$15,000 to spend on 1-5 cards...WWYD?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

Timing the market, in the sense of absolute peaks and highs, is a fools errand.

However, it is usually very easy to see when things are on the higher end, or the lower end. If everything has doubled recently, it's usually not the best buying time. When everything has been falling for awhile, it's usually a good buying time.

When the government shifts signaled that there was going to be an economic boom in 2016, I bought quick and then held. When government shifts later signaled that they were going to kill the economy, I stopped buying. A few more months and it will be time to start looking at more buying as things have fallen significantly this year. Will I buy at the bottom? Almost certainly no, but I will be ensuring I am buying at a low point in the market and not a high one.

It's pretty similar for cards. Just like when stocks 'go bad', some actually do well and make big gains if you picked the right ones, but the majority tend to follow the same basic rules. You can't time perfectly, but you can generally ID the better buying times.

The research I have seen suggests that over the long haul, you can't really even time approximately and beat the market. Look at all the countless professionals out there trying to do it. Over a long period of time, most of them do not beat the indices. Unless they have insider information.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

The research I have seen suggests that over the long haul, you can't really even time approximately and beat the market. Look at all the countless professionals out there trying to do it. Over a long period of time, most of them do not beat the indices. Unless they have insider information.

You absolutely can, and it is not hard. Most don't, because most people are putting money in when things look all sunny and happy because they follow the narrative of the moment. Many people then panic at the next downturn, and sell.

It takes about 30 seconds to determine if the market is generally high or generally low. We know in real time if things are generally speaking good or bad in the stock market. We know it's low right now. If you buy a diversity of blue chips and/or into properly managed index funds (which are not difficult to identify, less than 20 minutes of research) when it's low and hold, it is incredibly difficult to lose over the long run.

It does not take me to partake in insider trading to do this. It takes a little patience and common sense, no more. It barely takes any of one's time even.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

You absolutely can, and it is not hard. Most don't, because most people are putting money in when things look all sunny and happy because they follow the narrative of the moment. Many people then panic at the next downturn, and sell.

It takes about 30 seconds to determine if the market is generally high or generally low. We know in real time if things are generally speaking good or bad in the stock market. We know it's low right now. If you buy a diversity of blue chips and/or into properly managed index funds (which are not difficult to identify, less than 20 minutes of research) when it's low and hold, it is incredibly difficult to lose over the long run.

It does not take me to partake in insider trading to do this. It takes a little patience and common sense, no more. It barely takes any of one's time even.

Buying and holding blue chips and index funds is, I would absolutely agree, a winning strategy. I would doubt though that ex ante you can determine the optimal times to buy with any consistency. The vast majority of professionals out there can't do it, research shows. Let's suppose we each had a hypothetical amount to invest and we agreed on how to allocate it. I invest X percent of it at regular, predetermined intervals over a Y year period. Your timing is at your discretion over the same period. I bet you don't beat me.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Buying and holding blue chips and index funds is, I would absolutely agree, a winning strategy. I would doubt though that ex ante you can determine the optimal times to buy with any consistency. The vast majority of professionals out there can't do it, research shows.

Like I said, it is a fools errand to try and time exact peaks. But it is incredibly easy to buy when the market is having a bad time and prices are low and to sell when things are high. It takes maybe 20 seconds to open one's favorite stocks app and look at the indexes to know if things are generally high or low in the present to make buy decisions for blue chips and index funds. People can absolutely do this. I ain't special, and I ain't important enough to have insider information even if I was willing to commit the felony.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by G1911

Like I said, it is a fools errand to try and time exact peaks. But it is incredibly easy to buy when the market is having a bad time and prices are low and to sell when things are high. It takes maybe 20 seconds to open one's favorite stocks app and look at the indexes to know if things are generally high or low in the present to make buy decisions for blue chips and index funds. People can absolutely do this. I ain't special, and I ain't important enough to have insider information even if I was willing to commit the felony.

If it's that simple, more people would do it. See my challenge above.

You only know ex post if they're low or high because there are too many variables and uncertainties to predict short term direction..

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

If it's that simple, more people would do it. See my challenge above.

You only know ex post if they're low or high because there are too many variables and uncertainties to predict short term direction..

I feel like I must be missing an element here. You are saying we don't know in real time if the market is generally high or generally low?

I think it's very simple to know when we are in a recession or a lower/generally bad market. When the S&P is down 20%, it's not a high. It is generally low, it may go lower next week, next month, or even next year (hence the fools errand of exact timing), but we are obviously not at a high. I cannot understand how anyone would think that we are. Things in the market are generally bad. I think basically everyone is aware of this right now.

When the market was setting new index records constantly, that was a high and things were generally good in the market, as everyone was aware of. I stopped my buying, not because I am a financial genius but because of basic common sense and the knowledge that while the market goes up over time, it behooves to actually put cash in at the lows to maximize my eventual returns in 30 years.

It's not a special skill to know that when the market is setting daily records, we're high and one should probably wait to buy the blue chips and indexes later. It's not a special skill to recognize the market has dropped a lot right now, and might be a good time to buy into indexes. Definitely a far better time.

[Peter_Spaeth]

After the market bottomed in 2008 early 2009 at under 7k Dow, and it came all the way back to 14K or so, people with your philosophy would have been screaming sell because the market is so far up it has to come back down. A guy who was advising me begged me to sell and on top of that to buy VXX. Guess what, it kept going up and up and up from there without any really steep decline until the pandemic. You just can't know.

And I wish I had bought AMZN at every record high it hit from 50 to 3000. No you can't tell in real time.

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

After the market bottomed in 2008 early 2009 at under 7k Dow, and it came all the way back to 14K or so, people with your philosophy would have been screaming sell because the market is so far up it has to come back down. Guess what, it kept going up and up and up from there without any really steep decline until the pandemic. You just can't know.

My argument is to buy when the market is generally low and hold long term, not short term flip. Buy blue chips and indexes when the market sucks, hold it for the long haul. Don't let your cash get so low that you need to sell stock, sell it late in life when you don't have work income coming in, and sell it when the market is generally good. Don't retire with only a couple years cash on hand with a bad market.

Even in this example you have, the person doing this doubled their money buying at under 7 and selling at ~14K. They missed out on even greater gains, but they doubled their money in the short term using this basic strategy but as a short term hold instead of my long term hold. If only we could all double our money in the short term!

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

And I wish I had bought AMZN at every record high it hit from 50 to 3000. No you can't tell in real time.

I am able to tell, within 10 seconds, that this might be a good time to buy blue chips (like Amazon, they're pretty stable nowadays) and index funds. They are all well off the recent peaks as the US economy is deteriorating in the short term. This is not a special skill.

Maybe I'm an idiot, but I'm really not seeing any rational argument that the market is high rather than low right now. I didn't buy in 2021 because the same data told me, and basically everyone in the world, that the market was high and not a good time to buy into a long-term hold strategy of 'safe' blue chips and indexes.

[oldjudge]

Originally Posted by G1911

Like I said, it is a fools errand to try and time exact peaks. But it is incredibly easy to buy when the market is having a bad time and prices are low and to sell when things are high. It takes maybe 20 seconds to open one's favorite stocks app and look at the indexes to know if things are generally high or low in the present to make buy decisions for blue chips and index funds. People can absolutely do this. I ain't special, and I ain't important enough to have insider information even if I was willing to commit the felony.

Greg, if I understand what you are saying you buy when the market is weak and sell when the market is strong, or at least don’t buy then. Following that strategy you would have entirely missed the post 2008 financial crisis bull market. What am I missing?

[G1911]

Originally Posted by oldjudge

Greg, if I understand what you are saying you buy when the market is weak and sell when the market is strong, or at least don’t buy then. Following that strategy you would have entirely missed the post 2008 financial crisis bull market. What am I missing?

I am too young to have bought before the 2008 fiasco (I was 17 and broke as a joke in my dorm eating whatever I could scrounge up for $2 a day then), so all of my buying has been since this period.

We had a bull market, in the sense that it has gone up a lot from 2008-2021 and was very good overall when looking at the block of time. In 2031, we will probably say the same thing about the period after it. But within that period, there were dips and buying opportunities that were evident at the time. Obviously if I could see the future I'd do a lot better. Some times I have gone riskier than others. I bought in 2016, when there was a lot of doubt in the market though the year ended very well. I bought a lot in 2020, when Covid killed the market because I believed that the state would not actually commit suicide over the virus. This one was a very safe conservative bet.

There are some periods of time where things are stably going up year to year, and this was one of them. 2021 was very different; with records being set constantly, recovering quickly and then skyrocketing to be almost double the low in a year. Thus, I held off buying (I am speaking of blue chips and index funds, I have a relatively small amount in non-blue chip specific stocks I think will outperform and are less about the economy as a whole).

You can't always wait for a dip like the one we have right now (though most knew this particular one was coming and the incredible spike was not sustainable), but there are lots of periodic dips. When everything is breaking the record set last week, which broke the record set the week before, it's usually a bad time to buy.

That said, with blue chips and index funds, I have no doubt Peter's method will produce a fat profit in the end too. I'm just up 20% right off the bat by knowing the Trump boom wouldn't last forever. In 6 months I might be down 10%, it ain't a science but I think it's pretty easy to separate boom times from the normal times from the lows where everything is at a steep discount and you can buy in with a much lower floor risk.

*I am not a financial advisor or smart.

EDIT: Selling timeframe varies for everyone. I am 31, I intend to 'sell off' for retirement in addition to my IRA's, 401K and social security. I don't do stocks to feed myself tomorrow or next year, and keep more cash on hand than most financial advisors would probably advise. One should sell when times are good, not during bad times like right now, as a general rule. If I live long enough to retire and it is in an economic downturn, I won't sell them until we're recovered (and surely won't hit the peak, but I'll be selling in a better good time rather than a clear bad time). I do sometimes sell a specific stock because I see a bad future for that stock and I want to divest and pocket what I've made off it (or lessen losses, depending how well one picked). I usually don't manage to time the peak exact, but I try to know the specific stocks I own well to sell off when the red flags hit.