Stock Market is the bottom in?

Selling stocks when you don't hold them for more than a year will cost you twice as much in taxes on any profit you make from selling.
Not if you only do the playing around parts in a Roth, limits contributions obviously but it does avoid that & it scratches the itch.
 
What are the contribution limits on a ROTH now? I'm out of the loop on that but the last I remember it was maybe $6,500 yearly?
 
Gotta say this ASST ride has been fairly exciting so far.
 
What do you guys think I have seen this back and forth.

Index funds like what @Bowsnbucks mentions, say VYM, or high dividends like ZIM & INSW, single stocks like Tesla or Nvidia, combos of all?

I love these discussions of 'over time' whats the right approach.
We have combinations of active and index funds. Had 'em for decades. We have a mix of growth, value, dividend-payers, large & small cap stuff, MM fund, real estate, & bond funds. Depending on strong trends, we may tilt money in a certain direction to take advantage of those situations. Diversification tends to smooth out bumps over the span of time. A person aged 25 to 30 would probably be more aggressive than a person aged 65 to 70. Younger people have more years to recoup any losses. As people age, they tend to look to have investments that generate streams of passive income to replace job income. If planned wisely, one can live off the income "gravy", plus Social Security & Medicare (which we paid into) - and not dig too much into their principal. IMO, that ought to be the goal of us non-billionaires.
 
I'm pretty sure it was Charlie Munger that said you can't beat the market. I went and checked to see if the actively managed funds could beat the S&P 500. Keep in mind that these funds have trained trading professionals with incomprehensible resources. Here is how they did since 2001:
View attachment 77211
Taken from here: https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-us-year-end-2024.pdf

About 35% of the large-cap funds beat the S&P in 2024, which is honestly better than I would have thought.

As you extend the timeline, the odds get worse and Charlie gets more correct:
View attachment 77213

I still keep some solo stocks, but mostly because I believe in the company or I know more about what they do than I think the general public. Maybe I am leaving money on the table by not being more active? To me it seems like the more I learn about equity investing, the less it makes sense. For now, I mostly just dollar cost average into index funds. Also, Bitcoin, but that is a whole other thing.
Bogle famously said, "Why try to find the needle in the haystack. Just buy the whole stack." Over decades since the Great Depression, many mathematically-savvy folks have shown that beating the "market" on a consistent basis is nearly impossible. That's not to say certain stocks or funds can't beat the market in a given year - or 2 - they can and do. But over the long-term, indexes, which mimic the entire market (or specific segments of it), have beaten individual stocks and funds ...... and at much lower cost to investors. Most folks are not Buffet, making big bets on a few companies like he does, so we take the route most likely to get us to financial security. With mutual funds, we get professional management / stock picking, in a much more efficient way to buy stocks & other investments than doing so ourselves, at cheaper expense ratios. And you don't have to spend loads of hours researching individual stocks ..... if you know how to do such research yourself. I don't want to spend my life in front of a computer screen - the fund managers are paid well to do the research.
 
“You don’t have to beat the market, you just have to be the market”. -Terry Savage
  • Match market performance by investing in low-cost index funds (e.g., S&P 500 ETFs).
  • Focus on long-term growth rather than short-term speculation.
  • Avoid high fees, timing risks, and underperformance common in active management.
Why It’s Smart
  • Passive investing outperforms most actively managed funds over the long term.
  • It simplifies investing — no need to pick stocks or time the market.
  • Index funds offer broad diversification and lower expenses.
Backed by Experts:
  • Warren Buffett: “A low-cost S&P 500 index fund is the best investment most Americans can make.”
  • Jack Bogle (Vanguard founder): Advocated “be the market” via index funds.
  • Nobel laureates like Eugene Fama and Burton Malkiel support efficient market investing
 
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Pay attention to your expenses on these funds. It matters. Index funds are built to be dirt cheap for the investor.

My wife owned a fund called Akre Focus Fund because of a news letter we subscribed to. It kicked ass but it also had pretty noticeable expenses. 1.3%. Newsletter moved away from it when the gains were good but not good enough to justify expenses. The S5P 500 index funds we had there was .02% expenses.

Pay attention to your costs. Even Schwab will come at you with active management schemes. Thje one they got my wife with years ago before we had the confidence and time to handle our own was “we will take 4% of the profit only”. It sounds like NOTHING. It is a drag on the account.

Remember I’m talking about the past not the future. ETF’s are something we don’t own but i *think they kinda function similarly? The important thing is that you are investing, taking advantage of any and all employee matching and let time and compound interest take care of the rest.
 
Could be a wild ride today. A lot of the stuff I’m holding is flying past my call strikes. I’m really behind the fat lady on VLO. All mine gets cashed at $121 or $122. It’s sitting at $127 pre market with 5 days to go on the calls.


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I hope we keep the 30-40% tariffs on China . I’m not an expert on this, but won’t we get used to paying extra for Chinese made products and also generate revenue?

I studied my weekly buys and determined I could probably get by without any Chinese purchases ?… however I live in Rural MN . Maybe the metro people are not as fortunate to avoid that cost ?
 
I hope we keep the 30-40% tariffs on China . I’m not an expert on this, but won’t we get used to paying extra for Chinese made products and also generate revenue?

I studied my weekly buys and determined I could probably get by without any Chinese purchases ?… however I live in Rural MN . Maybe the metro people are not as fortunate to avoid that cost ?
I'd sure like to see the offset to the income tax from all the tariff revenue. It'd be a shame to force all those costs on us and the government just pisses all the money away bombing peasants in the middle east.
 
Does anyone know what this means?
1747061166803.png

I've been watching TBIO for a while now. Their stock has been dropping. Down to 0.01 now. They announced on their website that they just received a pretty substantial contract. But when I try to buy it, I get this error message. I already own a little and I'd really like to buy a bunch more, especially at this price.
 
Does anyone know what this means?
View attachment 77349

I've been watching TBIO for a while now. Their stock has been dropping. Down to 0.01 now. They announced on their website that they just received a pretty substantial contract. But when I try to buy it, I get this error message. I already own a little and I'd really like to buy a bunch more, especially at this price.
I believe you don't have the right type of account to purchase that one. They are trying to get you to call them and go through a broker I think. jmo
 
I'd sure like to see the offset to the income tax from all the tariff revenue. It'd be a shame to force all those costs on us and the government just pisses all the money away bombing peasants in the middle east.
I was thinking if we had a clause that revenue would be required for debt reduction? But I doubt they would do that ?
 
I was thinking if we had a clause that revenue would be required for debt reduction? But I doubt they would do that ?
They cannot reduce the debt. We're so far insolvent our only hope is to slow down the rate of accumulation. We've still got that pesky $9 trillion we have to rewrite this year at 3x the previous interest expense.
 
I’m just glad I didn’t panic and sell everything when the sky was falling. We’ve seen market downturns enough times to hold on for the ride. Every time it happens people say, “this time it’s different”. Every time so far, it comes back. I’ll just ride it and hope history is a good teacher.


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I’m just glad I didn’t panic and sell everything when the sky was falling. We’ve seen market downturns enough times to hold on for the ride. Every time it happens people say, “this time it’s different”. Every time so far, it comes back. I’ll just ride it and hope history is a good teacher.


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There really are not good alternatives.....IMO.
 
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