Investing General Discussion

Mist said:

VS what? The Dollar is at its highest vs the Yen since 1990.

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That is vs dollars. He's reading the chart backwards. (For the confused, high yen per dollar is bad if you have yen. It's great for us if we're buying Japanese goods with dollars.)

I'll wait for the revision, but the US economy grew at an annualized 4.9% rate in the 3rd quarter. Is the government spending element of the GDP a big factor? Maybe. If this economic growth is being generated purely by deficit spending then this is going to turn into a "chase our tail" scenario where the Federal Reserve keeps raising rates to try and reduce inflation (which slows the economy down) and our Federal government running even bigger deficits trying to keep the economy propped up. Fun times.

Ranak said:

I'll wait for the revision, but the US economy grew at an annualized 4.9% rate in the 3rd quarter. Is the government spending element of the GDP a big factor? Maybe. If this economic growth is being generated purely by deficit spending then this is going to turn into a "chase our tail" scenario where the Federal Reserve keeps raising rates to try and reduce inflation (which slows the economy down) and our Federal government running even bigger deficits trying to keep the economy propped up. Fun times.

US economy grew at blistering pace in 3rd quarter

U.S. GDP grew at a 4.9% annualized rate over three months ending in September.

abcnews.go.com

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Read something in the last week or so that basically said just that; all of the "growth" we're seeing is government.

On the flip side, IWM is actually green today.

Haven't done any selling for 2024 funds yet. Getting pretty nervous about the current market trajectory so I just pulled the trigger on 2 month's worth.

I kept hoping we'd pull out of this rut. And we have, just in the wrong direction.

Mist said:

Selling low, always good.

It's not your fault humans have logical faults.

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I mean, it's not my first rodeo here. How did "selling low" look last year? I waited all year for it to recover and it never did. See my posts from December where I talked about how I liquidated part of 2023 and planned on doing the rest when the market recovered. I sold in July and September at the peaks (for expenses from Sept - Dec of this year).

But we have literally zero money to live on for 2024 right now. So my option is to sell some now in the event it keeps dropping, or sit and wait for December and take whatever the market gives me. I've bought myself until February to see what the market does. Based on how things are going, we may be testing new lows by then and I'll have wished I sold even more today.

It's really easy to talk big about timing the market when you're still accumulating. It's entirely different when you need to live off it.

If I could go back, I would've diversified 10-20% into bonds and used that as a hedge. I didn't because the previous 15 years bonds had performed like absolute shit. I couldn't have predicted that things would be this fucked for as long as they have. I thought outlasting the 2020 and 2022 drops would've been enough, but it's not looking great.