OMG the stock market!

[Tomconroy]

There is a story today in the NY Times that some day the stock market could decline. I guess I should have posted it in breaking news.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/31/business/stock-market-record.html

[Rorey]

1. ....

[brooklynite]

2. Isn't this where someone here calls it a ponzi scheme?

[Pinback]

3. Won't somebody think of the *millionaires*?

[cadoman]

4. market's doing well -- indicates confidence in a good President

It's not the whole story by any means but it's a sign of how a good President can boost quality of life for everyone.

[PSPS]

6. LOL. "indicates confidence in a good President"

All it really indicates is that the algorithms used by and the increased speed of electronic trading is improving. The stock market stopped being an indicator of the overall economy a long time ago. The DJIA increased almost 60% during the trump term until covid knocked it down.

[Tomconroy]

5. I lived through a lot of markets now.

The only way I know to become wealthy is to dollar average every pay check into the market. Become wealthy just as the country has for the last 250 years. Market drops are the time to buy. There is emmense wisdom in the idea of buying low and selling high.
If anyone else has a better idea, please post it.

[Stuart G]

10. There is no better idea...If there is a new stock..sometimes a chance on that is worth the

ones you lose with similar bets. I know someone who got in on Microsoft and Tesla very early..Hard to imagine,
but that happened. You win some, and lose some. Some times the winners are worth the losers...But you never
know who the ...winners and losers are, ahead of time Do you?

Which company sells more cars?...Ford or Toyota?

Who even heard of Toyota 50 years ago?...I had hardly heard of VW....
I did hear of something called a De Soto, Pontiac, and Oldsmobile 50 years ago.
............and I doubt that I am the only one who heard of those cars

[Tomconroy]

13. Don't pick stocks. Invest in the broad market

Through the S&P five hundred or some other broad index. Don't buy stocks. Buy the country.

[Stuart G]

17. ...Yes, that is true, a little of this industry, and a little of that industry and some others.

How about this? The electric industry...(producers)..manufacturers of computers..(top names)..and others like that.
Also goods that are always in demand....and never lack demand...What about ...Scotch Tape.?..You may not
know this, but the Scotch Tape company...makes the very best masks for this pandemic...3M.
the Scotch Tape company.... Minnesota, Mining and Manufacturing..(N95s)..based in Minnesota..& elsewhere

Oh well back the hole....got to hide again... ....

[kentuck]

7. Eventually, everything that goes up must come down.

It's like a law of physics or something?

[Tomconroy]

8. Except for the stock market. It does go down but for all of our

history it eventually goes up.

[Stuart G]

12. That depends on the stocks you invest in..

...Some investments go down and out...What if you invested in..."IRIDIUM"...?

.......look up Iridium...It went down and out..and out some more..

.......I once went to a stockholders meeting and the head of the company...talked too much..
He went on and on and on, and sometimes sounded rather ...stupid.....so...I decided as
did a friend that I was with....to sell that stock....cause how good could it be?
The guy doesn't even know how to give a short simple report...How good can he be?

.....................Guess what that company's name was/is....McDonalds the hamburger place...
......................So I sold it because the CEO...talked too long.....a very wise move on my part..

[Tomconroy]

16. Don't buy individual stocks. Very few people are smarter

Than the market. Buy the market.
Except for a healthcare fund. That will out perform for a long time.

[Demobrat]

9. The stock market has been doing well for about a decade now.

It propped up Trump’s presidency for the first 3 years.

Remember “How’s your 401k?”.

It was a thing until around March 2020.

Not much to do with who is President as far as I can tell. Of course I’m no expert.

[Tomconroy]

11. I really wish I could convince younger people of this. The stock

Market did well in the 1920s, suffered an incredible crash, but if you dollar averaged in through the 30s and 40s you did ok. If you started in the 50s and kept dollar averaging through the 60s you became wealthy. The 70s were flat but if you dollar averaged you made some money. Beginning in 1982 you endured some very bad markets, but if you dollar averaged, you became very wealthy indeed.
If I do nothing else on this board I hope I can convince some young people to believe in the immense possibilities of this country. Start young. Invest some portion of your pay check. You won't believe what will happen.

[WarGamer]

14. As an active and daily trader...

The market is NUTS.

What was it... irrationally exuberant?

The last year has been easy to make money. Buy weekly options for SPY (S&P 500 ETF) and collect your cash.

Prices are waaaaaaayyy disconnected with valuation.

The whole thing WILL crash, bigly...

I don't think it'll be this year, though... probably Spring.

[Tomconroy]

18. I don't have the temperament to be a trader.

Even at the age of 66 I know I am a very long term investor. Day trading is gambling. Investing is a long, long term idea.

[WarGamer]

20. Definitely!!

I have a professionally managed long term retirement account.

I also have an account where I've allowed myself to "play"

I day trade, mostly options... risky shit but I'm in the green for the last year.

It's been fish in a barrel.

[Tomconroy]

22. I used to have a small account where I bet on individual stocks.

Eventually iI figured out I really sucked at it.

[WarGamer]

23. Playing shares isn't that exciting TBH...

Trading options allows you to hit BIG gains.

Just a few weeks ago, I held Moderna options and the options grew in value 26x within 2 days.

A $200 contract became worth $5200

[Tomconroy]

24. Just can't do it by temperament. And I think most people

are like me. Maybe it's best to get rich slowly.

[WarGamer]

26. You're right.

Here's how I do it.

First, I have an established retirement account. I don't touch it.

Then you start to lose the "feel" of the value of money. I can easily buy $4-5k of Options Contracts with the knowledge that they can be worth $0 in a few weeks...

When they're just numbers they're easier to work with.

What you're doing... is buying a contract which gives you the opportunity but NOT the obligation to buy or sell a stock at a pre-agreed price.

For example:

If I think Tesla will hit $800 by January, I can purchase a contract for $4600 which gives me the RIGHT to buy 100 shares of Tesla for $800/share by January 1, 2022

If Tesla hits $800+ $46 (the premium)... I make money. Let's say it hits $856 by expiration, I made $10 off each share and I have 100 shares. So I made $1000

If Tesla hits $946, I make $100 per share or $10k per contract.

The Stock Market is 90% Casino and 10% long term intelligent investing.

[mopinko]

25. do you trade w cboe?

my ex worked there for a long time.

[WarGamer]

27. No, I'm just a retail trader using WeBull..

[Tomconroy]

28. My absolute favorite investing book is The Elements of

Investing by Charlie Ellis and Burt Malkiel. About 120 very short pages about all you really need to know about investing. They both urge everyone to invest their serious money in index funds. Charlie confesses at the end he's always invested in a little company called Berkshire Hathaway. Burt confesses he has a little money set aside to play the market just because it's so much fun.
But please folks, with your serious money, don't try to outguess the market. That's really hard.
And for younger people: Please, set something aside from every paycheck. Live below your means. Don't go in to credit card debt. The rest is kind of easy.

[WarGamer]

30. 100% agree

For 99% of people, I recommend weekly auto-deposits to an ETF or Index Fund whether it be something like SPY or something from Vanguard or Fidelity... AND start home buying early.

Wanna live dangerously? Drop some money in Cathie Wood's ARK funds.

[bif]

15. The market has been very good to me.

I took the money from a pension plan and turned 20k into 550k over the last 25 years. Not too shabby.

[Stuart G]

19. Me too...A whole lot, different story, same result...Not the amounts, but same result..

[Tomconroy]

21. You lived through 1999 and 2008. You deserve to be wealthy.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

29. Oh, for Chrissakes.

I am so tired of people trashing the stock market.

Honestly, over time, it goes up. It goes up at least two out of every three years. On average, almost 10% a year over time. And that includes the years everything goes bad.

I've been investing since the late 70's, and I'm doing, quite well, thank you for asking. The people who try to time the market are fools, because timing is essentially impossible. Buy good stocks, better yet a variety of good mutual funds, hang on to them, and eventually retire.

It can help to have a good advisor. I'm lucky in that I have had one for about 25 years now who is solid, stable, and honest. I have done very well by him. A while back he put some of my money into two annuities, which are sadly too often curse words here. I am now collecting an income from each of those annuities, which is somewhat more than I'd be getting if I were simply doing the 4% payout that I am currently taking from my other investments. Oh, and my most recent payout from one of them was about three dollars more than it had been because the annuity had made more money. Hooray!

I am also in the wonderful place that my income keeps on going up in retirement. Not a huge lot, but enough to be nice. My investments are doing well, and if I need to I could increase my payout from those. Social Security, after several years of zero increase, has gone up and it looks like it will go up a bunch in 2022. I am very fortunate in that my medical expenses are essentially trivial, and so the SS increase is nice.

Lucky me, I actually have more income than ever before. It's not a huge amount, I'm not exactly wealthy, but I've been relatively poor at various points in my life, including when I first moved here to Santa Fe after my divorce, and because I'd learned to live on very little, I feel rather affluent these days. Of course, it helps that I'm not spending much at all because of the Pandemic and staying home most of the time.

[MichMan]

31. Many here that trash the stock market do so because of jealousy

They hear about other people trying to save for their retirement years and to justify their own lack of doing so, like to liken it to a casino or say it's rigged. You see it all the time here when people start cheering every time when it drops in value. Yet, they are always silent when it steadily goes up in value.

Like you, we always steadily invested just 6% or so from our paychecks and left it alone to accumulate. Didn't panic in 2001, 2009 or 2020 and just left it alone. Just retired a few months ago, but haven't had to take any out just yet.