VTSAX closed yesterday at $69.49 per share. Since JOT sold 892.949 shares at $67.59, that means he is still underwater by $1,696.60 on the shares themselves. He also lost out on $0.3736 per share of dividends that was paid this week which translates to $333.61 in dividends. But he might be making a little interest depending on what he did with the proceeds. But then he'll have to pay taxes on the interest at ordinary income tax rates rather than the qualified dividend tax rate. And then there could be transaction costs depending on how he executed the trade(s).
See, you guys don't even need me anymore! You can just copy and paste the list below and add the new week (or month or year or however long this thread takes until junioroldtimer joins us again).
As for dividends, those are real dollars that he missed out on so I think they should get added to his running total.
junioroldtimer sold 892.949 shares on February 7th at $67.59 each, converting $60,354.43 into cash.
On Feb 14 the closing price was $68.85, meaning that he had cost himself $1,125.11 after one week of trying to time the market.
On Feb 22 the closing price was $69.98, meaning that he had cost himself $1,866.26 after two weeks of trying to time the market.
On Mar 01 the closing price was $70.28, meaning that he had cost himself $2,402.03 after three weeks of trying to time the market.
On Mar 08 the closing price was $68.62, meaning that he had cost himself $919.73 after four weeks of trying to time the market.
On Mar 15 the closing price was $70.56, meaning that he had cost himself $2,652.05 after five weeks of trying to time the market.
On Mar 22 the closing price was $69.49, meaning that he had cost himself $1,696.60 after six weeks, plus $333.61 in dividends not paid is $2,030.21.
Maybe $2k of losses on $60k of assets is enough to convince him this was a bad decision? Maybe he's holding out for some hoped-for larger future drop? In his position, I think I might face the mental block of being unable to admit my mistake and cut my losses, causing me to double down on this bet and sell even MORE market funds into cash in an attempt to recover my losses on some future negative fluctuation.
He's still only a few percent off from breaking even, so it's not even unreasonable to assume he might someday see a vtsax spot price at which he could buy back in real quick and declare himself a winner. But frankly, all of the work of updating this thread every week has been a good reminder for me of another reason why I don't time the market. I think it would drive me crazy to have check every day trying to catch that little window of profit opportunity. Indexing is set-and-forget easy, and relaxing, and reassuring, and in the long term a mathematically superior strategy anyway.
And in this case, mathematically superior in the short term, too. By about two thousand dollars of free money that I have made in the past six weeks by doing nothing with the same amount of money that junioroldtimer decided to cash out.