Your IRA or 401k and Current Climate?

[Fishindude77]

Anybody making any drastic changes in their investment portfolios, moving out of stocks and into more stables stuff or cash?
Lots of folks are talking doom and gloom and a big recession coming, including some pretty close friends and family. They are saying stock market is dangerous now?

I'm retired so don't contribute anymore, so need to more or less "preserve" what we have to live off of for the next 30 years or so. Don't carry any debt, have some outside income sources, lots of real estate, haven't taken SS yet, and also sitting on probably way more cash in savings accounts and CD's than most people would deem wise in normal conditions. The IRA represents about 1/3 of our net worth and is down approx. 12% from high point several months ago.

Staying the course has served me well for the last decades and my gut tells me to do just that, but it's hard to ignore all this talk of an upcoming recession.

What are others thoughts on this?

[kork13]

My response to the markets lately has been that I'm moving out of cash into additional stocks/MF, and at more frequent intervals. Of course, most of this is not particularly new, it's just been more active lately.

With all of the instability & frothy markets, I made the following changes back around the new year:
- Stopped adding new cash to savings
- Diverted the cash to additional market investments - Changed my MF investment frequency from twice-monthly to weekly
- Doubled the amount of cash going into MM (sweep account) for individual stock purchases
- Restarted my purchase plan for individual stocks -- setting a pair of limit orders at roughly -8% to -10% ("bad day") and around -15% to -20% ("really bad day") relative to the then-current market price for each of the individual stocks that I'm following/holding... Then replacing them with new orders as they execute or expire.

The result has been a 45% INCREASE in my taxable investment account's balance in spite of the flagging performance of the stock markets.

As for our retirement accounts .... No idea what's going on there, I've changed nothing & haven't bothered to check on them. They're on autopilot, maxing out according to our standard investment strategy.

We're still relatively young, in our mid-30s, and totally comfortable with the "buy and hold" strategy.

[disneysteve]

I've moved a lot of cash out of our Ally money market into some brokered CDs and mostly Treasuries as rates have climbed. 2% or so beats 0.6%.

I will likely start moving some other money into one or more of our stock funds to take advantage of the reduced prices and rebalance our AA.

Other than that, no changes. My 401k contributions still go into a 60/40 fund as they have all along. When my cousin's estate finally gets closed, a good chunk of that money will also go into the market.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Kept 401k and IRA exactly the same and sold nothing. It's been ugly since I was so aggressively invested. Kept kids invested in VOO 100% still in 529 and ESA. I also added last month $75k to VOO to each kid's 529. Again ugly. But I am a "bogelhead" and I don't want to time the market.

That being said I also dumped a bit in last month into more ETFs. And I decided to play with my new solo 401k as a market timer. I'm going to try this market timing strategy which may not work or might but at least it's only $20k and I'll see what happens for the next 20 years.

[bjl584]

I haven't changed anything to date.
I'm thinking of increasing my contributions and riding it all the way to the bottom

[Jluke]

Since I am in accumulation phase I just adjusted my contributions from 12% to 25%. I was going to do this a little later on as part of my plan to max 401k but figured I might as well do it now and I can adjust to a lower amount later.

[rennigade]

We're also staying the course. Haven't adjusted anything.

I hate to dive into human behavior but it's amazing how fragile we are. The market was on a steady incline for the past decade, minus a few covid months which rebounded quick. Here we are, almost 6 months of a market that has slowly been going down, and people are ready to jump off buildings. Unbelievable.

[veronak]

I’m new to the whole investing thing. For me my goal is to pick up a few things when stock prices go low.

[srblanco7]

No significant changes - still banging away at our 401ks, Roth IRAs, and 529 plans. Still working to build our cash bucket.

Only change I made earlier this year (in tax advantaged accounts) was to move from balanced funds to equivalent total stock market and bond funds - which in my view simplified our "buckets". Still hold balanced in our brokerage account - wasn't willing to sell and create a taxable event.

Other than that - we've stayed the course. Can always work a bit longer if need be, in lieu of ER next year, or line up part time work in a new career field.

[Nutria]

Still sending periodic money to Vanguard (taxable investments) and Voya (401k), but this new money is going into cash (to purchase equities at a later date).