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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

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 hold total market/sp500 ETFs (even when they’re filled with overpriced companies), you should diversify into bonds (the most garbage asset class available for the past 20 years, until the last 6 months, when they became only partially garbage). This advice has gone from being labeled as generalist advice with asterisks, through many rounds of telephone, to now being something that invites angry replies if you disagree with it.

throw0101c 4y ago
> 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-timer/ 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. * https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crystallization.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crystallization.asp
- senko 4y ago
  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).

throw0101c 4y ago

> 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-timer/ 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. * https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crystallization.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/crystallization.asp

senko 4y ago
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).