5 ms·

I'm no longer adding to my VOO holdings—I guess I'm all in on VXUS going forward.

SilverElfin 10mo ago
What other hedges are there? Gold and silver I am guessing. Anything else to avoid dependency on the US stock market and exposure to the US Dollar? It feels like these assets have nowhere to go but down.
robmusial 10mo ago
If you live in America, are banking with an American bank, and hold your investments denominated in dollars I'm not sure that just shifting your investments to other global equities would really get you the outcome you want if your goal is to hedge against this specific risk. Besides if this really is the trade war to end all trade wars, the world losing one of the largest markets (the U.S.) is going to depress the entire global economy. I assume if you're even considering VXUS you're not close to retirement so wouldn't the better strategy be to just keep adding to VOO?
- munk-a 10mo ago
  I believe that TD's US presence is still a subsidiary of the main Canadian corporation - and there are some banks that will explicitly offer offshore non-US currency accounts. That is a good point to raise though since most banks may offer holdings in overseas funds but if they're managed domestically they'd likely be subject to the same currency shocks and your account may still read well on paper but be effectively unreachable.
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  I am retired but I have not sold all my stocks and moved to bonds. Even if you use the "rule of 100" I should still have around 40% of my portfolio in stocks. But to your point, I am certain that I am not going to profit from this fuckery. (Although, hilariously I bought silver a decade ago to teach my daughters about investing—and they each purchased a once or two from me. Of course it turned out to be a local maxima and they grow up, went to college—watching their investment sink all the while. Perhaps they did learn a valuable lesson in investing.) No, I'm just doing damage control. I had asked a month or so back as to where the "safe harbors" were during the Great Depression. My impression (and the responses did nothing to contradict this) were that there were no safe harbors—as perhaps there may not be any in some dystopian future we may or may not be headed for. "Hold, don't sell during the panic," is all anyone could offer. (And so too holding those silver coins until now might also have been a valuable lesson for my daughters?)
  - embedding-shape 10mo ago
    > where the "safe harbors" were during the Great Depression [...] were that there were no safe harbors Surely economy and the world economy operates in a completely different way now than it did back them, if not in the US, the very least in the rest of the world? But that's just my intuition, maybe things are more similar than they are different in reality? > Of course it turned out to be a local maxima Not to pour salt into your wounds (sorry), suppose your daughters were born 1980-1990 sometime, you really managed to hit exactly the stagnation phase it seems, that sucks but probably true what you say, still had a lesson in there :) I got curious and maybe others are too, especially if you don't usually look at price of commodities so here: https://www.macrotrends.net/1470/historical-silver-prices-100-year-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/1470/historical-silver-prices-10...
    - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
      Ha ha, yeah, must have been 2011 when we bought into silver.
      - embedding-shape 10mo ago
        :| I was thinking "Yeah, 1980 probably, then they'd be 20 now, it'd match with the college stuff" and then I thought you were joking with 2011 but yeah, terrible for the same reason :/
    - machomaster 10mo ago
      At least during the Great Depression you had independent markets like the USSR. Good luck investing, though. :-) The point about the higher independence of markets still stands. Great Depression was named as such by Americans (just like World Series, etc), but wasn't as global as the name implies. Nowadays the world's economy operates in even more globalized way and when the biggest players get hit, everyone suffers (1998, dotcom, 2008, covid). That's why the tariff war was such a counter-productive idea; even if you theoretically end up on top, everyone will still lose, including you.
josefritzishere 10mo ago
I am genuinely worried that my life savings will be destroyed by high inflation and the decreasing value of the dollar. This is the 3rd major market "correction" in my career and it looks like it will be the worst. Trump is doing so much economic damage to America... the outcomes are unthinkable for working people. I have trouble imagining what life will be like on the other side of this period of financial chaos.
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  The reality I have come to believe: if it goes down, we all go down. I get worrying about how to protect your life savings, I was worrying too. Now I just accept that we'll all be in the bread lines. Not that there's any comfort in that really, but that it might simply be an inevitability.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]

What other hedges are there? Gold and silver I am guessing. Anything else to avoid dependency on the US stock market and exposure to the US Dollar? It feels like these assets have nowhere to go but down.

robmusial 10mo ago

If you live in America, are banking with an American bank, and hold your investments denominated in dollars I'm not sure that just shifting your investments to other global equities would really get you the outcome you want if your goal is to hedge against this specific risk. Besides if this really is the trade war to end all trade wars, the world losing one of the largest markets (the U.S.) is going to depress the entire global economy. I assume if you're even considering VXUS you're not close to retirement so wouldn't the better strategy be to just keep adding to VOO?

munk-a 10mo ago
I believe that TD's US presence is still a subsidiary of the main Canadian corporation - and there are some banks that will explicitly offer offshore non-US currency accounts. That is a good point to raise though since most banks may offer holdings in overseas funds but if they're managed domestically they'd likely be subject to the same currency shocks and your account may still read well on paper but be effectively unreachable.
JKCalhoun 10mo ago
I am retired but I have not sold all my stocks and moved to bonds. Even if you use the "rule of 100" I should still have around 40% of my portfolio in stocks. But to your point, I am certain that I am not going to profit from this fuckery. (Although, hilariously I bought silver a decade ago to teach my daughters about investing—and they each purchased a once or two from me. Of course it turned out to be a local maxima and they grow up, went to college—watching their investment sink all the while. Perhaps they did learn a valuable lesson in investing.) No, I'm just doing damage control. I had asked a month or so back as to where the "safe harbors" were during the Great Depression. My impression (and the responses did nothing to contradict this) were that there were no safe harbors—as perhaps there may not be any in some dystopian future we may or may not be headed for. "Hold, don't sell during the panic," is all anyone could offer. (And so too holding those silver coins until now might also have been a valuable lesson for my daughters?)
- embedding-shape 10mo ago
  > where the "safe harbors" were during the Great Depression [...] were that there were no safe harbors Surely economy and the world economy operates in a completely different way now than it did back them, if not in the US, the very least in the rest of the world? But that's just my intuition, maybe things are more similar than they are different in reality? > Of course it turned out to be a local maxima Not to pour salt into your wounds (sorry), suppose your daughters were born 1980-1990 sometime, you really managed to hit exactly the stagnation phase it seems, that sucks but probably true what you say, still had a lesson in there :) I got curious and maybe others are too, especially if you don't usually look at price of commodities so here: https://www.macrotrends.net/1470/historical-silver-prices-100-year-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/1470/historical-silver-prices-10...
  - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
    Ha ha, yeah, must have been 2011 when we bought into silver.
    - embedding-shape 10mo ago
      :| I was thinking "Yeah, 1980 probably, then they'd be 20 now, it'd match with the college stuff" and then I thought you were joking with 2011 but yeah, terrible for the same reason :/
  - machomaster 10mo ago
    At least during the Great Depression you had independent markets like the USSR. Good luck investing, though. :-) The point about the higher independence of markets still stands. Great Depression was named as such by Americans (just like World Series, etc), but wasn't as global as the name implies. Nowadays the world's economy operates in even more globalized way and when the biggest players get hit, everyone suffers (1998, dotcom, 2008, covid). That's why the tariff war was such a counter-productive idea; even if you theoretically end up on top, everyone will still lose, including you.

josefritzishere 10mo ago

I am genuinely worried that my life savings will be destroyed by high inflation and the decreasing value of the dollar. This is the 3rd major market "correction" in my career and it looks like it will be the worst. Trump is doing so much economic damage to America... the outcomes are unthinkable for working people. I have trouble imagining what life will be like on the other side of this period of financial chaos.

JKCalhoun 10mo ago
The reality I have come to believe: if it goes down, we all go down. I get worrying about how to protect your life savings, I was worrying too. Now I just accept that we'll all be in the bread lines. Not that there's any comfort in that really, but that it might simply be an inevitability.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]