I've only been investing in individual stocks for 3 years and I'm not very good at it. Pretty aggressive investments.

Years ago I read "The Money Masters" and some sequels by John Train. I learned a lot. Each one seemed to have a different approach.

"The Quants" amazed me. Amazon.com

That is true. Inflation could possibly come down because the product slow down at the ports and from lack of drivers becomes more efficient, which causes prices to drop.

Many things are exploding.

Russia on the border of The Ukraine could heat up and spook the market.

My self described conservative(not political) broker has a motto. He likes to sleep at night. He likes preferred stocks which pay out 5-7% a year.

I do hold stocks. Truth because of government actions it is a house of cards. Gone are pensions replaced by 401Ks, 403b kind of stuff. Heck if you have a pension, you may be shocked to realize the money to pay you is invested in the stock market. It is sort of like the 1920;s everyone is in the stock market whether it know it or not. The 1920s prosperity, ended with the incomprehensible misery of the 1930's depression. We must believe it will not happen. People of the 1920's knew the stock market only goes up.
History shows they were wrong. Lose the farm? The farm was your family roots. It was all you knew, it was how you fed your family.

Safe place to put your money. In the past you would build a treasury bond ladder. Truly simple bonds maturing at different times. You would use treasuries-zero risk, they were backed by gold or silver and they would pay roughly 2% more than the rate of inflation.
Today, the cpi, consume price index, is 7%.a ten year treasury is paying 1.7%. You have to pay that 7% with after tax money so you need 9% or more to pay that 7% inflation. Social Security gave you/us a roughly 5% raise. It is historically large. Only problem is it is not enough to pay the inflated costs . The stock market IS NOT A SAFE PLACE but due to inflation you have no choice but to swim with the sharks and hope they do not realize they are looking to feed on you.

The Villages Investment Education Club will meet Thursday, 1/27, 3:00, at Sea Breeze. This meeting will be a dividend discussion.

Boomer

Well, I am going to help you guys out but I know there are less than smart among you.

At our age we should be 100% in CD's and live happily ever after. But as you know, the Government has made interest rates .0001 percent.

We are in unprecedented times. The old rules do not apply. We are so deep in debt, mathematically it can never be repaid.

There is a Woke War on Oil. Logically (for you intelligent folks) this means a squeeze on the very thing all things depend. It will go up and up and up. No matter what. The world must have it. Buy Exxon and consider it a CD.

Have to disagree with your last sentence. Stock market goes up and goes down but long run it has gone up. Just have to stay the course. Too many people get out when it goes down and never go back in until it is up a bunch.

Timing the market does not work.

Conservatism is ok but 100% in CD's is prescription for most people running out of money.

Spot on! We are heavily investing in oil, nickel and copper. All 3 play into energy needs for both electric and standard transportation requirements. The US and several other countries seem to be all in on the electric vehicle goals (demands?) based on "global warming", but the rest of the world will continue to demand oil to keep moving. Anyone who believes for a moment India and Africa are putting electric charging station needs at the top of their wish list is seriously delusional. So 2-4% of the world will force electric on those they can, while the other 90+ precent of the world struggle to find a gallon of gas to keep their world moving. The copper and nickel are both required for all these batteries that will be required should this all electric dream ever see the light of day (and I have serious doubts about that, but that is a different conversation) .

From Jan 2016 to 18 Jan 2022 the S&P is up 147%, while bitcoin is up 12,438%. Yes, this recent correction ("lost" 20% on paper) was painful to watch, but still WAY ahead. In fact, considered this correction a "fire sale" moment and bought more.

I am a HODLer with crypto investments, so all my gains/losses have been on paper only. These will be left to our grandkids (along with the lesson of investing well) hopefully.

I guess there are those that are comfortable clinging to the old way of doing things, but we have done far better in investing diversification than we would ever have seen sticking to the stock market and conventional investing alone.

We owned rental properties for a time as investments, but very grateful to have divested of them before the "COVID non-eviction curse" (pure luck on our part).

Funny, our crypto education and adventures started out as a form of entertainment fun & learning about "that new fang dangled stuff". Has paid us better returns than the investments we pay someone to help us manage. Go figure.


I just laugh when everyone mentions tulips about Bitcoin. These are the exact same people that continue to invest in the USD believing it is backed by something tangible, while believing cryptos are "different". NEWS FLASH, that all ended when Nixon took the USD off of the gold standard in the 70's.

When the US Gov can no longer pump money into T-Bills, you will find out just how incorrect that assumption is.

Unfortunately, I think we are all going to be seeing that s#&t show play out sooner than expected. Thanks Brandon.

How any of us retired and on fixed incomes fare when the dust settles is anyone's guess.

Well, FYI for dividend stocks, dividends paid out of increased debt versus cash from operations is not a sustainable mgmt decision. ie, see GE, General Electric which did just that. Only invest in companies with dividends from cash flow from operations, that's not the earnings per share, the answer is on the cash flow statement.

Market timing does work, but its not for everyone because you have to reprogram your lizard brain, the linear extrapolation part which humans have built into their survival reactions. . . Trust me, I had to go through that the hard way, which most traders and market timers do. Cost me personally 1/2 Million . . Market timing long term trends, ie multi year trends, is the way to go. This January was very profitable for me on the short side, day trading, as there are short term signals embedded in options stats, option greeks and other market data points which can signal certain movements. . . its not easy, its very hard to do consistently, but keep the trade sizes below the risk of ruin, and practice the skill and one can learn it. There is no educational course to qualify anyone, as trading is all a learned skill because you have to retain your brain's normal survival skills that fear is good and greed is bad. FYI, SP500 fair market value, is about 3000 to 3500, depending upon earnings with normal non pandemic expenses ratios, which i will then put my 401K from all cash bonds back into stocks, which i pulled out of last August.

Inflation is an imbalance of supply and demand, like a unicycle, the seat moves and the wheel moves. Only when they are in perfect balance does inflation not move. . . demand is the seat, supply is the wheel. . the problem with most TV aged inhabitants is that they associate inflation with the 1970's inflation spiral. increasing inflation from 2% to 5% is not an inflation spiral, due to fed actions and temporary supply chain disruptions. Both can be reversed

However, the inflation engine right now which will be with us for awhile is labor inflation. two long term effects: shrinking human population, even here in the US, and the job/education imbalance between blue collar and office jobs. Technology is displacing human jobs, I have done it personally with programming, taking a 4-6 hour manual job and replacing it with 15 minute programming and key strokes, to overnight automation coding. The lack of specialized manual labor and a shrinking labor supply will persist, and keep an inflation floor. . . the hidden effect is that fewer middle class white collar consumers will mean that maintaining current corporate growth rates will require hire retail prices. . . so something has to give in awhile. .

You seem quite knowledgeably in finance. Are you presently selling financial instruments? In the state of Florida ? If you are selling what are your credentials ? Education, licenses, fiduciary, specialties. etc.

i agree. you MUST sit & wait it out. i know it gets tougher every morning when that bell rings, @ least the last week or 2, but as a wise member here uses on their tagline--this too, shall pass. i'm hanging onto my stock no matter what.