@Anonymous wrote:
@credit_endurance wrote:Lol! @Anonymous Thanks! They ceertainly may have created a (monster) now!
Hey, maybe try some of this! Maybe a 50/50 split between dart board and actually doing due diligence? lol
"Can you successfully pick stocks with a dart board? The writers at The Wall Street Journal thought so.
To test their idea, the writers threw darts at a stock list in the newspaper. From those random hits they built a portfolio to stack up against highflying financial elites.
So how did the dart-throwing journalists do this year? “The results were brutal,” recounts Spencer Jakab of the Journal.
The random writer picks beat the pros by 27 percentage points in the year through April 22. “Only 3 of 12 of the Sohn picks even outperformed the S&P 500 ,” Jakab said." - Random darts beat hedge fund stars — again
Flip side, since my nadir of 3/16 I am up over 60% since then and at least I try to do some due diligence haha.
It's still floating. Dollar wise I'm about 1K off from my all time record which was admittedly set a few days ago when looking at the aggregate investment portfolio, though probably discounting the 5K I moved over today it's probably 6K under to be fair hah, still not substantial in the grand scheme of things.
I did start rebalancing some though, my contrarian small cap bet in my awful second job 401K (which I can't do a termination rollover because technically still employed there, annoying), switched it all into large cap income more towards iced's strategy which I'm coming around on still. Pared off some losers tax loss harvesting style that I'd lost confidence in, split the difference with a few more growth winners during this COVID time and then some additional staple buying.
We'll see, my investment pattern is clearly shifting, less sanguine about just placing a bunch of bets knowing the math that one of them has to run home (and to be fair like 4-5 bets from a few years ago have really run for me) when talking growth and specifically tech investing, but I guess I'm becoming more conservative now that I have a somewhat finite time left for income generation with the line I drew in the sand a little less than 5 years from now.
Employer 401K accounts are actively managed and have been relatively stable.
Our own brokerage accounts have seen some up and down. Between Feb and May every time there was a dip I would put in a little extra ($10k to $15k each time), all into well known mutual funds and ETFs. Nothing too extraordinary or too risky.
We are not eligible for Roth and I am trying to decide if I should pick a year and convert all my traditional IRA to Roth.
@iced wrote:July is here and I'm in a mildly stressful situation for a change. I need to liquidate some positions to round out a down payment and closing costs for a home closing toward the end of the month, and having to decide between stocks that:
1) aren't doing great right now but will incur little/no tax liability and will do great in 3-5 years,
2) stocks doing great right now (yay sell high) but are likely to continue to grow faster than my other positions and are largely short-term capital gains (ouch) or heavy dividend payers (also ouch), or
3) stocks that are doing pretty good right now AND are long-term capital gains tax advantaged but have a painful cost basis to liquidate in large numbers (think $1 cost basis now selling over $100/share).
I'm leaning toward a mix of 1 and 3, but I can't ignore the temptation to take some profits on 2. My AGI is going to get ugly, and I'm in danger of hitting the 20% capital gains bracket which would be quite painful.
On top of all that, the volatility is still there and if there's a sudden correction it's going to leave a bloody mark. The whipsaw at the end of June left me a little concerned as to whether I liquidate now or shed a little week by week in case there's a huge upswing in a week or two. I'm playing with fire.
Fun side fact: Boston dethroned NYC as #1 most expensive city in price per square foot: [https://www.housingwire.com/articles/this-is-how-much-money-you-need-to-buy-a-house-across-the-u-s/]. I can see why Rev fled to Texas where he can get 3x the house for the same price.
I think you should try to put some numbers around it.
For example the tax liability in the third option can be quantified, likewise the tax deduction in the first one. For both 1 + 2 that also is weighed by what you expect those stocks to do over the longer term, and if you can quantify future gains there it's pretty easy to come up with some napkin math calculations on that presumed tax savings over time vs. growth opportunity cost etc.
The smartest opinion I heard on June frankly from a market perspective is that for all the noise, volatility, and fury... at the end the month ended pretty flat which suggests don't succumb to short-termism.
For you personally I don't necessarily think this choice is going to matter much to you in the long term, your income and asset goals are measured in decades rather than years and as such I think it will be a wash longer term, but in the short term this is how I'd attempt to approach it anyway.
