I don't know of many 401ks allow for individual stocks investment unless it's the company's own stock. But most people underperform the index anyway, so that's another issue
Yeah, there is no bad news anymore. I don't see what the catalysts to go higher are. We got vaxed, printed lots of money, gave it away, invested in crypto-crap, passed spending bills ... what's left? Now we need to start talking about how we can pay for all that (taxes) and how we need to control inflation (increasing rates) - not pleasant conversations. Meanwhile, a 0.5% down day feels like a crash.
You are correct - it's not 401k. It used to be 401k when I was working. When I left, I moved the money to TDAmeritrade IRA, but I nick-named it 401k. Sorry for confusion.
NQ 17000 soon enough, fiscal trillions thanks to the Senate RINOs collaborating with their Democrat comrades.
A lot of new(ish) traders aren't used to a market where sectors and many stocks aren't highly correlated with each other. There is value out there and huge chunks of the market already corrected hard at various points this year ( eg small caps got hammered, energy took a huge hit in July/August, gold/silver miners have been bad since August 2020, copper miners corrected hard in 2021 after they ran up ). From a fundamental point of view, all those drops weren't fully justified.
Earnings growth has been huge. It's amazing to me how many traders don't recognize this. If you don't like the indexes, buy stuff with great earnings, good balance sheets, and a lot of good company specific news ( eg raising dividends, buying back shares, paying off debt ). Sure, there is a lot of overpriced crap out there, especially on US markets.
I let individual stocks take me out of the market. I have a trailing stop on each position and sell when I get the signal. If the market is trending downwards I don't buy anything new. If the markets are trending upwards, which they are doing now I'll replace stocks that give a sell signal with anything that gives a buy signal. Figure I might as well ride the wave as long as I can. How long are you prepared to sit in cash if the market keeps advancing?
Found out via personal research that during covi lows, there were over 50 strong names, that has reached either fair valuation or even less. (Industrial was a dominating sector) DCA into index at these levels and not into fair valued names, at the moment, would make zero sense for anyone who knows what they're doing & especially when the portfolio time horizon is 20 - 40 years. I salute your choice.
That’s a good question and hard to answer at this point. Assuming there’s no outright panic drop, I will try to re-long the same companies after they stumble on earnings or negative news/sentiment. Basically I am shifting from - buy everything because fed is pumping, to - be very selective because everyone is all in at high valuations. As @rb7 said, I maybe 10 years ahead lol.