Investing in bad times

[Lowdown3]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/22/bull-market-stocks-investing-returns-apple-netflix-amazon.html

Not a huge fan of CNBC but the article brought home the old saying "buy when their is blood in the street" or something similar to that.

2009 at market bottom, most were scared and looking for the door. If your "stuck" with money in a retirement account at that point, most are thinking preservation. But that's probably the best time to take a small risk.

My philosophy is that everything you invest in the market is not at all dependent on survival. In other words, if you can't feed your family for a year, are in debt out the whazooo, etc. you have no business doing a lot of investing. Cover your important bases FIRST.

But this mixed up survivalist idea that you should never be in the stock market is just utter BS. How many times have we heard the siren call of survivalism- "the market is about to crash" "get out of dollar denominated assets NOW!" "only thing worth having is precious metals" blah blah blahditty blah blah.... I've been the pariah up on stage at Survival Expos that was the only one out of 4 or 5 "experts" that said "no don't cash in your 401K, the S is not going to HTF tomorrow, plan for retirement as well...." I'm betting just the fact that I looked as if I could kick most of the crowd's butt kept me from getting tomatoes thrown at me!!! Damn that guy with long term experience telling us the truth!! We want to live in our fantasy of our 3 silver coins someday being worth $3 million....

How your $30. an ounce silver coin doing? Great return on that right? Oh no, it's "a hedge against inflation"- well Bubba, let me help you with some math- $30. - $15. = a $15. LOSS. Great "hedge" huh?

Meanwhile there is plenty of REITs well under $30. a share, like Armour currently at $23. that you could have purchased for as long as $19. the last few years, that every month distribute $.19 a share in dividends. Yes, roughly 10% a year. Is your coin returning that? Hell no it's not.

Got to plan for retirement as well as SHTF, it's not an either/or situation. I know quite a few folks that "cashed out" of IRA's, 401K's, etc. that ran scared in 93, 95, 96, 98 and 99, 2001 that are STILL WORKING but are retirement age. What if they had hedged their bets and said "yeah stuff looks bad, but I have storage food, power, water, etc. covered. I'm going to leave this money in the market." Many would be comfortably retired years ago.

Learn from other's mistakes, versus making costly mistakes yourself.

[Bill Foster]

My opinion, for what it is worth. Watch the companies that you own stock in. I cut my losses with a few companies in 1999. Yes, I was listening to the doom and gloomers, but I used common sense with my decisions. I found that 3 of the companies that I was invested in, BTW, good companies, were selling a lot of stock, but they weren’t selling a product. One was Lucent, a spin-off from AT&T. According to their own yearly report, fiber optic sales were down, but the stock was at an all time high. I sold at 104. Within a year, 0.75. A CA power company that was in my portfolio made the decision to shut down their own power plants that needed repairs and buy power at a cheaper price from...wait for it...Enron. These great decisions were in the yearly reports. Read them. I put the money into paying off my house and buying a BOL. No regrets. I kept energy stocks that took hits during the Obummer times but rebounded. My real estate dipped and recovered as well.

[rockriver]

bill,
some won some loss on lucent... you won. i lost! rode that horse to the ground... could have bought a real nice something but was greedy!

your comment on Watch the companies that you own stock in. is excellent...
i didn't...

i paid for it!

[Lowdown3]

Excellent posts guys!!!

It's easy to think you've "spotted a bargain" and jump too soon.

Windstream- aka poopstream. Watched them for a while because they paid a good dividend. Stock dropped a good bit (a few years ago, not the cliff WIN stock fell off of this year), and I jumped, small amount but still. Not a week later they ended their dividend- just ended it. WTF over? How is this legal? I hate shenanigans like this. Just like crappy Delta years ago- bought before the bankruptcy stayed with them when it was $3. stock. After that they literally just cancelled the old stock- no trade, not 20 for 1 reverse split, just one day you open your etrade account and it no longer shows anything there for Delta. Screw that dirtbag airline. Year and a half ago LUV (Southwest, an actual no ghetto airline) was down around $37. a share. Didn't buy a lot but held it. A few months later news say Warren Buffett is buying airlines and really likes LUV. $54. a share within a few months. Happy with it, sold. That would probably be the only airline I would buy again.

[wwdnet]

FWIW, my husband dabbles in stocks with mixed results. He bought some mineral stocks that were really cheap (<$3/share) that are now worth about $0.003/share - lost his shirt after the company did a reverse split and then took a $/share nosedive. He also bought stock in a medical device company at $6/share that's now at $160/share and has been slowly but steadily increasing in value. Too bad he didn't dump a boatload into that one instead of the minerals. His Ford stock has been a fairly steady earner, and with a new trade agreement with MX, should increase in value. I'm not counting on his stocks for future income; he just has fun playing. I've hear Business Investors Daily is the best read if you're looking to pick up individual stocks with good growth potential.

We were both smart to dump big bucks into our retirement accounts, which we haven't needed to use for anything but they're still there and still growing. Good! Grow enough to pay the deferred taxes bill...