Your retirement account should be in an allocation to where you are comfortable with dips and jumps. If you aren't comfortable with possible short term dips, you need to readjust.

The people that lose the most money are those that allocate into equities more and more as the market continues to do well, then after a crash they go extremely conservative. So they lose a ton, then go conservative and never catch back up.

If you stay true, the market always rebounds within 2 years and you will be more than fine long term.

The people that make the most on the other hand, are those that stay true or stay conservative until after a market crash and then buy low.

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Posted by CHiPs25

ATL

Member since Apr 2014

2903 posts

Posted on 1/18/18 at 7:00 pm to baseballmind1212

quote:
I'm worried with the market being around ATH that putting in right now isn't a great decision.

Then again I do have 30 years of work ahead of me to make it up.

30 years ago the dow jones was 4141. Today it's at 26,017. In another 30 years it could be at 100,000...who knows. Point being, the only right time to buy is all the time.

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Posted by Creamer

louisiana

Member since Jul 2010

2817 posts

Posted on 1/18/18 at 7:28 pm to baseballmind1212

If you are young and worried about market timing read this.

cnbc article

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Posted by LSUneaux

NOLA

Member since Mar 2014

4490 posts

Posted on 1/18/18 at 8:55 pm to YoungManOldMan

TRUMP.

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Posted by LSUShock

Kansas

Member since Jun 2014

4917 posts

Posted on 1/18/18 at 10:34 pm to YoungManOldMan

I stepped away the corporate world 2 years ago at 24. Haven't gone back to a "401k" job since. I left my old account at ~11k. Checked today and it's a little over $14k. Makes you think where it would have been after another 2 years of 7% contributions.

This post was edited on 1/19/18 at 12:08 am

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Posted by EA6B

Member since Dec 2012

14754 posts

Posted on 1/19/18 at 1:41 am to Creamer

quote:
If you are young and worried about market timing read this. cnbc article

I am a real life "bob" I started investing in 1980, I have never timed the market, and rode out all the crashes which over the long run were great buying opportunities. I read somewhere in my early days of investing that if you try to time the market you don't have to be right just once, you have to be right twice, when you sell, and when you buy back in, I knew I was not that smart.

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Posted by buckeye_vol

Member since Jul 2014

35239 posts

Posted on 1/20/18 at 2:39 am to YoungManOldMan

quote:
It's 16 days into 2018. I've already got a 8% ROI in my 401(k). WTF is going on.

Is this even possible? Over the last month, the Dow's Highest point and lowest point is about 5.6% and the S&P was at about 5.1%, and the low point for both was in December and that was cherry picking the largest possible difference. I guess a fund could happen to have just happened to have the right combination of stocks but that's assuming only investment in stocks and I obviously some crazy luck in that diversification of those stocks was perfectly aligned to beat all of the other comparable stocks by a significant margin.

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