I just opened a Roth IRA, and am ready to invest in the stock market

[Tonkaman]

Lately I’ve been geeking out on pandemic/virus documentaries and movies. It is absolutely fascinating! (especially since I had my own recent coronavirus scare)

After SARS cost the world $40 Billion they estimated that the next big one would break $100 Billion. Here we are and I think that number is going to be low.

 

[anderson750]

Hey.....but the IRA's are still performing better than Bitcoin

 

[TurboMinivan]

So, the stock market, eh? How is everyone doing?

Over the last few weeks, I had been thinking about my Roth account. When I initially opened it, I dumped $2500 (each) into two different funds. I thought I had chosen two index funds, but I later realized one of them was actually a no-load mutual fund. The mutual fund pays out a significantly lower dividend, plus it has a significantly higher expense ratio than the index fund. For those two reasons, I had been wanting to sell out of the mutual fund and replace it with dividend stocks. On Monday (Feb 24th), with the market crashing, I finally submitted a request to sell my entire position. Being a mutual fund, the transaction does not go through until the market closes that day. Once it finally did, I had locked in a capital gain of $341. I was happy about that.

The very next day, I used some of those funds and quickly picked up 10 shares of Dominion Energy. (My long-term goal is to own at least 100 shares of Dominion--since I am forced to use them as my natural gas supplier, I might as well let their dividends pay my entire gas bill... and a hundred shares will just about cover it.) I was in a hurry only because the next ex-dividend date was Feb 27th. Looking back, I should have stopped there... but we didn't know things were going to keep tanking, so I spent the rest of the funds and purchased shares of three other stocks in various sectors.

Anyway, this morning I logged in just to check on the bloodbath. Over the last four months, I have put $7000 into my Roth. At this moment, my account has a total value of $6900. That is enough to make some folks upset, but I'm just rolling with the punches--I'm still earning dividends no matter what the share price of the moment happens to be, and I know the market will continue to fluctuate. Now I'm just anxious to gather up some more cash to deposit so I can go on an investing spree while everything is on sale.

For purposes of this post, I logged in to my 401(k) to check the damage. Year to date, I'm down $12,800. Oh, well, this will also even itself out over time. I'll just keep dollar cost averaging my way along, as always.

 

[spaggyroe]

Warren Buffet once said something like “be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful”.

Eventually the coronavirus scare will pass, and the market will return. Right now could be a golden opportunity to invest more.

 

[DAA]

There are no good stocks or bad stocks. Just good prices and bad prices for them. I haven't put any money in stocks since December when I sold for very good prices. I'm not in any hurry to jump back in but if prices get enough better I'll do some bargain shopping.

- DAA

 

[Tonkaman]

Sounds like we should all be investing in toilet paper and bottled water ha ha

 

[Greg]

Anyone care to weigh in on the current market and investing?

My 401k bounced back pretty decent in the last 2 days, which has been nice to see.

I just bought a chunk of Boeing stock, going to watch it for a few more days, see what the market does and possibly buy a bunch more soon. I think there's an opportunity here for making big returns. This isn't part of my 401k, separate investment fund.

 

[jeeper]

I was going to ask daa if it had dropped enough for him to buy in again 🤣

I spent a lot of money on something just 2 days before we had the biggest of the drops. I didn’t feel like I had enough extra money after that, or I would have done the entire years Ira contribution that day 😢

 

[DAA]

I was going to ask daa if it had dropped enough for him to buy in again 🤣

No, it hasn't dropped enough for me to buy back in yet. If/when I push big stacks back in, it will be with the intention of leaving it for as long as the recovery takes.

Right now, 1700 on the S&P is my trigger to move some. I won't go all in at that level, not nearly, just push one stack in. If it doesn't get that low, awesome, I'll sit tight and it's good news for everyone including me. I won't move to a majority stock position unless it gets down to 1200. At that point, I think I'd just have to put a big old chunk in and wait it out for the long haul.

But all the winnings I took off the table in Dec., are still off the table and have earned over 2% YTD. The unexpected cutting of interest rates has provided a pleasant surprise for my bond holdings. I won't be tempted to push any of that back in until there is blood running in the gutters. Which, unfortunately, I think will happen this summer if virus lockdown goes into May.

I do have ongoing contributions going 100% into stocks though. Great time to start up the dollar cost averaging again with my automatic payroll deductions, I've increased my contributions to 15% (6% pre tax, 9% after).

- DAA

 

[Hickey]

There was one morning two weeks ago where Walmart stock (a blue chip) had plunged to $7 per share. Wish I would have been paying attention, I would have dumped my entire paycheck on it. It's bounced back to $112 today.


Edit: that was miscommunication from my management. It was "Down $7, not down to $7"

 

[SnwMnkys]

I picked up a bit of Fluor when it hit rock bottom. They had some accounting issues a few months ago which caused their stock to go on sale. Then the Corona virus scare just tanked them.

Hard to believe the worlds 2nd largest Contractors stock is only worth $6 a share. But it is for now.

 

[Herzog]

Fluor

I looked up their all time trend... how in the world does a contractor company like that not hit their (short but high) share price of pre-2009 during the last few years? Anyways, looks like they will at least bump back up to around ~$50/share unless they have some other major issues.

 

[SnwMnkys]

I looked up their all time trend... how in the world does a contractor company like that not hit their (short but high) share price of pre-2009 during the last few years? Anyways, looks like they will at least bump back up to around ~$50/share unless they have some other major issues.

My dad worked for them in the 70s early 80s oversees. I seriously doubt theyre going anywhere. I think theres really good long term profit to be made with them.

 

[glockman]

I wanted to buy into my company's stock last week but had moved my fun money to savings so didn't get it back to my investment account quick enough. MU was $34 last week, sitting at $44 today. 25% in a week would have been nice. I'm going to start buying in with DCA like DAA. I think there will be some pull back over the next few weeks so jumping in with one big push now will likely have some downside.

 

[TurboMinivan]

There was one morning two weeks ago where Walmart stock (a blue chip) had plunged to $7 per share. Wish I would have been paying attention, I would have dumped my entire paycheck on it. It's bounced back to $112 today.

Forgive me for being skeptical, but this sounds completely impossible. So much so, that I just hit up E-Trade to see for myself. They currently report WMT's 52-week low closing price at $96.53 and that was back in April 2019. Over the last month, the lowest intraday price reported was $102.00 on March 16th.

WMT pays a relatively low dividend yield (currently 1.96%), but it is a stable holding even in economic downturns. As such, it makes a great purchase for any long-term portfolio.

 

[Hickey]

Forgive me for being skeptical, but this sounds completely impossible. So much so, that I just hit up E-Trade to see for myself. They currently report WMT's 52-week low closing price at $96.53 and that was back in April 2019. Over the last month, the lowest intraday price reported was $102.00 on March 16th.

WMT pays a relatively low dividend yield (currently 1.96%), but it is a stable holding even in economic downturns. As such, it makes a great purchase for any long-term portfolio.

I never checked it myself, just heard the reports from management. You are right that it is a very stable holding, and it tends to do well in economic down turns.

 

[Hickey]

I never checked it myself, just heard the reports from management. You are right that it is a very stable holding, and it tends to do well in economic down turns.

After looking at a few charts, I have no idea what he was talking about. Wouldn't be the first time my manager was 3 miles off. Looks like it hasn't been below $100 for several months. I'll have to ask him for clarification.

 

[Hickey]

Forgive me for being skeptical, but this sounds completely impossible. So much so, that I just hit up E-Trade to see for myself. They currently report WMT's 52-week low closing price at $96.53 and that was back in April 2019. Over the last month, the lowest intraday price reported was $102.00 on March 16th.

WMT pays a relatively low dividend yield (currently 1.96%), but it is a stable holding even in economic downturns. As such, it makes a great purchase for any long-term portfolio.

So we get an audio and text message to our trucks on a weekly basis from our management to keep us filled in on what's happening in the office. The text message is just a transcript of the audio pep talk. In this case, my manager added a tiny two letter word that was worth a butt load of money. He said that our stock was down to $7 per share, but it was fixed in the text message and said "Down $7 per share"

I can't imagine the mess that could have caused were it a company wide message rather than just our transportation office.

 

[glockman]

So we get an audio and text message to our trucks on a weekly basis from our management to keep us filled in on what's happening in the office. The text message is just a transcript of the audio pep talk. In this case, my manager added a tiny two letter word that was worth a butt load of money. He said that our stock was down to $7 per share, but it was fixed in the text message and said "Down $7 per share"

I can't imagine the mess that could have caused were it a company wide message rather than just our transportation office.

We had a site wide video put out by out site manager last week from his home office as all non essential people are working from home. The video had automated transcription on the side bar. He said if you have symptoms of COVID make sure to help us by letting your supervisor know immediately. The transcript said, help us by laying your supervisor immediately. I have all male direct reports and had to quickly put the kibosh on that. Devils is in the details.

 

[TurboMinivan]

In this case, my manager added a tiny two letter word that was worth a butt load of money. He said that our stock was down to $7 per share, but it was fixed in the text message and said "Down $7 per share"

Oh, well that's a small difference. LOL

For anyone else following along who may be curious, Wal-Mart's all time high intraday stock price was $128.08 on March 18th. Since that time, the lowest it has dropped intraday was to $106.85 just two days ago (on March 26th). That represents a high-to-low drop of only about 16%, which compares rather favorably to the market as a whole.