I thought I was going to be rich, but I guess the market looked at the astounding growth and success and is now pushing the stock lower because it might not happen as much in the future.

I really hate the gambling element of owning stocks.
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End of the year should be a time to reflect and calculate if you're on track to meet retirement goals, no matter how long or short your timeline.

I like this calculator from nerd wallet for determining investment returns. I tend to choose 6% as my rate of return because I can plan to achieve my retirement investment number with something conservative and if I end up doing better, maybe I could retire earlier!

Number 1 rule that most people struggle with when investing is "pay yourself first" and learn how to live off the rest of your take home. You must be consistent with investing for retirement, it can't just be "when you have extra money." 6 years ago we started saving 25% of our income to investments and made it work to live off the rest. It's not always easy but it's the only way to make it work when planning for the future. And my plan is not to work forever!

https://www.nerdwallet.com/calculato...ent-calculator

I think I've mentioned before but I use TBIL in a brokerage account to keep the small amount of money actually labeled as an "emergency fund" in something that is liquid but generates 5.3% interest. There is no reason to have any substantial amount of money in a savings account today unless it's a high interest savings account. I like the ease of TBIL compared to a savings account, however, and just parking it there for an easy 5% annualized return with interest paid out monthly.
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Do you see more uptrend or possible correction?

I'm conflicted but see upside more than downside.
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I'm optimistic. The market went down when interest rates went up, so it seems logical that the opposite should happen next year. And we've essentially been at a 0 percent return on average for the past couple of years, so at some point it'll go positive.
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I see a short term uptrend with plenty that could put us into more downside risk/return to bear market territory. But I also know I'm just one douche and I try not to let noise freak me out and continually invest as the long term trend is almost always your friend!

If I was older, I'd definitely be more cautious right now. There are some out there predicting a true bear market and possible 2008 crash sometime in the next 2-5 years. I think if you saw housing crash again, followed by some banking issues those could be a catalyst. Probably lots of conjecture in that though from those predicting it.

Here's a good reminder using the monthly chart of the S&P for the past 10 years. Pretty incredible isn't it? Staying consistent will get you much farther ahead, especially if you can get consistent when you're younger.


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That's my thought. Market is 6-9 months ahead of what is happening. :-)
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Do you remember the lost decade of stocks from 2000-2009? The market basically made no gains for those years. Many are predicting that but there's always a bull to follow too.

"So, now consider total returns — price movement plus dividends: since 1925, only 7 per cent of rolling 10-year S&P 500 total returns were flat or negative."

https://www.thenationalnews.com/busi...ually-bullish/
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I just calculated our most recent ten-year average (assuming no change in December), and it comes out to 8.6 percent per year, which is kind of average. I was curious what it would be given the volatility of the last few years.
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I think there is still a fair amount of risk in the market. I've seen some rather troubling statistics on consumer debt, especially in the lower income individuals in the country that is pretty horrifying. Maybe it's nothing, maybe it's something that can cascade. I'm not educated enough to know.

I think there are major structural issues in real estate. I know there has been a lot of real estate bought on leverage, REITs, commercial, side hustles pushed by YouTube Finance bros, etc, and the numbers just don't work at 9% interest. Anywhere. Maybe it's no more than normal, maybe it's a swath of commercial real estate that is vastly under capitalized.

The other thing that is worrisome, and will remain for awhile is that I'm concerned that our society isn't good for high interest mortgages. Mortgages rates haven't been in the same universe as this since 9/11. That means there is 20 years of rates half this. I think I read it was 1995 since rates were this high. That means that nobody under 50 has ever even had the opportunity to be in the housing market in this kind of environment. And the world was far different then than now. That is a major structural change that was quite abrupt and we may not have seen all the repercussions yet.

The other thing that could make this thing get real ugly real fast is if the labor market softens. Every talking head couldn't help but crow about how the labor market was strong and there couldn't be a recession with a strong labor market. I think we've seen in Silicon Valley it doesn't take a load of layoffs to soften a labor market. That thing falls out of bed, even a little bit, I think it could have tremendous cascading results.

Obviously I hope none of that comes to pass, but those are the risks I see.
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I've been back trading options, mostly calls and its bern a good month.

SHOP has been good to me.
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The commercial real estate stuff is the big risk in my opinion. I could see a bad scenario where that sector collapses and starts taking banks with it. But I pay other people to solve those problems.
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That's free money!
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God fucking dammit!!!!

:-)
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My retirement accounts are at all time highs.

LFG!!!!!
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I haven't been actively trading anything, but in passing my brokerage account has seen a good bump.

I need to look and see what my retirement accounts are doing.
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