I had hoped this thread would turn out well. Here's some more stupid tricks, and the hard lessons I learned.
I started saving for retirement the day I got married. Pay yourself first as they say. I knew the value of compounding. I worked very hard in an automotive shop for low pay. I was mostly financing my own college as my parents had no money. I got a little help from the Army, but not much back then. I was a part time Guardsman then. Not sure I made $20K a year yet. I owned a modest home. I started saving, $25/mo, and raised it just a fast as possible doing side jobs. The goal was a net worth of $1M by age 53.
Fast forward about 5 years and I have about $20K in the stock market. I'm in an investment club but that was boring DGI stocks doing well lol. With my account I start buying large cap tech stocks mostly. MSFT, CSCO, INTC, PFE, ASND, LU, Nortel, JDSU, MOT. Eventually got bolder and bought small cap tech stocks. Sold some covered calls because those stocks have insane premiums. I was a genius, until I wasn't. They got crushed, and I learned that buy and hold thing only works if you don't pay 80 PEs and a third of your port doesn't go basically BK. I bought the rock star companies and virtually nothing recovered to this day. CSCO is still down 50%. Did I mention I shorted AOL about a year too early? Ouch! Fortunately I gave up after a few years and put what was left of this train wreck into JNJ, XEL, PFE, MSFT. Three out of four was an improvement lol. I didn't even look at them for about 10 years because it made me ill until they finally got about back to even. It took over ten years.
While all this is going on I start feeding my GOV 401K aggressively before during and after the tech bubble. S&P 500 and Russell index funds. All in on stocks as I had ground to make up. That went well but I haven't forgotten the tech bubble. I'm not getting burned again if I can help it. I smelled trouble in 2007. I started moving a little into the Gov short-term bonds. The market got hit about 5% and I went about 50% cash. Waited about a year and started averaging it back in every month, and upping my contributions. Could I ever do it again? Who knows, but I got it right once and it was huge. My account basically doubled in about four years and half of that included taking some GFC beatings with half my money. That move was worth at least $200K. Went back to 90%+ in stocks and left it that way from 2011-2018. Just buy and hold several indexes.
I found this place mid 2018 and I have full control of my 401K now. 100% cash. Started my put selling strategy to enter all my long positions. Market gets hit a few months later. I'm lucky I went in slow but of course I should have jumped in a little deeper last Christmas. But I stuck to the plan and 500 conservative option sales later I am more than fine. I really only need a 4% return now. A chimp could get double that in this market.
My big mistakes were horrendous, but were made very early. My biggest mistakes now are occasionally clipping my own wings selling covered calls as I mentioned in post #1. The option premiums far exceed my dividend income so I'll stick with the plan for now. The market is just too expensive to go all in now, but someday I will be far less cashy. I sleep well. My #1 investing rule is never do today what you wish you had done last week, or month etc. It's really hard to abide by that everyday, especially when I am looking for 5 new option positions in stocks I would like to be long in eventually. They are hard to find and sometimes I am just a little early. There is no fixing that. Gotta have that income. It's probably good I have a part-time job at HD because it keeps me from staring at the market all day everyday lol. I really enjoy selling puts and putting premium cash in my account 2-3 days a week.
I hope some forum lurker finds this helpful, because I sure wish somebody had warned me just a little when I was young. Actually one guy tried. The Prez of my boring investment club. A U of Boston finance major. He invested a couple hundred K in some guy named Peter Lynch's mutual fund during the 1980s. He just shook his head while everyone was riding the tech stock bubble. He was too polite to tell me directly if you pay stupid high PEs and believe patience will fix it, you will learn how very wrong you were. I'll never stop learning, or ever again be so arrogant with any strategy. I'm not quite 60, but I might not live long enough to fix any more extreme stupidity and enjoy my labor. I don't want to be stressing the markets when I am 75.
I started saving for retirement the day I got married. Pay yourself first as they say. I knew the value of compounding. I worked very hard in an automotive shop for low pay. I was mostly financing my own college as my parents had no money. I got a little help from the Army, but not much back then. I was a part time Guardsman then. Not sure I made $20K a year yet. I owned a modest home. I started saving, $25/mo, and raised it just a fast as possible doing side jobs. The goal was a net worth of $1M by age 53.
Fast forward about 5 years and I have about $20K in the stock market. I'm in an investment club but that was boring DGI stocks doing well lol. With my account I start buying large cap tech stocks mostly. MSFT, CSCO, INTC, PFE, ASND, LU, Nortel, JDSU, MOT. Eventually got bolder and bought small cap tech stocks. Sold some covered calls because those stocks have insane premiums. I was a genius, until I wasn't. They got crushed, and I learned that buy and hold thing only works if you don't pay 80 PEs and a third of your port doesn't go basically BK. I bought the rock star companies and virtually nothing recovered to this day. CSCO is still down 50%. Did I mention I shorted AOL about a year too early? Ouch! Fortunately I gave up after a few years and put what was left of this train wreck into JNJ, XEL, PFE, MSFT. Three out of four was an improvement lol. I didn't even look at them for about 10 years because it made me ill until they finally got about back to even. It took over ten years.
While all this is going on I start feeding my GOV 401K aggressively before during and after the tech bubble. S&P 500 and Russell index funds. All in on stocks as I had ground to make up. That went well but I haven't forgotten the tech bubble. I'm not getting burned again if I can help it. I smelled trouble in 2007. I started moving a little into the Gov short-term bonds. The market got hit about 5% and I went about 50% cash. Waited about a year and started averaging it back in every month, and upping my contributions. Could I ever do it again? Who knows, but I got it right once and it was huge. My account basically doubled in about four years and half of that included taking some GFC beatings with half my money. That move was worth at least $200K. Went back to 90%+ in stocks and left it that way from 2011-2018. Just buy and hold several indexes.
I found this place mid 2018 and I have full control of my 401K now. 100% cash. Started my put selling strategy to enter all my long positions. Market gets hit a few months later. I'm lucky I went in slow but of course I should have jumped in a little deeper last Christmas. But I stuck to the plan and 500 conservative option sales later I am more than fine. I really only need a 4% return now. A chimp could get double that in this market.
My big mistakes were horrendous, but were made very early. My biggest mistakes now are occasionally clipping my own wings selling covered calls as I mentioned in post #1. The option premiums far exceed my dividend income so I'll stick with the plan for now. The market is just too expensive to go all in now, but someday I will be far less cashy. I sleep well. My #1 investing rule is never do today what you wish you had done last week, or month etc. It's really hard to abide by that everyday, especially when I am looking for 5 new option positions in stocks I would like to be long in eventually. They are hard to find and sometimes I am just a little early. There is no fixing that. Gotta have that income. It's probably good I have a part-time job at HD because it keeps me from staring at the market all day everyday lol. I really enjoy selling puts and putting premium cash in my account 2-3 days a week.
I hope some forum lurker finds this helpful, because I sure wish somebody had warned me just a little when I was young. Actually one guy tried. The Prez of my boring investment club. A U of Boston finance major. He invested a couple hundred K in some guy named Peter Lynch's mutual fund during the 1980s. He just shook his head while everyone was riding the tech stock bubble. He was too polite to tell me directly if you pay stupid high PEs and believe patience will fix it, you will learn how very wrong you were. I'll never stop learning, or ever again be so arrogant with any strategy. I'm not quite 60, but I might not live long enough to fix any more extreme stupidity and enjoy my labor. I don't want to be stressing the markets when I am 75.