[jimjamuser]

Originally Posted by manaboutown

The stock market is currently very highly priced so many feel now is far from an optimal time in which to jump in with both feet.

This is evidenced by the Shiller PE ratio which is at 37.27 today - Cringe!!!: Shiller PE Ratio - Multpl

Buffett has been selling huge amounts of AAPL and BAC to lock in capital gains. He has been a net seller of stocks and has built up an enormous cash reserve. This may in part be motivated by looming future tax increases on C corporations. Inflation has been horrible over the last 3+ years as anyone who shops for groceries, purchases gasoline and such will verify. We have been experiencing the worst inflationary period since the late 1970s -No one can predict if, when and how it will end. United States Inflation Rate

I wish I could offer a solution but I have none. All I can say is I have built up my cash reserves to the highest percentage of investable assets they have ever been. I am mostly in T bills but also some AMT free munis.

If you simply google inflation rate, you get that it is currently 2.4% and the long term rate is about 3.2%. Buffet may be smart in selling.

[rsmurano]

Let’s take stocks as an example. Why would anybody let a stock go down to $0? I would never let that happen. Have you heard about putting a trailing stop loss on your stocks/etfs? Probably not or you would know ways to prevent your stocks to go down to a $0 value. You can put in a $ value or percentage value to trigger a sale. This is 1 way to take emotions out of selling something you really like.
When I leave the country for weeks/months and will have no internet, all my stocks/etfs have trailing stop loss trades on them.
For funds, I do something different because you can’t apply a trailing stop loss.
If people are nervous about investing in the market, or don’t know what they are doing, you should not do stock trading. But if you haven’t taken the time to learn the basics of investing, or learned from your mistakes in your early trading/investing days, it might be too late to start now. Big screwups now and you might not be able to recover from them

[Blueblaze]

I sure wish I was as smart at 70 as I was at 46 when I got out of the market in time to miss the last dotcom crash. At 54, I became an idiot who lost half my savings with "buy-and-hold", believing in lying balance sheets and my market "genius", during the mortgage banking crash. The market instantly turned around the day I realized I couldn't even pay off my own mortgage with what was left, and cashed out. Afterwards I could never find a point to get back into the market without risking it all again, and I missed the recovery -- along with the ridiculous swings in the corrupt casino the "market" has become. I found better investments -- a home business and real estate (plus a 20% savings rate) that salvaged my retirement.

I would absolutely love to turn it all over to an expert, in the form of annuity that takes the same market risks along with me, knowing that a 100-year-old insurance company can outlive a downturn that I can't. But every time I look into it, I find the same thing. The crooks want you to give you their money and feed it back to you with a real return rate barely equal to the inflation rate -- plus enormous fees.

So I'm stuck in the money market, where at least I don't have to beg someone for my money if I need it, while getting the same rate I'd get from an annuity.

I sure wish I was still a 46-year-old market genius (with 46-year-old knees). But 70-year-old me can't afford to play casino games anymore.

[manaboutown]

Originally Posted by Blueblaze

I sure wish I was as smart at 70 as I was at 46 when I got out of the market in time to miss the last dotcom crash. At 54, I became an idiot who lost half my savings with "buy-and-hold", believing in lying balance sheets and my market "genius", during the mortgage banking crash. The market instantly turned around the day I realized I couldn't even pay off my own mortgage with what was left, and cashed out. Afterwards I could never find a point to get back into the market without risking it all again, and I missed the recovery -- along with the ridiculous swings in the corrupt casino the "market" has become. I found better investments -- a home business and real estate (plus a 20% savings rate) that salvaged my retirement.

I would absolutely love to turn it all over to an expert, in the form of annuity that takes the same market risks along with me, knowing that a 100-year-old insurance company can outlive a downturn that I can't. But every time I look into it, I find the same thing. The crooks want you to give you their money and feed it back to you with a real return rate barely equal to the inflation rate -- plus enormous fees.

So I'm stuck in the money market, where at least I don't have to beg someone for my money if I need it, while getting the same rate I'd get from an annuity.

I sure wish I was still a 46-year-old market genius (with 46-year-old knees). But 70-year-old me can't afford to play casino games anymore.

I understand your history. I bought a few shares of Colt Industries while still in high school in 1959 or so. At that time my father was trading the nifty fifty. I remember him calling his broker in the morning before he went to work. However I never was much of a stock market guy but invested in rental real estate, first residential and then commercial, starting in 1967/1968. Along the way I held a few stocks and started an IRA when they became available. I bought a few shares now and then of stocks like IBM, MSFT, WMT, JNJ and BRK and never paid them much attention, just let it all sit. I needed to maintain liquidity so held mostly money market funds. I do remember all the hysteria during the 1999 dot-com bubble crash, day traders going broke, and I knew a few. I also remember the 2007-2008 financial crisis. I did not pay much attention to either as they did not affect me. My rents just kept coming in. Today I remain focused on RE but needed to sell sizable multi-partner properties in 2022 and 2023. Thus I was faced with what do I do with the money. That is how I ended up spending time on the market. I am about 50% in cash (T-bills and money market) as the market seems very pricey to me. I did get lucky on some NVDA, lol. At this point in time I am slowly going Boglehead with low cost indexed ETFs, Vanguard and Schwab. I have just put my toe in the water, though, and am not about to dive in. After a lot of soul searching I decided to continue to hold onto my remaining commercial real estate as I am not really a stock market guy.

[bragones]

Originally Posted by rsmurano

BS meter! If you can’t find investments that give you 40-200% gains, you shouldn’t be in the market.
BS meter? How about these as a small example, 1 year gains:
Tesla 50%
Facebook/meta 263%
Apple 58%
Nvidia 99%.
That’s just in tech stocks. There are other sectors that are booming. Small cap is doing good. My s&p fund is up almost 40% for the last year, whereas my tech funds are up even more.

I also have a couple dozen low cost/low risk index funds (that I pick from) that I’m getting over 40% plus good dividends on top of that. These fund symbols I only give out to friends. It takes some research and a little bit of time to come up with funds that match my stringent requirements that produce these types of gains (low cost, low risk, low turnover, 3% min dividends, 2 digit gains over the last 10 years, growing dividend each year for the last 10 years, and more). Again, there are dozens of them, I have been using the same indexed funds for the past couple of decades.

For no risk, I’m still getting over 5% in money market funds as we speak.

I think that takes care of any BS meter posts

Hmmmm....On Aug 6th you posted the following, so did you miss record high market gains?

"I got completely out of the market and put everything in 5.25% money market holdings."

[BrianNotFromNYC]

Where are you getting 35 to 70% in low risk? Not saying I call bs, unless you don't have an answer. I do agree annuities are the worst investment among those regulated anyways

[Robbb]

Originally Posted by rsmurano

If you bought an annuity you already suffered a hit probably close to 10%, so if they let you out, assuming there are no more fees attached, you already paid the fees.
Annuity is the WORSE financial move anybody could make. Most people buy annuities because they don’t know how to invest in the stock market, and when the piranhas hear this, they offer you peanuts in guaranteed withdrawals but hide all the high fees and people think this is heaven.

Don’t let people fool you, we were in a recession 2.5 years ago by the technical standards, and the worst economy and inflation in 40 years, 2.5 years ago and It’s still not good today. Why do you think big investors are selling. 1/2 my holdings are still in money market making over 5%, while the other 1/2 is making a minimum of 35% to 70% with very very low risk and 3% dividends. If I thought the economy was doing great, 100% of my money would be in stocks/funds.

Not to be disrespectful but 35-70% with "very very low risk" is delusional.

[Robbb]

Originally Posted by rsmurano

BS meter! If you can’t find investments that give you 40-200% gains, you shouldn’t be in the market.
BS meter? How about these as a small example, 1 year gains:
Tesla 50%
Facebook/meta 263%
Apple 58%
Nvidia 99%.
That’s just in tech stocks. There are other sectors that are booming. Small cap is doing good. My s&p fund is up almost 40% for the last year, whereas my tech funds are up even more.

I also have a couple dozen low cost/low risk index funds (that I pick from) that I’m getting over 40% plus good dividends on top of that. These fund symbols I only give out to friends. It takes some research and a little bit of time to come up with funds that match my stringent requirements that produce these types of gains (low cost, low risk, low turnover, 3% min dividends, 2 digit gains over the last 10 years, growing dividend each year for the last 10 years, and more). Again, there are dozens of them, I have been using the same indexed funds for the past couple of decades.

For no risk, I’m still getting over 5% in money market funds as we speak.

I think that takes care of any BS meter posts

Just humor us and give us one fund that is has increased 40% and provided a good dividend.

[will1546]

Hi Find a CFA. Everyone on this has their own idea.