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Comment by thunky

1 day ago

> I am screaming: crash and burn baby! Crash and burn! Gimme those shares at 50% off yesterday's price.

Sure, but once you reach the point where you have a lot of money in the market you probably won't enjoy watching 50% of it disappear, even if it means your next auto investment is for a nice bargain price.

Also, when the stock market crashes usually bad things accompany it. Like a depressed economy and job losses.

>>Sure, but once you reach the point where you have a lot of money in the market you probably won't enjoy watching 50% of it disappear, even if it means your next auto investment is for a nice bargain price.

I assume I am investing to build wealth. That means my goal is to never spend down my wealth. When I retire, I am withdrawing a maximum 4% a year and expect my portfolio to average >6% per year. When I die I will own the largest number of shares I ever owned in my lifetime (assuming for simplicity sake I own a total stock index fund as my sole investment).

So, my goal remains to celebrate buying low since I never intend to sell shares (how this is managed upon retirement is a slightly more complex subject, probably involving 'buckets' of assets to cover withrawals so a 50% crash doesn't change the overall thinking that the price of shares is irrelevant to stock that will never be sold).

edit: speaking theory when I say "when I retire" because I've already been retired for almost a decade. My portfolio continues to grow (highest ever literally at yesterday's close).

  • > my goal is to never spend down my wealth

    Never spend it, but you're ok with it being taken from you? You're a special case retiree if you can watch the market take half of your life savings and cheer it on. Especially with a 4% withdrawal rate, which fails a lot of 30 year backtests.

    > I am withdrawing a maximum 4% a year and expect my portfolio to average >6% per year. When I die I will own the largest number of shares I ever owned in my lifetime.

    A lot of successful backtests end with significantly fewer shares, too. There are no guarantees here.

    There has to be some floor where you stop cheering on a market crash, because if it drops low enough for long enough then you are screwed and so are your heirs.

    Be careful what you wish for.

> Also, when the stock market crashes usually bad things accompany it. Like a depressed economy and job losses.

It's our own fault for tying the stock market performance to our economy's performance. Why would I, a train worker, should have my pension affected by Sam a Altman's bad decision making or by Enron's lies and deception.

It's our own fault that the stock market is so volatile and that we tie so much of our economy to a financial gambling machine that's become increasingly divorced from reality in the last couple of decades. Like you are putting money on a stock that trades at 1000 on a company that is 10 years away from being profitable? You deserve your money to go poof.

  • > Like you are putting money on a stock that trades at 1000 on a company that is 10 years away from being profitable? You deserve your money to go poof.

    Who is suggesting that?

    NVDA trades at 57x earnings, MSFT 37, GOOG 22. The article is about META and they are 27x. These are the big companies that dominate the s&p that we're talking about.

    I don't think anyone is suggesting to put their life savings into Anthropic. They can't anyway, it's not public.

    The s&p PE is 30, which is high, but still lower than it was in 2020 before the AI "bubble" started.