marquis De la Loins @ 39-

You can do the same things. Its not about being brilliant….its about wanting to take control of your own destiny, rather than leave it in the hands of the suits in NY.

They always leave out the husband’s visit to the doctor about that blotch of possible skin cancer [and his company is on the verge of bankruptcy], or the fact that the transmission repair on her 2007 just cost $5000 with no warranty [and its monthly payment is $800/mo], and they just lost $2000 at the casino this year, their two college kids both have $100K college loans to pay off that mom and dad co-signed [and both haven't got job offers yet, so have moved back home], etc, etc….

It will tell you that Johnny and Mary just graduated from college with honors and should each get $120K/yr jobs very soon now, and will likely buy their own $500K homes this year with their windfalls…

It will tell you that the husband is in good spirits and expects a 20% raise next year when they make him VP of operations.

It will tell you that they’ve got plans to visit Atlantic City to make more casino windfalls on their error-proof gambling “system”.

etc, etc, etc….blah, blah, blah…

I have friends that see those Chritmas Card form letters and immediately throw them all in the trash, unread…LOL

Puts upside MACR short APPL whipsaw margin options laddered yields.

RE: deejayoh @ 8 – That may be true for several people, but why even anwser the poll if you’re only going to lie? My net worth has more than tripled but that is more of a function of my young age and of my income representing more than just a fraction of what my net worth was. For someone in their mid 40s, market fluctuations affect net worth more than personal income as income is only a small fraction of net worth. Some people may be lying but let’s not go around accusing the majority :)

I just pointed out that the results seem inconsist with the known facts. Not accusing anyone of anything.

I suspect what TJ says is the case for many. I know I went into moslty cash in early 2007 and have accumulated considerable savings based on my choice to rent in the interim. But the little money I left in the market is down 20%, just like everyone else. Mostly 401k so I figure let it ride.

From the comments I don’t get the sense there are too many active traders here – at least not people minting coin by shorting stocks. There were a few but they moved over to the ticker guy forums a long time ago.

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I think there is a distinction between “making money” and “increase in net worth”. My increase in net worth is due to savings. My investments are pretty close to breaking even right now.

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In the interest of reducing “blather”, I need to rephrase, now that I made actual calculations:
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My investments are down 6.4% from this time last year (up 1.5% since last March). However, my overall net worth is up 4.2% from this time last year, mostly due to savings accumulation.
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amusing…so very many silly lies in a forum intended to dispel or at least not propagate blather. Perhaps that was the question’s intent?

Why do you assume this? Participants in this blog are obviously self-selected and hardly representative of society at large. We have been screaming about the sky falling for several years now, so it wouldn’t be at all surprising if folks here were generally protected from the crash.

Matsayswhat @ 25 even .01 is an increase

I think .01 would better fit under the catagory of “Stayed about the same”

Good point. I’ve got to stop commenting before I drink my morning coffee.

I think .01 would better fit under the catagory of “Stayed about the same”

RE: singliac @ 6 –

From someone retiring now, they would have been better off investing in treasuries for the past 30 years than dollar cost averaging stock index funds. Not sure about 40 years, but don’t be too sure about those great gains.

The annualized rate of return on the S&P 500 over the past 30 years, with dividends, is 10.76%.
Over 40 years it is 9.10%.
20 years 7.68%.
10 years -1.80%

source: http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2006/12/sp-500-at-your-fingertips.html

Increased, but only because current income has gone to paying off all debt, not consumption, and some asset sales returned more than expected as we continue to pursue cash.

Same here.

The poll asks if your net worth has increased, and anything positive counts as an increase (even .01% :) ) Would my increase have been better if the economy was doing well and housing prices were up? Yeah, but something is better than nothing :)

Given the results from the poll on peak monthly closings for 2009, it is safe to say that the majority of readers here are bears. Bears should have done well over the last 12 months. The last 4 months, not so much.

As a bear I’ve done fine over the past 4 months. My money is in (1) Retirement guaranteed treasury fund (3.75%); (2) TIPS (roughly neutral); (3) laddered CD’s (2.5-5.5%). More importantly, we spend considerably less than we make every month, so our savings grow… building equity the old fashioned way. Perhaps I’m not a bear so much as a conservative investor.

From someone retiring now, they would have been better off investing in treasuries for the past 30 years than dollar cost averaging stock index funds. Not sure about 40 years, but don’t be too sure about those great gains. Stock dividends used to be much higher than comparable interest rates (to compensate for greater risk), now they are much lower in general. Stocks used to be a good investment in the 50’s and 60’s when few people were invested in equities, but with the mass movement into 401k equities and mutual funds, stocks just aren’t a very good buy based upon fundamentals. Look at current P/E ratios and the current market isn’t a screaming deal despite the massive correction that we just experienced.

As long as people believe that you “can’t lose” with long-run dollar-cost averaging, then the market will be overbought.

GS has benefitted from govt bailouts, a 10 billion under the radar payout from AIG that was essentially a bailout , repeal of mark to market, and arguable some market manipulation from March to June. There is no way they continue on the pace that they are on given that all their income was from trading and bailouts.

You mean when I turned my 401(k) contributions back to buying aggressive funds in order to dollar-cost-average through the bottom, and put about 30% of the cash in my trading account to work on stocks (which all just about immediately popped 80%)?

I did poorly last week since near the neckline of the much-touted H&S formation, I went short to protect my long positions and missed all the upside in the whipsaw. But that’s life…

I switched to Geico, so I’m really not sure where I am at.

Too funny!

By deejayoh @ 8:

All major indexes are down 20-25% since last July, yet 56% of respondents on this blog made money!

Said they made money. There is a difference between poll results and reality.

Given the results from the poll on peak monthly closings for 2009, it is safe to say that the majority of readers here are bears. Bears should have done well over the last 12 months. The last 4 months, not so much.

I think there is a distinction between “making money” and “increase in net worth”. My increase in net worth is due to savings. My investments are pretty close to breaking even right now.

Funny!

People make money in the stock market by investing in global investment strategies. People give money to huge financial institutions who are promising you huge profits. Huge profits have been the bragging rights to owning stocks. It was the same for Real Estate for a while.

The cocktail party, water cooler stories of huge profits are what people had to feel important.

When you invest in the global markets you should understand that in many of those market places profits are low. The goal of most companies, world wide, is to survive and make a living.

We are in for at least a decade of working businesses. No one is going to let you get rich on their dime any longer. The American Way of doing business just took a massive credibility hit.

All major indexes are down 20-25% since last July, yet 56% of respondents on this blog made money!

Said they made money. There is a difference between poll results and reality.

It makes you more money than just losing it does.

And now is the time to be putting that money to work. I’m looking for a 50% retracement back down to the March lows and I’ll start to increase my positions.

I didn’t vote but our cleaning business has had a 20% growth this past year. That 20% is in addition to regaining some of the clients we lost last year. Our inquiries on line are above where they were two years ago. We get 2 or 3 requests for estimates from on our website per week. That’s a good conversion.

Now for the but…… Our losses are in the hundreds of thousands since 2006. We’re not the only ones. I have this conversation with a lot of the people I do business with. There are a few that have had steady business growth. But…… the discussion usually come around to sustainability of business.

We take all clients that are a reasonable return on our time. A custom builder is taking on a client whose wife may become unemployed during the project. Many people have taken on part time work for other companies to feed their business during this “recession.” It is kind of like Vegas. You hedge your bets where you can but….

I suspect this is a question that elicits answers with the bias in the same way as “did you make money on your trip to Vegas” or “are you a better than average driver”

I’m sure people here are doing better than average but most comments seem to be about staying in cash. That doesn’t make you much money

For somebody like me with a 40 year horizon before retirement, I don’t think that dollar-cost-averaging advice was bad. I know a lot of people who stopped contributing after stocks started free-falling. Now they are used to that extra income, I bet that they won’t start contributing until stocks start rising again. Even though everybody know “buy low, sell high,” not many people actually do it. I increased my contributions right after the market started to tank. If the market drops again, maybe I’ll even start contributing more. It may turn out that I’m wrong, and I’ve wasted a lot of money, but I doubt it.

I AGREE MIKE

The 401Ks may be tax deferred, but in stocks they were a total joke the last 12 months.

The only way to beat the stock market bullet was matching funds [I did invest in stocks partially mixed with money markets and bonds too that way]; at least your half of the stock invested cash can money is still there….but once you hit the max on matching funds, I left retirement investing [I call it money you withdraw after you're dead...LOL] and went to just taxable cash can accounts, the income on investment interest is so low now-a-days, what difference does it make? To put Johnny’s college money in a tax credit account [ask an accountant, it may be these tax deferred accounts reduce your potential social security too] may be a good decision, albeit there goes your college tuition tax write-off too…LOL

What have been some of the strategies?

Personally, I stayed away from RE, and have been fortunate trading the market and investing in a couple hedge funds that weathered the storm well.

If nothing else, this poll shows the investment accumen of Sea Bubble readers.

We all know stocks nosedived 40% [to about an average 2009 8000] since the DOW high of 14000 a year ago; albeit in 2009, its sort of flatlined at approx 8000 since.

House price wealth loss in 2009 for Seattle is about 10%; but if you’re not in bad debt and you didn’t get recently [like the last 10 years] swindled into the max house you could possibly afford [I'd say 50% of what you qualified for was a perfect sized loan in the 2000s], the 10% you lost on your RE this year could of been made up [if you're frugal] by saving cash into your cash can [especially if you got completely out of debt] recently.

Bottom line, your 2009 wealth is dependent upon how much RE you bought in the 2000s and your ability to balance the 2009 RE wealth loss is how much debt you’re not in.