I don't understand why the U.S stock market isn't going down.

AnotherJoe

CreditCardChris wrote: »

I don't understand the psychology of what's happening now, as a bystander I'm in awe at what I'm seeing. Parabolic growth for 10 years straight pretty much, longest period of down turn was just 5 months back in 2011 for -20%.

Why isn't anyone taking any profit? How can there still be more people buying than selling? They're all buying into a parabolic fomo style like what we saw with bitcoin back in 2017.
Rubbish. It's nothing like that at all

I can just imagine all the fund managers just sitting with their fingers on the mouse waiting to squeeze every last drop of fomo money before taking profits.
You credit fund managers with far too much intelligence and foresight
It's incredibly unsettling see this kind of growth without a serious 1 year+ correction, to let the market calm down and stuff. People who are buying now have balls of steel even if they're planning to hold for a very long time. Madness.

If the market worked in the wholly rational and predictable way you think it "should" work (and which it obviously doesn't) it would be easy to game it, to "take profits" at highs, buy at lows, and since it isn't then perhaps you should accept that whatever drives the market isn't as clear cut as your theory and perhaps explains your name "creditcardchris " rather than "richasCroesuschris"
There's a good analysis doen somewhere about "mr unlucky " who only ever invests at market tops. And he does very well, because at root the stock market globally/ us is at an all time high something like 2/3 of the time.
Forget your theories about taking profits at what you imagine is the top, because you don't know when the top is, (or the bottom) no one does, and invest over the long term. There have been posts like yours every year this decade and those who "take profits " (unless of course they need them) are the mugs not those who accept they can't predict the future rises and falls and stay invested.

benbay001

CreditCardChris wrote: »

Wait for the dump and then put that money back into the stock market of course.

Its so easy.

masonic

CreditCardChris wrote: »

Wait for the dump and then put that money back into the stock market of course.

Maybe you could let us know when you think it's the right point to sell and the right point to buy back in so that we can monitor your progress. I suppose we can take today as the point you'd sell.

If you're like most other people, you'll get it so wrong you might as well have stayed invested throughout.

Thrugelmir

Share buy backs and Trump's friendly corporation tax policies have had an influence over the past couple of years. Individual share prices aren't always directly correlated to the underlying economic or company performance.

AnotherJoe

masonic wrote: »

Maybe you could let us know when you think it's the right point to sell and the right point to buy back in so that we can monitor your progress. I suppose we can take today as the point you'd sell.

If you're like most other people, you'll get it so wrong you [STRIKE]might as well have stayed invested throughout[/STRIKE]. would have been much better off had you stayed invested ,

Fixed your typos Masonic
,

Alistair31

CreditCardChris wrote: »

Wait for the dump and then put that money back into the stock market of course.

Sounds easy.

CreditCardChris

masonic wrote: »

Maybe you could let us know when you think it's the right point to sell and the right point to buy back in so that we can monitor your progress. I suppose we can take today as the point you'd sell.

If you're like most other people, you'll get it so wrong you might as well have stayed invested throughout.

I'm not an insider at a major investment bank with an entire team of researchers and annalists to utilise...

I'm not talking about average Joe selling and buy back lower, I'm talking about the big investment firms, eventually they're going to pull the trigger and cash out temporarily and buy back lower.

masonic

CreditCardChris wrote: »

I'm not an insider at a major investment bank with an entire team of researchers and annalists to utilise...

I'm not talking about average Joe selling and buy back lower, I'm talking about the big investment firms, eventually they're going to pull the trigger and cash out temporarily and buy back lower.

Well there is evidence of a transfer of wealth from individual traders to institutions, e.g. http://finance.martinsewell.com/traders/Barber-etal2005.pdf (see table 9 and discussion on p.22)
But institutions get it wrong plenty often enough. Once you deduct the cost of their infrastructure, research and staff, there would be very little left that could really be classed as profit, if anything, and a private investor looking to benefit from such asymmetries through a fund would no doubt be left quite disappointed.

Edit: Here's an interesting analysis of target date retirement funds showing that when professional fund managers try to tinker with the allocations according to market conditions to try to improve returns, they actually have the opposite effect: http://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IB_17-2.pdf (page 4)

The solution is not being on the other side of those exploitative trades by refraining from trying to time the market yourself.

Thrugelmir

Prism wrote: »

Things theoretically can keep going up indefinitely with no crashes. The worlds population continues to grow, developing economies become consumers and eventually developed economies. Companies make more revenue, become more efficient, make more profits, pay higher dividends.

More approriately there's an old adage. Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash is always king.

AnotherJoe

CreditCardChris wrote: »

I'm not an insider at a major investment bank with an entire team of researchers and annalists to utilise...

I'm not talking about average Joe selling and buy back lower, I'm talking about the big investment firms, eventually they're going to pull the trigger and cash out temporarily and buy back lower.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:
You might want to take a look at the history of the "big investment firms" and the mystical knowledge and ability you grant them that allows them to "pull the trigger and cash out and buy back later."
Financial wizards like Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, HBOS blah blah blah I don't want to spend too long typing
Though I will mention LTCM, based on work from a Nobel winning economist. Lost maybe 5 billion dollars in less than 5 months
I recommend a couple of films for you, The Big Short and Margin Call.
Or TL;DR these guys have LESS clue than the Average Joe or even Another Joe about what's happening.