Man, Some Days I Love Owning Stocks

[james.hendrickson]

Guys,

I just want to say..."wow, when the stock market works, it really works".

I've been slowing accumulating as much Coca Cola stock as I could get my hands on...and this morning it broke $70 per share.

I also took a concentrated position in Barnes and Noble Education, - its also up by 30% since I bought it.

Now, granted, I've also been putting a ton of money into index funds/mutual funds...its just when you get a solid price movement in a particular company, its can have a serious wow factor.

[disneysteve]

Yep. Portfolio, which is 60% stocks, is up 400K YTD. And that’s with me withdrawing 40K so far to live on now that I’m retired and me selling over 100K worth of stock so far this year to rebalance.

[myrdale]

All of my investing has been through the 401(k) at work, or my Roth IRA with Vanguard. In both cases its mutual funds. I haven't done anything at all with buying individual stocks.

Does anyone have any opinion on which stock broker is the best to work with? Ameritrade? Robinhood? ETrade? Vanguard? Someone else? It looks like there are ALOT more companies out there than I realized.

Rather than asking who is the best (I doubt anyone here has used more than a couple), maybe I should ask which you've had the best experience with.

[james.hendrickson]

All of my investing has been through the 401(k) at work, or my Roth IRA with Vanguard. In both cases its mutual funds. I haven't done anything at all with buying individual stocks.

Does anyone have any opinion on which stock broker is the best to work with? Ameritrade? Robinhood? ETrade? Vanguard? Someone else? It looks like there are ALOT more companies out there than I realized.

Rather than asking who is the best (I doubt anyone here has used more than a couple), maybe I should ask which you've had the best experience with.

I like schwab a lot - when you pick up the phone you actually talk with a real person who knows what's going on.

[disneysteve]

All of my investing has been through the 401(k) at work, or my Roth IRA with Vanguard. In both cases its mutual funds. I haven't done anything at all with buying individual stocks.

Does anyone have any opinion on which stock broker is the best to work with? Ameritrade? Robinhood? ETrade? Vanguard? Someone else? It looks like there are ALOT more companies out there than I realized.

Rather than asking who is the best (I doubt anyone here has used more than a couple), maybe I should ask which you've had the best experience with.

2/3 of our portfolio ($2.5 M) is with Vanguard and if I could easily move 100% there, I would. We have accounts with Schwab and formerly had TD Ameritrade which merged with them. We've also been with Olde and H&R Block back in the day as well as Scottrade. My 401k is with Lincoln Financial. There might be one or two others we've dealt with over the years. Vanguard is by far the best. I find their website and app to be the most user-friendly and on the rare occasion when I've needed customer service, theirs has always been top notch. I've always heard good things about Fidelity but have never personally had an account with them. But huge Vanguard fan here.

[disneysteve]

I really don't think there is a wrong answer between Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab. Any one of them is an excellent choice.

[QuarterMillionMan]

No to be pessimistic but I’m waiting for crashes in the stock market and/or housing markets. All the sugar highs from big government artificially inflating these markets will produce buying opportunities the likes which we’ve never seen before. Not to mention king dollar possibly being dethroned. I’m putting my $$$ in cryptocurrency and silver and gold.

[bjl584]

I'm up big this year, as most people in the markets are.
Not sure when it will end, but I'm in it for the long term, so I'm not too concerned with an inevitable recession and market crash.

[disneysteve]

No to be pessimistic but I’m waiting for crashes in the stock market and/or housing markets. All the sugar highs from big government artificially inflating these markets will produce buying opportunities the likes which we’ve never seen before. Not to mention king dollar possibly being dethroned. I’m putting my $$$ in cryptocurrency and silver and gold.

Like minded folks have been saying the same thing my whole life. Hasn’t happened yet. Most likely isn’t ever going to happen. In the meantime we’ve enjoyed 30+ years of tremendous growth in our wealth while those sitting on the sidelines have not. To each his own. Conspiracy theorists never come out ahead but I don’t waste my time trying to change their minds.

[disneysteve]

I'm up big this year, as most people in the markets are.
Not sure when it will end, but I'm in it for the long term, so I'm not too concerned with an inevitable recession and market crash.

Recessions are a totally normal part of the economic cycle. We avoided one this time which is exceedingly rare but another one will come along at some point. That’s a big part of why I’ve been working to trim our stock allocation a bit. Now that I’m retired and we have sufficient assets for the rest of our lives, we don’t need to take as much risk. If we were younger, I wouldn’t change a thing and would stick with a high stock allocation.

[ua_guy]

I was witness to the later-2000's financial market collapse. I was in my early 20's and hanging on to a mortgage at the time and feeling pretty scammed, actually. My house was now worth almost nothing, and anything I had in retirement was worth even less than I put in. People suffered, and banks got slapped on the wrist and bailed out. I was furious, distrustful, angry. That recession was a heck of a way to start my early career and saving years. It left a mark. My thought process changed, though, and I got some good advice on here, and also had some earnest conversations with my dad who was, in a sense, forced to retire at the same time. He encouraged me to play the long game, double down on my efforts of paying things off, and saving for the future. Ride the waves. I'm looking back at the last ~16 years of doing just that, and it was the right decision. I haven't strayed from stocks, and they've contributed to my largest gains over the same time period.

[Fishindude77]

I was witness to the later-2000's financial market collapse. I was in my early 20's and hanging on to a mortgage at the time and feeling pretty scammed, actually. My house was now worth almost nothing, and anything I had in retirement was worth even less than I put in. People suffered, and banks got slapped on the wrist and bailed out. I was furious, distrustful, angry. That recession was a heck of a way to start my early career and saving years. It left a mark. My thought process changed, though, and I got some good advice on here, and also had some earnest conversations with my dad who was, in a sense, forced to retire at the same time. He encouraged me to play the long game, double down on my efforts of paying things off, and saving for the future. Ride the waves. I'm looking back at the last ~16 years of doing just that, and it was the right decision. I haven't strayed from stocks, and they've contributed to my largest gains over the same time period.

Many younger folks have yet to see difficult times.
We've not had much of a "dip" or "recession" or whatever you want to call it since 2000, and that one didn't affect everyone. Prior to that it was 2000. In 2000 our business went from doing over $30 mil in annual revenue to approx. $12 mil. The work was not there and the faucet just shut off.
We had all of our stuff paid for and reacted quickly so didn't get hurt too bad, but it wasn't much fun for a while, much lower incomes and really tightening the belt.

This lengthy "good period" we've been in is unusual, and we will see another significant downturn at some point.
The best defense is to be debt free and have cash. If you have lots of cash during a downturn you can sometimes make some great purchases.

[disneysteve]

The best defense is to be debt free and have cash. If you have lots of cash during a downturn you can sometimes make some great purchases.

Debt free for sure. And having "dry powder" to invest is great, too, but that shouldn't be interpreted as parking a huge chunk of your holdings in cash just waiting for the next downturn. Doing that guarantees that you'll miss tremendous gains between now and whenever that downturn occurs.

[ua_guy]

Many younger folks have yet to see difficult times.
We've not had much of a "dip" or "recession" or whatever you want to call it since 2000, and that one didn't affect everyone. Prior to that it was 2000. In 2000 our business went from doing over $30 mil in annual revenue to approx. $12 mil. The work was not there and the faucet just shut off.
We had all of our stuff paid for and reacted quickly so didn't get hurt too bad, but it wasn't much fun for a while, much lower incomes and really tightening the belt.

This lengthy "good period" we've been in is unusual, and we will see another significant downturn at some point.
The best defense is to be debt free and have cash. If you have lots of cash during a downturn you can sometimes make some great purchases.

Some younger folks. Like Gen Z, they have not been of age during a real recession except for the Covid blip, but many of them weren't invested yet anyway. They do face some pretty tough times though with regards to traditional paths like home ownership and overall living expenses. Millennials...different story...some of my peers lost their jobs and couldn't find the same kind of employment, lost their homes, had to dig into retirement savings and empty out piggy banks to bail themselves out. I think those qualify as "difficult times" and wouldn't be included in the subset "many younger folks". Or maybe my surprise is because I still consider Millennials and people just cracking 40 to be "younger folks".

But then again, I thought "most people" think we're not actually in a good period. That the economy is in shambles and most folks are having to decide whether to eat, or pay for gas. Which is it, really?

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Gen Xer had it terribly. We had the 2000 internet bust and there went jobs and stocks (all my friends graduating in 1999/2000) had no jobs and my slightly older Xers were laid off and searching. Then 2007-2009 Gen Xer were the most foreclosures because based on age that's the group that owned homes on the crazy loans (I was one that made it but every other friend lost a house), I knew almost no one who wasn't underwater and lost big. Milleneals? They weren't old enough to have homes or condo and lose they only knew the job market.

The market in 2000? Well all the dot.com companies went belly up and the market crashed hard for money and jobs. Then covid hit and tons of Xers were "middle" career so expensive workers and majority had kids at home. Most Xers I know didn't have covid babies their babies were in "school" but online and hang onto jobs while doing it virtually.

Xers were the last generation of people without internet and yet were are still in the workforce adapting to social media and jobs with connectivity. It's an interesting dichotomy. To go to college and be the first with dial up and computers. Most milleneals had computers and cell phones and grew up with the computer. I think most Xers had it only at school and remember floppy disks, 8 tracks, vhs, beta, and all original gaming systems.

Xers are the first generation without the pension to be the norm (started in the 80s the 401k) where retirement is no longer the three legged stool of pensions, SS, and savings. It's 2 leg stool