Dow @ 20K. Time to jump off!
POSTED BY: JO753
UPDATED: Friday, April 4, 2025 13:08
VIEWED: 120054
PAGE 69 of 119
Dow closed today at 26,627. That is the 6th highest Close in history.
Tomorrow the Jobs Report is released. Historically, September usually has the bad numbers going down and the good numbers going up.
Tomorrow could easily announce some of the best numbers since the categories were created in 1994.
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Dow closed today at 25,598. S&P 500 and NASDAQ lost a greater percent today.
Yesterday marked 19 days in a row over 26K, which is the most in history. Yesterday's close was at 26,430.
The Dow peak Close on 3 October was 26,828. So now it is 4.6% off this High.
The S&P 500 peak Close to date was 2,930.
The NASDAQ peak Close to date was 8,109 on 31 August.
If you are wondering if you can panic, we will know Bear Market is coming when the Dow drops 15% from it's All-Time High. That would be 22,804 Dow. That would actually be the most profitable scenario for Market Timers.
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Dow closed today at 25,052. This palindromic Close is 6.6% off the Record All-Time High, which was last week.
This is the 63rd day in a row over 25K, since 13 July. Prior to January the Dow had never Closed above 25K.
I've been noticing tech stocks dragging on the Market lately. Heard a report this is due to Tariffs on Chinese products, and since Liberal Techboys give all their production business to China, they are afraid of not being gazillionaires anymore.
Or is Powell launching an October Surprise?
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So I started the 401k. Only what they're matching me for now until I see the match and make sure everything is set up right. Put it in a money market fund that has a .22% return over the last 5 or 10 years.
You never followed up. Thoughts?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Dow Closed today at 25,339. This is 5.5% off the Record All-Time High from last week.
NASDAQ gains were double the percent of Dow.
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Quote:You are absolutely correct that I have failed to follow up, yet.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
So I started the 401k. Only what they're matching me for now until I see the match and make sure everything is set up right. Put it in a money market fund that has a .22% return over the last 5 or 10 years.
You never followed up. Thoughts?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The past 2 weeks I have been quite busy at work, and falling asleep quickly after work.
I was hoping to carve out a block of time tonight.
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Quote:I have been trying to get back to this for 2 weeks, and I am sorry for the delay. I was not ignoring of avoiding it, but would have been timed better a couple days earlier.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
Do you know what you plan to look for? I recently went through it with some people and was surprised how easily snookered some were.
You'll have to be a bit more specific with that question because I don't know exactly what you're asking me.
Here's what I do know.
I'll get a 100% return on the first 5% I put in there beginning in November. This match is not vested until I work with the company for 3 more years after that. It's also not retroactive, so any additional money I put in this year will not be matched and it will only be on the first 5% going forward.
I have to pay SSI/MC on every dollar I make and nothing gets shielded from that.
Limits to how much you can put into a 401k in a year are nearly $3,000 more than I will make this year.
Anything over $12k will be taxed federally at 10%. Everything over $1k will be taxed at 4.8% for state and local. If I were to put everything over $12k in there from now until the end of the year, I'm looking at a tax savings of roughly $450.
My company match would only be a maximum of around $90 from when I'm eligible until the end of the year, and added with the tax savings if I put the rest of my money into the 401k would be about $540 earned.
The EIC won't be a thing for me this year. I was looking to see how much I could gain by putting the rest of my cash into the 401k for the year, but the EIC has a limit on both your taxable wages and your AGI, and it will be compared to whichever is higher, so even putting money away will still only net me a couple bucks here if anything at all.
If you have any suggestions, I'm more than happy to hear them.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
I will try to get this all in one post.
You will need to look for 2 kinds of funds. Hopefully you can find 2-4 candidates for each of the 2 kinds. One family of funds I looked at for friends had been reduced to about 170 funds (from 450ish), and I found 2 of one kind and 4 of the other. IIRC none of those was in the category they should have been in.
Sorry, but you will actually need to evaluate each one, I can almost guarantee just reading the prospectus and summary or rating will not work. I have found some of the very best funds in the "Moderate" and also "low" risk categories. One rule of thumb (which you need to ignore) is that the most aggressive Growth is by definition more volatile and risky. The reverse is not true. Being risky does not guarantee high growth. Some funds just lose money all the time, and only being Classified as aggressive do they seem like the risk is worth it, but it is not, there is no correlation. Once you look at they like I explain, you will find the prospectus humorous on many.
You are looking to take advantage of a Bear Market cycle. The last one was in 2008, following a peak in October 2007 and ending the slide in March 2009. The last before that was 2001, following a peak in 1st Quarter 2000, then starting Bear around April 2001, and already at least 17% down before 9/11.
You need to know how well a fund is likely to, or you hope it will, perform in the next Bear Market cycle.
Many people will tell you that what your stated goal is, IS NOT POSSIBLE. It is called Market Timing, and today's Financially Illiterate Fiscal Professionals have been spoon-fed the mantra that Market Timing does not exist, does not work, will not ever work, no matter how many savvy Market Timers implement it each time successfully.
Standard Disclaimer is past performance is not indicative of future results. Which is technically and legally correct. But you and I both know that THERE WILL BE PROFITABLE FUNDS during that time. So, do you throw your hat on the fund which
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Wow. Thanks for all of that.
My stuff is small potatoes compared to your examples. I'll be putting about 35 bucks in every two weeks with a match. Less than 2,000 in a year and I'm starting at zero.
I'm really not too concerned about anything as long as the money I put in there comes out ahead of inflation and any check cashing and closing fees when the market crashes, so with the match I'll have probably around 35-40% of the value to lose if I only put in what gets matched until then before I lose my own money.
It looks like you're right though. I don't think my 401k offers any "cash" option. I must have been confusing that with my old IRA. The closest thing we have is a fund that aims to stay worth $1.00, but it does have a disclaimer that this might not hold true. It's only around 7 years old.
I'll have 35 bucks in there on this check if it started immediately. I don't get the match until next month. I'm going to have to look deeper into it before I think about maxing my contributions for the rest of the year. I did find out that the max you can put in is only 50% of your paycheck, so I wouldn't be able to dodge all the taxes I thought I would now anyhow.
Thanks for the tips and I will be referencing this post when I do my research.
Oh... and yes. I do understand what you're talking about with the graphs. I'm sure I would have figured that out on my own when looking into them, but thanks for giving me a heads up to look for it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Discontinue your small potatoes excuse.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Wow. Thanks for all of that.
My stuff is small potatoes compared to your examples. I'll be putting about 35 bucks in every two weeks with a match. Less than 2,000 in a year and I'm starting at zero.
I'm really not too concerned about anything as long as the money I put in there comes out ahead of inflation and any check cashing and closing fees when the market crashes, so with the match I'll have probably around 35-40% of the value to lose if I only put in what gets matched until then before I lose my own money.
It looks like you're right though. I don't think my 401k offers any "cash" option. I must have been confusing that with my old IRA. The closest thing we have is a fund that aims to stay worth $1.00, but it does have a disclaimer that this might not hold true. It's only around 7 years old.
I'll have 35 bucks in there on this check if it started immediately. I don't get the match until next month. I'm going to have to look deeper into it before I think about maxing my contributions for the rest of the year. I did find out that the max you can put in is only 50% of your paycheck, so I wouldn't be able to dodge all the taxes I thought I would now anyhow.
Thanks for the tips and I will be referencing this post when I do my research.
Oh... and yes. I do understand what you're talking about with the graphs. I'm sure I would have figured that out on my own when looking into them, but thanks for giving me a heads up to look for it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
No need to make any small potatoes into midget potatoes.
Despite what many say is the reason to be in early age, the real reason is that you need to weather a Bear Market yourself, in the midst of it happening, in the thick of it, not just from historical perspective looking at a chart - everything looks obvious then.
Some folk say the history of the Market cycles shows an average of 7 years between Bear Markets. Some say we are overdue for one now. So, at this point in your life, how many Bear Markets do you have remaining until you retire - think about that to yourself.
The greatest value for anybody being in the Market, or at least as aware of the Market as if they were in it (training 3rd Grade kids with pretend accounts, all on paper), is the experience of weathering it, and seeing how well your plan worked.
You will need that experience for the Bear Market cycles that follow. So, for that first experience, it is absolutely best to have smaller potatoes, as long as you treat the experience as if you had big potatoes.
My example was only round numbers, easy to understand, not an expected amount. The primary focus should not be on the amount, but on the multiple, the percents.
If your attitude is to not lose your money, then you will lose money.
If you get 2K in there in the next year, then multiply by 5 to get 10K, instead of getting 1K, then that will be all the more to grow or use in your future.
Then the next time, you can have a more solid foundation of understanding, able to dispute and refute nonsense from those who tell you what to do. You'll have a better idea of what to do and not do, whether you can handle whatever pressure or tension you choose to pursue.
I've seen funds with that $1 plan, all of them less than 9 years old. I would avoid them. Think about if you created that fund. You could collect other people's money, invest for the past 7 years, more than tripling your money, but never need to pay back any of it to investors in order to maintain that flat curve, and then when the Market eventually does go Bear, just say Oops! and close the fund, walking away with gobs of money made off of other people's money. I'm not even sure if that is a crime, and people less Fiscally Literate than you are considering giving that fund their hard-earned money. That is even more profitable than a Ponzi Scheme,
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Sure. I'm going to take this seriously even though there isn't a lot of money in there. My goal during any bear markets would be to at the very least keep 100% of my contributions and the company match. If I could actually somehow make money off of that while I'm just starting out that would be great.
I will definitely be treating this as an educational experience as well. I didn't actually learn much while I was in the market the last time. I got in at a great time, made close to 30% on my investments year after year for 5 years at a place that was paying me a lot of money, matching 6% at 100%, and putting in a large profit sharing bonus on top of it. Then as if by some higher power intervention we got bought out and all of my winnings were put into a new company and on "hold" right before the bottom fell out and I didn't lose a dime of it.
Well.. I guess to say I didn't learn anything wasn't true. I did learn that you should never gamble with money that you need. I also learned that I'm not Wall Street hot shot and I didn't know nearly as much as I thought I did.
My extreme luck during that cycle was one of 3 major things that I contribute my current excellent situation to. Even though I was making great money at the time and I did a really good job of saving a lot of it, I never would have been able to afford my home 2 years after I was laid off if I hadn't done so well in the market.
Quote:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I've seen funds with that $1 plan, all of them less than 9 years old. I would avoid them. Think about if you created that fund. You could collect other people's money, invest for the past 7 years, more than tripling your money, but never need to pay back any of it to investors in order to maintain that flat curve, and then when the Market eventually does go Bear, just say Oops! and close the fund, walking away with gobs of money made off of other people's money. I'm not even sure if that is a crime, and people less Fiscally Literate than you are considering giving that fund their hard-earned money. That is even more profitable than a Ponzi Scheme, and perhaps Legal.
I was actually thinking about this after reading your post and replying to it yesterday.
If they can't guaranty that they will keep the fund at least $1.00, then why the hell should I be putting my money in there when it never goes much over $1.00.
I've got about $38 in there right now since my check went through and I was able to verify that it is set up right. I'm going to do my research and decide where I want to put the money going forward before my next check.
Thanks for the info.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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