letsgobobby wrote:Mr. Newb, again I implore you to reduce your risk allocation from 100% to something closer to 60%. I am convinced that with the next 50% decline, you will sell out at the bottom.
In some ways you cannot fight Darwin's laws.
However much you tell someone about investing, they 'get' and 'hear' the bit that they find attractive. Wisdom of experience counts for 'nought as they say in Yorkshire.
The OP will take his/ her strategy, which is not really what is suggested as a strategy around here, and go over a cliff. Sell out at the bottom.
They 'get' the bit about high long run returns from equities, and they have the recency of the last 4 years that equities have done well. So they 'buy the dips'. In other words, I get no sense from OP that he/she understands what a grinding bear market is like, has lived through one, has seen the charts of 1968-1980 for example or 1929-1939. In their minds they *always* buy in the low periods-- they ignore the bit where you go over the cliff (1929-1933 etc.).
it's a product as much as anything of a limited ability to delay gratification. They have found this new toy, the stock market, and it's got to work *now*.
That's why I am calling it evolution, because evolution/genetics/ upbringing hands us different levels of ability to delay gratification. Or we learn it, the hard way-- I am certainly less rich than I was in 2000.
Maybe then they'll come back and get religion. Or maybe they will simply move on to other forums with other strategies and approaches.
You can't stop people making stupid mistakes *unless* they want to listen to you. I have been reading a lot of James Lovelock recently and have kind of come to that conclusion about bigger, societal issues, too.