Silly me. Those Goldman Sachs guys were smart mother ers. You have to trust in the well managed funds.
CC, do you have a valid point?
A mixed bond fund is very stable. They are a safe place to park money that effectively doesn't grow. Individual bonds often have problems, but not well managed bond funds by well paid managers in Fidelity, Vanguard, etc.
Silly me. Those Goldman Sachs guys were smart mother ers. You have to trust in the well managed funds.
In 2014 oil field related bonds looked just safe as safe could be. The frack boom was built on bond money. Oil will never drop to $30.
Cherry picking the abnormal.
Are oil bonds "well mixed?"
Last edited by Wild Cobra; 02-07-2016 at 06:39 PM.
I moved a lot of my money over to a tax exempt long term bond fund last year. I'm happy I did and getting a ~4% tax free interest rate isn't so bad imo. I don't think you made a mistake or did anything "scary". At some point I'll move that money over to an index fund when I think we are near a bottom.
Then again... if I know what's going to happen.
That's the problem. The future is very hard to predict.
it's basically at $30 right now and has been as low as $27 this year.
do you think this is the floor for oil prices?
guess I should have put it in blue
my point was that with bond funds chasing yields in a low interest environment you can be pretty sure that a lot of funds are holding shale related bonds that seemed super safe at the time with $110 oil but will very well default at $30 oil.
Go gold miners! I had bought some near its low and it's taken off recently. Unfortunately, I also tried some oil and that keeps going down.
Off-topic - but since this thread isn't politics either - saw Motown (the musical) last night. Very good - especially the Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson acts - kid has a great voice - of course, nowhere near the real thing (performance-wise).
I will be shocked if gold continues to climb. lMHO with the current deflation n commodities it's more likely to drop a lot.
I bought it when it dropped a lot - almost near the bottom. I'm gonna ride out the climb. When it inevitably turns, I'll sell, wait for another big drop day and put it back into S&P 500. The rise is probably only because the Fed will be reluctant to raise rates with the stock market down and yo-yoing like this. It's only to feel like I'm doing something and pick up a little gain.
Well, so far, I have staved off greater than a $12k loss of my 401k since I went to 95% bonds and 5% stocks. Would have a little more if I went all bonds. not bad for a week. I wonder what the next week will do.
Timing markets is a fools game, IMO, unless you have a LOT of time on your hands.
Buy. Hold. Collect dividends.
With most of the world approaching deflationary reflection points, i.e. Japan, Europe, etc, gold just holds no attraction. Rather have interests in a functioning business.
Having a single strategy is a fools game IMO. Why not take a diverse approach?
I break my money up into 4 categories:
Emergency Money: 6 months living expenses that just sits in a mm account
Retirement Money: Majority of my money invested in a mixed SEP IRA fund. Your recommended buy,hold,collect dividends...and enjoy the tax advantages...time frame of decades.
Long Term Money : Time frame of years but not decades. I move this money between index & bond funds. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell when there is a market correction on the horizon and it takes about 2 minutes to move money from one fund to another. It's not necessary to nail the absolute market peak/bottom to come out way ahead.
Gambling Money: Small percentage of my money that I bet on individual stocks looking for large short term gains. Sometimes I nail it and make huge gains and sometimes I get my ass kicked. This is a set amount of money and when I make big gains the profit over the set amount gets moved to the retirement or long term category. When I bet wrong it's up to me to find a better stock to get back to the set amount (I never move retirement/long term money to this category). All in all this is my best performing category. At this point if I do something really stupid and lose every penny I'll still be ahead of what the retirement/long term funds have delivered but too risky to bet my entire future on my psychic abilities to guess wtf an individual stock is going to do.
Last edited by SnakeBoy; 02-09-2016 at 02:08 PM.
+1
Exactly what you should be doing. A mix of funds with different time frames and risk profiles, each tailored to a specific amount.
Buy hold and dividends is a long term saving strategy most appropriate for a good chunk of retirement funds.
Heh, you beat me to it. Another +1
Exactly except I use leveraged ETFs - not individual stocks - mostly US financial (because they'll bail out the banks) - play the ups and downs - mostly on market fears and over-reaction. Don't usually mess with commodities but gold miners was SO low. Now, how low can oil go?
Yeah I do etf's as well as individual stocks. Just whatever catches my eye. ETF's are definitely a safer way to go and I'll probably start sticking to them primarily. At 49 I'm becoming more & more risk adverse. The only time I messed with commodities was gold back in '08/09 but that was a no brainer back then.
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