Where is your money invested?

[Tenacity]

You do understand that the those dollars in the stock market and your bank account are all controlled digitally through a centralized system. You've already acknowledge all the red flags in this system and you still want to hold everything in it? Gold, bitcoin, and cash are not tied to this system. Bitcoin is digital but it's decentralized. What do you not understand from this?

Yes, I understand it's all NUMBERS on a screen. What I'm trying to get you to understand that if stocks, bonds, the dollar, and real estate ALL crash........the entire country and the world crashes. Which means your bitcoin would be worthless as well. Which means your gold would be worthless as you won't have a strong trading economy to even use it.

Yes, it is impossible to function in today's society without be apart of the system. I'm just saying don't rely on this system. Never rely on anything you do not control.....

Newsflash though AAAgent, we don't control the vast MAJORITY of aspects in our lives. All we can do is try to "position" ourselves in a proper place to take advantage of monetary opportunities as they come, as well as, be in the "know" about them.

Your "solutions" of putting cash under the mattress, buying gold and investing in bitcoin is making the problems WORSE, not better.

 

[AAAgent]

And what value does gold have if the world goes to ****? No one cares about gold. The value is in tangible assets. Like I said, if the world goes to hell, gold doesn't grant you any tangible value. Can I live in gold? Can I hunt with it? Can gold transport me to places?

and your stocks grant you tangible value how? Go and try and trade your stock certificate when the market collapses for food. I've never mentioned anything about not owning a home or a gun. I have my gun, car, etc. I own everything I have and have 0 debt.

The stock market always rebounds. You are fundamentally ignoring the concept of owning stocks. It is ownership of a company, or in the case of mutual funds, a collection of companies. We invest in stocks to buy shares of ownership.

It always rebound, yes. Have I said to never be in the stock market? I'm saying the market NOW is significantly over valued so you idiots spouting nonsense about getting in it now or holding your wealth in it now are stupid. Do you want to get crushed the next time it crashes? Do you think we're priced relative low now? I want to get in when it's low and sell high. Not get in while it's high and sell low which is exactly what happens in a panic crash and we're about due now for a panic crash. 87, 2000, 2008, and probably in the next year or so.

Last I checked, the stock market was over 20,500 and has been on a consistent upward trend for the last 6 years or so.

The last I checked, we lowered interests rates to 0% for close to 10 years (currently still less than 1%), there is no yield anywhere. Last I checked auto loans went from 5 years to now 9 years. No yield anywhere so we force everyone into the stock market to revive everyone's 401k that was destroyed during the last crash because g0d knows we'd riot if we lost our digital fiat wealth.....

 

[EyeBRollin]

Yes, I understand it's all NUMBERS on a screen. What I'm trying to get you to understand that if stocks, bonds, the dollar, and real estate ALL crash........the entire country and the world crashes. Which means your bitcoin would be worthless as well. Which means your gold would be worthless as you won't have a strong trading economy to even use it.

Even if real estate were to crash, do you think the guy with 6 multi-family rental properties cares? He's got 6 options in the event of nuclear fallout. Lol.

 

[AAAgent]

Newsflash though AAAgent, we don't control the vast MAJORITY of aspects in our lives. All we can do is try to "position" ourselves in a proper place to take advantage of monetary opportunities as they come, as well as, be in the "know" about them.

YOU don't control the vast majority of your life. Don't lump me into that category.

 

[EyeBRollin]

and your stocks grant you tangible value how? Go and try and trade your stock certificate when the market collapses for food. I've never mentioned anything about not owning a home or a gun. I have my gun, car, etc. I own everything I have and have 0 debt.

Ownership in a company.

It always rebound, yes. Have I said to never be in the stock market? I'm saying the market NOW is significantly over valued so you idiots spouting nonsense about getting in it now or holding your wealth in it now are stupid. Do you want to get crushed the next time it crashes? Do you think we're priced relative low now? I want to get in when it's low and sell high. Not get in while it's high and sell low which is exactly what happens in a panic crash and we're about due now for a panic crash. 87, 2000, 2008, and probably in the next year or so.

How would I get crushed? That is the point of mutual funds. Is every company going bankrupt during a crash? Why do you think the market always rebounds? The whole world would literally have to go to **** for me to "lose everything" in a crash. And I would still have my house, my gun, my car, etc.

The last I checked, we lowered interests rates to 0% for close to 10 years (currently still less than 1%), there is no yield anywhere. Last I checked auto loans went from 5 years to now 9 years. No yield anywhere so we force everyone into the stock market to revive everyone's 401k that was destroyed during the last crash because g0d knows we'd riot if we lost our digital fiat wealth.....

Wealth is ownership. Stocks and bonds are ownership. Real estate is ownership. Owning gold...? Good luck with that. lol.

 

[Tenacity]

I'm saying the market NOW is significantly over valued so you idiots spouting nonsense about getting in it now or holding your wealth in it now are stupid. Do you want to get crushed the next time it crashes? Do you think we're priced relative low now? I want to get in when it's low and sell high. Not get in while it's high and sell low which is exactly what happens in a panic crash and we're about due now for a panic crash. 87, 2000, 2008, and probably in the next year or so.

- The problem is nobody can TIME the market (not even you lol).

- Another point is that with those crashes you talked about, if the person would have just held onto their holdings, their shyt would have recovered soon and then more growth would have been added shortly there-after.

 

[Tenacity]

YOU don't control the vast majority of your life. Don't lump me into that category.

AAAgent now you aren't even making any sense. You just talked about the danger of potential worldly events (which are out of any of our control) coming in and fvcking up our investment portfolios.

Stay consistent brother lol.

 

[AAAgent]

Make some valid arguments and i'll respond. Stop stating your opinions, i got sh1t to do.

 

[EyeBRollin]

Make some valid arguments and i'll respond. Stop stating your opinions, i got sh1t to do.

What value does gold have? Why should I prefer it to stocks, bonds, or real estate?

 

[speed dawg]

If the world goes to sh*t, the guy with the most bottles of water will be the richest man in the world. What will you do with gold?

 

[FwoGiZ]

I am alright with money..

I have 20k in RRSP(Registered Retirement Savings Plan) which I mostly contributed from 18yo to 27yo until I stopped contributing cause I figured it was dumb as **** considering I'll prolly have 50-66% of my salary as a pension from my current job for the rest of my life, at 43-51yo.

I never had a loan for anything, ever. Mortgage excluded. I spend around 7-8k per car. Cash

I bought a house 195k at 22yo with 40k down payment, sold it 245k 4 years later. Cashed in 120k since I was gonna pay it within 12yrs.
Then I bought this house 300k (75k cash down) 4years ago and I think I could sell it 340-50k right now. Cash in 140-150k.
Reason being, I decided to buy big toys (jetski+flyboard) which cost me roughly 40k in the end. But **** it's fun..!

I also have probably around net 150-250k (rough estimate) in my pension right now.

I NEVER got ANY kind of money from ANYONE. I paid for my education and moved out of my parents place at 19yo but all they ever supported me with since I was 16 was free food free rent. I was paying for absolutely anything else. My dad had me work ever since I can remember... 10-11yo lawns\snow shovelling then on. My parents taught me self discipline, being careful with what you buy and independence to which I am truly grateful.

I might not go along with the whole pension thing if at any point I feel like my own happiness would suffer for it.
In this case, the plan is to cash everything and move out of the western world and start a business elsewhere on the planet. I have several skills that I could put to use.

 

[synergy1]

We're happy to discuss which stocks, bonds, and real estate investments we prefer. That's the beauty of investment topics. We do know that politics (much of which is rooted in belief and (mis)information) does influence investments, which unfortunately makes the pissing matches inevitable.

But come on... the only time we hear gold pitched as an investment is on extremist nutter talk shows where they constantly warn of the world ending.

If he likes gold, and feels strongly about it, i'll listen. My opinion on gold is that its a good hedge against disaster - a hedge against fear. Maybe a 1-2% holding 'just in case' isn't the worst idea. But to me, gold has no utility and will not produce something. A good company/ enterprise will - this creates value in the long term which interests me greatly.

And per our other conversations, I would say I agree with a lot of what you are saying. Our government is broke. Thats a fact. Perhaps some of the finer points is where our research diverges, but that is the point of good conversation!

 

[PrettyBoyAJ]

For the millionaires on the forum how did you get to where you are today?

Any advice you'd give to other forum members?

 

[Roober]

Did really well in the market for a couple years, then stopped paying attention and lost about half of my gains in 2016. As a side note, almost everyone did well in 2013-2015.

Read "The Intelligent Investor". Great intro book to investing and Warren Buffet's entry into investing. Basically, don't look for get rich quick schemes. It may happen sometimes, but look for solid companies with solid growth and long story short, solid P/E ratios. There is much more to investing in specific stocks, such as evaluating the last 5 years of annual reports, quarterly reports, looking at the market, etc. If you do your due diligence, you risk is very low while the gains are from low to substantial. For example, I bought the Facebook IPO, and sold recently for over 100$ a share. It took 10 years, but I made 2.5 times my money. When I didn't do my due diligence, I took a bath (i.e. biotech, energy companies, etc.)

I firmly believe the 25/75 ratio for investing between stocks and bonds. Never have more less than 25% of your portfolio in bonds or stocks or more than 75% of your portfolio in either. I love muni bonds as it is tax free income most of the time, just make sure you check the call date. Muni bonds net you any where from 4-8% a year depending on the grade of the bond. I have some safe ones, and some not so safe ones (i.e. Stockton).

A couple other pointers...
-invest in your 401k up to the company match, nothing more!
-if you have more, invest in a Roth up to the max ($6,500)
-If you have more, put in a brokerage account and follow the 25/75 rule
-be smart about your company. Look at the "compensation package". Many of my buddies make about 30k more than I do a year, but I get 15% put in my retirement and my medical is free. Basically, we make the same. Additionally, they have to put money in 401k to get the match
-If you don't like money, invest in CDs. Get my point? CD rates are absolute $hit right now. Anyone who recommends them knows nothing about investing.

for retirement accounts
-If you are an active investor - reading "useful" articles, wall street journal, checking annual reports, etc., put in an account with low transaction fees
-If you are a passive investor - let someone else do it for me!...T.Rowe Price has great mutual funds

I know a guy who has worked for $25/hour for 15 years and has over 1.5 million in his retirement accounts because he educated himself and is an extremely active investor. He retired recently at 35 and solely focuses on growing his retirement, and his new business.

The market is for conmen, but if you are smart and diligent, you can go along for the ride.

 

[synergy1]

To what roober mentioned about the Intelligent Investor and the right P/E stocks - numerous studies have shown that low P/E stocks outperform in the long run. This was the fundamental message in Intelligent Investor and Later Securities Analysis. Obviously there is a lot of nuance there, as many value investors will look for quality of earnings along side price ( price is what you pay, value is what you get). However the key with the 'value idea' is that it will perform poorly compared to benchmarks for sufficient time such that (1) institutions won't be able to strickly follow it and (2) it'll weed out more impatient investors.

And I hear ya on getting burned with the due diligence. My earlier investments excluded some of my strong principals such as low leverage since I thought there would be a regression to the norm. There wasn't and I lost out.

I keep it simple. Do I like the product? Does the company make money? Do they have a good amount of market share? Will they continue to make money? My selections this year have performed well, much better than past ones thats for sure. Its hard to predict the future, but sticking to the idea of looking for a low P/E stock that makes money seems like a good way to approach it.

Index funds are great too. Thats what I recommend the person who doesn't want to do the research!

 

[Tenacity]

To what roober mentioned about the Intelligent Investor and the right P/E stocks - numerous studies have shown that low P/E stocks outperform in the long run. This was the fundamental message in Intelligent Investor and Later Securities Analysis. Obviously there is a lot of nuance there, as many value investors will look for quality of earnings along side price ( price is what you pay, value is what you get). However the key with the 'value idea' is that it will perform poorly compared to benchmarks for sufficient time such that (1) institutions won't be able to strickly follow it and (2) it'll weed out more impatient investors.

And I hear ya on getting burned with the due diligence. My earlier investments excluded some of my strong principals such as low leverage since I thought there would be a regression to the norm. There wasn't and I lost out.

I keep it simple. Do I like the product? Does the company make money? Do they have a good amount of market share? Will they continue to make money? My selections this year have performed well, much better than past ones thats for sure. Its hard to predict the future, but sticking to the idea of looking for a low P/E stock that makes money seems like a good way to approach it.

Index funds are great too. Thats what I recommend the person who doesn't want to do the research!

To you guys that pick your own individual stocks, how do you guys even go about your research? Do you even have enough external information on the stocks to make accurate predictions?

The vast majority of active traders don't beat the market average, my question is why not just buy an S&P 500 Index Fund and call it a night? Move on and do something more productive with your time rather than trying to beat the market?

For Index Funds I'm doing S&P 500 and Total Bond Index, but you guys can also do Balanced Funds.

- Vanguard Wellington: https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=INT&FundId=0021 this will give you 65/35 Stocks and Bonds

- Vanguard Wellesley: https://personal.vanguard.com/us/funds/snapshot?FundIntExt=INT&FundId=0027 this will give you 60/40 Bonds and Stocks

Expense ratios are higher on these though, I would personally just do the S&P 500 and Total Bond Index Funds, and divide up your proportions based on your risk tolerance.

 

[Tenacity]

Buy-and-hold is used by brokers to stay rich:

"Stocks are low; buy more!"
"Stocks are high; buy more!"

They're trained to brainwash investors to keep the large wirehouses rich.

In my opinion, buy-and-hold is NOT an effective strategy, as evidenced by the all of folks in 2008 who lost their homes and/or were forced to work another 5-10 years to make the money back. The real estate market may have "rebounded", but that didn't stop people from losing their homes.

Also, if you're 50 or younger, you have TIME on your side. You can work another 10 years and HOPE (I call it "buy-and-hope") that the market/real estate rebounds.

When you're 50+ years old, time starts to work against you. A 50+ year old's risk tolerance is lower than a 40 or 30 year old's.

Espi I understand, but the truth is a couple of things:

- If the people would have held onto their stock/bond positions, they would not have seen a loss. They would have recovered and saw the massive gains that followed.

- With real estate, the ones who loss were the ones who never should have purchased real estate to begin with or they bought homes they couldn't afford.

- With an index fund, there are no brokers, you are your own broker.

Now as you know, I've ranted about how these passive investment vehicles aren't what they used to be. But I don't know any alternatives to them? Do you? AAAgent talked about buying bitcoin, gold, and stuffing cash under the mattress.......which is a worse-off alternative, not a better one.

If you guys know of a better portfolio I would love to hear it. Again, my passive investment portfolio is an S&P Index Fund, Total Bond Index Fund, Long Term CDs, and High Interest Savings Accounts.

 

[AAAgent]

This is mainstream brainwashing on how to pacify idiots into dumping their lifesaving's into a market that the corporations and governments manipulate. If they control your money, they control you. 401ks, stock market, etc. are all long term shackles that make you a slave to the system. Kind of like the matrix.

These sheeple...smh lol. The people that are unplugged, all unplugged in different ways but managed to wake themselves up. But obviously if everyone woke up and realized that they were all being herded into to be sucked dry while the few got rich, there would be blood on the streets.

Do me a favor tenacity, hold your stocks and bonds. In fact, buy more. Please buy more.

Let's chat in 5 years and i'll pay you to clean my toilets. Of course it will be salaried and it will come with lunch mon-friday.

 

[Tenacity]

What if you were 65 years old in 2008? Would you have TIME to wait for the stocks to recover?

I personally wouldn't recommend a guy being in equities at that age. My plan personally, is to have moved out of the markets and in all fixed income by the time I'm in my very late 50's because like you said....I wouldn't be able to hold on through a crash like that.

 

[Tenacity]

This is mainstream brainwashing on how to pacify idiots into dumping their lifesaving's into a market that the corporations and governments manipulate. If they control your money, they control you. 401ks, stock market, etc. are all long term shackles that make you a slave to the system. Kind of like the matrix.

These sheeple...smh lol. The people that are unplugged, all unplugged in different ways but managed to wake themselves up. But obviously if everyone woke up and realized that they were all being herded into to be sucked dry while the few got rich, there would be blood on the streets.

Do me a favor tenacity, hold your stocks and bonds. In fact, buy more. Please buy more.

Let's chat in 5 years and i'll pay you to clean my toilets. Of course it will be salaried and it will come with lunch mon-friday.

AAA like I keep telling you, if stocks and bonds all go through the floor (and never return) that will hurt all other aspects of business as well.

What are the alternatives? I would love to know. Gold, bitcoin and stuffing cash in the mattress isn't a viable alternative.

My plan is actually very conservative. I'm recommending the S&P Index Fund, Total Bond Index Fund, Long Term CDs, and High-Interest Savings Accounts.

You have some people on this forum that recommend that guys Day Trade individual stocks and invest in multiple Real Estate Properties.