A sure sign of the coming bear market...

[Kodos]

My spidey-sense has been telling me it's time to sell some stocks in our retirement accounts and move to a more conservative position. This "article" assures me that I'm right. ;)

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/hey-snowflakes-get-on-board-the-trump-market-train-2018-01-29

[Kodos]

Kinda glad I followed my instincts here. Went from around 80% stocks (index funds, not individual stocks) to more like 50%. Still hurts, but not as much as it would have.

[Edward64]

Nice call.

I'm going to hang on for the ride (not that I have much choice now). I do have some speculative stocks/mutual funds but 80% of my portfolio is what I would call pretty solid stocks/mutual funds and am confident they will recover.

[Kodos]

I've had a bad feeling about the market for the past couple months, probably not based on anything more substantial than the idea that the market has been going up for a long time, and all markets eventually have a crash. Because of that, I have been googling things like "Bear Market," "Market Crash," yada yada yada. Of course, there is lots of stuff out there. Honestly, I'm not qualified to discern between the crackpots and the people with legitimate insights. But this was interesting. He's basically saying that we are on top of another bubble that is much larger than the dot.com bubble.

https://stansberrystreaming.com/presentations/grant-williams.html

[Logan]

Well, yeah. There are people who have had a "bad feeling about the market" for the past couple of years, and even had legitimately good, defendable reasons for feeling that way. If they decided to get out back then, they'd still be chasing money that could take a decade or more to recoup.

Unless you're about to retire, pretty much all you should be thinking about is saving all you can in a mix of tax-deferred and taxable accounts, diversifying your investment mix, and shifting that mix over time as you get closer to retirement. When the market is strong, invest. When the market is down, invest and get more for your money. Trying to time things leads to disaster damn near every time.

I can't watch the presentation but I'd be surprised if I'd agree with it based on your sentence. The dot com bubble was a bubble because valuations were insane and were built on hopes and dreams. Today, corporate balance sheets are very strong, earnings are good, liquidity is plentiful. There are macro issues that will most likely lead to another downturn at some point but I don't personally view that as a "bubble".

[Arles]

I agree with Logan. I used to tinker with my investments and try to time things. Last year I switch to essentially two funds - one based on my retirement date (I chose 2045) and another focused on international investment. The 2045 fund made 25% and international one made around 30%. The funds I had been tinkering with all made between 18% and 26% - so it's doubtful I would have made more. I'm sure there's a downturn coming at some point, people will panic and prices will go down for the funds I buy. Not a bad thing, IMO.

Unless you are really dialed into this stuff or need access to the most money possible over the next 3-5 years, I would just put it in a [YEAR] retirement fund where the year is around when you want to retire. The beauty of these funds is they re-balance every year based upon your retirement date. I usually pick a later date so it's a little more aggressive (that's my preference), but I'm not sure that's even buying me that much.

[Logan]

And speaking of target date or index funds, that reminds me that I left out what's probably the most important key principle: keep your fees as low as possible. The difference in paying 1% annually (or more) and paying 0.1% or even 0.05% can be literally years of retirement.

[Arles]

Yeah, an expense ratio of 0.5% is a good goal for target funds. If you want to still invest in "normal" mutual funds, the Vanguard ones tend to have the lowest fees.

[Kodos]

I've been a longtime fan of index funds myself. I'm not planning to stay out long. But I'm willing to miss out on some gains at the moment. Part of what I've done is switched to retirement date funds that are earlier than I actually plan to retire.

[albionmoonlight]

I agree 100% with not timing the market.

But, if one were to try, I think that the best sign of a coming bear market is when you start to get pundits predicting that the boom will never end and the best sign of a coming bull market is when you get pundits writing things like "Are bonds actually a better long-term investment than stocks?"

[PilotMan]

The market is set for a slowdown or drop, it's coming. I think that this year will see some modest gains, but it'll be a lot bumpier. I've seen in my area, a housing market that is cooling off. Nobody ever makes a killing on homes in NKY. Prices are very stable, however, volume has been low, and buy times very quick for a few years. Lately though, month by month, average price paid and average time on the market are going down, and going up respectively. Inflation and rising rates will see both of those trends continue as home values continue to slow.

The market raced ahead last year on the idea that business taxes would lower, that has come to pass, and now those companies are expected to produce and the value of their stocks to come back into line. It's not predicated on some massive middle income boom to fire them up, it's about ROI. Investors are at a point where they have money in hand, and will not hesitate to sell it off if they don't get the returns they seek.

Personally, I'm comfortable riding out whatever comes. As bad as 2007-2009 hurt, the resulting returns were substantial and worthwhile. I'm still well over 20 years to retirement and any drop is still a buying opportunity. I'm comfortable with my positions with individual companies and I'm balanced enough that I can ride out market volatility.

[Fidatelo]

I think the alarming part of the video Kodos posted is less the idea that a stock market crash is coming (of course it is, it always is), but more that the very fundamentals of the economy are totally fucked. Some of those graphs are scary as all hell.

On the other hand the last 10 minutes felt like he was shilling for Big Gold or something.

[Kodos]

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3bblmtyxIoY" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

This video has it all! Images of fire, foreboding music. Get in your gold bar bunkers!