No. As I wrote, I sold after the market went back up enough for me to get back nearly all my losses. Don’t know if this is actually a high or a low compared to a month from now. I suspect another crash, which is why I am holding off (in which case, right now the numbers represent a high). However, the rally may (or may not) mean that the numbers today are a low compared to what they will be a month from now. The market does not seem to reflect reality, and many folks suspect reality will catch up to the market.
“When the U.S. government’s official jobs report for May came out on Friday, it included a note at the bottom saying there had been a major “error” indicating that the unemployment rate likely should be higher than the widely reported 13.3 percent rate.
The special note said that if this “misclassification error” had not occurred, the “overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported,” meaning the unemployment rate would be about 16.3 percent for May.”
I keep hearing there will be an August crash. Just talked to my broker yesterday. He said jokingly that it’s the same people predicting this would never happen which just did yesterday… Lol.
I just read some investor that actually predicted this and the crash etc. Can’t remember his name. But he’s been spot on so far. He’s saying August will be just fine. I still have some time but not a huge amount before retirement but right now we are still investing.
The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to time the market. Best scenario is to have balanced and diversified portfolio based on your long term investment goals.
The issue is where are you going to put your money if not in the stock market. Bonds? Real estate? Gold? There’s not a lot of other places to put your money and make decent investment returns in the long run.
I didn’t touch my retirement funds, but I made a big mistake pulling all of my 2 kids college savings out mid-March from an aggressive global age based fund into FDIC insured cash when they went down 6.5% and 14% respectively. Had I just rode this out they would not have had any losses right now for the year. Cost me about $30,000 for panicking.
We didn’t touch our kids 529s. They are age matured and one more year to go. We lost a bit and have to check but it seems we will make that back , if we didn’t already. One thing I am learning as you said have a diverse but smart portfolio. We did make some changes “before” the crash like putting a drop limit on 30% of the portfolio. That helped more then I can say. Now I have to talk about taking that off and when??
When we went low they seemed to switch to more dividends and now we are reaping that reward.
So when I talk to people that actually know about investing they just keep telling me keep putting money into the market.
I heard a theory that the recent turmoil caused the most havoc on small businesses that are less likely to be publicly traded. They didn’t have the infrastructure necessary to responded to COVID by implementing working from home strategies or adopting new testing and cleaning protocols.
As a result, larger businesses are picking up the market share from the smaller competition. While non-traded mom-and-pops go under, the publicly traded corporations are gaining value. That’s why the market is responding so well, according to this theory.
Sorry about that, you just never know. If I was in charge of investing I would do the same
for my kids 529. Good thing DH doesn’t listen to me. However i influenced him NOT to invest the extra cash from various bonuses. Usually we only keep 6 months of expenses in cash. Not sure when to jump in. So technically we didnt lose money but we sure didn’t gain like we could have.
The FDIC insures banks and accounts in those banks. If the bank fails or suffers a loss, your account is insured. Until that happens, having your money in Bank A is no different than in Bank B. If Bank A fails, it’s likely the assets will be sold to another bank and you won’t even notice (except you get new paperwork)
If you don’t need access to the money now, probably best to buy a CD to get more than 1% interest.
https://www.bls.gov/bls/news-release/empsit.htm contains the archived employment situation reports. March, April, and May have a big box at the bottom describing the error (February had no such big box). From the reports, the adjustment amounts to correct the error are listed below, along with the reported unemployment rates and unemployment rates adding the adjustment for the error.
Month U3 Adj U3 Adj
February 3.5 0 3.5
March 4.4 +1 5.4
April 14.7 +5 19.7
May 13.3 +3 16.3
So with the correction for the error applied to all months where applicable, the unemployment rate did drop from April to May, but the unemployment rates from March to May were worse than the reported numbers.
I watched an interview with Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize winning economist, last night.
His concern about the lower than expected unemployment rate in May is that it may cause the political leadership to feel that no additional emergency relief for lost wages is required, and therefore not extend it after it expires in the next few months. He thinks that the reason we are not feeling like we are in a Great Depression now is due to that emergency relief, and that by withdrawing that relief too soon could cause a relapse in the economy.
Whether it is too soon or not soon enough is a delicate dance imo. He has said right things in the past and wrong things. How would we know if he is right or wrong this time?
I moved a portion of our stock-index accounts into a money market account within our IRA, and some more into bonds. It was probably a conservative move, but I feel like there will be major stock tanking in the next 6 months or so. (But I am woefully ignorant, so I could be wrong.). We still have 50% in stocks. If the market tanks, I will move money back into the index accounts. We have pension income streams and DH is still working, so we don’t anticipate needing access to this money anytime soon.
Everyone is always just guessing. We have a tremendous amount of data, and very little ability to predict the future.
I rebalanced a little in late March to get back to 60/40, which is my target from now until my demise. Did a little tax loss harvesting. Then scrubbed moss off the patio and cleaned the windows, which is about what we should be doing about the stock market. Set a target and get on with life.
