I just pulled another third of the money we have set aside for retirement from the stock market, which means that more than half of our money is now out of the market.
If Congress wants to play Russian Roulette, then I think I'd rather be further away from the blood splatter. Hey, they may miraculously arrive at a good solution, and the stock market may go up, but even if I miss it, I'm pretty sure it will settle back down because there is still plenty of bad news to come and there will be chances to get back in.
But the downside seems much bigger than the upside to me right now. At worse, I'll still have the same money I started with. No one thought they'd vote down the TARP, either, and the market crashed 700 points in one day.
So...well, that would be a buying opportunity.
If you read history, this sort of reminds me of WWI. Nobody thought the other guys would be so stupid as to escalate, until it was too late.
Like then, there are so many entanglements in the market -- Greece, and Spain and Italy, and the good old U.S. of A.
Or maybe like James Dean racing the other guy to the cliff, and the other guy's shirt gets caught and -- whooops, iiieeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!
They say don't time the market, but I just did. Let's see what happens.
(If --as what probably will happen-- it just goes sideways, I'm still wanting to invest in less risky if lower earning investments.)
I had to ask myself what was most important about our retirement money and the answer was -- 'security' and there are just safer places than mutual funds right now.
Linda and I have always had a modest lifestyle and if we continue that way, we'll be fine if it doesn't all go down the rabbit hole.
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At your age you probably shouldn't have more than one-third of your portfolio in the stock market. Anyway that's the standard advice, and I think in these times you probably should be even more cautious. My wife and I (a bit older than you) have only about 20% of our portfolio in equities.
Well, they say wait six months to a year before you make any major decisions after your circumstances change.
So, the house was the first step, and this is the second step.
Sold my B & N stock, too.
"Linda and I have always had a modest lifestyle"
My wife and I don't exactly live high off the hog either, but by the time the Republicans get through slashing Social Security and Medicare and wrecking the economy (for everybody who's not a billionaire, that is) we might end up living under a freeway overpass.
Latest update: Looks like there will be a 'compromise' to avert a shutdown, but still you're probably smart to pull a good deal of your money out of the stock market.
Stuff it under your mattress, of course!
July 15, was the last day to buy gold on comex for USA resident.
Counter Intuitive it is, but in actuality the 'stock market' will do best, as they just announced QE3. In general in in HYPER-INFLATION the stock market does well as a place of real wealth that you can pick up on a bargain. Best book on this is Marc-FABER 'tomrrows gold' inflation chapter.
In do agree in general not to have money in USA stock market that said Vanguard has some good funds for old dead folk.
Now 'gold' is very safe with QE3 on the horizon.
social security and medicare are going to end dunc, and nothing the pug's can do can stop this fact.
humpty dumpty ( us economy ) has fell off the wall, in many ways the US entitlements are 1000X worse than greece.
they can 'fix' the debt problem for 6-12 months, ... but 5-15 years the dollar will be gone, and so will all entitlements, the entire system will be reset. The US government will implode on its debt, and all the troops will have to crawl home on their own.
Be careful when you all talk about 'stock market'
banks of course are fucked, but 'sugar' and 'coffee' are doing fine ... and so will gold.
Like we have said here for long time, all that YOU need will go up, and all that you don't need will go down.
You don't need a car or house in bend, and they will implode, but food, and oil, ... electricity will all rise, and so will any stock associated ...
The notion of 'buy opportunity' is a myth. After dot-come crash of 1999, none of those high-tech came back. They were 99% gone, bend gone.
In actuality like Japan post tsunami is where you find deals. The good shit like Toyota were a bargain for a few days.
In USA a good company would be J&J, or WALMART. If they go down 50%, then yes you should buy I can't think of another US company, maybe Microsoft ditto if they went down 90% probably a good bet to pickup on the bottom. Trouble is 90% of todays US companys will not be around in 10 years.
Wise move..I think. I dumped everything about a month ago and took some profits. With QE2 ending, it was pretty obvious that stocks were going to struggle. Back door QE3 has begun...$90 billion in the last two weeks which is about 10 billion more per week than we saw during QE2. I'm laying low for a while but I'm thinking of mining stocks and at some point, I'll probably buy back in. I think gold will hit $1800 by the end of the year and silver will settle around $50. There will come a day when both go parabolic and you won't be able to find anything physical.
I think the next 90 days are going to be pretty darn interesting. 2008 style market crash is almost certain at some point. It'll be intentional and leave us begging for the next round of QE so everyone's 401K will look better on paper.
Buckle up!
But of course if everyone does this, the market Will fall.
Obviously, that ain't happening -- so far.
It's not something to wish for, by any means.
I figure it's 10/1 that a 'relief rally' will take place and I'll lose out in the short term.
But that one in ten chance is so dire, that I just don't want to risk it.
Dunc, S&P & MOODY now report its 50-50, why do you stick do this pollyanna think of it being 10-1, its like your one of those 77% who still don't even know what's going on?????
The default has already happen the point of no return has past. They have now replaced social-security with IOU's, and federal-pensions, and medicare. There are now over 100 trillion in obligations with no possibility of payment in future. Each citizen owes more than a $1M, and yet has a negative net-worth.
As MADOFF said, the USA is the great PONZI scam in the world, and its going down.
The respected website Shadow Government Statistics currently places the real unemployment rate at 22.8 per cent - equivalent to the worst months of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
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