Somebody say something

[PhilJohn]

I see the market as little to gain, much to lose. I'm staying in G unless a solid buy point comes.

Moved to real world G fund Jan 2023. Yup, missed 2023 gains. OTOH, Schwab account doing nicely. Tired of noise of market pundits- either gloom or exuberance. Odd feeling that something ain’t quite right with the markets. I’ll use loose cash and follow Uncle Warren into short term treasuries. Will reevaluate TSP allocation this fall. Might even stop by local coin shop and pick up a dozen silver rounds or 1 ounce bars for grins. At least I’ll have something to hold and admire.

I've thought about gold and silver a lot lately, but right now I am committing as much as I can afford to TSP contributions. I retire at 53, and I am 50 now. The plan is not to touch it until I am 60, and hopefully that interest will get me to my financial goal. Maybe when I can no longer contribute I will start buying gold and silver.

[jimcasada]

I'm sticking with I-fund for now. Didn't see this French election thing coming, but we have the Olympics coming up and lots of folks heading to Europe. S&P 500 can't keep going up without the Dow and everything else falling behind, can it?

[twinkc]

DMI and ADX S&P 8Jul2024.png

I'm retired so my risk tolerance is a bit conservative. That said I'm sticking with 60% C and 40% G for now as I continue to study the DMI and ADX technical indicators, which are showing strong upward trend (DMI+ =37.94) and strength (ADX=36.46) for the S&P (see graph). When I examined the ADX indicator for the S and I funds, it was weak (less than 20) even though their DMI+ lines were trending slightly above the DMI- lines.

[harpole]

Anyone been following a strategy "all year" and beating the C or S funds? Just curious if anyone is pleased with their performance from strictly following a strategy this year. Seems like an off year for TSPCalc...

[jimcasada]

I've got a question... When I checked my real TSP accounts today, I see that my military account matches my fantasy account here at 13.17% ytd, but my civilian account says 13.99% ytd. I am certain that I have made the exact same ITF changes on all three accounts all this year, so why the difference? I'm guessing that it probably has something to do with the fact that I've been withdrawing $2200/mo from my civilian account, while not making any withdraws from my military account since retiring last year, but I don't know why that would cause this .82% difference?

[polom319]

Anyone else having a hard year with your YTD following a TSPCALC plan? I'm sitting at ~1.5%ytd. Ugh.... I'm currently following #183044

[Aitrus]

The year's not over yet, and we're entering what is historically the the worst time of the year for the market.

But as long as your long-term average is beating the long-term average of 10% (or the industry standard advice of 7-8% per year) then you're winning. An individual yearly loss here or there is something that nobody can get away from. Even the buy-and-hold crowd can't get away from it because they're earning exactly what the market earns (meaning whenever the market loses they lose as well), or they're diversified to hedge losses in exchange for a some opportunity cost.

[imktwo]

I have not strictly followed a plan. However, of the dozen that I track, 13826 and 170669 are the only ones on my list reflecting over 5% gain YTD. Of the rest, only 3 are positive on the YTD.

[bloobs]

seems like buy and hold works well for elecrion years. but somewhat a tad concerned there is a paradigm shift of sorts happening here, other than a single blip outlier year

[mrwawa]

@bloobs. What makes you think there is a paradigm shift? The strategies I follow are not doing well this year and I can't see any indication that election years are any different.

[bloobs]

@bloobs. What makes you think there is a paradigm shift? The strategies I follow are not doing well this year and I can't see any indication that election years are any different.

It seems that the powers-that-be are buying in and out of equities on a markedly difference schedule than in the past 20 years this year.

this year, i am using 5 different seasonals in my x number of retirement accounts; each one intentionally distinct in which and when ETFs are IFT'd (to create a "diversification" risk management benefit). 4 of these are "safe" strategies meaning ones that they have fairly low stddevs, higher means, no negative years in the past 20 years; and 1 that is very high risk, meaning high stddevs, but several years with ridonkalous returns of > 50% and conversely occassionally horrible years of double-digit negative returns.

That one strategy is doing very well for me this and the others are significantly underperforming buy and hold.
So I wonder if this phenomenon is more than just an outlier event or some coincidence--but instead due to a concerted and deliberate (AI/ML knowledge-driven) attempts by big money specifically to take advantage of seasonal strategies practitioners PREDICTED moves.

[mrwawa]

I agree that something is going on, but my experience with ML algorithms suggests that they would be trained to basically do the seasonal investing, as it would be trained on historical data. I'm not sure how to look at it, but should daily volume data be able to verify anomalies this year relative to the past?

[paul]

Ok. I'll say something - buy and hold.

[12squared]

seems like buy and hold works well for elecrion years. but somewhat a tad concerned there is a paradigm shift of sorts happening here, other than a single blip outlier year

B&H works best when there is an incumbent president in the running. Biden's withdraw may have changed the status quo.


from Did the positive seasonality chart just change?

[mjedlin66]

^That's a good chart right there.