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Wellness Wednesday for February 21, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Keep in mind that if you run some scenarios on holding bonds to buy cheap stocks during cyclic downturns you might find that timing the market (even optimistically doing so near optimally) might not pan out because of lost gains during all the years when stocks just did average.

You bring up another good point that I know some people do and I wish I did (or could do, now; I have a job that prohibits playing the stock game). Some people employ a strategy that’s like “90% boring index funds and assets based on standard investing advice” combined with “10% YOLO/WallStreet Bets/trying to beat the market”. Helps scratch the day trader itch and limits downside risk ruining one’s retirement.

Something like that, having a set level of risk, might help you edge away from the anxiety.

Sorry about the late reply.

Keep in mind that if you run some scenarios on holding bonds to buy cheap stocks during cyclic downturns you might find that timing the market (even optimistically doing so near optimally) might not pan out because of lost gains during all the years when stocks just did average.

I have thought about this. The old quote comes to mind: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent." Even if there 'should' be a correction coming, the fed and others might kick the can down the road for a long time. Years of growth, so that the loss that comes from a crash might not even wipe out all the gains.

I've thought about the possiblity of selling non-callable bonds when interest rates go down. That makes them more valuable. But I'm not sure exactly how to buy them and how to sell them. And what if the markets crater without the interest rates actually going down? What if inflation is high at the same time?

Shrug