Timing the market

The artist formerly known as my brother used to tell a bad joke before any conversation over the phone. Today being the birthday of he who won't be named given his pedophile tendencies, I'll start with one of his non pedophile jokes: How do you make God laugh?

Make a plan 

Timing the stock market has the same effect, in that the market almost always gets the last laugh.

The 401(k) is the sucker's way to get into stock market. I am mostly joking, but people who have no business investing in the markets are forced by their employees to willfully put their money into the system. 

The market is cyclical so it has ups and downs without much cause. 

I personally like the markets going up and down because I have 20 years or so until I can retire. I view these extremes as perimeters that will be seen again. 

Hedging with multiple varieties of investment is best plan a lot of the time, but when EVERYTHING is down, not much one can do. 

The Gold mutual fund I have through Fidelity is currently down much more than everything else in the last few months, so I am keeping a steady eye on it. Whenever it bottoms out, it will likely be one of the biggest gainers... based on historical events.

I made a lot of trades last year (2021) with my Fidelity account. It was a hobby. I came out ahead by $5k. The low point of 2020 saw the account under $14k, so having over $33k at one point in 2022 is funny because I know people who pulled money out in 2020 and never put it back.

I only invest new money into my TSP, but it's down. I noticed a trend over the last few months... whenever I get paid, the market has a big day so I pay a premium that is lost within a few days. To make matters worse, TSP changed platforms so tracking actual losses has been hampered.

Since August, 13, 2021, I've had bulk of my TSP in the G Fund. I moved everything, but the profits I made up to that point to G Fund. With 86% in G Fund, I put all new investments into a spread that was mostly C Fund. I'm almost at 50% G Fund balance after 10 months of maxxing out my contributions.

I'm way down for the year, but I would be much worse if I didn't get conservative last August. My gut told me bad things were coming when my work was shutdown due to COVID. 

I started tracking on a weekly basis the sums in my Fidelity, Van Guard and TSP in September 2021. As you can see, it's frustrating.