I'm ready to move my $ out of the stock market. Can you help me pick a fund?

[QuarterMillionMan]

James it is obvious to me that your smart money friends and frankly yourself included have not done your homework on bitcoin when you recommended gold and not bitcoin. I encourage you to just spend 5 hours researching bitcoin vs gold preferably 10x the amount of time and you'll understand why I keep buying bitcoin over gold. To me it does not matter who our next president will be. I know the crowd here where they stand on bitcoin so I won't waste my time trying to convince anyone here of my expectations of bitcoin but James I thought of you as the star pupil amongst everyone else as it pertains to bitcoin but now I'm questioning myself, lol. But gold is my 2nd best option and the spot price just hit $2998.

[srblanco7]

Dips in the market can also be an opportune time to do Roth conversions.

[ua_guy]

Thanks for explaining your situation more. Are you guys planning on retiring soon? Already retired? The problem with pulling everything out of the market & going into nothing but fixed income is that you won't be able to keep up with inflation, especially after taxes. If your CDs/Treasuries/whatever are earning 3-4%, with inflation running at ~3%, taxes will eat your earnings down to being at or below the inflation rate. It sets a hard cap on your spending power, without the ability to grow ... and if/when you withdraw from it, that cap continues to decrease. Typically (though not in all locations), real estate assets tend to also grow roughly in line with inflation. So they, again, will not provide enough growth to allow for you to reliably draw from your assets in retirement (beyond a very definite timeline).

You need some higher-earning assets to keep your assets growing -- stock market investments are the simplest way to bump up your earnings. Yes, during some periods it'll hurt ... but a reasonable fixed-income component will balance that out & keep things stable enough for you to remain patient.

I totally understand that watching the chaos going on right now is troubling. But panic-selling is never going to help.

There are a couple advantages worth noting. When shifting asset allocation in tax-advantaged accounts, there are no taxes on the gains or asset sales. That does obviously not apply to personal brokerage accounts. If moving to an asset like a CD, earning 4% is better than losing 2% during an unstable period, and 4% is still better than inflation at 3%, both of which are better than losing 2%--or more.

Real-estate is also a big concern right now. Because HCOL, interest rates, inventory constraints, our local market is extremely, wildly inflated, and our home is definitely a non-ignorable portion of our net worth. We estimate we've gained 75% more value since buying 4 years ago, and when we almost sold last year, our realtor's analysis of his own sold comps indicated we'd have no problem moving a home at the price we hoped for. Even if the housing market corrects by 30%, we still gain. But I'm nervous about potentially missing the opportunity to cash out at this water mark. Now, part of that is also needing a plan of somewhere to go which is much cheaper, or deciding to rent instead. We need to stay local for now, but cashing out has definitely been on my mind for the housing market as well.

[Smilinggirl]

Dips in the market can also be an opportune time to do Roth conversions.

Can you explain this more? If I convert 50k, I still pay taxes on 50k whether the market is up or down. I'm not doubting you, and I've read this elsewhere. I just don't understand it.

[Petunia 100]

Can you explain this more? If I convert 50k, I still pay taxes on 50k whether the market is up or down. I'm not doubting you, and I've read this elsewhere. I just don't understand it.

You convert more shares for the same $ when the market is down.

[disneysteve]

Are the bond funds not safe?? Ugh. How to I buy a CD instead of a bond fund in my Fidelity/Vanguard accounts?

Bond funds are not "safe" if you want to be sure not to lose any principal. Bond funds can and do lose value at times.

It is simple to buy CDs and Treasuries (and other bonds) in your Vanguard account. I can walk you through it if you'd like. I'm sure it's easy at Fidelity too but I don't invest with them so I'm not familiar with their interface.

[Atretes1]

Can you explain this more? If I convert 50k, I still pay taxes on 50k whether the market is up or down. I'm not doubting you, and I've read this elsewhere. I just don't understand it.

If you want to convert a total of 200K and for example if the markets drops 50% you would only need to convert 100k now instead of the 200K. Yes you are still paying taxes on the converted amount. If the market is at a low point, and you convert at that low point. Then eventually the market will recover with the converted shares that you already paid taxes on.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Average bear market loss 33% and duration 13 months. Not sure why they are saying get out of T-bills & Money Markets.

[EasyMoney00]

If you want to convert a total of 200K and for example if the markets drops 50% you would only need to convert 100k now instead of the 200K. Yes you are still paying taxes on the converted amount. If the market is at a low point, and you convert at that low point. Then eventually the market will recover with the converted shares that you already paid taxes on.

That's not how it works. If you want to convert $200k, you'll still convert $200k. The only thing that would change is how many shares get converted.

If 50 shares represented $200k a week ago but now 100 shares represents $200k...you'll convert 100 shares.

[Smilinggirl]

If 50 shares represented $200k a week ago but now 100 shares represents $200k...you'll convert 100 shares.

This makes sense to me. Thank you

[Jluke]

The real question is if Snydley sold anything yet….

my investments recovered $25k on Friday. Still down 10% or so, though from an all time high, which probably isn’t the best anchor point but I don’t stress about it

[srblanco7]

Hi- I've decided to move my $ out of the stock market for a while, and later I will invest in some individual companies that operate in line with my values. I'm not sure which Vanguard account to choose, there are so many Bond/ETF accounts and I don't know which to choose, or if I can/should choose cash holdings? I'm looking for a stable place to put the $. I moved my work retirement $ to VIPIX (not sure if this was the right choice). TIA

Is this an indicator that you're not comfortable with your asset allocation? Market timing is, in general, notoriously challenging (when is the right time to get out and when is the right time to get back in?). The adage "it's not about timing the market, but about time in the market" is your reminder to base your decisions on an appropriate long-term time horizon and not near-term market gyrations. Wish you the best with whatever you choose.

[Atretes1]

That's not how it works. If you want to convert $200k, you'll still convert $200k. The only thing that would change is how many shares get converted.

If 50 shares represented $200k a week ago but now 100 shares represents $200k...you'll convert 100 shares.

That is how it would work for my situation. I should have specified in my example that 200k is the total amount of pretax money that I have total. So, if the market dropped by 50% I would only have 100k to convert. I hope this makes what I was trying to say sound better. I realize the share difference and you explained it better for someone that doesn't understand it.

[EasyMoney00]

That is how it would work for my situation. I should have specified in my example that 200k is the total amount of pretax money that I have total. So, if the market dropped by 50% I would only have 100k to convert. I hope this makes what I was trying to say sound better. I realize the share difference and you explained it better for someone that doesn't understand it.

This makes more sense to me.

[Snydley]

The real question is if Snydley sold anything yet….

my investments recovered $25k on Friday. Still down 10% or so, though from an all time high, which probably isn’t the best anchor point but I don’t stress about it

Yes- I moved all of my retirement out of stocks last week. Honestly I'm really doing this because I'm rapidly approaching the point where I cannot give ONE MORE DIME of my money to Tesla, Meta, Amazon, Walmart, Target, etc. These billionaires are taking insane profits while we are work more and more for less and less. Health insurance costs are crazy. The greed is out of control. Billionaires are taking off the top in the vast majority of transactions in this country! If I'm refilling my kids school lunch account (it's online with a processing fee), using a rideshare, my credit cards are robbing people that don't pay on time at 30% interest.

I'm going to move my savings/checking from Bank of America to a credit union. I've been paying for things in cash lately.

I can live cheaper that I planned, I don't care. I can work longer (I need to work 1/2 time anyway to keep the health insurance). Well, who knows how much longer I will be working in my lab anyway, since my NIH funds might be stopped in May. Latest from the chair of my department is that all faculty are looking at ~35% pay cuts, which was a big relief to hear because that means they don't plan to let us go.