How much $$$ have you lost?

[Quasi]

Just curious if everyone else is hurting as much as I am from the stock markets.....

[Patience]

I'm not cashing in for over 20 years, I just figure I am buying the stocks now a lot cheaper than they would have been.

Basically I just care about where I start & where I end, all the stuff in the middle is just noise. You haven't lost anything unless you cash out.

[Franchise]

I think we all know that. It's still kinda painful to watch though.

[Quasi]

Yeah, I know it's just noise....but it's not pretty. For better or worse I'm still buying stocks. I'm too stubborn to go squeamish now :D

[Pseudolus]

I've been pretty successful at convincing myself that "being able to buy stocks cheap right now" is a good thing. I even found myself less than thrilled when the market started going up last week. Ah, the power of negative thinking...

[sb_jim]

You haven't lost anything unless you cash out.

If you or your mutual funds held shares of Enron or Worldcom you probably did lose money, those shares aren't coming back. In the grand scheme of indexing that probably won't mean much in 20 years.

Was yesterday a proverbial dead cat bounce?

[Patience]

today went from a triple digit negative to a small positive last I looked.

BTW, I do stand corrected, that if you owned any of the stocks that left the market before you did, you did lose.

I do not invest heavily and am pretty conservative, so I can't get too worked up about all the ups & downs.

[Troy McClure]

BTW, I do stand corrected, that if you owned any of the stocks that left the market before you did, you did lose.


I don't understand this - how is owning 100 shares of Enron, which go from $50 to $0 any different from owning 200 shares of stock XYZ, which go from $50 to $25?

Either is a loss of $5000 - and averages out in the long run.

????

[bertuary]

I think the idea was that Enron's not gonna bounce back, whereas the guy at $25 still might turnaround.

[DW Simpson]

Pseudolus wrote:
I even found myself less than thrilled when the market started going up last week. Ah, the power of negative thinking...

Me too. I've been watching the technical indicators, which admittedly aren't the most useful tools in the world in a bear market, for the last several months, and pulled the trigger last weekend because the S&P 500 MACD and Stochastics looked like they were meeting at a local bottom. The mutual fund cashes the darned thing Wednesday afternoon, right after the surge back. Missed the bottom by a day.

http://cchart.yimg.com/z?s=^gspc&a=m26-12-9,ss,r14&p=b&t=1y&l=on&z=m&q=l

[Pi Man]

i lost more than i contributed over the last two quarters... :swear:

[Han Solo]

If it weren't for contribs I would have lost some. Boy, I picked the right time to have a loan taken out from the funds - the interest I'm paying myself back is much more than what that money would have earned on its own.

[Loner]

The day after I switched all my future contributions to cash, the market picked up.
Tell you guys what - I'll tell you what I do with my money - then you all do the opposite.

[The Drunken Actuary]

I'm not cashing in for over 20 years, I just figure I am buying the stocks now a lot cheaper than they would have been.

Basically I just care about where I start & where I end, all the stuff in the middle is just noise. You haven't lost anything unless you cash out.Unless you left money in a former employers 401k and are no longer contributing anything to the account. It could go down to $0.00 and the noise will all stop.

[Pi Man]

If it weren't for contribs I would have lost some. Boy, I picked the right time to have a loan taken out from the funds - the interest I'm paying myself back is much more than what that money would have earned on its own.
no sarcasm intended.... why don't you just contribute more in the first place? you aren't paying yourself gains, your buying more equity, no?

[Han Solo]

If it weren't for contribs I would have lost some. Boy, I picked the right time to have a loan taken out from the funds - the interest I'm paying myself back is much more than what that money would have earned on its own.
no sarcasm intended.... why don't you just contribute more in the first place? you aren't paying yourself gains, your buying more equity, no?
none taken. I know I'm not paying back gains. We actually had the loan out for a different purpose. The timing just worked out well that while the loan is out the market turned south.

[urysohn]

-5% during the second quarter, -17% since the start of the second quarter (roughly -12% this past month - ouch!). But I'm still outperforming the S+P by a pretty fair margin, and I'm telling myself that's the important thing. :)

Also pretty glad to have taken out a loan when I did (also for a different purpose, but reaping the benefits of the timing)

And yes, the downturn is nice because you buy cheap. But it will take about 10 years of decent (not phenomenal) performance by the S+P/ Dow/ Nasdaq to return to their previous highs. So the downturn will be horrible for already invested assets, though future contributions may more than make up for, depending on where you are relative to retirement.

[Pseudolus]

The first time I ever had any money available to invest happened to be juuuust about the peak of the market, when it looked like everyone was going to make 18% returns forever. Luckily ( :roll: ) that money still wasn't very much. Overall it's probably a Good Thing that I got a lesson in the vagaries of the market early in life. (Unlike those people in the newspaper who can't retire now because they were margined in techs up to their duodenum.)

[Ozric Tentacles]

(Unlike those people in the newspaper who can't retire now because they were margined in techs up to their duodenum.)Hmmm... someone's been reading Gray's Anatomy. ;-)
(or is it Grey's?)

[42]

How much "value" did my 401k lose? None. Because ever since the Dow hit 6000, I figured stocks were so overpriced that every time I got my 401k statement, I calculated what it would have been if the Dow were still at 6000. Anything above that I just considered to be phony paper gains, so I didn't miss them when they went away. (Now, if only I had been smart enough to know when the pinnacle had been reached, and cashed out at that time ...)

[kazh]

Isn't 401k about 250 miles? No wonder so many say they've lost -- that's too far for me to walk without getting lost, too. :-?

[Quasi]

Bump....

I just got my third quarter 401K statement.....OUCH!! These balances can't go negative, can they?

[urysohn]

Woohoo! I'm back in the positive for the year-to-date! 0.1%, but it's one heck of a lot better than it had been.

Warning: Market timing is a highly risky activity and can result in significant losses. Please do not try this at home.

[Take 2]

All my money is currently tied up in plastic -- visa, m/c, discover, ...
So I gain when the rate drops -- just traded a 10.9% for a 0%!
(That leaves my 8% policy loan as the highest-rate balance. :) )
Next year I hope to need to know what my 401K makes.

[Abducens]

>>I just got my third quarter 401K statement.....OUCH!! These balances can't go negative, can they?

My statement said one fund had deposits of $1,020 and investment performance of ($1,040). I think that means I owe them $20.

[Loner]

I've bneen engaging in arbitrage. One of my credit cards offered me a 0% on balance transfers or cash advances for 12 months. Slapped 10 grand in a money market acct. Woo-hoo! I love screwing this particular bank as they did me in the past. I wonder how many years in a row they'll give me the offer before they catch on.
Come to think of it, I should've put it in savigns bonds...

[Double High C]

I assume that we are counting 401K's in these polls, and I say I wish that losing $12K doesn't sound all that bad.

The lord giveth, and the lord taketh away.

[Alya]

I've bneen engaging in arbitrage. One of my credit cards offered me a 0% on balance transfers or cash advances for 12 months. Slapped 10 grand in a money market acct. Woo-hoo! I love screwing this particular bank as they did me in the past. I wonder how many years in a row they'll give me the offer before they catch on.
Come to think of it, I should've put it in savigns bonds...
Did the same thing, only we put it into second mortgage payment -- immidiate saving of an annual 5.5%! Where else could we get riskless return like that!
The funny thing was when got our first statement from that credit card and there was a minimum payment on it and it was about 2% of the total amount. It turnes out that if you have 0% interest they just divide the balance by 48 months and this is your min payment.

[42]

Alya, am I missing something? What Loner did sounds riskless. After 12 months, he just takes the money back out of the money market account to pay off the advance (and keeps whatever interest he earned). In your case, won't you have to either come up with the money to repay the credit card company or face their double-digit interest rates? :-?

[Alya]

In your case, won't you have to either come up with the money to repay the credit card company or face their double-digit interest rates? :-?
We will have to come up with the money -- we will just write a check from the same mortgage account where we deposited credit card's money. It is a baloon thing -- we are supposed to pay only interest now and to repay the whole amount in 10 years. Everything that we pay above interest reduces the principal (and => reduces the interest for the next period), but we can take it out any time we want to as long as principal is zero by the end of year 10.

[Quasi]

I assume that we are counting 401K's in these polls, and I say I wish that losing $12K doesn't sound all that bad.

The lord giveth, and the lord taketh away.

Losing $12K once isn't all that bad....but losing $12K several quarters in a row really adds up. I know it's paper money at this point, but it's depressing to see that the balance is lower now than it was several years ago and I've just about been maxing out what I put in. I figure it's too late to pull money out of stocks now.....or maybe I'm just being stubborn.

[Double High C]

I hear you. I feel your pain.

(It is my pain too.)