks.

I hate all of that quantitive easing.

IMO, the next 2 rate hikes have already been factored in to the stock and bond prices. Future rate hikes will have more of an impact on bond prices, than it will the stock market. The rates will rise due to the economy doing well.

What's your situation? I say just ride it out. Invest in mutual funds and keep pouring money in to your retirement account. As rates go up, CDs are more attractive.

I don't have time to go into detail but people thinking that bonds will crash are misunderstanding what bonds are.

Stocks crash as I showed above as much as 40% loss in a single month.

Bonds are not stocks

Books and books have been written on the subject of investing I hope you all can further your understanding beyond these few posts on Pinside

Here is one survey on bond returns

http://personal.fidelity.com/products/pdf/perspective-potential-downside-bonds.pdf

The fed printed money to buy their own bonds and drive yields down kept borrowing cheap. This also drove the value of the dollar down commodities up now with the fed raising rates the dollar is rising and commodities are going down no pop. As for a crash in the bond market that would mean a spike in yields and a good place to invest

There's never a bad time for a good investment.

So, here's how to fake looking like a pro investor/trader. And by pro, I mean someone who has half a clue.
First, NEVER give advice and don't tell people what you think is going to happen. If you absolutely can't help yourself and have to prove your fortune telling skills, do it in a way that doesn't sound like you absolutely know what is going to happen, because you don't. All the traders I have ever known who I would give the time of day to always use language like, "I'm a bit worried about....", or, "What if the way we've been thinking about this is actually...", or, "I couldn't sleep last night as I can't work out....". All professional traders are CONTINUALLY TORMENTED BY DOUBT.
Second, If you are saying or thinking something that can be freely sourced from the internet or CNBC or Yahoo Finance or your local suburban accountant, then STOP THINKING IT and especially STOP SAYING IT. You immediately give away your amateur status, and you will likely end up damaging yourself or others. All that crap is in the market a thousand times over. You think you just stumbled across all the answers??
Recognise that you are a product of statistics. Plenty of people make money in the markets, plenty more than that lose. You are not special. You have to exist. The richest person on the planet has to be SOMEONE.
And lastly, for now, making money is not about being right. It is about being small when you are wrong and massive when you are right. The biggest mistake you can make as a trader is being right and being small. The only reason I have ever fired a trader is because they were absolutely right about something in every way, except they didn't have a position.
I have traded the equity derivative, commodity and bond markets for bulge bracket banks in the biggest dealing rooms in the world for over 25 years. I have been wrong a LOT. More than you would believe. I don't need to work any more.
I will be wrong again.
I will never tell you what I think is going to happen.
Listen, don't talk.
Good luck to you all.
Oh, and pinball is waaaaay more fun than trading.

Great post. I invest long term. Recently moving a bit more in Energy funds.

As far as previous post, I 've been lucky with some big wins. It's so easy to lose a lot of money.

There's some dang solid wisdom right there.

IMO it takes money to make money, you need to make (income) more than you spend this is a critical first step.

I've made a lot of money on AAPL but this was related to how much money I had at my disposal to invest at that time. I mean it was after 10 years of investing before I was able to buy a large sum of APPL.

I had been saving/investing for years and years and was at a good point when I got into APPL and have trippled at least. My point is if I had trippled $3000 that's no big deal but if I trippled a much larger stake then we're talking about real money.

But don't be disappointed if you don't have a lot to invest now, most people start out small and over time a small sum plus additional money can snowball.

It takes both initial investment but also keep adding to it that's the key.

The snowball is a good analogy, baby steps and such, Rome wasn't built in a day etc..

But as I said it takes two things first a profession or job that you can earn a decent income leading to the second part saving and investing.

Don't overlook a good job offen needing a good college degree or even graduate school.

Invest in your future because if you don't look out for yourself no one else is going to.

Always try to save invest even if it's just a small amount because it adds up, don't think about getting rich quick but rather the more likely thing is get rich slowly.

Only bit I (maybe indirectly) disagree with, it's not a zero sum game. Just because someone is winning doesn't mean someone else is losing.

People who lose money IMO from two reasons

1) fees charged by investment advisors or brokers etc...

2) trying to beat the market or time the market or both.

People think they have a hot tip or think the market is going to crash or take off so the jump in and out.

Really most investors know very little that isn't known by everyone else and isn't baked into the market already.

Studies show the average investor is notoriously bad at timing the market almost like they pick the exact worst time to move in or out of stocks or bonds.

Every jump in and out costs money, plus you risk missing out on a big day or week run up, you want to be in before the run up but often people wait until they see signs or good news on the product pipeline but that's already too late, you missed the big bump.

Every dog has its day, one day may be technology sector while banks are in the toilet. That doesn't mean you should be only in tech and out of banks because one day the worm is going to turn and you'd wish you had bank stocks or energy or whatever.

Just realize you don't really know anything that going to happen in a day or week and no one else does either.

I recommend buying a broad base low cost ETF or mutual fund and just keep adding as you can and take whatever the market gives you.

In his defense, I don't think he was saying it's a zero sum game. The truth is, most people do lose money in the market. When the market is at a low, they want to be in cash. When the market is at a high, they want to be all in.

This is why when I talk to my advisor, I'm always asking him what his clients are telling him.

The number one thing my advisor combats is human emotion.

I couldn't have said it better myself

Here is a good treatment

A) no money to invest
B) bad decision making

https://www.google.com/amp/s/asymmetryobservations.com/2016/09/14/investors-feel-and-do-the-wrong-thing-at-the-wrong-time/amp/?client=safari

I recall back in the dot com bubble before the crash, every day there were news articles and advertisements (cab driver giving investment advice), billboards you name it. Everyone was screaming and scrambling to get into the market, the higher it got the more people wanted to invest. It was bound to get over sold and crash but often the selling got carried away or good stocks got thrown out with the bad and people sold at rock bottom or capitulated at the exact time they should have held on or bought stocks.

There is always someone buying the day before the crash and always people selling at the absolute bottom of the market.

Correct. It's negative.

Edit- that's a bit flippant of me. It's just that the vultures in the banks suck out so much money from the system I'm surprised any participant on average has ever made any money.

Suck out money from the system?

Then how is the market almost 20,000?

Don't find a two horse race and decide you want to take one side of it. Ask 100 people about a two-outcome system and guess what, you will get a 50/50 split on the expected result. For every short there is a long on the other side, and you can't both be right. Look for sentiment imbalances. Find the priced-in expectation and take the other side. I have used one service for decades and I think it still adds value. www.investorsintelligence.com. But, look at something other than the S&P (and, if you are looking at the "Dow Jones" then give up now). Look at ratios. Have a view on oil? Then look at the gold/oil ratio.

Reject dogma. If you can't change your mind, about anything, in a split second then you are doomed. Go check yourself right now. Find something you really believe in and challenge yourself to change your mind on it. Find reasons to change your mind. If you start to feel offended by the possibility of accepting the alternate view then forget it. Forget trying to make money out of any market and go get a real job. In fact, go get a real job anyway, it's much better for the planet.

Lose some money and be happy about it. Own your mistakes. Make a list of them. Study them intimately and treat them like your children. They are the only thing you have that are truly your own. Your mistakes are just as much the fruits of your labour as your successes. In fact, they are your successes, just a different type. How can you do less of what doesn't work and more of what does if you don't have a portfolio of things that don't work?

Be fucking humble. This should be self evident, and if it's not, then again, give up now.

Charts/technical analysis works. And not for the reasons you think. I am a charting professional. I have invented chart patterns that many professionals use. All the mumbo jumbo that chart guys use (and I'm one of them), all the jargon, it's tea-leaves. You might as well use sightings of crows as trade indicators. Here is the reason it works.. it forces you to study your market carefully and gives you a sense of history. Simple..as..that. Successful chart guys find something that works for them and they employ it consistently for a long time. It's a form of discipline. The more you know about the chart of something, the more you know about it, period. The longer I did this, the more stuff I gave up using and honed WHAT WORKED FOR ME.

Have a sense of humour. The whole trader/tough-guy/douchebag/Mr Serious thing is so wrong. ALL the best traders are funny. Think about it, this is important.

And here's one for the options guys. You know absolutely nothing about what you are doing. Everything that has ever happened to you in the derivative markets is down to pure luck. The smartest thing you can do is stay small. NEVER employ an option strategy that has a notional size bigger than what you could actually invest. Fluff around with yield enhancement if you must, it's a valid strategy, but don't lever up. And stop telling people how to trade options.

This is quite cathartic. I should write a blog on it, lol.

Quoting the DJ? See above. And if they hadn't sucked what they have out of it, it would be 30,000.

I have a problem with a stock purchase as zero sum. It simply is NOT.

This is not an option trade where there is truly a loser of money that pays for the gains of the winner. THAT is zero sum. And the time component forces each trader's hand.

Not the same as the buyer and seller of a stock. There does not need to be a losing side on a stock sale. A stock can be lower than the purchase price and pay a dividend and there is no compunction to sell on time.

Please stop describing stock trades as zero sum. This is infuriating to me. If you are as accomplished as an analyst as you claim, you know darn well stock trades are not zero sum. There are folks on here looking to learn about investing that are going to come away thinking they are. Don't do them that disservice.

Shot and long is like comparing apples and oranges short sellers do not own stock long investors do. Compare a sale of a stock there is a seller and a buyer yes they can both win as the seller may want the money for a better investment

To mirror TimeBandit, the most important thing you can do is take the time to study a company, its competitors, its financials, market conditions, politics, and macro economic conditions before pretending you have an idea how to buy and sell. Studying charts forces this. Subscribing to investing news also forces this. If you can't do all that, you may as well throw darts, which why everyone recommends that most people should stick to long term funds (just remember you still need to study when to get out and back in).

I've played with the market off and on for quite a while with extremely mixed results, overall sub-par because my gut has been right more often than my timing. I blew off spending any further thought to investing several years ago and now anyone can throw a dart at this market and make money. Just don't mistake this good market for your own investing prowess, it gets people again and again, which is why I suspect the best investors are those that can make the most sense of human nature. Company revenues are based on sales, and sales are based on people's desire to buy a product or service. If you are good enough to crack a fraction of the code of human nature, there are plenty of more important things to achieve than stock picking.

I used to listen to a range stock analysts along with daily reading of headlines and investing books, but after mixed results I no longer believe that one can make substantial money in stocks in a short period of time in normal market conditions without a LOT of luck, meaning you are just rolling the dice. Notice how tech stocks rarely IPO any longer? The market is too unpredictable, so the big investors now focus on keeping them private until they are too big to avoid it. It's a far better way to manage a company than focusing a quarter at a time.

At any rate, I do think a solid understanding of global macroeconomic conditions is a fantastic input to fund investing, so I'm thinking about starting there again... it's interesting stuff.

point is, you really can't time the market. You said study and time when to get out and back in, this is (IMO) a false premise. Like I said Buffett's team bought IBM and promptly lost 15% in a few weeks/months (or whatever figure it was). Don't you think old Warren (or his army of stock pickers) studied the company top to bottom. but the fact is he doesn't care because he buys companies or stocks that he wants to own. He doesn't particularly know what the stock will do next week or next month but he kind of knows what he expects to happen over a long time period.

Fact is (IMO) there is no use trying to timing the market.

Who knew black Monday was going to happen? Hindsight is 20:20. My point is and the philosophy is that the timing is impossible and if you miss out on just a few of the totally good up days it's kind of a big deal. Also did Black Monday really matter (assuming you just held on)? DOW is now almost 10x higher than it was before that epic crash not counting all the dividends over 30 years.

*Most* investors don't get market average *because* they jump in and out, they try to time the market. 'Oh Brexit let me get out' of the market, 'oh Trump won let me get out of the market'. Point is, I do great just adding to whatever I have, if the market tanks I just buy more. if the market goes up I just buy more. Overall I get the average price of the stocks (good and bad) and I get the overall market gain.

Now that's not to say I don't rather buy on a DOWN day and sell on an UP day if I want to sell. But to me the only thing that is sure fired free lunch is tax loss harvesting (TLH) and specifically for myself since I have a very large taxable account and I have the highest tax rate possible. So I really get a bang out of that, some people might find it's not really worth the effort but to me, it's golden.

IMO look at those news letters and you can put them in the bottom of the bird cage for all I care. I bet they are wrong quite a lot. So they make money selling investor rags, if they were so smart would they sell the info? No I think they'd make money trading stocks rather than selling advice.

There is a phone number to call to get locks of the week in Football (etc..) you'd think if those locks of the week were so great, why aren't all the bettors ridding around in Rolls Royces? I'll give you 1 guess, it's because those tip hotlines are a lode of bunk and they sell you tips because thats a way for them to make money, if there was a real lock (I mean a REAL LOCK) they would not advertise it because it would run the line up, and etc.. same goes for stock market tips.

Unless you have inside information (which is real illegal) you have nothing that all the big traders don't already have. Professional fund managers can't hardly beat the market (some do lots don't). Sure you'll have a Berkshire Hathaway and Fidelity Magellan type run but no way to know before it happens and those runs don't last forever.

All this BS about zero sum.......So clearly no one has a clue about naked shorting?

I just observe. 15 years ago I did well when Sonics moved to Florida. WaWa is doing great, may want to check them out. Panera bread and Tijuana flats are a couple other restaurants who seem to be doing well.

Stocks to avoid, company's who have stores in malls.

It takes money to make money.
Prov. In order to make money, you must first have some money to invest. I've been reading a lot of books about how to become wealthy, and they all make it depressingly clear that it takes money to make money.

step 1: make more than you spend
step 2: invest that money
step 3: repeat until you have the desired amount of money to retire
step 4: easy street

Short term timing is nearly impossible, but timing is only a piece of the puzzle...it's more important to understand what you are buying or selling, and that's where the studying comes into play. Once you understand a sector you can then apply educated guesses as to timing. It's a game of odds rather than certainties, and studying just helps to increase odds.

Banking is a good recent example and of course I have to talk in hindsight... 2007-2008 those stocks were destroyed. Citigroup went from $500 to $15 in less than 2 years. Any owner of the stock should have used technical signs to decide to sell somewhere before it went to $15 (timing). Since then banks have been bitching about not being able to make money in a low interest environment, and when the Fed finally started dropping hints about imminent rate increases due to a better economy, it was a sign that one could make an educated guess and time(!) a purchase in banks since the increased odds of rising interest rates would also increase the odds of bank stocks rising. Studying tells you which are the better bank stocks/funds/indexes to buy. To add a grain of salt, investors have been trying to time this event for years without success, but it was inevitable rates would have to go up when the economy stabilized.

Your buy and never sell strategy is not bad advice, but you still have to make a guess as to what to buy, at the time you have money to buy. The current strategy of buying a major index fund will bite people at some point... for example, if all new investment money flows into the DOW index, those 30 companies will become overvalued relative to the thousands of other companies and a pricing pullback will become inevitable and will hurt. Do you then spread it across companies in NASDAQ 100? S&P 500? Russel 2000? Sector funds? There's different reasons for each. I'm not disagreeing with you, just trying to stress the fact that buy-and-hold is neither straight forward nor risk-free.

thanks for the thoughtful reply, this subject is something complex not really a subject that lends itself to 300 word replies. And Imo there is more than one way to skin a cat.

I would say if you are astute and have a gift you can beat the odds. But like the story of lake Wobegon where all the kids are above average. It's just a joke. It's likely that I am average or below average. I can't really beat the market (maybe by good luck) so I just feel the best advice is to buy (S&P500 or Total Market index) and hold + add to that. In such a way you get all the winners. If there is a little company that will go like INTC or MSFT in the next 1-20 years you will own it and you will get the gain without having to pick it ahead of time.

Also, as shown the markets move up (is this a doubt?). I mean over time it's like 6-7% for stocks and maybe it won't be that good but I'm predicting that there will be an upward movement. So for example even if you had stocks before the worst crash they will (they do) recover. The great depression, the Great Recession, the dot com bubble, the black Monday crash they all were real and in the moment were a loss but over time they are replaced with gains.

Recall when DOW 1000 was a big thing? 1972
DOW 2000? 1987

the point is we are approaching 20,000 thats 10x or 20x higher

that's not even counting dividends.

Note. I hate DOW as its something they keep messing with add this drop that and it's a stock price weighted index which makes zero sense to me. I hate DOW 30 but it's something people talk about. Don't even talk to me as if that's a serious index. I am talking about Total Stock Market or even S&P500 which comprises like 100%-85% of the US stock market.

I posted the chart twice in this thread going back 200 years the US stock market has gone up 6-8% a year and maybe inflation was 2-3% (IDK) but the point is if you can ride out the ups and downs you are probably better off just buy. and forget.

the strongest determinants of success are thus

1) how much money you invest (this is the Sine qua non) thats Latin for without which nothing. This is the alpha and omega of investing.
2) time (TIME) (***Time***) Time heals all wounds, time is money, time is of the essence, Rome wasn't built in a day. I mean work + time = results.

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3-10) all other factors such as stock picking or sector rotation or chart analysis or fundamentals or TLH etc....

I'm familiar with creating short positions by selling naked. But we both know this is a form of trade that is different than typical selling when the underlying asset is owned.

I bought the Nasdaq 100 in 2007 and still have it after a 150% gain. I wish investing was that easy, but reality is not all are winners, so the 6-8% long term result is more of the norm. And to diverge from boring index buy-and-hold strategies....

Anyone do contrarian investing? I almost convinced myself to dabble in crude oil last year around this time figuring it is a near guarantee to go back up, just no idea when. Sure enough in the past 11 months it has doubled in price, yet it's still 1/2 of what it was in mid 2014. Most energy based stocks suffered as as well during the downturn.. any opportunity left?

Banks are the other interesting sector... I mentioned before that Citigroup was a $500 stock from 2000-7 and now it's at 1994 pricing levels (!). All this talk about banking deregulation under the next administration makes for interesting upside speculation.

So I've been reading this thread for a while with interest, and am looking for some knowledgeable opinions. How do you all weigh your thoughts on continually dollar cost averaging ( a good plan) regardless of what is going on in the market with the concept that bull markets typically only run 8 years or so, the US economy seems to be hanging by a thread, and our national debt is completely unsustainable, short of monetizing it through inflation.

Doesn't it seem to a prudent investor that this might be a good time to take your winnings, pull out of the market, wait for a correction, and then jump back in with both feet? I know that trying to time the market is suicide, but shouldn't one take into account current situations and circumstances? Or do the old rules which held sway for the past 80 years no longer have validity in today's world?

I am retired, no longer make the big salary, and am not pouring cash into stocks rain or shine like I was able to do 10 years ago. I've now got some money in stocks, more in fixed income investments, but am mainly limited to what I now have to work with. If I get caught in a big downturn, I can't buy my way out of the situation by continually investing my salary into the market at its lows, like if I was working. I have to sort of ride the roller coaster until the end. And, being in my mid-'60's, I want to invest somewhat for the future, but also want to invest to have access to some money now. Who cares if I am filthy rich in my 80's, when I might be too old to really enjoy it like I can now?

Advisors I have talked to at Fidelity and Vanguard tell me to put my fixed money back into the market over the course of the next 6 months to a year. But won't I feel foolish if I put a bunch of "safe" money into the market now only to see it lose maybe 15-40% of its value in a downturn? The advisors tell me that it will surely recover over a period of years, but again, when? When I'm 75 or 80?

How do you older guys weigh these issues that affect us much more than an up and coming 30/40 year old with another 20 or more years to work?

Determine the asset ratio suited to your age and risk tolerance.

Determine how much income you need to generate based on your expenses. Are you making that in retirement taking in the above criteria?

Timing the markets is folly. It's been proven over and over again.

Set your mix per the above and then do it.

How much income are your fixed investments producing each year?

We are in an environment where rate increases will be the norm.

To give you an idea, in my muni-bond account, I buy bonds and hold them. When cash is built up from the interest, I buy more muni-bonds. When the bonds mature, I buy more.

It's like watching paint dry, but every investor needs boring assets.

I think the fixed assets are currently in the 2% range. Mostly short term investment grade bond funds and similar vehicles. It would be nice to find something in the 4 -6% range with some safety, but maybe I am dreaming. Haven't found anything out there so far.

Does it make sense to just find some good dividend paying stocks, buy them, and hold them rain or shine for the return? Investment advisors are telling me at 65, I should have maybe 40-50% of my money in stocks, but I sure wouldn't want to lose big on almost half of my life savings should a big downturn occur!

instead of a pinball forum, I suggest you ask on a dedicated investing forum like https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php

no disrespect to the folks here on Pinside, but this is a pinball forum. It'd like my going to a food forum and asking an investing question.

I guarantee you that the people on Boglehead forum are 1000% more informed and there are real people who write books and blogs and articles on the subject of investing particularly saving for retirement.

but there is no way to predict when to get out or get back into the market. It's unknown. You can get out take your winnings and then see another 20% rise and then when are you going to get back in? It could be sever years or never before the market is below it's current level.

I mean we are talking about a market high, but you know (?) that market highs can stick.

Congrats to all those who do well with investing. And I'm 100% about the premise: Investing in businesses, spending less than you make, etc. However, I've been out of the market for a while. People talk about timing the market, but for GenX, especially the tail end of it, like me born in 1980, the timing was kind of done for us and not in a good way.

In 1998 I enter college and tech jobs are tech companies are on fire. 320 kids in my Computing I class. Inflation had been low and deregulation combined with Greenspan's low rates lit stock markets on fire. I love computers anyways so no problem. In 1997 right before I entered college I saw Bill Gates appear on the big screen at Macworld. Apple was virtually bankrupt but I remember putting an Apple stock alert on Yahoo! so I'd get text messages whenever Apple had a big day. I had thought hey if I had any extra money I'd buy Apple stock but I was in college so I had zero dollars. After paying my way through college I learned the first lesson of timing:

Don't be graduating into the tech field in 2002 after the dot com disaster. No one was hiring inexperienced kids with CS degrees like they were four years before. It takes time to make enough to live on your own and save for retirement. By 2004-2005 I finally started making enough to save on my own (having, the years before, taken my passbook savings account down to close to zero). So I got one of those Ameriprise Fee only advisors and put as much away as I could dollar cost averaging into whatever they told me to. And I saved up for a condo because housing was doing awesome! So in 2006 I closed on a condo in an 'up and coming' neighborhood. As you can see, my timing so far is impeccable. Second lesson of timing

Don't buy in neighborhoods that are iffy during a housing bubble. Basically I was instantly upside down, ended up having terrible neighbors, putting my own money into the tiny condo association because the other owners were deadbeats, etc. I needed to sell my investments to keep afloat. By 2009 its obvious that my condo isn't worth half of what I paid. I am debt free other than the condo though, so I hunker down. I build a giant pile of cash and stop investing. Partially because I want the cash if I have to mail the keys to the bank and walk away, so I can get by with awful credit, and partially because no one went to jail after the housing / banking scam. Not exactly trustworthy times. I short-sold in 2011, worked with the bank and got out ONLY shelling out thousands of dollars.

Fast forward. in 2013 I was married and in 2014 we have a kid. I kept piling up cash because I still didn't trust the markets, and also because I have a family and do want a house of ours. We bought this summer. This time, I pick a well established neighborhood and buy a SFH. No associations, etc. (and yes, I'm aware we're likely in yet another housing bubble).

But I've painfully been out of the stock markets. I have been contributing the max up to match in my retirement funds and probably have almost six figures in retirement assets, but its invested in money markets and bonds, because I wasn't sure exactly how much I'd need to put down to get a house. Third rule of timing: I guess always put money in the markets? Six months after closing on the house I have zero desire to put money into a market with crazy high P/E, and a bunch of open frauds out there (IMHO Tesla is a wild fraud, along with maybe a 1/4 of the silicon valley companies out there). I expect a correction because every time interest rates have gone up, it eventually tanks the stock market. So yeah, I'm stuck. It's one thing to dollar cost average in a tall market but its another thing to rebalance into stocks right at the top. Oh and also not trust the markets at all.

Anyways, I'm not the worst off of my age/generation, and I'm a saver at heart and make a good salary. But I know I'm not alone, it seems every milestone I've hit as I get old enough to hit them times with a really shitty time to be investing/buying a house/etc. I guess given my experience I'm just too gun shy at this point about the stock market.

This is all they EVER say.

I can relate to this post a lot. I was on the other end with the housing. I bought a house in AZ with my wife (near phoenix). Bought low 2 years before housing bubble exploded for $140k. Fast forward about 4 years and I got a note in my door at the height of the bubble, bank offering 350K for my house! I am kicking myself to this day that I didn't sell high, I was afraid if I sold the bubble would continue and I'd be priced out of the market. I was young and dumb, didn't know it was a bubble, If I had I would have sold it in a heartbeat. Eventually moved back up north to Wisconsin, got sick of the desert, pollution, etc... Broke even on my house, didn't lose money on it, didn't make any. Heard back from my realtor a year later that the value of the house I sold was 80K, things really tanked in Arizona. I feel lucky I got out when I did. The job market was terrible at the time for people with any sort of IT degree. Now when I look at those homes in AZ they some are shooting back up high again, we are definitely in some sort of a bubble again.

Shameless plug for a good site for trading computers http://www.blueauracomputers.com

The housing market is also nearly impossible to time, let me tell you my real-estate story.

I bought a house in 1996, sold in 2004 and sold the house for twice what I bought it for...nice! But that also means houses now cost twice as much, and I upgraded. The value of my next house then went up 50% in the first two years! So tell me, what happens when your home value and size goes up? So does taxes, insurance and maintenance costs.

Due to poor timing it took 2 years for my homestead exemption to kick in (the cap on annual property tax increases) which happened to coincide with the peak of the housing bubble, so now my tax bill has doubled and with a sky-high propery tax rate, and I was in shock. Needless to say within a couple years the house value plummeted to less than I bought it for, while only by a few percent, the property taxes took many more years to drop back down to the actual value. I held the house for 10 years, and during that time as things went bad I not only fixed them, but I made it better. After 10 years, even with the housing recovery, I wound up selling for 10% less than what I had into it (even though the market price was 10% more than I paid). Effectively negative appreciation for a decade, and that is prior to the massive over-taxation. Every cent of gains on my first house now gone.

My next house went up 20% in the first 2 years (everyone's houses went up in that time, and so did the stock market). I'm left with two lessons: had I stayed in that first house I would own it free and clear today, but instead I have 30 years left on my mortgage because housing costs have greatly out-paced income. It's also a great example of the value of a buy and hold strategy: assuming the long term market trends are upwards, holding it absorbs all market timing snafus you may unknowingly put yourself into. Stocks, real estate, the lessons are all the same.

Right there with you. I read your story and there are so many similarities to mine and a lot of my buddies in my age group. Born in 77'. Got the body blow of trying to start a career in CA during the dot com bust, pulled myself off the mat, found my legs only to get the Tyson style uppercut from a bursting housing bubble in 07' that sent my newly purchased 500k house to 300k by 11'. Timing is everything. I too am a saver by nature and have spent the last 10 years sacrificing to get very stable and debt free. Now I find myself selfishly rooting for a really heavy correction in the stock market. I'm just so tired of buying high. And I want that correction/collapse to happen now, rather than when I'm 50 or 60 and can't recover. I feel like the big correction is coming soon though. Housing prices/rents once again seem insane, int rates don't seem like they can get lower and are indeed heading up, unemployment extremely low, and the stock market is at an all time high. The headlines also seem earily similar to 06' where everything is rosy and there is actually "a lot more room for this Bull to run". 2017 should be interesting.

I was born in 1973, middle of Gen X. I have found the market to be outstanding since I began investing in 1997...again, buy, hold, never sell. Ignore the noise and maintain correct investment ratio. Don't trade.

Are adjustable rate mortgages still a thing though? That had a lot to do with the last housing bubble. People were fine for the first X amount of time when the rate was locked in. Once the rate started to tick up and people couldn't cash out because of the saturated market things started crashing. My wife worked in the fraud dept of a local mortgage company. They were approving everything even when she or a peer would say it's a bad idea based on the research of the borrower. She was recently out of college and I was almost done. If we hadn't been brand new to the job market and done something with her gut instincts, neither one of us would be working right now.

She got a job at THE company to work for in town and literally 8 days after she got that job her old place shut the doors over night.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/20300396

Things crash a lot faster and harder than they get built up. I agree that it seems like easy street right now, so all I want to know is who can I buy puts on and retire next year?

sorry I didn't read the other 240 replies, so, at the risk of being repetitive . . .
where is all the money fleeing bonds going to go?

Bitcoin

Screenshot_2017-01-03-06-20-41-62 (resized).png

Where did it go during 2008-2009 when bonds and stocks moved in tandem down? Every debt is an asset on someone's balance sheet. When debts are written off it erases the assets, forcing sales to raise collateral/cash. Wheee!