So this is a very volatile time in the markets right now – my investment portfolio tells me that. In just a short several years, I’ve seen the tech boom (and bust), the run-up of hedge funds then private equity, the age of mega leveraged buyouts, the real estate explosion, and now… the fallout.
At first I was under the impression that these cycles of boom-then-bust are something confined to the 1990s… yeah, how generation-centric of me, right? 
Then I read A Random Walk Down Wall Street. There it is: booms & busts are NOTHING new. Sure, the vehicles may change, but the fundamentals don’t.
Hegel said: “We learn from history that men learn nothing from history.”
Buffett said: ““Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”
If you are (a) supremely confident of your ability to pick the next Google or that you have a broker who does OR (b) if you are taking all your money out because you’re certain that the market will crash & burn – just think about those two sayings.
As for me? I have some bonds and a whole lot of stocks, and I’m sitting pretty on my (small but growing) pile. I’m in it for the long haul, baby.
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I will admit that watching my retirement accounts go down every month is depressing….but I don’t need the money for at least 35 years, so I’m not too worried. I’m actually thinking of investing in a non-retirment portfolio…
Even since the beginning of the year, my retirement accounts have plummeted. Bu I’m taking the approach that I don’t need retirement money right now, and I’m just going to ride it out…look at it as a time to get cheap stocks and funds!
most of my investments are in canadian income funds, which contributed to my $1921 in passive income last month.
They’ve been dragged down with the rest of the market. Very little of my investments are in US based stocks. However, if you’ve read ‘when genius failed: the rise and fall of Long Term Capital Mgmt’, you’ll know that in a down cycle, non-correlated global markets all converge and everything gets pulled down.
The market is dropping on recession fears.
Recessions are part of the business cycle. they shake out the excesses of the previous cycle and give new people a chance to make their fortunes.
Right now is probably a good time to be invested in bonds. The Fed is all set to drop interest rates by .75% – 1% this year. Bonds typically rise in such an environment.
I’ll be posting about bonds on my site. Subscribe to my feed to make sure you don’t miss it!
On average, if you are in for more than 5 years, you will come out ahead. A low market is an opportunity to buy shares at lower cost, so when the market recovers you’ll gain from it.
Well, you know, it’s easy to stay in the market when we’ve had a 25 year long boom market which happens to be currently experiencing some turbulence and a downturn. We’ll see how confident you remain if the market goes into a long, protracted bear market like it did from 1966-1982.
I do want to say that people who did invest continually from ’66-’82 and watched their money stagnate the entire time made out like bandits when the bull market exploded. (Obviously people who put their money in other investments during that time and then sunk the whole thing into the stock market right before the bull did even better, but don’t count on getting that lucky.)
I’m putting my money where my mouth is; I just invested an additional $4000 since I think this is a great buying opportunity, despite the fact that I’ve seen quite a plunge in my net worth in the last couple of months. (Like Living Off Dividends, I also have a lot of money in international stocks, but don’t give up on U.S. stocks either.)
right on. SALE on stocks! I do my shopping at brokerage companies now.
I’d be worried if I were my parents age (57), but at 29, it’s all good. Lucky my mom has a pension and not a normal 401K…