[FinanceAnon]

I would just hold it - I have sold most of my index fund holdings in the past 6-9 months and been just holding cash. I don't think stocks have reached the bottom yet, so holding cash at 0% return is still better than negative returns from stocks. Right now, it's about not taking losses. I also don't see the market and economy rebounding quickly after reaching bottom - they will stay flat for a while IMHO

[atombender]

As a counterpoint, I would quote the great John C Bogle: "Never, never get out of the market." [1] Knowing when the market has reached the bottom is not really possible.

During the dot com crash in 2000-2001, investors sold all the way down to the bottom (and lots of them sold at the very bottom), and then they eventually sold all the way up to the peak, when instead they could have just held onto their shares.

Rebalancing doesn't really work. That's another thing Bogle showed us.

Of course, if you need the cash, that's another matter. But then you arguably shouldn't have invested it in the stock market to begin with. If you have a time horizon less than 5 years, the market is just too volatile.

[1] https://youtu.be/1SLb1QJvTvg

[notch656a]

>"Never, never get out of the market."

Cash is a market though, just a different market. If you hold cash you're in a particular market, one that has earned significant returns measured against equities this year. (of course, depending on timespan you may want to pick _which_ market you think best)

It's been strange indeed. My highest yielding investment the past couple years was buying a new vehicle. Conventional wisdom says new vehicles are horrible investment, but in this market it's exceeded yields of every single asset in my pretty diverse basket.

[kqr]

> Rebalancing doesn't really work. That's another thing Bogle showed us.

Wait, what? Rebalancing has worked very well in my backtesting, assuming the fairly generous trading fees I get, at least.

What are you referring to?

[atombender]

> they eventually sold all the way up to the peak

Edit: Bought all the way up.

[andsoitis]

> so holding cash at 0% return is still better than negative returns from stocks

holding stocks as they go down in price does not necessarily matter. It only matters at time of sale. Selling an index (or a particular stock or set of stocks) as they go down only to buy them again later is not the right strategy... you're incurring transaction costs at the very least and the fact that you cannot time the market means you'll probably lose out even further.

Hold the index, unless you need the cash flow or forecast that you need more buffer for flexibility and don't want, in the short term, to be penalized for volatile stock prices (e.g. in case you need to sell to service some cash needs).

And if you have the cash, continue to buy the index on the way down. If your view is that the market, over the long term, is the best generator of wealth, then continuing to buy into it is the more rational strategy.

Inaction is sometimes the best action. There are more ways to be dead than being alive.

[Retric]

If you can sell 100 shares today and use that money to buy buy 200 shares in 6 months then you are better off than if you had held 100 shares for that same six months as long as you buy back into the market.

Actually trying to time the market is largely a fools game, but people do get lucky. Or more often realize they shouldn’t try and time the market.

[ushakov]

> holding cash at 0%

as consumer prices are surging this no longer may be true

my bet is on physical assets: guitars, gold, watches

[subsubzero]

Gold looks ok, I don't know about guitars but watches are plummeting just like the stockmarket.