Anybody buying on this downturn?

[disneysteve]

My portfolio had gotten out of whack, so I sold some bonds and bought some stocks. Now I will continue doing nothing, unless/until it gets out of whack again.

I didn't sell anything but I did put a little extra in stocks yesterday. I normally put $1,600/month into savings and $1,600/month into our Vanguard account. I put the whole $3,200 into Vanguard as our AA has shifted too, of course.

I'm going to wait and see what happens this week. I have some cash in my Roth so if things continue downward and drag the AA more out of whack, I may invest a chunk of that cash to get things back in line.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

i sunk too much in january and more now.

[Fishindude77]

Not doing anything extra with my stock market investments, but there is a piece of property I've got my eye on that goes for sale next month. With any luck this little "blip" in the economy will have others wanting to hang onto their cash and maybe I can get a good deal.

[Like2Plan]

I finished funding my IRA--(I bought more total stock market). I expect we will have ups and downs in the TSM for a while, but I'm not expecting to tap into the money until many years from now when these ups and down will (hopefully) just be tiny little virtually indiscernible squiggles on the valuation chart.

[cypher1]

I ended up jumping on extra purchases for VASGX for HSA last Fri. VTSAX, VTIAX, VSIAX, VGHCX for Roth and Taxable last Fri and Mon.

[amarowsky]

Lol, wish i was working right now for this reason. Making extra dough to toss in the market while it’s tanking.

have to up my Uber game to higher than $400 per week, so I can toss in some extra funds now that this opportunity is upon us. (Unless this is the END OF THE STOCKMARKET!! *Erie music plays*) which I Highly doubt!

Question for you guys/gals....

Given this market correction. I would like opinions/advice. Do you think it would be more wise to:
1) take 10K of SP sold when SP was @ 3,300’s and use it to buy back MORE SP @ 2,900’s (+ this hyper volatile condition)
or
2) use the 10k for it’s initial purpose - Pay off 10K of my HELOC @ 4.25% to Decrease my debt/save interest + open up 10k worth of equity should I need to buy something.

Seems like either would be a good use of these funds. I really don’t have anything I “need to buy” but we are still prospecting on rental homes. (No time like the present to buy, as the equities recover, it would be nice to have some income from investments (rents pay no matter how ****ty the economy is, albeit sometimes rent may have to be dropped, pending the situation)

[AJSimon]

Question for you guys/gals....

Given this market correction. I would like opinions/advice. Do you think it would be more wise to:
1) take 10K of SP sold when SP was @ 3,300’s and use it to buy back MORE SP @ 2,900’s (+ this hyper volatile condition)
or
2) use the 10k for it’s initial purpose - Pay off 10K of my HELOC @ 4.25% to Decrease my debt/save interest + open up 10k worth of equity should I need to buy something.

All I can do is channel my inner Ramsey and say pay down the debt. The argument I assume he'd make is that you wouldn't borrow against your house to invest in the stock market - and the math of what you're proposing here is essentially the same thing.

[TexasHusker]

I don’t necessarily agree with Dave Ramsey on everything. Even the most successful, profitable businesses carry debt. I disagree that you should be debt free before you invest. I wouldn’t use my home equity to buy stocks, but I would (and have) use(d) it to help me buy other real estate or start a business.

I was fully self employed / semi-retired at age 47, and I can trace the foundations of this back to the strategic use of equity in my principal home at several key times.

[Jluke]

VTI: 10 shares at $140

nibbling at the downward spiral

[disneysteve]

I took the plunge and bought 300 shares of American Airlines at 14.535 in one of my IRAs. It's down over 52% from last month and is at a 5-year low by a significant margin. I'm happy to hold onto it for years if that's what it takes. I don't expect a fast recovery.

[TexasHusker]

I took the plunge and bought 300 shares of American Airlines at 14.535 in one of my IRAs. It's down over 52% from last month and is at a 5-year low by a significant margin. I'm happy to hold onto it for years if that's what it takes. I don't expect a fast recovery.

Good luck. I have put some blue chips on my watch list - Chevron, Apple, Caterpillar, Disney, and a few others. I am still waiting for panic selling. The markets remain far too calm.

If we breach 20K on the Dow, that could be what sends everyone for the exits, with the Dow finally finding some support in the mid teens. A bear market can put the squeeze on even the most seasoned investor. The though process begins to look like "Yeah, I've lost 25%, but why should I lose another 25% when I know it's likely going down?" I mean sure, we all know that the markets will go on to new record highs at some point, but why should I suffer a 50 percent haircut in the process?

So you will have those that were OK with a 25% dip (but nervous), but are most certainly NOT ok with yet another 25% dip. Because that means you've got to score 100% just to get back to where you were.

[rooskers]

If you have seen my previous post, I went through a tragic divorce and was awarded my half of the retirement. It just so happens that I put $250,000 of the retirement, that was sitting in cash, into my balanced portfolio of funds today. The market may go down but at least it didn't go in three months ago when I was waiting for the QDRO to go through to get my half of the retirement. The rest of the money will be dollar cost averaged into the market over the next year. Here is to the next 25 plus years of growth, I hope.

[Singuy]

Congrats to those who bought. Trump caused AH trading to spike hard already. Tomorrow will be another historical green day.

Honestly, the economy is fine..people really need to just wait it out. But Trump really needs the stock market to fly high so the Trump rally continues.

[kork13]

Soooo..... I'm starting to strongly consider something I wouldn't otherwise have considered.... But I'm really kinda thinking about using some of our next home's DP cash to start buying into the market drop to take advantage of the fire sale rather than sitting on the sideline. DW already agreed to it (remarkably easily -- I suggested the idea, and she immediately said "Let's do it"), but I'm still a bit hesitant. Brain says "FULL STEAM AHEAD!!" while heart says "Debt free home in 3 years! Risk-free!" I know that as the values (eventually) come back up, that money will grow even more & I can use it to knock out the mortgage at will. I'm just wrestling with the idea of intentionally reducing my DP to bet on that growth.

I've got ~$155k currently set aside planned for the DP, planning to buy something in the $375k-$400k range in May. $140k of that is straight cash (MM/savings), $5k in an I-Bond, $10k (formerly $12k ) in stock MF's that I've been slowly selling over the last 8 months (gratefully!! ~$80k of my cash is from those MF sales, sold at the height of the market, which is all now perfectly safe amid this storm). Thinking is that I can leave the I-Bond and MF's alone, set aside $100k cash (~25%) as the DP, and start buying into the market again with the remaining ~$40k.

I'd be buying into a set of 6 ETFs that I've been planning to start into once we actually purchased the house. First step would probably be $10k upfront, then maybe another $1k/week for as long as the $40k (or this down market) lasts. Just not sure if I'm straight-up crazy, or crazy as a fox....

ETA: Decided to go for it.... I just put in $10k in limit orders at advantageous prices, and we'll just have to see how it goes. I'll reassess in a week, and go from there...

//BREAK//
In other news, I did switch the automatic investments for DW's & my Roth IRAs to invest weekly instead of twice-monthly, just to give us more touch-points to the market & follow the volatility a little better. I'm also thinking to triple the invested amounts (from ~$110/wk to $300/wk), to front-load our contributions & max out by 1 July, vs. spreading them out over the rest of the year. Haven't quite pulled that trigger yet.

ETA: Also pulled that trigger & set up the tripled purchase amounts.

[disneysteve]

Good luck. I have put some blue chips on my watch list - Chevron, Apple, Caterpillar, Disney, and a few others. I am still waiting for panic selling. The markets remain far too calm.

If we breach 20K on the Dow, that could be what sends everyone for the exits, with the Dow finally finding some support in the mid teens. A bear market can put the squeeze on even the most seasoned investor. The though process begins to look like "Yeah, I've lost 25%, but why should I lose another 25% when I know it's likely going down?" I mean sure, we all know that the markets will go on to new record highs at some point, but why should I suffer a 50 percent haircut in the process?

So you will have those that were OK with a 25% dip (but nervous), but are most certainly NOT ok with yet another 25% dip. Because that means you've got to score 100% just to get back to where you were.

As I've shared before, over the past few years, I gradually dialed back our equity exposure from about 85% to about 60-65% so even a 50% drop in the stock market only means about a 30% drop in our portfolio. I'm okay with that at this point in my life. I've still got enough years ahead of me to recover. And I'm still willing to put more in when the buying is good.

Time will tell how good my AAL buy was. It was only $4,300 so not a huge investment in a $1.3 million portfolio (well more like $1.2 million now). I just wanted to play a bit.