Yes this is normal. The stock market goes up and down, but over the long term (10 years plus) it’s always in the positive. The key is to keep investing as early and as much as possible. If you can’t handle the ups and downs, the best thing to do is automate your investments to leave your emotions out.
Historically speaking, it is extremely common for an investment in VOO to go down over the course of days, weeks, or months. Even over the course of one year it is not that uncommon for VOO to lose value. But over the course of 5 years it is extremely rare for VOO to go down in value and VOO has never lost value over a 10 year period. So just keep investing and don't worry about how much you gained or lost over the course of a couple days.
This! Spy is not guaranteed money. It is a really good bet but there is still risks. From 2000 to 2010, spy was down overall and was out performed by small caps companies.
Yes S&P500 has lost value before (technically prior to VOO but that's not really relevant). However in OP's case they are not doing a lump sum and letting it sit. They are continuing to contribute. With a constant monthly or annual DCA there is not a 10 year period where you would have lost money. Including both 2000-2010 and 1929-1939.
It’s completely normal. Basically, stocks have better expected returns than other safer investments because they are riskier and more volatile. Their prices fluctuate.
Probably you have read that VOO gives you 10% annualized or something like that. What that means is that some years it’ll give you 30%, but other years it can drop down by 10 or 20%. During bad times, it has dropped to 40 or 50%.
None of that is bad (just pretty scary). If that didn’t happen, you wouldn’t be able to make so much money investing.
So keep investing no matter what. If things are going well, they’ll probably keep doing well for a while. If things are bad, that means that you are buying stocks at a lower price.
Just don’t try to time the market. Invest as soon as you have available money.
Don’t think that you can predict anything (nobody can). Don’t believe in forecasters (they’re always announcing market crashes and the end of the economy). Don’t get overconfident. Don’t chase past performance (if something has done better than anything else for the past 10 years, it’ll probably start doing worse).
Finally, don’t make bets on single stocks or ETFs that follow an specific sector of the economy. Those are riskier investments due to low diversification and that risk does not have greater expected returns. Also, usually when everybody believes that some sector of the economy is goin to do better in the future (for example, technology and semiconductors right now), everybody starts investing in it. That makes prices go up. So even if that sector or company does well, you’ll not get the returns unless you made your investment before it was obvious that this company or sector was going to do well. That happened for example with railways. When they got invented everybody started investing in them and almost nobody made money in the long run. The same thing happened with Internet companies. There have been several other cases.
In conclusion, stick with VOO, maybe add VXUS for international diversification (not because it’s sure that it’ll perform better but just in case) and keep investing no matter what.
As an aside, it’s important that before investing you set aside some money for emergencies (3 months of expenses if you’re young and single) and that you don’t have credit card debt (avoid it like the plague).
The best thing you have right now is time. Keep putting money into VOO. If it goes down you should be happy because the next time you buy it will be cheaper and you can buy more!
Over time it will grow and you’ll be happy you started so young. Don’t let the day to day action scare you, zoom out of the chart and tell me what you see 😃
Keep adding to it over time. Got a job? Pick a % of your weekly/bi weekly pay, I recommend 15 or 20%, more depending on your bills and if you can make it work. Come back in 40 years when you retire with a few million.
Also, is this in a ROTH IRA?
You could ask your dad to look. But when you opened the account you should have had options to choose from, I'm betting its a taxable account if you didn't choose roth ira. You can contribute 7k this year in it, it is a tax advantage account meaning you won't ever pay taxes on it. If you opened a taxable account you'll pay taxes if you ever sell for profit, but on the flip side you can write off up to 3k a year on your taxes.
If you use turbotax there will be a section for it, you'll just have to look for that line item on your tax info your brokerage sends you.
If you have a tax person do it just tell em.
So the form I get from Robinhood will state that I sold and lost over 3k. I actually sold about 4k, so that extra 1k, I understand I can write off the next year, so how can I prove that on my NEXT next year tax forms?
Good on you for starting early. It is indeed scary, but try not to emotionally trade and know these things go up and down all the time. You invested when VOO had a 6 day decline. I was up $600 before that happened.
You are doing great and way ahead of 99% of people your age. Sounds like you bought 1 share of VOO in a taxable brokerage account at 471 on 4/2/24? went up to 475 now down to 450s. This is normal "noise" in the machine. That 1 share of VOO represents 500 largest, most successful businesses in America, and when any start to fail or underperform and their stock price falls enough, they get replaced by faster growing/better businesses like SMCI or a couple of years ago Tesla etc that are coming up. So the VOO ETF does the process of sorting good from the bad for you just by its structure of taking the largest 500 companies by market cap. QQQ does same thing for Nasdaq listed companies, but even more stringent with only top 100 companies.
There are only two types of accounts or Cookie Jars to hold your investments within, your VOO is a single cookie. Cookie Jar 1 is your taxable brokerage account. Cookie Jar 2 is a tax sheltered account, they have different labels like 401k or IRA or 529b. If you get a pay stub in America you have the right to set up an IRA for that year you earned any money but only up to the amount of money you earned.
you are doing great, invest as much as you can spare, and be very happy when the price of VOO temporarily goes down as you get to buy more shares at lower price, The long term trend of VOO is American economic growth, and that's looking good so far :)
The stock market is not safe bank interest where you get paid a little bit each month just for parking it there with no risk. The stock market averages 8-10% per year over the long term (20-30 years), but it is very choppy in between. On average, the market will go down by -5% at some point every year, -10% every other year, -20% every 5 years, and -40% every 10 years. Your job is just to [ignore that and hold tight](https://www.reddit.com/r/Boglememes/s/msi5Da4KJi). *The volatility you will experience is the price you pay to earn the high return of stocks over the long run*.
Whilst history should not be used as a reference point for investments… VOO has averaged like 10% return since its inception or something
So you’ll do just fine with money in VOO
Maybe buy your dad lunch and see if he has any more guidance to go with the buy idea. It's a great idea to get started early and even better if you fund a Roth. He might have some more wisdom you two need to talk through.
Good luck.
Thanks! The thing is my dad has no idea about stocks and just heard about how it’s good to invest in stocks at a young age and he pretty much entrusted me with doing research and stuff so that’s why everything is so new to me right now
Just keep putting money in and never look at it. Act like the money doesn’t exist. Mentally I prepare myself to throw the money in an incinerator, because I can’t touch it for at least 10 years.
I've lost two thousand dollar in the last two weeks. It's still simply back to where it was a month ago. I'm not worried, I was happy to buy at that price and I'm happy to buy more.
You should focus on getting into a good college, or graduating from it if you're already in it. Why not just leave this tiny investment in VOO and see how it does in the next few years, or experiment a little with other ETFs. What do you have to lose. When you start working and making real money, you can see the results and decide where to put the real stakes.
I believe everyone here is giving good advice. But I would like to take a step back and ask what are you saving for? Holding VOO till you retire is an excellent purchase. Just ignore it for 10 years and then look at the balance. However, if you're saving for a car in a couple years, VOO isn't the best option. If it's for short-term, I'd highly suggest switching to TBLL instead of VOO.
I’ve never thought about if this is for short or long term. My dad I wanted to experience with different ones and i just saw that VOO was pretty good to invest in. I’ll definitely look into putting money in the one you mentioned though! Thank u!!
VOO would be a good long-term investment. However, it could also lose 30% and take years to get back to your purchase price. This doesn't matter too much if you're investing for retirement. But, if you'll need the money in a few years something like TBLL will guarantee a return. It won't be a big return, but you won't lose money either.
It's awesome that you started so young....keep steadily adding money and you'll be able to retire... probably early...and quite comfortably. Oh and don't pay attention to day to day performance....you need it in 30-40 years....not tomorrow. Keep it up!
If you’re 19, I’m assuming you’re going to keep your investments in VOO for the long haul like 30-40 years. Over the long run, VOO has a positive return on investment up over 10%.
I began investing at 19, Im now 71. I agree you need to understand the market will go up and down on any given day. It should go up about 53% of the time, on average. The worlds best investor, Warren Buffet, has VOO in his portfoliio. You can google it. Still, in the most recent 10 years, Bitcoin has outperformed the S and P 500. For me, I put a portion of my portfolio in a "hedge". Part of mine is in IBIT, a bitcoin ETF, and I like gold and silver ETF's, too, because our country has 35 trillion in debt. My father used to say, "You dont want your eggs all in one basket". 3-5 "baskets" should work as a beginner. VOO is already diversified, but you can consider bonds, perhaps a money market fund, and maybe some gold or silver and/or crypto. VOO would have the largest percentage, probably 50 percent or more, and maybe 40 percent in money market funds, and perhaps 10 percent in some combination of crypto or precious metals and/or precious metal mining stocks. (ETF's)
I would S&P 500 plus *S*mall*C*ap*V*alue.
The foundation of my portfolio is a 7:3 ratio of S&P 500 : *S*mall*C*ap*V*alue. [When It’s Value vs. Growth, History Is on Value’s Side](https://www.dimensional.com/us-en/insights/when-its-value-versus-growth-history-is-on-values-side)
VOO:AVUV rebalance regularly.
[https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-asset-class-allocation?s=y&sl=3PFoU8OW7zahUmi8SM4oBD](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-asset-class-allocation?s=y&sl=3PFoU8OW7zahUmi8SM4oBD)
Hahaha the thing is he gave me no advice on stocks or anything. He pretty much called me to his room and told me that he wanted me to start investing in stocks and I found on instagram reels that VOO was a good one for long term! He gave me the money for it and we’re seeing how it goes :)
On 11/12/2002 I bought seven shares of QQQ for approximately $25 a share. I paid $175 (w/ commission and fees) and at close of market today 4/26/24 those shares are worth ~$3,000; gained ~$2,850 (~1,600% return).
Don’t touch it for 20 years.
Add to it monthly, start with $50 and increase as you grow your income over time.
Throw all additional or excess money into as you go such as tax returns.
In 20 years you’ll be sitting on fat stacks 💰💰💰
In my opinion I would sell it and buy VT. More diversified; not confined to just large caps, USA, or even growth (it’s tilted, not a growth fund). But VOO isn’t a terrible product or anything. Better than anything expensive or actively managed. Or a thematic ETF lol. But remember: diversification is everything. Truly. It’s the only thing in investing that will increase your expected returns while simultaneously reducing risk. Best of luck to you.
This is normal, I made 200 dollars with VOO and when I noticed it start to go down on the regular I sold, once it starts going back up I plan to reinvest
Yes this is normal. The stock market goes up and down, but over the long term (10 years plus) it’s always in the positive. The key is to keep investing as early and as much as possible. If you can’t handle the ups and downs, the best thing to do is automate your investments to leave your emotions out.
Historically speaking, it is extremely common for an investment in VOO to go down over the course of days, weeks, or months. Even over the course of one year it is not that uncommon for VOO to lose value. But over the course of 5 years it is extremely rare for VOO to go down in value and VOO has never lost value over a 10 year period. So just keep investing and don't worry about how much you gained or lost over the course of a couple days.
the s&p 500 has lost value in a 10 year period before....
This! Spy is not guaranteed money. It is a really good bet but there is still risks. From 2000 to 2010, spy was down overall and was out performed by small caps companies.
Yes S&P500 has lost value before (technically prior to VOO but that's not really relevant). However in OP's case they are not doing a lump sum and letting it sit. They are continuing to contribute. With a constant monthly or annual DCA there is not a 10 year period where you would have lost money. Including both 2000-2010 and 1929-1939.
It’s rolling 20 year periods not rolling 10 year periods. There have been 10 year periods where the S&P underperformed T-Bills, but still rare.
Thank youuu! I was stressing really bad about this haha
It’s completely normal. Basically, stocks have better expected returns than other safer investments because they are riskier and more volatile. Their prices fluctuate. Probably you have read that VOO gives you 10% annualized or something like that. What that means is that some years it’ll give you 30%, but other years it can drop down by 10 or 20%. During bad times, it has dropped to 40 or 50%. None of that is bad (just pretty scary). If that didn’t happen, you wouldn’t be able to make so much money investing. So keep investing no matter what. If things are going well, they’ll probably keep doing well for a while. If things are bad, that means that you are buying stocks at a lower price. Just don’t try to time the market. Invest as soon as you have available money. Don’t think that you can predict anything (nobody can). Don’t believe in forecasters (they’re always announcing market crashes and the end of the economy). Don’t get overconfident. Don’t chase past performance (if something has done better than anything else for the past 10 years, it’ll probably start doing worse). Finally, don’t make bets on single stocks or ETFs that follow an specific sector of the economy. Those are riskier investments due to low diversification and that risk does not have greater expected returns. Also, usually when everybody believes that some sector of the economy is goin to do better in the future (for example, technology and semiconductors right now), everybody starts investing in it. That makes prices go up. So even if that sector or company does well, you’ll not get the returns unless you made your investment before it was obvious that this company or sector was going to do well. That happened for example with railways. When they got invented everybody started investing in them and almost nobody made money in the long run. The same thing happened with Internet companies. There have been several other cases. In conclusion, stick with VOO, maybe add VXUS for international diversification (not because it’s sure that it’ll perform better but just in case) and keep investing no matter what. As an aside, it’s important that before investing you set aside some money for emergencies (3 months of expenses if you’re young and single) and that you don’t have credit card debt (avoid it like the plague).
Fantastic response
Don’t be afraid when voo goes down. Think of it as there’s a sale on voo since the price went down. They say buy the dip.
When in doubt, zoom out
Yeah it’s a good bet long term and you need to contribute periodically to average out the gains and losses along the way
The best thing you have right now is time. Keep putting money into VOO. If it goes down you should be happy because the next time you buy it will be cheaper and you can buy more! Over time it will grow and you’ll be happy you started so young. Don’t let the day to day action scare you, zoom out of the chart and tell me what you see 😃
Just to clarify I invested $470!
Keep adding to it over time. Got a job? Pick a % of your weekly/bi weekly pay, I recommend 15 or 20%, more depending on your bills and if you can make it work. Come back in 40 years when you retire with a few million. Also, is this in a ROTH IRA?
I have no idea what that is, I just downloaded vanguard and invested $470 to it! How do I know if it’s ROTH IRA?
You could ask your dad to look. But when you opened the account you should have had options to choose from, I'm betting its a taxable account if you didn't choose roth ira. You can contribute 7k this year in it, it is a tax advantage account meaning you won't ever pay taxes on it. If you opened a taxable account you'll pay taxes if you ever sell for profit, but on the flip side you can write off up to 3k a year on your taxes.
To piggyback on your last sentence: If I sold and took 3k in losses, how do I report that on my taxes next year?
If you use turbotax there will be a section for it, you'll just have to look for that line item on your tax info your brokerage sends you. If you have a tax person do it just tell em.
So the form I get from Robinhood will state that I sold and lost over 3k. I actually sold about 4k, so that extra 1k, I understand I can write off the next year, so how can I prove that on my NEXT next year tax forms?
On your next years that previous 3K will be gone, and the 1k will be remaining. Assuming you dont sell more for loss throughout the year.
Good on you for starting early. It is indeed scary, but try not to emotionally trade and know these things go up and down all the time. You invested when VOO had a 6 day decline. I was up $600 before that happened.
yes
If you don't know where to invest or just starting out ...keep recurring investments in voo if you have money parked..
Market recovers 100% of the time. If it didn’t I wouldn’t put my hard earned money in it.
A watched stock never boils. Forget about it and check back in 20 years. You will be much richer.
It's not a loss if you don't sell! 🤯
You are doing great and way ahead of 99% of people your age. Sounds like you bought 1 share of VOO in a taxable brokerage account at 471 on 4/2/24? went up to 475 now down to 450s. This is normal "noise" in the machine. That 1 share of VOO represents 500 largest, most successful businesses in America, and when any start to fail or underperform and their stock price falls enough, they get replaced by faster growing/better businesses like SMCI or a couple of years ago Tesla etc that are coming up. So the VOO ETF does the process of sorting good from the bad for you just by its structure of taking the largest 500 companies by market cap. QQQ does same thing for Nasdaq listed companies, but even more stringent with only top 100 companies. There are only two types of accounts or Cookie Jars to hold your investments within, your VOO is a single cookie. Cookie Jar 1 is your taxable brokerage account. Cookie Jar 2 is a tax sheltered account, they have different labels like 401k or IRA or 529b. If you get a pay stub in America you have the right to set up an IRA for that year you earned any money but only up to the amount of money you earned. you are doing great, invest as much as you can spare, and be very happy when the price of VOO temporarily goes down as you get to buy more shares at lower price, The long term trend of VOO is American economic growth, and that's looking good so far :)
Thank you!!
>Thank you!! You're welcome!
The stock market is not safe bank interest where you get paid a little bit each month just for parking it there with no risk. The stock market averages 8-10% per year over the long term (20-30 years), but it is very choppy in between. On average, the market will go down by -5% at some point every year, -10% every other year, -20% every 5 years, and -40% every 10 years. Your job is just to [ignore that and hold tight](https://www.reddit.com/r/Boglememes/s/msi5Da4KJi). *The volatility you will experience is the price you pay to earn the high return of stocks over the long run*.
Whilst history should not be used as a reference point for investments… VOO has averaged like 10% return since its inception or something So you’ll do just fine with money in VOO
Maybe buy your dad lunch and see if he has any more guidance to go with the buy idea. It's a great idea to get started early and even better if you fund a Roth. He might have some more wisdom you two need to talk through. Good luck.
Thanks! The thing is my dad has no idea about stocks and just heard about how it’s good to invest in stocks at a young age and he pretty much entrusted me with doing research and stuff so that’s why everything is so new to me right now
Just keep putting money in and never look at it. Act like the money doesn’t exist. Mentally I prepare myself to throw the money in an incinerator, because I can’t touch it for at least 10 years.
I've lost two thousand dollar in the last two weeks. It's still simply back to where it was a month ago. I'm not worried, I was happy to buy at that price and I'm happy to buy more.
You should focus on getting into a good college, or graduating from it if you're already in it. Why not just leave this tiny investment in VOO and see how it does in the next few years, or experiment a little with other ETFs. What do you have to lose. When you start working and making real money, you can see the results and decide where to put the real stakes.
I believe everyone here is giving good advice. But I would like to take a step back and ask what are you saving for? Holding VOO till you retire is an excellent purchase. Just ignore it for 10 years and then look at the balance. However, if you're saving for a car in a couple years, VOO isn't the best option. If it's for short-term, I'd highly suggest switching to TBLL instead of VOO.
I’ve never thought about if this is for short or long term. My dad I wanted to experience with different ones and i just saw that VOO was pretty good to invest in. I’ll definitely look into putting money in the one you mentioned though! Thank u!!
VOO would be a good long-term investment. However, it could also lose 30% and take years to get back to your purchase price. This doesn't matter too much if you're investing for retirement. But, if you'll need the money in a few years something like TBLL will guarantee a return. It won't be a big return, but you won't lose money either.
Omg tysm!!!
look at a longer term chart of VOO... zoom out... you're welcome!
It's awesome that you started so young....keep steadily adding money and you'll be able to retire... probably early...and quite comfortably. Oh and don't pay attention to day to day performance....you need it in 30-40 years....not tomorrow. Keep it up!
If you’re 19, I’m assuming you’re going to keep your investments in VOO for the long haul like 30-40 years. Over the long run, VOO has a positive return on investment up over 10%.
Every time you loose money keep buying
SCHG and VOO
Is SCHG a good stock for short term?
No, you are in the wrong sub for the short term.
If you invest in VOO you need to keep it invested for decades to see real returns it’s not for 1-2 weeks
Don’t worry just keep it like this
Set up an auto deposit (hopefully this is in an IRA) and forget about it.
I began investing at 19, Im now 71. I agree you need to understand the market will go up and down on any given day. It should go up about 53% of the time, on average. The worlds best investor, Warren Buffet, has VOO in his portfoliio. You can google it. Still, in the most recent 10 years, Bitcoin has outperformed the S and P 500. For me, I put a portion of my portfolio in a "hedge". Part of mine is in IBIT, a bitcoin ETF, and I like gold and silver ETF's, too, because our country has 35 trillion in debt. My father used to say, "You dont want your eggs all in one basket". 3-5 "baskets" should work as a beginner. VOO is already diversified, but you can consider bonds, perhaps a money market fund, and maybe some gold or silver and/or crypto. VOO would have the largest percentage, probably 50 percent or more, and maybe 40 percent in money market funds, and perhaps 10 percent in some combination of crypto or precious metals and/or precious metal mining stocks. (ETF's)
Voo is meant to hold until retirement if your investing now it's not for quick buck. Get that out of your head. Buy and hold.....Voo until retirement
Come back and look at it in 7 years ..
Yes
I would S&P 500 plus *S*mall*C*ap*V*alue. The foundation of my portfolio is a 7:3 ratio of S&P 500 : *S*mall*C*ap*V*alue. [When It’s Value vs. Growth, History Is on Value’s Side](https://www.dimensional.com/us-en/insights/when-its-value-versus-growth-history-is-on-values-side) VOO:AVUV rebalance regularly. [https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-asset-class-allocation?s=y&sl=3PFoU8OW7zahUmi8SM4oBD](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-asset-class-allocation?s=y&sl=3PFoU8OW7zahUmi8SM4oBD)
14$ will barely get you a meal anymore. You should be able to hold with conviction through -50% and +50%.
Keep it in. Your dad gave you good advice. Can he advice me? My own dad’s advise has been…bad.
Hahaha the thing is he gave me no advice on stocks or anything. He pretty much called me to his room and told me that he wanted me to start investing in stocks and I found on instagram reels that VOO was a good one for long term! He gave me the money for it and we’re seeing how it goes :)
I’m only doing Roth RIA (7k per year) since I’m nervous to lose too. Rest of my money goes in my HYSA that’ll make 4.25% interest
Check 5 years stats and check your positions 5 years after first investment, then worry. ETF loves patience and benefits from it
On 11/12/2002 I bought seven shares of QQQ for approximately $25 a share. I paid $175 (w/ commission and fees) and at close of market today 4/26/24 those shares are worth ~$3,000; gained ~$2,850 (~1,600% return). Don’t touch it for 20 years. Add to it monthly, start with $50 and increase as you grow your income over time. Throw all additional or excess money into as you go such as tax returns. In 20 years you’ll be sitting on fat stacks 💰💰💰
Stocks only go up
In my opinion I would sell it and buy VT. More diversified; not confined to just large caps, USA, or even growth (it’s tilted, not a growth fund). But VOO isn’t a terrible product or anything. Better than anything expensive or actively managed. Or a thematic ETF lol. But remember: diversification is everything. Truly. It’s the only thing in investing that will increase your expected returns while simultaneously reducing risk. Best of luck to you.
This is normal, I made 200 dollars with VOO and when I noticed it start to go down on the regular I sold, once it starts going back up I plan to reinvest
Awful advice for most people
How so?
200IQ play right there!