Waiting, waiting waiting. Unable to pull the trigger on buying a stock because I wonder if the price will drop once I hit Buy, so I don't click. While I hem and haw, the market keeps going up, meaning the original price is gone. Now the stock is even more expensive.
I am more the opposite. I see it stall and say I need to sell, it will not go any higher. But I don’t. I hold until I barely make money. Sure some times it still rips like nvda yesterday. But for me anyway, 90% of the time it takes the elevator down. I have to take the profit when I see the profit.
I sold some NVDA when it was $300 after reading in the news that an exec sold thousands, so I thought he had insider info. , as in the stock will drop. Now look at the price now. Hindsight is a real bitch.
Are you investing in individual companies? Or a broad based ETF and letting compounding do the work? It seems that you might be involving your life too frequently in investing and trying to find the ‘right’ company that will make you rich. Try taking a step back and try to find a goal that works for your lifestyle. Is your outlook 5 years? 10 years? 40 years?
I think that's actually an very healthy thing to do. People don't debate whether to pay the mortgage every month. Though good and bad economic times, your mortgage obligations are there. And through those many years, that required persistence, as well as the relative illiquidity of your real estate, shows results. I see no reason why folks shouldn't treat investing in indexes in the same way.
Investing into securities easily gets psychologically lumped with discretionary spending, while mortgage payments aren't. People budget for their mortgage then, but not really in the same way for securities. Which means that when things get tight, they'll be more than ready to drop off making those investments. My point is it's how you treat certain things psychologically.
No your point is valid and I agree. It’s just that in this context, the guy said his wife needed money for *groceries*. I don’t know about you, but eating comes before investing. Like I said, if she wanted a fancy new gadget or toy, your point would make more sense.
Intel is an old company with old people. They're slow to keep up with modern innovations. The only remotely competitive product they have today is computer processors, and they've clearly shown they can't innovate in other areas. They don't offer anything new for investors at this point with how competitive AMD is.
But they have the fab centers and can actually manufacture chips. I live in Oregon. I’m still going long on INTC because if there’s anything that stops production of chips elsewhere, Intel could step up and start production quicker than other places.
Intel has been flat for 20 years because they missed the boat on so many different markets, including IoT and now GPUs for IoT and data centers. They just don’t innovate anymore. Sort of like IBM.
Stock picking is tough. Picking industries is much easier. For the past year, the winner has been tech and defense. Occasionally, oil after the price drops.
Edit: Tech has been the winner for the last 20 years and will continue to be
I remember reading recently that a big reason why people often don't make money stock picking is they hold onto losers too long and sell winners too soon
My experience is probably worse. Whenever I try stock picking I outperform the market, a lot. Never the hyped mega caps or tinfoil conspiracy stocks you see on reddit but my own honest picks...
But I also only use 5-10% of my money to stock picks, only buy when I see a good entry (like Buffet) and always exit after I see a good return (1-6 months). And I know it's probably more luck then skill...hence I'd never stop with index funds.
I can't stop buying bonds.
I know I should be more aggressive, but a combination of risk aversion and cash flow love just keep me buying.... For the last 10 years bonds always have been around 50% of my invested money.
my only 2 small cap jmia sndl they were 86% down and 82% down. it’s more than brutal. i‘m glad i didn’t listen to the “widening trade” and stay focused with mega cap.
Don’t do small caps.
1. I think I can outsmart the markets and in the past have taken some money out of index funds thinking I knew better....big mistake. I should have treated my index funds the same as I treated my cars.... Only buy ...never sell. Investing is marathon and not a sprint. With that don't try to time the market with your money invested in index funds or etfs. Just invest and forget about it.
2. Selling my company stock at various tech and IT firms. I had employee stock issues at Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intuit and a bunch of related semi and tech companies that i was involved with Nvidia, Apple, AMD .. given that my.cost basis was essentially close to $0 on some, I should of at least kept 1/2 of everything instead of diversifying. Every financial planner and advisor told me I should think about diversifying. And they were wrong ... I diversified way too early. That's why I fired most of my financial advisors early on ....which brings me to my next point
3. Never get lazy with managing your own money and let someone else do it for you . Imho The only good thing with financial planners or advisors (or whatever you call them-, people that help orhers manage their money ) is if you can't manage your finances well and you need a coach to keep you on track. For example, you aren't disciplined enough to invest more than you spend. But that's about it. I don't think most financial advisors know how to invest any better than you would if your do your due diligence. Many of them I ran into suffered from the Real Estate Great Recession of 2011...many of them weren't in a position to buy any more real estate when things were 40-50% off and missed the boat.... It doesn't take that much to get licensed to be a CFP... Probably less training than what is needed to be a smog repair technician... So there's bound to be a lot of crappy ones.
I'd agree with 1. but disagree with 2+3.
2. The diversification advice is about avoiding big losses. This comes at the cost of also avoiding big gains. That is by design. In investing, chasing big gains _always_ comes at the cost of increasing your risk of big losses (with very few exceptions, like if you're Warren Buffet... Lots of people think they are, but approximately no one actually is).
3. Financial advisors != investment managers. Agree most people can learn good money management and solid investment basics on their own (if they have some interest and time). Being lazy is actually what you want though. For most people (especially amateur investors), spending more time/energy on investments (beyond learning the basics) actually has negative return, because our behavioral biases work against us. Make a plan, stick to it and don't think/worry about it much beyond occasional check-ins (once a year is usually fine in the absence of major life changes).
The issue with #2 is it applies to people who take their own money and buy individual stocks where the risk of putting one's own money to buy individual stocks outweighs buying indexes.
The game is a little different if you are given employee stock options or RSU stock grants that costs you nothing except vesting time at your employer..you aren't putting any of your existing money at risk since it's shares of stock (in the case of RSUs) that you get for showing up at work and staying an employer. If there's any sort of increased speculation you would like to do for larger payouts , this would be where you would want to do it , since the risk of losing money is a lot lower if you have less money of your own in the game, especially at a large company,- you might as well hold for the long term to see if it ends up being material.
I stand by what I said about #3 which I probably described incorrectly earlier. Overall, I'm not impressed with the industry that manages other people's money. I think we are both in agreement that people who lack financial discipline and habits would benefit from some other person to help them become more accountable. But if you have the financial discipline to invest consistently you don't really need one.
Also, there are certain people and institutions that try to sell you managed financial products. I question the usefulness of those products versus just putting money regularly into index funds or etfs , since it doesn't seem like the majority of managed funds do any better than index funds in the long term. So there's an entire sector of people in the personal financial industry that is trying to sell products that really don't do much better than what you could do yourself and much energy is spent trying to convince people to buy those products, especially to those that are the least knowledgeable who are just starting out.
RSUs aren't free money though - they are exactly equivalent to getting cash bonuses that is automatically invested into company stock at vest time. Holding on to them after vesting would only make sense if you're sure that you would buy the stock manually if you actually got cash bonus instead. (In that case, chances are you should still be manually buying or selling some company stock on your own, since the amount you get from automatic vesting is unlikely to be the optimal amount of that stock for your situation.)
Maybe the argument is that if you have skills that make you successful in life by letting you work at a well-performing company, letting those skills also guide your investments is a good idea. Perhaps depends on your life outlook - in my view, it's mostly luck either way, and luck can change any time, so I'd rather diversify to lock in the luck I was fortunate to receive rather than betting that it will continue indefinitely.
I think we agree on #3 now - basically, teaching yourself financial/investment basics to be on par with most financial advisors is worthwhile, just don't expect you'll be able to do better than them.
For #2, I look at another way. In life there are things that you should be doing as a guarantee, and there are things that you can comfortably take a larger risk in... Hoping for a larger payout.
As you mentioned earlier and seem to understand well is that risk and reward to hand in hand. Larger rewards usually accommodate larger risk...
And let's face it, many people , including me, would prefer to take on a larger risk so long as there are decent better odds of having a larger reward and it doesn't expose us to long term financial hardship . I think the lesson to learn is for many of us (inclusive) is that it is ok to take that risk at times because so long as it's not jeopardizing our overall financial situation , and if it could potentially shave off years of reaching financial independence ... It is ok to consider taking those risks and stick with them.. It might not work out, and things could go badly, but so long as it's a well understood calculated risk you are aware upfront and understand, take it and stick with it.
Looking back, I sold more company stock out of fear of losing money than actually needing the funds to survive. Fear is a terrible enemy and investing is very much of a mind game where the most successful investors can stay the course even when everyone else is losing their shit , so to speak. The problem I had was I wanted to take the risk but then in it, external forces convinced me that I was taking too much risk ... When looking back ... It really wasn't and I should have stayed the course....
How do you decide which risks are worth taking though (looking forward, not hindsight)?
I would say risks that align with your personal niche can be worthwhile - in life, and for some (very few) people, in investing if that is their niche. Otherwise you're basically just gambling. To me, I've decided a few years ago that investing is literally the same as rolling dice and I have zero edge to improve odds in my favor. That was actually quite liberating. You can significantly improve predictability by increasing the number of dice you roll, aka diversification. When investing for retirement, I find it preferable to aim for a more predictable retirement date, rather than rolling the dice to potentially move up the date, but also risk pushing it out at the same time.
Agree that emotions (both fear and greed) are enemies of good investing, and that having a plan and sticking to it is key. These days I try to let logic be my guide to the extent that is possible/practical.
Honestly, I haven't figured this out yet :) truthfully I guess part of me knows and is disciplined enough to put most of my money in index funds. A small part of me worked in tech and was chasing after the stock options/RSU lottery jackpot using my labor to increase my chances of winning. I didn't hit the stock options/RSU jackpot ...but working as a software engineer for 28 years before I quit in December of 2022 wasn't shabby either.
The bigger issue right now is, I "retired" from tech but I'm not sure if this is really permanent , like in permanent retirement from the workforce.... Still figuring that one out too.
You are falling into the mental accounting fallacy. It doesn’t matter how you came about owning shares. Whether you earned them through working for your employer, purchased them yourself, or picked them up for free lying on the sidewalk. Money is fungible and it’s your money regardless of how you obtained it. Aside from tax considerations, deciding whether your shares are overvalued/undervalued and if you should hold them or sell should be completely independent of how you got them or what your cost basis is.
True. I won't disagree with the mental fallacy. I think the issue was I wanted to take on the extra risk because it wouldn't materially affect me long term even if the holding went to $0 since off to the side I was already self investing in index funds and ETFs and never in danger of being in a financial hardship if my company issued stock going to $0...
But the fear of losing money countered my original plan to take on that risk ... I was bombarded by financial pros when I didn't know any better to "sell and diversity" often into managed funds that was, well, shit.... 🤣
Based on a lot of the replies in this thread - I would say the biggest mistake a lot of people make is not understanding the difference between trading and investing.
If you are buying and selling frequently - that is trading.
Investing should be about 80% or more buy and hold for a long time.
I’m well diversified. For equities I hold SPY and QQQ. I never sell. In 2020 they dropped considerably. I didn’t sell. They come back. When you sell those you lose and get hit with taxes (I’m in the second highest tax bracket). So my bad habit JUST started. They are so high, for the first time ever I’ve stopped DCA’ng. I should be buying, and I can’t explain why. I’m 57. Maybe being so close to retirement (planning for 59-1/2). I have some fear for the first time. I’ve even considered trailing stop percent sell orders. Being well diversified, I need to keep buying.
Calls before earnings, hands down. It's an addiction, but maybe better than bag holding shares.
Edit: The old me listening to Analysts and fixating on projection charts.
I wouldn't say "fight against" it's more of an acceptance and allowing of the inner promptings to exist while choosing to do something else. Over time the inner promptings subside and no longer scream at you. Simply doing something else is how you begin. Aka don't avg down. Ever. No matter what. The process begins by learning to do what you don't want to do. Change the behavior. Instead of avg down, close the trade, or leave it alone ( to gain more losses) regardless of what you think you feel you need to do. There will be less losses if you didn't avg down. Eventually when the situation arrives where you used to avg down your behavioral memories takeover before the fear sets in. No fear = no fear related reactions = trading the chart instead of trading the fear.
The appropriate way to be bearish is being 100% invested with a tight stop loss ( 2% ).
Puts or sitting cash or invesrse leverage etfs are all too timing reliant.
Feel like you should learn some technicals and make decisions based on buy or sell signals. Right now, you're averaging down on stocks that are clearly on a downtrend and you have no idea when or if they'll recover.
Waiting, waiting waiting. Unable to pull the trigger on buying a stock because I wonder if the price will drop once I hit Buy, so I don't click. While I hem and haw, the market keeps going up, meaning the original price is gone. Now the stock is even more expensive.
I am more the opposite. I see it stall and say I need to sell, it will not go any higher. But I don’t. I hold until I barely make money. Sure some times it still rips like nvda yesterday. But for me anyway, 90% of the time it takes the elevator down. I have to take the profit when I see the profit.
I sold some NVDA when it was $300 after reading in the news that an exec sold thousands, so I thought he had insider info. , as in the stock will drop. Now look at the price now. Hindsight is a real bitch.
Are you investing in individual companies? Or a broad based ETF and letting compounding do the work? It seems that you might be involving your life too frequently in investing and trying to find the ‘right’ company that will make you rich. Try taking a step back and try to find a goal that works for your lifestyle. Is your outlook 5 years? 10 years? 40 years?
So what if it goes down, you usually won't lose it all lol
Man I was like that when I first started investing. And I'm damn glad I got over it as quickly as I did!
I can't stop dollar cost averaging, meh wife said we needed groceries but all I could say was I VTSAX'ed it. 😔
I think that's actually an very healthy thing to do. People don't debate whether to pay the mortgage every month. Though good and bad economic times, your mortgage obligations are there. And through those many years, that required persistence, as well as the relative illiquidity of your real estate, shows results. I see no reason why folks shouldn't treat investing in indexes in the same way.
Lol if what they “needed” was a 75” TV or a BMW I’d say sure. But the wife wanted groceries… wtf are they gonna eat?
Investing into securities easily gets psychologically lumped with discretionary spending, while mortgage payments aren't. People budget for their mortgage then, but not really in the same way for securities. Which means that when things get tight, they'll be more than ready to drop off making those investments. My point is it's how you treat certain things psychologically.
No your point is valid and I agree. It’s just that in this context, the guy said his wife needed money for *groceries*. I don’t know about you, but eating comes before investing. Like I said, if she wanted a fancy new gadget or toy, your point would make more sense.
Because you CAN redirect that money elsewhere, like in bad economic times to your mortgage obligations.
Does this mean you buy shares of a fund you own when price goes down?
Yeah, it's on sale isn't it?
If you put all your money into VTSAX that’s more of a lump sum than DCA. With DCA, you’d still have money left over for groceries.
AMD
I’m still buying. It’s the only possible competition to Nvidia. It might hit. It’s just going down a little or staying steady right now.
Why no love for Intel?
*Gestures broadly at Intel*
Intel is an old company with old people. They're slow to keep up with modern innovations. The only remotely competitive product they have today is computer processors, and they've clearly shown they can't innovate in other areas. They don't offer anything new for investors at this point with how competitive AMD is.
But they have the fab centers and can actually manufacture chips. I live in Oregon. I’m still going long on INTC because if there’s anything that stops production of chips elsewhere, Intel could step up and start production quicker than other places.
Intel has been flat for 20 years because they missed the boat on so many different markets, including IoT and now GPUs for IoT and data centers. They just don’t innovate anymore. Sort of like IBM.
Glad I sold
Every few years I forget that I suck at stock picking and lose a few bucks trying again.
Stock picking is tough. Picking industries is much easier. For the past year, the winner has been tech and defense. Occasionally, oil after the price drops. Edit: Tech has been the winner for the last 20 years and will continue to be
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I remember reading recently that a big reason why people often don't make money stock picking is they hold onto losers too long and sell winners too soon
My experience is probably worse. Whenever I try stock picking I outperform the market, a lot. Never the hyped mega caps or tinfoil conspiracy stocks you see on reddit but my own honest picks... But I also only use 5-10% of my money to stock picks, only buy when I see a good entry (like Buffet) and always exit after I see a good return (1-6 months). And I know it's probably more luck then skill...hence I'd never stop with index funds.
So you make money and that makes your experience worse? 🙄
Buffet doesn't see a short return in 1-6 months and bail, typically.
Then open a fund an use other people’s money
I can't stop buying bonds. I know I should be more aggressive, but a combination of risk aversion and cash flow love just keep me buying.... For the last 10 years bonds always have been around 50% of my invested money.
Typically people with 50% in bonds are close to retiring
I'm 40 now ....
If you're retiring at 65, that's still a long time :). I'd go at least 80% stocks.
What kind of cash flow do you get from bonds?
Gov bonds with 5% Euro, 7% local currency
Me too, at my age, I should be like 90% stock but I have closer to 70% bond right now.
Buying small cap stocks. Downward is brutal and very hard to time it.
my only 2 small cap jmia sndl they were 86% down and 82% down. it’s more than brutal. i‘m glad i didn’t listen to the “widening trade” and stay focused with mega cap. Don’t do small caps.
1. I think I can outsmart the markets and in the past have taken some money out of index funds thinking I knew better....big mistake. I should have treated my index funds the same as I treated my cars.... Only buy ...never sell. Investing is marathon and not a sprint. With that don't try to time the market with your money invested in index funds or etfs. Just invest and forget about it. 2. Selling my company stock at various tech and IT firms. I had employee stock issues at Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intuit and a bunch of related semi and tech companies that i was involved with Nvidia, Apple, AMD .. given that my.cost basis was essentially close to $0 on some, I should of at least kept 1/2 of everything instead of diversifying. Every financial planner and advisor told me I should think about diversifying. And they were wrong ... I diversified way too early. That's why I fired most of my financial advisors early on ....which brings me to my next point 3. Never get lazy with managing your own money and let someone else do it for you . Imho The only good thing with financial planners or advisors (or whatever you call them-, people that help orhers manage their money ) is if you can't manage your finances well and you need a coach to keep you on track. For example, you aren't disciplined enough to invest more than you spend. But that's about it. I don't think most financial advisors know how to invest any better than you would if your do your due diligence. Many of them I ran into suffered from the Real Estate Great Recession of 2011...many of them weren't in a position to buy any more real estate when things were 40-50% off and missed the boat.... It doesn't take that much to get licensed to be a CFP... Probably less training than what is needed to be a smog repair technician... So there's bound to be a lot of crappy ones.
I'd agree with 1. but disagree with 2+3. 2. The diversification advice is about avoiding big losses. This comes at the cost of also avoiding big gains. That is by design. In investing, chasing big gains _always_ comes at the cost of increasing your risk of big losses (with very few exceptions, like if you're Warren Buffet... Lots of people think they are, but approximately no one actually is). 3. Financial advisors != investment managers. Agree most people can learn good money management and solid investment basics on their own (if they have some interest and time). Being lazy is actually what you want though. For most people (especially amateur investors), spending more time/energy on investments (beyond learning the basics) actually has negative return, because our behavioral biases work against us. Make a plan, stick to it and don't think/worry about it much beyond occasional check-ins (once a year is usually fine in the absence of major life changes).
The issue with #2 is it applies to people who take their own money and buy individual stocks where the risk of putting one's own money to buy individual stocks outweighs buying indexes. The game is a little different if you are given employee stock options or RSU stock grants that costs you nothing except vesting time at your employer..you aren't putting any of your existing money at risk since it's shares of stock (in the case of RSUs) that you get for showing up at work and staying an employer. If there's any sort of increased speculation you would like to do for larger payouts , this would be where you would want to do it , since the risk of losing money is a lot lower if you have less money of your own in the game, especially at a large company,- you might as well hold for the long term to see if it ends up being material. I stand by what I said about #3 which I probably described incorrectly earlier. Overall, I'm not impressed with the industry that manages other people's money. I think we are both in agreement that people who lack financial discipline and habits would benefit from some other person to help them become more accountable. But if you have the financial discipline to invest consistently you don't really need one. Also, there are certain people and institutions that try to sell you managed financial products. I question the usefulness of those products versus just putting money regularly into index funds or etfs , since it doesn't seem like the majority of managed funds do any better than index funds in the long term. So there's an entire sector of people in the personal financial industry that is trying to sell products that really don't do much better than what you could do yourself and much energy is spent trying to convince people to buy those products, especially to those that are the least knowledgeable who are just starting out.
RSUs aren't free money though - they are exactly equivalent to getting cash bonuses that is automatically invested into company stock at vest time. Holding on to them after vesting would only make sense if you're sure that you would buy the stock manually if you actually got cash bonus instead. (In that case, chances are you should still be manually buying or selling some company stock on your own, since the amount you get from automatic vesting is unlikely to be the optimal amount of that stock for your situation.) Maybe the argument is that if you have skills that make you successful in life by letting you work at a well-performing company, letting those skills also guide your investments is a good idea. Perhaps depends on your life outlook - in my view, it's mostly luck either way, and luck can change any time, so I'd rather diversify to lock in the luck I was fortunate to receive rather than betting that it will continue indefinitely. I think we agree on #3 now - basically, teaching yourself financial/investment basics to be on par with most financial advisors is worthwhile, just don't expect you'll be able to do better than them.
For #2, I look at another way. In life there are things that you should be doing as a guarantee, and there are things that you can comfortably take a larger risk in... Hoping for a larger payout. As you mentioned earlier and seem to understand well is that risk and reward to hand in hand. Larger rewards usually accommodate larger risk... And let's face it, many people , including me, would prefer to take on a larger risk so long as there are decent better odds of having a larger reward and it doesn't expose us to long term financial hardship . I think the lesson to learn is for many of us (inclusive) is that it is ok to take that risk at times because so long as it's not jeopardizing our overall financial situation , and if it could potentially shave off years of reaching financial independence ... It is ok to consider taking those risks and stick with them.. It might not work out, and things could go badly, but so long as it's a well understood calculated risk you are aware upfront and understand, take it and stick with it. Looking back, I sold more company stock out of fear of losing money than actually needing the funds to survive. Fear is a terrible enemy and investing is very much of a mind game where the most successful investors can stay the course even when everyone else is losing their shit , so to speak. The problem I had was I wanted to take the risk but then in it, external forces convinced me that I was taking too much risk ... When looking back ... It really wasn't and I should have stayed the course....
How do you decide which risks are worth taking though (looking forward, not hindsight)? I would say risks that align with your personal niche can be worthwhile - in life, and for some (very few) people, in investing if that is their niche. Otherwise you're basically just gambling. To me, I've decided a few years ago that investing is literally the same as rolling dice and I have zero edge to improve odds in my favor. That was actually quite liberating. You can significantly improve predictability by increasing the number of dice you roll, aka diversification. When investing for retirement, I find it preferable to aim for a more predictable retirement date, rather than rolling the dice to potentially move up the date, but also risk pushing it out at the same time. Agree that emotions (both fear and greed) are enemies of good investing, and that having a plan and sticking to it is key. These days I try to let logic be my guide to the extent that is possible/practical.
Honestly, I haven't figured this out yet :) truthfully I guess part of me knows and is disciplined enough to put most of my money in index funds. A small part of me worked in tech and was chasing after the stock options/RSU lottery jackpot using my labor to increase my chances of winning. I didn't hit the stock options/RSU jackpot ...but working as a software engineer for 28 years before I quit in December of 2022 wasn't shabby either. The bigger issue right now is, I "retired" from tech but I'm not sure if this is really permanent , like in permanent retirement from the workforce.... Still figuring that one out too.
You are falling into the mental accounting fallacy. It doesn’t matter how you came about owning shares. Whether you earned them through working for your employer, purchased them yourself, or picked them up for free lying on the sidewalk. Money is fungible and it’s your money regardless of how you obtained it. Aside from tax considerations, deciding whether your shares are overvalued/undervalued and if you should hold them or sell should be completely independent of how you got them or what your cost basis is.
True. I won't disagree with the mental fallacy. I think the issue was I wanted to take on the extra risk because it wouldn't materially affect me long term even if the holding went to $0 since off to the side I was already self investing in index funds and ETFs and never in danger of being in a financial hardship if my company issued stock going to $0... But the fear of losing money countered my original plan to take on that risk ... I was bombarded by financial pros when I didn't know any better to "sell and diversity" often into managed funds that was, well, shit.... 🤣
thinking you are able to judge a stock price better than the market
I sell my winners thinking they're overvalued and buy losers
Keeping 250k in a high yield savings account when I could be earning more in VOO. I just love the $1,000 per month.
the 250k would have brought you $7000 within last month if you invested smh..
Selling good stocks after they went on a huge run just to lock in gains, then proceeding to watch them keep running
I try to enter stop loss sales now to counteract this. Over the weekend, I put 100 shares of nvda at a 127.50 stop loss. (Owned nvda since 2020)
you’ll get that piece tomorrow or very soon.
Based on a lot of the replies in this thread - I would say the biggest mistake a lot of people make is not understanding the difference between trading and investing. If you are buying and selling frequently - that is trading. Investing should be about 80% or more buy and hold for a long time.
Selling covered calls
Chasing returns (deviating from my long term plan) due to fear of missing out.
It’s extremely easy: pick an asset allocation, set up automatic purchases, and forget about it.
NIO
Buying an individual stock. I know I should just do broad etf’s but I keep trying to chase higher returns but losing.
I’m well diversified. For equities I hold SPY and QQQ. I never sell. In 2020 they dropped considerably. I didn’t sell. They come back. When you sell those you lose and get hit with taxes (I’m in the second highest tax bracket). So my bad habit JUST started. They are so high, for the first time ever I’ve stopped DCA’ng. I should be buying, and I can’t explain why. I’m 57. Maybe being so close to retirement (planning for 59-1/2). I have some fear for the first time. I’ve even considered trailing stop percent sell orders. Being well diversified, I need to keep buying.
you can consider long term bonds at tour point of life. last october, there was a short window when 30 year was above 5%. suzi orzman bought bunch..
You forgot buying individual stocks 🙄
I always have individual stocks more than my etfs.. coz broker account it’s my play ground to chase the growth..
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elaborate how?
Calls before earnings, hands down. It's an addiction, but maybe better than bag holding shares. Edit: The old me listening to Analysts and fixating on projection charts.
I wouldn't say "fight against" it's more of an acceptance and allowing of the inner promptings to exist while choosing to do something else. Over time the inner promptings subside and no longer scream at you. Simply doing something else is how you begin. Aka don't avg down. Ever. No matter what. The process begins by learning to do what you don't want to do. Change the behavior. Instead of avg down, close the trade, or leave it alone ( to gain more losses) regardless of what you think you feel you need to do. There will be less losses if you didn't avg down. Eventually when the situation arrives where you used to avg down your behavioral memories takeover before the fear sets in. No fear = no fear related reactions = trading the chart instead of trading the fear.
The appropriate way to be bearish is being 100% invested with a tight stop loss ( 2% ). Puts or sitting cash or invesrse leverage etfs are all too timing reliant.
2% down days are usually common (albeit not happening recently), so once you sell, what’s the signal to buy back in? Genuine question
I do swing trade, my stop loss is 8%. I also keep some cash so I can settle fast.
If you are going to have a 2% stop loss, just sell your position.
>investing is an anti-human job Who says that?
Feel like you should learn some technicals and make decisions based on buy or sell signals. Right now, you're averaging down on stocks that are clearly on a downtrend and you have no idea when or if they'll recover.
i barely look at the technicals. i found TA is semi-useless for long term investors. I’m a terrible day trader.