These stock market post are annoying. The market is dropping, Coronavirus scare will end, market will rebound. It happens every time. Yes EVERY TIME. once things calm down, buy even more stocks and make a killing off them and watch your other stocks start to catch up and then grow again. Who cares how much it drops. You won’t lose money unless you sell. Because like I said, the market ALWAYS rebounds.

And once again, your dooms day and negative prediction was off. 3 years ago we were all jumping with joy when the market hit 20,000. Thinking it wouldn’t be able to climb much more. Now we got dooms day post and people all upset because it’s at 20,000.

Yes you are correct there is always a rebound and most huge dives occur in days and weeks and recoveries usually take months and years, which means real dollars are lost over all. Your post suggests the long term investor and many of our younger work force are not long term investors. With the huge decline in pensions and almost total reliance on personal investments many younger investors will see their earnings drop considerably and many may well delay investing or completely quit which will very much alter their financial future. Also the millions that are required to take RMDs may have to do so while capital amounts are down considerably. Also we may have many families that will be laid off our terminated that may need to cash in their accounts to continue to live. We may be looking at several months of very diminished service related sectors of our economy being at a standstill. Those families will need to find resources other than UE and tax refunds as well. So yes you are correct in your thoughts but one also has to realize every family and individual may have unique situations that don't give them the options that many of us are able to choose.

Bryce

Maybe I’m different but I’ve never thought of relying on a pension. Personal investments for retirement is all I’ve been taught. My dad always taught us to set ourselves up so we don’t need social security. Now that I’m self employed, pension is out the window completely. Diversifying investments makes it so you don’t have to rely on one thing. With jobs potentially being lost and wages cut, it means rental properties will go up. Maybe I have no heart, but i have little sympathy for people who don’t invest wisely, don’t set themselves up for retirement, or don’t have money set aside for times like this. Sure things are tight for a lot of people, but most people make it tight on themselves. I don’t make a lot of money. My yearly income is lower than a lot of people I know. I still have a home, diverse investments, 12 months of food storage, plenty of toilet paper and other necessities, and enough money saved to survive a year of I lose my business. And yep I’m a 33 year old millennial who didn’t get a dime from my parents.

So when something like this happens, and people are upset because they weren’t prepared, I don’t have much sympathy.

Good for you whippersnapper! Hopefully you don't have to learn empathy by getting humbled and struggling through truly hard times

Whippersnapper? Thanks for the heads up gramps. I’m not being prideful at all. Just stating the obvious. I have empathy for things that deserve it. When someone drops out of high school, or doesn’t go to college, or doesn’t take risk, or waste money, I don’t have sympathy when something like this happens and they can’t survive for a couple months.

And if I do have to struggle through tough times I don’t need sympathy from others because of my stupidity in getting myself in that situation.

Pensions were very common up until the mid to late 80s. It was not that workers and millions of American workers established pensions that were part of their retirement plans. IRAs allowed businesses to drop pensions and rely on the workers to invest their own money or non-shared investing. The sad case is that millions never put enough away to meet their retirement expectations and several not even good basic living expenses.
Saving money is not the only way to find financial security either. Many small business owners have decided to invest more heavily in their own businesses and for those that are good managers that is a very good choice. One of the basics of investing is invest money where you have knowledge and experience as you will probably invest more wisely. Even more important you may know better when to not invest.

Bryce

Lost 30% so far on 401K and Roth IRA's. Some say expect to lose 70% on your retirements. That being said man when this is over there will be money to be made. Now the problem is that people with money will be in first and make hay. I think this all is a ploy make big money. Warren Buffet buy when there is panic and he does.

There's a lot of wealth being transferred. This could be another one of those stock market moments where the smaller guy gets wiped out and the bigger guys emerge even bigger. It certainly seems angled that way. I know a couple that believe that to be the case, and they have invested accordingly. Buffet isn't the only one on the sidelines waiting with piles of cash for the blood to get deep enough. The fed totally blew the doors off the hinges with a rate-cut and QE. Opening those doors to a larger group of banks than the previous QE's, with the promise of unlimited cash, oh my. There's no valve on the tap! Those smaller banks are gonna get wiped out! They'll be absorbed by the larger banks, with the fed's assistance, and an even greater injection into the system. QE to infinity is a failed system in the death throws. Free Market Capitalism has booms and busts, but they are more often and less violent. What we have had is a manipulated market that continues to rise, but only if it is continuously invested into. It's no longer economy driven. Cause the economy is in debt, because Americans don't produce hardly anything and spend more than they make. We could very well have the housing bubble of 2008 on steroids now in 2020. We didn't change anything in the system except remove some of the restrictions to going deeper in debt. It's scary easy to get yourself in debt right now. They're begging people to come buy something.

You haven't lost anything if you haven't sold anything.


How is it a ploy if people with a little or a lot of money invest when they choose to ?

If you have no money to invest it doesn't matter whether you are first, last or never. Why is it someone else's fault that you have less or none ?