I am not financially savvy at all. I have a few bucks invested in stocks.

[Stinky The Clown]

I have been through these things before. they're ugly. But now, it seems to me, is not the time to sell. The time to sell was yesterday. Today, you have only a paper loss. If you sell, the loss becomes real.

Just my uninformed, ignorant-assed perspective on today's bloodbath.

[dionysus]

1. downturns are actually a good time to buy. a rebound will happen eventually.

[MilesColtrane]

2. Timing the market is for suckers.

Even the guys who manage funds for a living rarely beat the returns of someone who diversifies, buys and holds over a long period, and minimizes costs.

[ThomWV]

3. You're exactly right

And so is the other response. When the market drops like a stone its a good time to buy if you have any cash available. I sold quite a few shares in a mutual fund two weeks ago and I'm very much tempted buy back into the same fund with the same money tomorrow. We'll see if it drops any farther. I personally thought it would drop like a stone this morning and then rally back later in the afternoon, ending about flat. I still think that will happen, its just going to take a little longer.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. You're right, Thom

I wish I was in the "have any cash available" bracket, though.

Hehehehehe

:D

[sofa king]

18. I wouldn't count on that.

All financial growth is currently based on the flawed premise of virtually free energy propelling growth indefinitely (and recently shown to be mathematically impossible past the next few decades even with infinite energy, and highly unlikely to last that long).

You may get a temporary bounce-back, but some global instability or another will drive energy prices up another 200-300% over the next ten years and unless you bet on war, death, crime and starvation, you're sure to lose.

[FourScore]

10. We almost cashed out about the same time, but we got too busy.

i'm kicking myself in the butt for not doing so. I had predicted this. See my other post about my sister in 2008 (post #9).

[FreakinDJ]

29. Cashing out and re-entering after the markets have bottomed

doubled my 401K in 2008

I pulled out again last week BTW

[FourScore]

30. That does NOT make me feel better.

I am so mad at myself right now!!!!

[csziggy]

4. The time to sell was two or three weeks ago

Before the market began its drop into the abyss.

The best thing to do now is to ride it out. Theoretically at some point the market will be back to where it started or even above that point.

[DaveJ]

5. Criminal minds are taking all the profits anyway

High speed computers have only been around for a few decades. Financiers seemed to learn how to use them about 10 years ago, and now know how to skim anything off the top that people think they might be able to get in their 401ks.

I doubt the common man has much chance of making money from the market.

The BEST one can hope for it to break even.

[metalbot]

13. High speed computational trading isn't going to hurt the "common man"

It will kill people who want to be part time day traders who try to "time" the market.

You can still make money in the markets (and far better than you would from a CD), but you'd better be in it for the long haul, and you'd better know what you are investing in.

[DaveJ]

20. Well I'm no expert but I do not trust money to come from nothing

The market has consistently gone up until the year 2000, but technology is refined now and experts have found ways to make this easy money off the backs of others.

People keep talking about what the market has done 'historically'. Historically, the stock market DID reflect the market, but my point is that experts have learned how to make money from stock, bonds, etc, and that money has to come from somewhere, which is private retirement accounts and others who hold stocks. If you look at a graph in 25 years I bet the stock market will continue to be a horizontal line.

[AwareOne]

14. My company talked me into joining in the 401k

program about five years ago. I was reluctant but they said "with the company contribution, how can you lose"? Well, it has done nothing but lose ever since. Built up for a couple of years and then, wham! lost 45% of it's value. Recovered over the last couple of years and now, wham!, massive loss again. I would have been better off putting the money in a coffee can, really, I would be ahead if I had just done that. They tell you to pick several different funds and "diversify". All the funds crashed about the same regardless of if they were "aggressive" or "conservative" or even based on foreign stocks, all crashed about 45%. Of course the broker gets his steady cut of every buy and never looses money so doesn't really care how the funds fair. Buy and hold no longer works.

[DaveJ]

21. I know, It's like I'm given a tithing to corporate overlords

These 401k pushers make people feel dumb if you don't do it. They certainly aren't going to acknowledge that this easy money is now going to people who specialize in making easy money.

Could be worse, though, my company doesn't even do matching anymore.

[sofa king]

15. Did anyone else notice the sell-off preceded S&P's announcement by 2 days?

As long as that's going on, the little guy is nothing more than a lunch-money target for the insider bullies.

That's what the Bush years were all about: gaming the table so that you will give everything you have, and ever will have, to them.

[jeff47]

19. That's 'cause the sell-off has nothing to do with S&P

Austerity is bad for business. With Obama going all-in with the Republicans on austerity, things are going to get bad.

If S&P was relevant, treasuries would have tanked. They didn't. Treasuries did fantastic today.

[sofa king]

24. Okay, I'll take that into consideration.

...But I also won't be surprised to see Congressional hearings on this very subject late next Spring.

[rdking647]

7. your exactly right

I have a cash pile built up. I nibbled at adding to a few beaten up stocks today.. Bought some pipeline companies and some high dividend payers.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. You are correct, this is not the time to sell

if you have some spare cash it might be a good time to buy.

[FourScore]

9. My sister (who has worked in the stock market) BORROWED money in 2008

with the last crash. she put it in stocks she knew had bottomed out and were bound to go back up. She paid back the loan and made a fortune.

[KoKo]

27. How is she doing at market close today? Did she put "Stops" on...Using Hedging

Techniques? Sounds good because what she did was easy to do "the last time." But, how is she doing right now after today's close? :shrug:

[FourScore]

28. She's travelling right now, so she's just going to ride out the storm.

She says she'll throw more money in if it continues to bottom out. She knows it will all come back up, so she's not scared. She sees it as a way to make more money.

[yellerpup]

11. I agree with you.

I wanted to sell in April, but Mr. Pup vetoed that idea. Now, I'll just hold on to my stocks and hope the whole world doesn't explode. The market has been the only place in the past few years to enable me to earn 'interest' on my money. I hope it comes back strong and soon.

[bemildred]

12. Bingo.

This is a good time to sell gold you've had sitting around for a while. Maybe not the best time, but a good time.

Anything else you would be thinking about whether it's time to buy, or whether you need to wait for better days.

The only sensible reason you would sell now is because you think it's never coming back.

[JoePhilly]

16. My view ... is that you are always ready to buy some and sell some.

The time to SELL SOME, is when any investment rises quickly. And so, let's say you put 1000 dollars in company X, and the stock for company X jumps 20% ... convert (sell) some of that and turn it into cash. Capture some of the gains.

If your 1000 dollars grew to 1200 in this example ... you could take 400 of that, and put it in something else or even in cash. You might not get added gains on that 400, but so what ... the remaining 800 would get them ... and you now have the 400 to put somewhere else.

Now ... a smart invertor is also ready to sell SOME early, on drops. And so in the prior example, I sold 400 after a 20% gain, now, if the same stock drops 20%, its right back to where I bought it originally.

And so there is the key ... if you invest, you need to have trigger points ... so you sell and CAPTURE GAINS after increases, and rarely sell on a fall.

A fall becomes an opportunity.

Another example ... In Jan 2009, my friend say the DOW at 7500 as an opportunity. So, he shifted his and his wife's 401k contributions so that they would max by the end of April 2009. A couple can put 32k in 401ks in a given year.

Which means he put 32k into the market at about 7000, and then in about 9 months, the DOW was back to 10,000.

He did not sell anything in the collapse. And he added money in the dip.

As the DOW increased in the last view years ... he's been taking gains all along the way. Some he keeps as cash, some he reinvested in other vehicles that he thinks have a better up side.

Buy low, sell high ... and to do that ... take gains when you can so you have cash on hand when things fall.

[LeftyMom]

17. You are correct sir.

If you don't have time to wait this thing out, you should have your money elsewhere.

[Jakes Progress]

22. Let me loan you my tin hat.

Here's my lifetime view of the stock market.

Things are good. Everyone get invested. Kill Pensions. Start 401Ks. Yeah.

Crash. Rich people take your money.

Things get good again. Everyone says get invested. Yeah

Crash, Rich people take your money.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Sure you can be in the market. You are betting that you can work around the manipulations going on. Take no advice from "experts", particularly national ones. They are working for the rich people. 401Ks are the rich people's maneuver to take the last shreds of your money.

I don't trust them. I think they want to take my money. Money is not lost in the stock market. If you lose, someone else gains. Las Vegas is more honest.

[mnhtnbb]

23. It definitely is not the time to sell. You missed that. Whether it is the time

to buy remains to be seen.

Personally, I think we're going farther down.

If you have a long time line--more than 5 years--start nibbling. If you
have some cash available, take some and buy when you're comfortable.
Buy some more when you're next comfortable. It's called dollar cost averaging.

[NeedleCast]

25. The Time To Sell Was 10 days ago, if you were going to sell

Now is the time to buy.

[Mimosa]

26. Even I know that!

I'm financially savvy, many years too late. Stinky, you're right.

[jtuck004]

31. Stinky, what you suggest about the loss may be true.

But please be aware of the line in EVERY prospectus:

"Past performance is no guarantee of future results"

(The attorney in the firm I worked in back in the 80's suggested I downplay that line. Seems it cut into their profits).

Because even though stocks have been staying somewhat up even in the face of 24 million unemployed, underemployed, and dis-spirited people who want full-time work, the new record of 45 million people on food stamps, 50 million with no health insurance, another 5-7 million houses that will be foreclosed on in the next 5 years, with not one thing that suggests anything but a massive wave of home-health care aide hiring to look forward to for job growth, they may not stay that way.

In which case hanging in there might mean that one may have been better off taking a paper loss when there was less to lose. Or hang onto it, and maybe the money won't come back for another 20 years, or perhaps longer. Or maybe it will all come back before Christmas. Believe me when I say no one knows for sure.

Hard decisions, when one makes their money from other's labor, and buys their product from thieves (which is basically every investment bank in existence). Not taking a shot at you, just an observation on what we have taught people is the way to run a railroad.

(Just a thought - IMHO, one's money (and soul, or perhaps karma) is better off running a small business in which co-workers share the assets, as opposed to being a rent-seeker living from the labor of others. YMMV, and I am sure it varies from the wisdom of anyone trying to make a commission by selling stock. I also think it is better on your back, because you don't spend as much time bent over. Again, however, that's just personal opinion).