People. Banks. Large Corporations. ......the virus won't kill you unless you had underlying health issues AND you catch the bug. Unlike businesses and banks....PEOPLE still have a little rudder input over whether or not they get sick. I remember not so long ago that people were saying that the Dow isn't the economy and the economy isn't the Dow.
Alls we have is super conservative stuff but even Bonds getting hammered. MUB (muni bonds) down 5% yesterday.
I remember about 20 years ago when people were wondering if the DOW would ever break the impenetrable 10,000 barrier. Now it's well over twice that. Unfortunately, I bought all the stock I could afford too soon after it went on sale. Now it's even cheaper and I wish I could spare more cash. Smart investors buy when the market is afraid and sell when it's euphoric. Look at the charts. It ALWAYS comes back up and much more. Just keep chucking the money in there. In 10 years, my balance has tripled even with the current irrational behavior and with me not putting much in there. You only lose money if you sell or if you don't diversify and your single basket breaks and dumps your eggs. The late 60's through about 1981 were rough sledding but that was mostly from dumb government policies. Since then, there have been lots of corrections and we were overdue for one. Other than the irrational fear of this new virus, the economy is really solid. I used to work with a guy who would see the market climbing and he'd get all excited and move his 401k from cash to stocks. Then the stocks would correct. He'd ride that out till the price got lower than where he bought. He'd see that, panic, and move the money back to a cash fund. He just kept ratcheting his balance lower and lower as he got closer to retirement. We kept telling him to quit fussing with it, but he never listened.
I am diversified. If the stock market goes to zero, my dad, Stan and I will just be fine. Good thing he helped me convinced my husband to save.
In the early 2000s I decided to take my IRA which was largely in a targeted date fund (mixed stocks and bonds) and go all in on the market. Not to attempt to play individual stocks, but to get more aggressive in my mid-50s. I was 100% stocks until about a year ago I looked at things (I do a net-worth statement quarterly) and took 50% of the IRA stocks and put them into short term bonds. Retired 15 years, I've never taken anything but taxes out of the RMDs so we are still well fixed. I look at the borrowing on the government, corporate and personal levels and wonder how long people can be paying the investors. With kids today starting out with big student loans and few enough having degrees that will lead to jobs that bring in money to cover the costs, who will buy our second houses, our toy cars, our antiques, etc. You can't give crystal or fine china or even sterling silver to kids today.
I was always amazed at the "kids" they started hiring around `2000 jumping from job to job after 6-7 months and cashing out their 401k's each time they job hopped. You don't just develop a retirement fund out of nothing in later years and SSI alone is not what I'd want to look forward to. Live in the now and die living in the streets I guess.
Wasn't Mazda already struggling a bit, and some of those European manufacturers? The last time I visited my favorite dealer, there was no one in the parking lot, asked the parts jockey what was what, he said in January the place was packed with buyers, and now because of the news no one comes around anymore.
Pretty sure people are not in the mode to spend hours haggling just to come out with a car and the coronavirus.
Also diversified. I was all in on a mutual fund that tracked the S&P 500. A year or so ago, I moved most of that to a mixed fund of mostly bonds with the rest in stocks. Yesterday, for example the all stock fund dropped about 9.5% (half of which looks like it's returning today) but the other one only dropped a little over 6%. That clearly helped smooth out the bumps but also slowed the growth. Once things get back to normal, I'll probably go even heavier on the bonds since I'll probably be retiring in a couple more years. ROI over the past 10 years is about 12% as of yesterday. It was about 17% a few weeks ago, but I can't complain.
Fair enough. I expect many future opportunities to "buy on the dip". The Stock Rollercoaster ride is not over yet.
if history is any indicator, the big shots are making a fortune selling on the gains and buying on the losses
In 1929, both Jessie Livermore and William Durant, the former CEO of GM, "bought the dip." Both of them ended up destitute. I'll pass.
That's the joke. Like "Buy High, Sell Low" or "we lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume."
If I didn't have a couple major expenses right now, I'd have bought way more on the dip. And and @noonm said, there will be more sales in the future.
I went by two bars Sunday afternoon and both were packed. Each had only one free seat. The second one, it looked like a bunch of fans showed up to watch sports TV together. I joked with my server, "So did they come to the bar to hide from the corona virus?" Bob Wilson