If the value shrinked 90% and you're not buying tons of shares of this company (or negotiating more shares instead of $ if it's a private company), it means it was all bullshit to begin with.
Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
211–220 of 228 posts
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
By keeping your stocks you lost your money to inflation too, and then another 20+% because you held through a bubble pop. I think a lot of the personal finance investing advice given to people in the vein of “solid advice for 90% of people to follow without too much expertise” is becoming some weird dogmatic religion. You must never time the market (even at a loose monetary policy induced bubble), you must always hol…
> By keeping your stocks you lost your money to inflation too, and then another 20+% because you held through a bubble pop. By holding stocks and not selling you have lost nothing : * https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market... "Losses" only occur when you lock them in. If your trading account is down now you have lost nothing—just like you haven't made money until you sell your holdings for cash.…
To the downvoters: this is correct.
Marking to market (looking at unrealized losses or gains, ie. the value of your portfolio before you sell) is useful if you trade on margin, use this as a collateral (borrowed against it), or plan to sell soon.
In all these cases, this is because you need to sell (directly or indirectly) and thus lock in whatever the current value is.
But until you sell, you have no actual (realized) loss (or gain).
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
#213According to the Buddhist doctrine, thinking of temporal things as if they were permanent is the chief source of human suffering. Certainly it does apply to economic growth.
Everything is temporal so the conclusion is to not think at all?
The conclusion is you should not expect stability. Arguably you need to think even more in such conditions.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
#214Be grateful for having any stocks.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
We don't know about the OP. He didn't say what his situation was. For the hypothetical situation of my parent my stance stays even if voted into oblivion. And I knew it would likely happen given the overall sentiment on HN. Like with variable renumeration itself knew what I was getting into. FWIW I have a variable mortgage and I knew what might happen and is now happening and that is why I didn't buy at the top of wh…
I’m not saying your position is wrong or irrational. You chose not to participate in an upside which can be a lottery ticket. It’s a fairly rational position. You asked why you were being downvoted so I tried to explain the reason, which it seems like you were already mostly aware of. And even if the funeral is as you describe, my point is that people don’t usually want to be told at a funeral why the deceased was wr…
Fair enough. Just to be clear tho, I was asking for a rational discussion (or as I put it "substantiated reply as to why this isn't true", not for why I was being down voted ;)
And again fair enough that in this situation it is very easy to not apply this to the original poster's question and situation (which analogy wise would be shouting at the entire group of people gathered at the funeral that it's this guy's fault for crossing the tracks vs. having a side conversation w/ someone who posited that maybe the guy was one of the ones that actually stands on tracks for thrill when he knows the train's about to be there ;))
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
In which case - and sorry for not having any consoling words here for the OP here - I can unfortunately not really have much empathy here. An overwhelming majority of people especially here on HN laugh at you if you discount variable aspects of renumeration. Employer issued options or RSUs are down 90%? So what! You accepted a variable renumeration scheme. You knew ahead of time. You are no longer making 200k base +…
Without additional info, telling a stranger that they had “200k in options/RSUs that you expected to actually yield you 500k in value for doing nothing? Well that's the deal you took.” is likely to gather some downvotes for tone, lack of empathy, and a bit of strawmanning.
It was a side conversation after my parent poster created a hypothetical situation precisely because the OP did not specify. Also see longer reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33141941
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
#217doesn't take paragraphs to explain this. you invest better by remaining emotionally attached from your investments. if you've invested well over the past 5 or so years you should be sitting on a nice pile of cash. spend it. the dollar is strong, inflation is at an incredibly high level. don't just waste it all, treat yourself to something nice. if you haven't been invested over the past few years, you should devise a plan for doing so as a bear market/market downturns are the best times to invest.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
#218Fidelity did a survey of thier customers whose 401k did the best over the years. The most popular response (about 1/3) was 'I don't have a 401k at fidelity'. They had forgotten about it and left it alone to grow through good and bad. If you know how your investments are doing you know too much
Your first and second sentence made me laugh out loud because I thought it was a joke. The explanation makes perfect sense though - buy and hold beats the average attempt at market timing.
The finance academic literature has advocated for years that buy and hold is the best strategy for individual investors. However, anyone who bought the stocks at the market peak in 2021 will have to hold them for a looooooong time before they can break even. And that too in terms of nominal returns as break even in real returns will take forever! So the pain is real for the people who started stock investing last two years.
Re: Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
#219Re: Ask HN: How to deal with markets down turn? Feeling down
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your first and second sentence made me laugh out loud because I thought it was a joke. The explanation makes perfect sense though - buy and hold beats the average attempt at market timing.
The finance academic literature has advocated for years that buy and hold is the best strategy for individual investors. However, anyone who bought the stocks at the market peak in 2021 will have to hold them for a looooooong time before they can break even. And that too in terms of nominal returns as break even in real returns will take forever! So the pain is real for the people who started stock investing last two…
If you started two years ago you should have a loooong time to wait. Stocks have never been considered a great short term investment. Those of us who started 20 years ago have put only a small part of our net worth in the past few years and so are still well ahead