Market in free fall

It was well overdue for a correction. Those who peeled some off the top when the Dow was at 18,300 not long ago did OK.

 

guys be careful of index funds I know that is what most people recommend but the S&P 500 index has a lot of oil and gas companies in it. Return OF principal is so much more important than return ON principal. I do not trust the debt of most of these companies much less the equity!

And China market is slowing. Hard....

 

If pellets suddenly went down 20%, we would all (those who use them) be out buying pellets. If they went down another 20%, we'd buy more. If they went up 50%, we might start thinking about whether we needed all those pellets, and whether we could sell some to the neighbor. (The numbers may change, but the point is, you buy when the price is going down, and sell when the price is going up.) If you accidently bought too many while the price is high, you don't sell them because it is now low, but you buy more to lower your average cost.

Companies (stocks) are the same, to the extent you can control your buys and sells. As one approaches retirement, it is time to thinking about reducing exposure, because of the risk of holding volatile investments over the short term.

Greg

 

Good job right there! At your age, now is the best time to be saving.

 

I gambled in an economics class that was required in my senior year of college(lots of high paying shipping, offshore, power engineering jobs when we graduated). The entire class was enrolled in a fake yahoo trading pool starting with 10k and who ever ended the semester on top got 10/15 bonus points on the final exam.
Everyone could see each others portfolios and I think the professor inadvertently selected minimum stock price of $2.
Most guys bought big names GE, Caterpillar, Siemens(companies they new) I'd run searches for cost, 52wk range, PE ratios etc and formulated guesses buying 2-$5 stocks on volume and setting stop sales with 10% ROI or maximum 2% loss. When you're playing with house money it seemed easy.

I was far and away blowing out everyone in the class until one of my buddies saw the stock price I was buying and found some random coal mining company and bought it with all of his 10K or so he had....
The mining company was acquired in a merger and more than tripled in a day he sold and sat back, mean while Enron spiraled out of control most everyone lost their 10K, I managed to end up with ~32K over a 5 month span and finished second in the competition.

I think I still got 10 bonus points on the final exam which helped me get a 100 because I answered the question of "How many stocks should you have in a portfolio" with you can gamble on low price stocks and make a bunch of money but somewhere in the textbook that I never bought/read it states 20 something - he gave me 1/2pts for the answer

 

Ive lost 35K in the last 5 days,If I leave everything alone it should be back... I'm back where I was last October

 

What a difference a day makes......

 

It'll come back, don't even look at your long term investments. I lost nearly 3 fold that in October 2008

 

Bad money week but, Your Personal Investment Performance (PIP) for the past 12 months ending 07/31/2015 is 9.59%.
(Your PIP is posted by the 3rd business day of each month.) I'm sure this number might look different in Sept.

 

I agree unless your invested in oil or gas companies or emerging markets of export countries like Brazil, Russia or Asian tigers.

 

You only lost if you sell.
what it's worth today doesn't mean much if you aren't pulling it today.
dividend drips will net you more shares and actually earn you more in the long term. VOLATILITY is how people can make money.

IF you're under 55, its a great time to buy GOOD companies.

I'm not too worried about the S&P500 Vs oil at all, in fact, oil is only 1 of the top 25 by weight-age.
http://portfolios.morningstar.com/fund/holdings?t=SPY

 

When I started my real job 4 years ago I setup my 401k to get the company match then when ever I get a raise I bump my contribution so that my take home remains the same. Pay less taxes now and save more.

I am on the phone with the company Fidelity account manager at least twice a month and whenever I am in Chicago I make sure to take her out to dinner. Get a call every once in a while to take a closer look at something or tweak my contributions a bit. Been averaging 12-14% the last 4 years. Yeah could be doing better but that aint half bad return for a couple steak dinners a year. Most in my age bracket put the minimum in for company match and let in ride in a target fund. They average 3-4%.