If you say so bro!!
-
Life Advice & Visual Arts
Posting Rules Bluelight Rules 🌌 Share Your Dreams! 🌌 📸 15 Years of Photo Contests 📸 -
LAVA Moderator: streaM Freak
the market: stocks, bonds, options, whatever
- Thread starter hydroazuanacaine
- Start date
Jackthesmartass
Greenlighter
- Joined
- Aug 11, 2026
- Messages
- 33
Time to load more APPLE ..
Bleaney
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2021
- Messages
- 3,036
Dollar cost averaging every month is the only way around this. Otherwise with lump sum investing, especially in individual companies, you're gonna need a huge amount of luck to pick the right timing to invest, even with a a mixture of good judgement, knowledge from 'experts' and a sizeable dollop of picking your timing out of thin air. Although if you have a long enough time horizon it doesnt matter when you invest. If you have 30 years or more, then the chances are that you're gonna come out ahead, even if you initially bought at a peak, just before a huge and prolonged crash. Of course with DCA, as long as you keep paying in through thick and thin, especially through the thin, then in time, things should work out great. They always have done previously.oof, too true
Obviously this mainly applies to index funds and ETFs. Individual stocks still remain far too risky imo, at least for me with my current level of knowledge. I know my limits, both of my knowledge and understanding, and of the time and effort required, which I just don't have the time, energy, motivation, or interest, to learn enough about individual companies, it's just is not there, and I am therefore sticking to index funds and ETFs, which I understand very well.. Even if and when they go through bad times, they never collapse completely and always recover in time. Historically speaking. The same cannot be said for stocks in individual companies, which can easily loose huge amounts on their share prices, or entirely collapse to nothing, and basically never recover.
The vast majority of actively managed funds do far worse than passive index funds, showing that even people working full time in this occupation, cannot reliably beat the average market returns, by trying to be clever, and by trying to beat the market. This barely ever works, at least never on a consistent basis.
Last edited:
Bleaney
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2021
- Messages
- 3,036
Some of the financial / retirement planning 'influencers' that I watch, advocate using only 10% or so of their total funds for riskier investments, such as crypto, and individual companies.
They do this as a 'bit of fun' with money they can afford to loose.
But they are careful to keep the vast majority of their allocations in the far less risky ETFs and index funds.
The majority don't do crypto or individual companies at all, and put everything into ETFs and index funds, until the time to retirement nears five years or so, and allocations need gradually switching to safer options, that are immune from market crashes.
Last edited:
That's sensible.
There is also a psychological trap in investing in individual stocks, which has happened to be, more than once: when I get on a roll, I can start assuming that I know what I'm doing. And even if I can make predictions or relative valuations better than the Average Joe, there are thousands of high IQ professional traders, companies with inside knowledge, and quant algorithms that basically have everything already valued in to the price.
And even if the stock price is not the fair price, there are people on the market that can make that change at their will. It might not be in their best interest to show their hand and drop or pop a stock in a single day, but that doesn't mean they couldn't if they wanted to.
In conclusion, that's sensible and despite being called an influencer I would nod my head along to that.
Bleaney
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2021
- Messages
- 3,036
I wasn't sure of the correct term to use tbh, "youtuber" or "content creator" might have been better. Whatever, I have certainly learnt a great deal from my favorite 3 or 4 financial channels that I watch regularly.
They really know their subject.
They really know their subject.
kingsfont
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2026
- Messages
- 63
Last week I bought a stock that has over 55% short interest and a very high beta, I traded it before and watched it lose 90% when it suddenly whiplashed and I sold for an 80% gain. Maybe I'll make a quick 10% on a short squeeze this time around, maybe I'll lose a little. The only thing I've learned trading is that I never ever doubt my own confidence and my own analytical abilities. Once you starting doubting yourself you give in to fear and lose objectivity. Once you lose objectivity you're basically guessing.
Yeah if it's working then it's working right?
With caveats. For example, if you invest in a pure growth fund that stays flat for a decade that would be worse than DCAing into dividend aristocrats fund that will continue to pay returns.
I started investing heavily during the COVID crash so I've seen right there how impactful it can be to lump-sum at the right time, and I was mainly accumulating dividend funds so I didn't even do as well as if I had invested in pure growth then.
Most of my friends are DCAing into growth or balanced funds so they take the hit every time the market corrects while I'm using that opportunity to sell off dividend funds that held value, and lump-sum aggressively into the growth funds at their 200 day moving average.
Arguably, this approach takes more patience because I have to wait for the correction, which is usually a longer wait than just waiting for the recovery after the drop. But it offers some protection against the tail risk of flat growth for a decade.
kingsfont
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2026
- Messages
- 63
I do this with my 'investment account' and then I have a separate 'trading account' for trading.
I agree, which is why I am confused by people buying SPY options with a 1 day expiration. If anyone knows why I'd love to hear, because people on webull can't answer me when I ask.
options price can move rapidly, especially when there's not much time value left.
in extreme situations, a contract that costs 25c can pump to $10 in minutes during a squeeze when price moves rapidly
options contracts represent 100 of the underlying so a 25c contract = $25 and at $10 it's worth $1000
the tradeoff is the probability of profit is low but the reward:risk is high enough that it can be profitable even with a low chance of happening
Okay, I think I understand. Sort of like a parlay in terms of probability vs reward.
Sounds like a fun little roll of the dice with fuck-around money.
I think it's pretty funny watching all these "technical analysis" of huge index funds and things that are extremely hard to value like Bitcoin, like someone drawing a support floor on a random number that they see occuring twice then a green arrow going to the sky
Bleaney
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2021
- Messages
- 3,036
It all depends on what time horizons people have. At my stage of life, a flat, or negative decade would range from disappointing to disastrous. But for those just starting out, or with more than a decade to play with, such a period would represent an excellent opportunity to get lots of funds invested cheaply, just by regularly continuing to turn up every month and DCA into lower risk ETFs or Index Funds. And then all they have to do is be patient and wait.
History tells us that in time, those markets are going to be going up, and they will have had a long buying opportunity to take advantage of flat and / or discounted prices. That would pay them very handsomely, in the longer run.
Although it was the Covid stock price crash that got me interested enough in investing to start looking into things a lot more thoroughly and seriously, to avoid diving in with no idea what I was doing, I was too late to catch that particular bargain opportunity - for the very brave - it has to be said. Especially if you were a beginner at that time! Although as it turned out, 2022 also ended up being a flat to negative year, which got me off to a good start, as although I didn't know it at the time, even that was a very good buying opportunity, and I solidly DCA'd my way in, over the course of that year.
Obviously we don't know when the current 4 year Bull is going to run out of steam, so I'm having to hedge my bets a bit, as it would be devastating to loose all of my gains, and not have them recover before my planned retirement date.
Last edited: