Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Don't look now but stock market is booming

Just had a meeting with my investment advisor...se recommended pulling profits from some of the big gainers like MasterCard...they had grown like 26% so we trimmed it and some others and bought into other areas for diviecifaction....
We have done this several times over the years and it seems to help with downturns and corrections...when the smoke clears and things get better it seems to recovers faster...

So for those of us that are stock market ignorant (like me) and invested in a company % matched 401k that is being managed by a financial group, do we just hang tight and trust the financial group to do the right thing?

What type of return (% gain) are you getting on your 401K over the past three years?

Its changing. JFK was going to get control of the cabals gravy train. Trump will. How many members has he placed on its board?

He will nationalize it or close it. We are probably headed back to thegold standard.

Not sure about 3 years (don't have access right now) but it's been 12.62% since Jan. 01 this year. I know we had a pretty big dip in the 4th quarter of 2018.

6.3% since Sept 17. That is SP100, and about 30% equities with TIAA CREF.

That's a pretty good return. Sounds like they have you set up tracking the S&P 500.

Compare the 3/5/10 and life time returns on all fund choices to you, continue to have a set percentage withheld from each and every paycheck,

sit back and hope for the best.

This entire thread has been nothing but copy and paste personal opinions, about past performance.

If I did miss an accurate prediction in these last 20 pages, someone feel free to point it out to me.

Virtually any equity fund has been well over 10% since Jan 1, look back for the past 12 months, not year to date,, You likely just broke even.

I'm not stock market smart, but have managed to keep 10% + gains since January this year. I think Trump should stay the course against China! Hell most products from China are low quality. buy quality and buy once! Farmers might have to sell to other countries, or change there crop selection! That's always been the way with farming! Take all land out of CPR and make them survive in business like the rest of the country! They will figure it out real soon!

Nobody can predict what the market will do in a certain time frame.

Farmers would gladly do what you've prescribed, but the 98.2% of Americans who don't farm wouldn't survive the market rates that farmers would charge for commodities. There would be mass chaos, if not outright starvation. The govt food policies have nothing to do with "helping" farmers and everything to do with keeping urban dwellers fat, satisfied, and voting.

Search for "cheap food policy government" and educate yourself a bit. It's been official policy of the United States since the Great Depression, and accelerated after WWII and yet again under the 1960s social experiements of the Democrats.

I am no expert....I use Edward Jones...
I had a 401 k through my employer and also opened an account with Edward Jones years ago....I had way more money in my 401k but the E Jones account would consistently outperform my 401k...so when I quit working I fooled it all to Edward Jones.
I am also convinced that it's your branch office advisor that makes the differance...they lean on expert data from the analissis people...and need to manage your funds accordingly..I am with a small town office and I think my account gets more attention than in a big city one.

Very well put...
Plant somthing else?.???
Farming just doesn't work that way....we raise corn and soybeans here and a tad of alfalfa...that's pretty much all we can sell...we used to raise milo in this country...if I planted 100 acres of milo I have no idea where I would sell it...probably have to truck it 200 miles...just wouldn't pay...wheat? No it rains too much and gets a mold in it they dock you for so much again it's not worth it...

Couple of suggestions.

1) Your 401(K) is going to provide your living expenses for as much as 30 years of your life. It's worth educating yourself thoroughly about investing. You should know EXACTLY what you are invested in, and why, and sleep well at night because of your choice. Knowledge is power. Do not let some dweeb in an office somewhere make decisions for you. He has a whole list of things that are important to him, and your future welfare is only one of those.....

2) As you get up to speed, you should benchmark your portfolio against the market average (which would be the S&P 500 or even the Wilshire 2000), as well as other funds in the sector. You always try to compare apples to apples. If you are in an energy mutual fund, you compare against other energy mutual funds. If you have an underperforming fund, get out.

3) Compare apples to apples. Some things are riskier than others and should return (much) more. A fund that invests in public utilities will always underperform an emerging market fund or a aggressive growth fund that invests in new tech companies.---- in the long run. However, you may not sleep well investing in something that could go down 50% one year and up 60% the next. So take risk into account. Returns are meaningless unless adjusted for risk.

4) Be very careful with companies like TIAA-CREF. They tend to push annuities, under the guise of mutual funds. I've spoken to several people that THOUGHT they were in mutual funds, but they were actually in annuities. Annuities guarantee returns and provide tax shelter, and in return, you get lower returns. Substantially lower returns. Unless you are at spitting distance of retirement, there is no reason to put ANY of your investments inside an annuity. It's a return killer, and will hurt your ability to build your nest egg enormously.

Actually, no, that is defeatist nonsense. I rent a piece of ground from a family for my farm. 12 acres. 15 years ago, the revenue from that piece of ground was about 10 tons of hay and some winter graze. This year, it'll generate right at a million $ gross for us. And I'm only using about half right now. They rent another 110 acres to my farm manager, and it still grows hay and provides a little graze.......

"Changing crops" doesn't mean soybeans or sorghum. It means looking closely at your resource, and growing high end stuff the urban DINKS are willing to spend money on. That might be organic blueberries, or organic fingerling potatoes, or fall asparagus, it might be organic bird feed, boosted with CBD oil; whatever. It's most positively not something you have to compete with every Tom, Dick and Harry around the globe with.....

Rooster, Dutch makes some good suggestions. I didn't start educating myself, in earnest, about the stock market and my 401K and investing until 2012. I started with this little book (you can get it on Amazon.) It is one of the best explanations of the stock market and investing I have read. I now have an extensive library of investing books with which I have educated myself and I am quite comfortable managing my own retirement portfolio, and not leaving my financial future in the hands of some "dweeb" as Dutch puts it so eloquently!

Not possible on a broad scale to keep billions of people fed, and not possible in the USA since we have an official govt-run "cheap food" policy. You filled a small niche market, which is awesome. If a few more of your neighbors did the same, then your niche loses value. Niche fish farming is not going to supply the food needs of the USA urban dwellers.

I’m not in the business of feeding everybody. My dad did that and worked all his life for starvation wages. The government dictated what you could make. Heck with that. He asked me to take over the farm, and I had to tell him I wouldn’t take it if it was free. I farm to put money in my family’s bank account. City dwellers better hope they have enough of those high city wages if they want my stuff.

The moment the government enters what I’m doing, I’m out. I’ll go raise black soldier fly larvae or something the government hasn’t caught wind of yet. The only thing I hate more than competition is government involvement. It kills every sector it touches.

The stock market is booming because we have started investing on our economy,....No more money to China.