Checked 401K today after not looking in 3 months

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Type "aapl stock chart" into Google search.

$23 in 2016
$155 today

Similar with SPY. Truly unbelievable gains in the last decade. Hopefully it continues, but don't count on it. You need to Fed to print money!!!

OP is ridiculous but so are you. AAPL released new products today. Ofc it’s high.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks Biden!

F you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why do so many on the Right just repeat what they’re told. No critical thinking ability. I thought Limbaugh’s “ditto heads” was a joke, but it appears to be true. The Right is mostly a bunch of lemmings ready to follow Trump off a cliff.

Right. Like they blame Biden and his policies for inflation, yet inflation is worldwide (thanks China and Russia) and Biden has hardly been successful with getting much through Congress (thanks Manchin and Synema). They say it’s Biden because that’s what the Right’s pundits tell them to think. Ditto heads.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. I looked at my 401K today after not looking for months. I max out every year (with catch up since I'm in my 50s) and every penny I've put towards it this year is gone, plus an additional $100 grand. So around $125K down since the start of the year. Is this thing going to turn around? And I know that some are going to say that I'm thinking about it wrong, that every cent of my paycheck that I've sent to my 401K this year means I'm buying deeply discounted stocks, etc. It just still feels like a gut punch to see that I'm $125K down. Others who want to commiserate?

The only thing I’m commiserating is that I have to share a country with idiots like you. We have a minor market downturn and you are crying? We are up ~20% from pre-pandemic highs. We are up 100% from early 2016. Hell, we are still positive from Biden’s inauguration date despite the utter mess that he was handed.

Everyone is down on the year because the end of 2021 was the “top.” For now. Correct, we are still way way up from 2010. People need to stop complaining.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Type "aapl stock chart" into Google search.

$23 in 2016
$155 today

Similar with SPY. Truly unbelievable gains in the last decade. Hopefully it continues, but don't count on it. You need to Fed to print money!!!

OP is ridiculous but so are you. AAPL released new products today. Ofc it’s high.

Maybe I should buy tomorrow at 155 and hold for 6 years. It should 6x again in the next 6 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks Biden!

You mean Thanks Biden voters!

The poor dude is trying his best, which is not that much.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've also lost everything that I put in this year. Funds have only lost money despite aggressively saving. I wish that I'd not bothered to put anything in and instead invested in real estate, my home, or other. I know that it may come back in a few years but it is difficult not to be completely disheartened by it. We don't have a ton of savings to begin with so to watch it disappear immediately is upsetting.

I have no sympathy for you or others like you – you know why? Because you were either greedy or dumb or both.

I’ve always been a big fan of focusing first on paying off your mortgage because if you “don’t have a ton of savings to begin with,” you need to focus on the very basics like having a roof over your head secured. You probably knew that but didn’t do it because everyone on DCUM and all of your coworkers or neighbors were saying how great it was to be in the stock market because it was going up. You had FOMO and didn’t want to settle for the sensible 3% return you get by paying off your mortgage.

This goes against conventional wisdom, but I view stocks as just “funny money“ for rich people. My stocks are down for the year like everyone else’s, but I don’t care because I have a paid-off house and cars, and tons of I bonds for short term cash. Beyond that, I just try to maximize my money and you do that in stocks, but I only did that after I had the basics of a middle-class life secured.

No one these days knows if/when you can even retire. The traditional guide used to be the 4% rule, where you can withdraw in retirement 4% of your assets. Go over to the Bogleheads form – some people think that’s now 2.5%. In other words, if you save $2 million, *maybe* you’ll have $50,000/year in retirement income. And the younger generations more than likely won’t have Social Security in the same form that exists today.

That’s why I say it’s funny money - nobody knows how much you really need and you can lose 40% of it at any given time, etc. Sorry but you have to just work and save, work and save, work and save and don’t think stocks are going to bail you out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why do so many on the Right just repeat what they’re told. No critical thinking ability. I thought Limbaugh’s “ditto heads” was a joke, but it appears to be true. The Right is mostly a bunch of lemmings ready to follow Trump off a cliff.

Right. Like they blame Biden and his policies for inflation, yet inflation is worldwide (thanks China and Russia) and Biden has hardly been successful with getting much through Congress (thanks Manchin and Synema). They say it’s Biden because that’s what the Right’s pundits tell them to think. Ditto heads.

You should upgrade your sources of information. I'm in Europe now and credible sources like the BBC and the FT constantly differentiate inflation in the US vs Europe: in Europe the main cause is energy and food, given the war. In the US it's the massive stimulus, both monetary (Thanks Fed!) and fiscal (first with Trump, then much expanded with Biden, most recently with the free money for student loans).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The fed needs to drop the rates they are overshooting again. Dumb old people

Real interest rates are negative with our currently rate of inflation. If anything, the Fed needs to pick up the pace of rate hikes and should be coming in with 100 bps or more. How do you expect to bottle up inflation with an accomodating Fed that still has negative rates?

Tell me you know nothing about economics without telling me you know nothing about economics.

[Anonymous]

I don’t look. I have an Acorns account on the side that I transfer whatever I can to at the end of each month. I use that as the canary in the coal mine, and when it stalls or dips, I either put more into it or do more straight-savings for a while, depending on what else is going on with my budget.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It could take a very long time to come back.

This isn't like 2008. The Fed put is gone. 2008-2021 was an anomaly driven by an excessively accommodating Fed. That era is over.

This is debatable. If the FED does nothing then we likely enter a depression, in which case stocks could lose 50+%. But nobody thinks the FED will let us enter a depression, they will start up the printers at some point when SHTF, in which case you want to own stocks as a buffer for the currency devaluation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Same boat. I’m the poster who asked on another thread whether to pay down the mortgage or to invest my $100k inheritance. After watching my investments continue to lose money I just paid down the mortgage. Felt a lot better about that. I’d imagine I would have invested that $100k and watch it lose 20% the next day. I know logically that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, but I’m down $86k this year and just can’t keep throwing that money down the toilet.

Lol. Now imagine if you invested now even more, how much money those shares will be worth when you need the money. Much higher returns than saving some interest on a mortgage. How do you think Warren Buffett invests?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ugh. I looked at my 401K today after not looking for months. I max out every year (with catch up since I'm in my 50s) and every penny I've put towards it this year is gone, plus an additional $100 grand. So around $125K down since the start of the year. Is this thing going to turn around? And I know that some are going to say that I'm thinking about it wrong, that every cent of my paycheck that I've sent to my 401K this year means I'm buying deeply discounted stocks, etc. It just still feels like a gut punch to see that I'm $125K down. Others who want to commiserate?

As long as you haven’t sold, you are fine. My portfolio is down 500k from high but I am still keep buying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It could take a very long time to come back.

This isn't like 2008. The Fed put is gone. 2008-2021 was an anomaly driven by an excessively accommodating Fed. That era is over.

This is debatable. If the FED does nothing then we likely enter a depression, in which case stocks could lose 50+%. But nobody thinks the FED will let us enter a depression, they will start up the printers at some point when SHTF, in which case you want to own stocks as a buffer for the currency devaluation.

50% is nothing.

Nasdaq lost 70% during the .com crash.

A nice fat reset would be welcome. There is too much europhoria driven by the excessively accomodating Fed since 2008-2009.

That era is over. Look at the Fed's balance sheet now compared to 2008. It is ridiculous. People got addicted to easy wealth and easy money..now the piper must be paid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've also lost everything that I put in this year. Funds have only lost money despite aggressively saving. I wish that I'd not bothered to put anything in and instead invested in real estate, my home, or other. I know that it may come back in a few years but it is difficult not to be completely disheartened by it. We don't have a ton of savings to begin with so to watch it disappear immediately is upsetting.

I have no sympathy for you or others like you – you know why? Because you were either greedy or dumb or both.

I’ve always been a big fan of focusing first on paying off your mortgage because if you “don’t have a ton of savings to begin with,” you need to focus on the very basics like having a roof over your head secured. You probably knew that but didn’t do it because everyone on DCUM and all of your coworkers or neighbors were saying how great it was to be in the stock market because it was going up. You had FOMO and didn’t want to settle for the sensible 3% return you get by paying off your mortgage.

This goes against conventional wisdom, but I view stocks as just “funny money“ for rich people. My stocks are down for the year like everyone else’s, but I don’t care because I have a paid-off house and cars, and tons of I bonds for short term cash. Beyond that, I just try to maximize my money and you do that in stocks, but I only did that after I had the basics of a middle-class life secured.

No one these days knows if/when you can even retire. The traditional guide used to be the 4% rule, where you can withdraw in retirement 4% of your assets. Go over to the Bogleheads form – some people think that’s now 2.5%. In other words, if you save $2 million, *maybe* you’ll have $50,000/year in retirement income. And the younger generations more than likely won’t have Social Security in the same form that exists today.

That’s why I say it’s funny money - nobody knows how much you really need and you can lose 40% of it at any given time, etc. Sorry but you have to just work and save, work and save, work and save and don’t think stocks are going to bail you out.

In the same post, you call other people dumb, and also advocate for paying off a 3% mortgage before doing any investing in the stock market? Oy.