Investing General Discussion

Blazin

Blazin

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a_skeleton_03 said:
Blazin Blazin I had all of my TSP in the G fund .... like a piece of human garbage. I switched to the higher yield S fund.
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The G Fund is pretty much being in cash, there is nothing wrong with having a percentage in there as dry powder to move into the market during a bigger correction (>10-20% downturn) but it should be no more than maybe 10-20% of your portfolio.

The S fund is small caps (Russell 2000 index) This market segment was getting creamed for quite awhile but has since mid last year made a monstrous comeback. I would avoid the I fund all together, big US companies already have plenty of foreign exposure. For a guy your age I would look to adjust your portfolio over time to :

G Fund (Short Term Bond/Cash) : 10%
F Fund (Mtg Backed Bonds): 10%
C Fund (S&P 500): 60%
S Fund (US Small Cap): 20%

This would be for new money going in plus the overall portfolio, but once a year or so you may have to do some rebalancing. This ratio should be fine at least for another 10 years at which point depending on financial situation and goals you might want to start toning down the C/S fund and moving more into G and F to preserve capital.

IF/WHEN there is a large market correction I would empty Cash and Bonds into the C Fund, but there would have to be blood in the streets. We only get these opportunities about once a decade at best but we are at year 8 right now
 
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Picasso3

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Blazin said:
With the market at all time highs just makes me more cautious to move it all at once. If you do over time (called dollar cost averaging) then it takes advantage of pullbacks we may see over the next year.

I don't know the amounts however. If one of them has say $500 in it I would t spread that out over a year that would be silly .

I would do over a year and weekly but transfers of st least $50 increments per fund. So some may finish faster than others,
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It's 27k, either 2k or 4k in each item.
 
Gravel

Gravel

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The TSP is one of the best deals you can get as far as a 401 plan.

An 80/20 split in C/S funds mimics a total market index fund pretty well.

And even though it sounds like Blazin convinced you to stick with the TSP, I can explain better. With the TSP, you are only allowed two distributions from it. You can do a one time distribution (for instance, rolling it over to a tIRA) in service. But the 2nd distribution has to be everything. That's it, once you get to that 2nd distribution you're officially out of the TSP forever.

So moving your TSP right now to something else is a terrible idea, only because you're limiting your options completely from then on.

Fee drag is one of the biggest hindrances to retirement portfolios, and the TSP is the lowest you'll ever get. It beats everything, including Vanguard (barely).
 
Strifen

Strifen

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I've been buying uranium equities for the past 3 years now as a long term/contrarian investment and after a brutal 11 year year bear market things finally look to be turning the corner. I've been studying this industry for years now and in the early 2020's the world is looking at a substantial shortfall of mined supply.

Some companies I like.

CCJ - Major blue chip producer

MGA, NXE, DML - Explorers and developers

UEC, URG, UUUU - Small cap producers (stable and based in the U.S)

URA - ETF tracking the entire industry.

The gains in this sector so far in 2017 have been incredible but I'm expecting a healthy pull back from the recent buying frenzy. Uranium bottomed out at 18 bucks a pound in Nov 2016 and it's recovered to ~27 bucks today. The uranium equities underwent their final capitulation phase back in Nov and have very clearly broke the trend line. Smart money and institutional investors have been pouring in.

If uranium gets back up to $65 bucks a pound then many of these equities will see a 5-10 fold increase if not more. It's a highly risky play, but the world needs nuclear power as a clean source of baseload energy. Looks at whats going on in the most populated cities in India and China, they are living through an environmental crisis the air pollution is so bad. These countries absolutely need more nuclear power because it provides around the clock clean energy. China's building reactors like mad, japan is working to bring theirs back online (albeit slowly) - other countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia are turning towards nuclear power.

Germany is shutting down all their reactors (8 more) by 2022 but that's because Merkel sold out to the green party, and who knows if they'll even be able to do that... don't get me started on the idiocy of germanys energiewende.
 
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TJT

TJT

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Bonus time of year so I need to invest a lump sum in some various things. Time to research shit!
 
Blazin

Blazin

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Blazin said:
I picked up a starter position in JNJ last week @ 112
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This has been a nice trade so far in JNJ, Just put in a stop at 118, which I really hope doesn't fill as I think we are going to see mid 120s but have to protect that $6/share gain. Order in right now for XOM @ $81 for a swing trade to $90. Don't care if it takes forever to get there will just collect divy while I wait.
 
Blazin

Blazin

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JNJ stop moved to 119 and entered XOM yesterday at 81.

Market has moved so fast without pullback good value getting hard to find. Really hoping we get at least a 3-5% pullback before summer.
 
Blazin

Blazin

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Picasso3 said:
Putting my party money in xom.

It looks like a turd to me, what's our angle?
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I have flipped it three times since 2015 for over 10% each time, and every time I buy it the chart looks like total shit. I really love this dividend player but I do think it's going to be stuck in a long secular decline so I'm going to keep dumping in the high 80s or 90s unless something fundamentally changes with their revenue growth. And it pays me a nice divy while I wait out the ride back up. My exit on this one may be lower unless oil breaks into 60s
 
Blazin

Blazin

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Big Phoenix said:
Nvidia got fucking hammered, down over 10% today.
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Been watching it certainly a tough day, but considering how far it's come I don't think it's too alarming. Nor would I be looking to start something new .

May have a few month period of consolidation where it drifts lower, 80s in a Market pull back seems quite plausible
 
Fogel

Fogel

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So after maxing out my roth and 401k for the year, I was thinking of jumping in on vanguards total market index. Will probably be able to get to the admiral fund level by end of next year. Would eventually like to get into a little active trading but still want to be mostly passive.
 
Blazin

Blazin

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Fogel said:
So after maxing out my roth and 401k for the year, I was thinking of jumping in on vanguards total market index. Will probably be able to get to the admiral fund level by end of next year. Would eventually like to get into a little active trading but still want to be mostly passive.
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Don't think there is any right or wrong but I try to keep it around 80% passive 20% active. It may be "best" to do all passive but I enjoy investing. In very strong years the market beats me, years like 2015-2016 I beat the market, biggest difference I find is that I'm able to manage the risk more on the downside but that lower beta hurts total return, but understanding your own risk tolerance is probably best way to come up with that mix. Vanguard use to have a tool type survey you could go through to analyze how you view risk/reward etc. pretty sure they still have it.
 
Threelions

Threelions

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a_skeleton_03 said:
Solid advice, thanks. Going to build for 2 years in C and then move to a hybrid approach like you have listed.
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Please, please, please use a combination of C,S,I funds or choose a Lifefund. You can see the yearly rate of return on the TSP website. I can tell you from 15 years of experience in the TSP that the lifecycle funds are a good bang for the buck. They are professionally managed of course. You can make more money by directing your funds into the C,S,I, but at a potentially greater cost as they can be more volatile than the lifecycle (although the 2050 fund and later are always going to be riskier until you get closer to that year.) Please tell me you are at very least hitting 5% so you can get the 5% matching. Best of luck friend!
 
Kiroy

Kiroy

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Anyone familiar with setting up a 401k for a small business (filing as s-corp) with 4-8 employees? I'd like to work with vanguard and looking at their options the 'simple IRA' looks like it might be the best option for a start.
 
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