The difference is 10 years ago I was 50% leveraged and had no cash.
This time my margin loan stands at $10 credit(!) and I have well north of six figures ready to use to catch the falling knives.
I like to think I have learned from my mistakes.
So . . . market timing? Not sure lesson learned.
When will your entrance point be? 5% drop? 10% drop? 20% drop? Timing is a pretty arbitrary thing without a plan (or a crystal ball).
Yes market timing. You can put your money in on the same day every 2 weeks forever, or you can recognise when it is simply and utterly stupid to do so and wait a little bit.
Up to the peak, do you guys realise Amazon was trading on 244 times earnings?
244 times! That goes way beyond dot.com stupidity. And that one stock is more than 5% of the S&P 500. And this is before we start talking about additional regulations to be imposed on your other tech companies who have been abusing our privacy for far too long.
Down here we have 4 banks geared towards residential property lending comprising 25% of our market and we are entering the first real property bust in a generation caused by macro-prudential controls, sentiment, weak wage growth, lack of confidence in government and tax rules and good old fashioned greed and excess. The stock prices have already fallen significantly, but they are not writing enough loans now to ensure future sustained profit growth.
This week is not going to be one of those 3 day corrections and the index continues to march steadily upwards again. I'm not going to wait forever, but there's absolutely no rush to pile back in over the next month or 2.
Top is in
for now(!). I will swallow my sea of red on the broker screens for the near future and progressively dump my cash in over the next 6 months as the market falls. Absolutely pointless doing it now, and I saved myself 7% by not throwing it all in 5 weeks ago.
I cannot predict the bottom, but this is one of those moments where you know you are not there yet.
You guys are in the denial stage of grief. That much is clear. I'll come back to this thread at the capitulation stage in a few months time :)
Of course one day we will see these recent highs eclipsed. Just don't bank on it being any time in the very near future.