Buy now or wait for the downward trend to continue?

[DividendDragon]

I bought most of my stocks over the past 6months which means I'm looking at heavy losses at the moment, but I have faith in the companies I own and have 30+ years to wait for growth.

I'm going to have some capital coming my way very soon so I'm just woundering if I should by now or wait it out for things to worsen?

Thanks
Lewys

[Roadmap2Retire]

I bought some CVX yesterday. Its a good time to average down. However, I wouldnt go all-in. There will be plenty of investment opportunities over the coming weeks/months...so, I'd recommend having some cash ready to move.

[rapidacid]

Lewys,

The best advice I can give is to just formulate a plan you can live with and then stick to it.

For example, I don't DRIP my stocks. Instead, I setup a Google calendar reminder every 5th Monday at 3pm EST to alert me to buy my best idea with the dividends that have accrued over the last 5 weeks. I choose Monday because historically Mondays are the worst performing days, so in theory I'll be buying low over time.

In your situation you may want to setup something similar: Divide your incoming capital pie into 5 or 10 or 20 slices and setup a calendar reminder for whatever horizon you're comfortable with and put a slice of capital to work on that day.

No one has the right answer to buy now or wait. Since you've already correctly acknowledged that you're going to be holding your best ideas for 30 years the current prices won't matter too much in the long run.

Formulate a plan, stick to it & execute and always look forward, not backwards.

[crimsonghost747]

It's a tricky situation: we are talking 30 years here so a few percentage either way won't make any difference, then again the P/E ratios are quite high and it's possible that with a bit of patience you could grab some shares for a better price. I'm afraid this whole "should I buy now or wait?" is one of the most difficult questions and if someone has the answer then he is a very rich man.

In the end it's your money and your choice, but here is what I do at the moment. I still keep buying monthly with a portion of my paycheck but I keep a large cash reserve ready in case the prices go lower. This is mainly because I still have a big cash reserve from the days when I didn't know what investing is.
So I guess my advice is: keep buying but don't go all in. Consider investing part of the incoming money but also try to build up some sort of a cash reserve which will just sit there and wait for lower prices.

[hendi_alex]

I most always keep a good sized allocation of opportunity cash. There is nothing worse than watching the portfolio value dive, and at the same time be unable to take advantage of the deep bargains that appear at that time.