Your three worst moves lately?

[ken-do-nim]

(02-08-2021, 09:57 PM)fenders53 Wrote:

(02-08-2021, 09:20 PM)ken-do-nim Wrote: That was a very interesting read.  I made similar investing mistakes back in the early 2000s, following Nortel and Lucent to the ground.

My three worst moves lately?  Hmmm...

1.  I got used to shifting money around in my ROTH IRA care-free, and I just did some rebalancing in my taxable account, completely forgetting that if you sell stuff before a year is out, you pay a lot more taxes.  Oops...

2. CURE is looking like a dud.  It got out to a promising start; I bought around $50 and it's $80 now, but it hasn't budged in a while and all the other equities are doing so well.  (I read an article on Seeking Alpha indicating that over the past 30 years, it was the overall single best ETF.)

3. Waiting too long to improve my 401k portfolio.  I had it all in an S&P 500 index last year, and there are funds that did and are doing way better available to me.

It  was interesting skimming back through it.  A lot of the dog stocks mentioned above came back to life lately and I know some of us owned them on the way back up.  

You are probably smart to get out of SPY.  I still own some but not like I used to.  It's way too concentrated n a few stocks, and some of them are over valuable.  Probably safer ways to get a market return, or beat the index as you mention.  Coming out of the next market bottom SPY may be a great idea once again.  And ouch on your tax error.  I can't even imagine if all my short term option trading was in a taxable account.

Oh wow with the thread revival I read this again.  It's almost laughable.  CURE is at $130 now and is one of the bedrocks of my port.  My 401k is back to all SPY, has been for a while, and is much better for it.  None of the other funds they offer can keep up with it over the long run.

As for not selling ABBV at 121 - I'm hoping it will be back there soon enough.  At their pipeline, they have a ton but in particular I'm excited about Veliparib which is in phase 3 trials for treating breast and ovarian cancer.  They also have a Parkinson's disease drug in phase 3.  It's still the best 4% payer I've found.