Hello
I am very new here, but my impression is that most of the users follow the rule of selecting an asset allocation and sticking to it.
This is obviously a very smart choice, but it has the downside of being a little boring.
I have found that what works best for me is to have the vast majority of my investments to be on auto pilot as well, but I regularly put aside a small portion of my savings in cash for what I call "opportunistic" investments.
It is fun, and if the trading is not speculative I think sometimes the returns can be good.
Maybe a way to add a little more risk, but keeping it safe by doing this on a small percentage of the monies.
I still maintain a buy and hold approach, so opportunities almost always arise for me when prices are unusually low, as I hate to sell (I probably sold stocks/funds around 5 times total in the last 10 years).
If any of you do something similar, we could use this thread to post recommendations on what we consider to be "bargains".
I'll start by recommending vanguard's energy sector fund (VGENX), also available as an ETF (VDE).
Reasons why I recommend (I bought VGENX, but I would assume the below are all valid for VDE as well):
1- aside from a brief period between November 2008 and April 2009, it has never been as low as today in the last 10 years.
2- in spite of the recent price drop, and in spite of some suggesting it could drop even further, I don't think oil has suddenly and forever become an unprofitable business to be in (assuming you have a long term horizon)
3- U.S. Stocks in general are high so I see this as one of the few opportunities to "buy low" in today's market.
Sorry if there's already a similar thread, if that's the case I can just copy/paste this there and the mods can delete this one.