What to Invest in the next 3 years?

If I do really well, I can possibly retire in 3 years. I calculated with a 9% return on my net worth for 3 years in a row, I will have the option to retire. I don't plan to, but it would be nice to take time off whenever I want.

Given the market is at an all time high, and almost everyone is predicting a correction, how do I invest in this environment.

5 years ago, this stupid financial advisor my friend recommended to me actually told me to sell my Index Fund and short the market because the market is at an all time high. I lost $10,000 with this clown. Good thing I stuck with my plan and continued to put my IRA money into the S&P500 and was able to more or less ride the bull market wave. Last year I put more after tax money into the S&P500, and so far have made further gains.

So now is the million dollar question? What to invest now?

Yes, I will hold cash. So the money I invest will be a fraction of my current cash reserve and the money I further make from work. I will not be 100% invested when the market take a violent down turn. My cash will be in 1.85% savings account and 2.5% CD. I still want to buy a house so this can be used for down payment also.

I am not gonna talk about rental property here even though its an option. I was gonna buy a multiunit property but backed out.


The problem is no one really know when the market will correct. The bull run might go another 3-5 years.

I am thinking of doing an experiment.

Dollar cost average over the next 3 years into

- QQQ - tech EFT that had far outperform the market
- VYM - high yield dividend ETF. Supposedly high dividend ETF do relatively better in a bear market due to the dividend while everyone's stock value gets crushed.
- S&P 500
- Amazon??? - PE ration of 150:1. Scary. Even though it might still continue to grow more than 10% annually.
- Tax free muni bond? Not that excited about it.
- Realestate crowd funding? Seem kind of risky in this market.

Any other ideas, suggestions?

I may still lose my shirt, but by dollar cost average the risk should not be that high. I'll also drop in a lump sum if the market correct by more than 10%.

If the market continue to rise, I can further benefit from this run, and possibly get close to my goal of 9% annual return.
 

signoria

Sparrow
Wait for the big DXY rally which could drag down EURUSD to the levels of 0,98 and when USD gets flat, invest in GOLD.

Most EM FX and stock market prices are pretty undervalued. If you think the EM problem will be solved in a year, you can find Turkish bank stocks trading at less than half book value, with 4-5 years dollar bonds yielding %20 plus.
 

Faust

Kingfisher
Gold's been a shitty investment for years. Why will it cease to be shit, and how will it cease to be shit in a way that couldn't be better captured by say, puts on the stock market?
 

ChicagoFire

Kingfisher
If you think America is fine for the next couple decades real estate. If you can't afford real estate then there's platforms that allow you to buy shares. Look up FinancialSamurai as you need to do your own research. Obviously crypto and I keep hearing from people that Bitcoin is too expensive and all I can say is it's undervalued. Buy at periodic paces. General rule of thumb spread your resources around so if crypto does go bust you won't suffer massive losses.

When the stock market crashes buy up. President Trump takes way too much credit for the stock market and he's walking into a trap. I can see the headlines, "Trump takes credit for the stock market, drops 1000% Thanks President!" My investing policy is periodically invest, spread, live below my means, and play for the long run. I definitely didn't sell when Bitcoin dropped a couple weeks ago.

Also everybody's risk tolerance will vary. I have some money in peer to peer lending but at about 5% returns that's a waste of money. Once people pay off their debt to me I wouldn't put any more money in that category. I speak for myself when I play for the long run. An underrated topic is fun experiences. When you're an old man on your death bed hopefully you can remember some fun you had. That doesn't mean party everyday but I personally try to do something fun once a month since I work so hard everyday. You're essentially hedging against losing everything in some black swan event.
 

MrTickle

Robin
Gold Member
I think the bull run is linked to interest rates. If interest rates get north of 3% and inflation is below 2% then people will start to move some investments into safer cash savings.

Where is your money now?

If it is in passive funds then you shouldn't need to do anything with them. If there is a crash in next few years you just put your plans back by 18 months to 2 years.

The worse case scenario is you "retire" and the market crashes in the first 1 or 2 years of retirement as this could seriously damage your pot long term.

It would be dam tempting to invest in crypo in 2019.
 

BlastbeatCasanova

Kingfisher
Tattoo removal: a lot of these hoes and dorks who got "sick tats" will probably want to get them removed as they grow older and (as I predict) the pendulum swings back to having ink free skin is the new "trend."

hearing restoration: I think this could be a big thing the future. With smart phones came an unprecedented level of people blasting their ears with small speakers for several hours a day. Also my generation seems to love going to music festivals with insanely loud music. Seems like there could be a big market for procedures, etc. involved eith restoring hearing as the technology gets better.

I'm sure you wanted an answer like gold or real estate but I was trying to think outside of the box for ya
 

tonired2

Chicken
Lithium / lithium miners
My personal preference and 25% of my portfolio GXY (big exception to me, usually limit myself to 10%), just doubled my position yesterday
I might buy into PLS tonite

Thank my later

Edit :
Today GXY 2.49aud
PLS 0.77aud

It may fluctuate up and down in the short time, but let's come back here in a year or two (hoping 3 to 6 months to be enough)
 

ksbms

Pelican
Nobody nows really and I'd be supercautious against all "experts" of any shade (with the exception of Buffett perhaps but neither he is an omniscient oracle) - if you look around you'll find plenty research showing that a bunch of monkey (yes, REAL monkeys), randomly composing a reasonably diversified portfolio, will outperform the "experts" recommendations.

I plan to put my money into some Nasdaq 100 & Composite ETFs, mixed up with some more conventional shares, I think. Why? We are living in an increasingly more technologically driven world and software and semiconductors of various kind will be in every single device you can imagine (including animals & humans - one day, far away).

I think Amazon is good bet, they still have new markets to expand to and Bezos keeps diversifying operations as the encroachment into food sector showed, and a possibility to enter health sector. Also, it' cloud computing - Amazon Web Services - sector brings sizeable revenue and more and more processing and storing power will be needed and used and AWS is and will provide that in spades. The last one dovetails with Nvidia's GPU technology (CUDA) which is a core element of Amazon's servers for a variety of computation heavy AI and machine learning neural networks.

I'd "top up" buying separately more Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, (possibly Intel) and some hi-tech bio and pharma shares too. The key problem is what percentage should the whole portfolio constitute of tech, though - 25%, 50%, 75% or balls deep?

This is not an advice and you're responsible for your own research, I bear no responsibility for the outcome of your financial choices.
 

Irish

Kingfisher
Gold Member
Why would you come to RooshVForum to ask for investment advice?

Do you go to Schroders and ask them where's the best country to go to pickup chicks?
 
Tattoo removal and hearing enhancement are actually not bad advices. I thought about getting into tattoo removal myself couple of years ago. Right now I don't see how to invest in it passively.

Crypto currency is too much of an unknown for me. I think some crypto ETFs are in the works. If there's a crypto ETF I might get a position in it.

I've already invested in Realtyshares, the crowdfunding real estate investment platform. It's OK. It's like peer to peer lending. Seems good in the beginning, but peters out. I might look into hard money loans with a 1st lien on the house. If the economy goes south, the borrower defaults, at least I get the house.

Amazon and tech. It's definitely a gamble. With such high PE ratio, do you guys imagine Jeff Bezo worth 300 billion dollars in 5 years? That is insane. I might just buy another share of Amazon just for the heck of it. I already have a small position. QQQ is a tech heavy ETF. I might just bet on it slowly through dollar cost average.


The question in hand is how to invest in a market that has an imminent possibly of a large correction.

I already have a position in real estate and stocks which I have no plans to sell in the next 5-20 years. My current cash is earning 2% in CD and high yield MM, and of course I'll be making more money in the next 3 years.

I think I'll allocate 50% of my investable cash and dollar cost average into several ETFs and index fund. Of the remaining 50%, half of that will be dumped in in several tranches as the market drop 5%, 10%, 12%, 15%. If the market does not correct in 3 years, I'll have caught some more of the bull run, but still end up rather cash heavy. With that cash in had I'll bite the bullet and buy a house despite it being so expensive.

Just for fun, I'll divide between tech QQQ, high dividend VYM, and tiny bit of Amazon and see which one comes out ahead.
 

joost

Kingfisher
Everyone can say "invest in this, invest in that" but you're the one with skin in the game.

First rule is DIVERSIFY. Having cash is good if you can use it at the right time. During long term it'll lose value due to inflation.
 

Laurifer

Woodpecker
Gold Member
Sounds like you're pretty risk adverse but consider a portion towards fledgling American pot companies or established Canadian ones. Federal legalization in the US is going to become a subject for 2020 I believe, and likely to see a weed stock boom like we have going here in Canada.
 

rosario

Chicken
I would look into the permanent portfolio by Harry Browne. It will give you a solid hassle free base. Then speculate on whatever you wish knowing that you can lose the speculation without major harm.
 
Well 6 month later, there has been a lot of turbulence in the market. Let's see where we are.

My original post was dated 9/10/2018. At that time S&P was at 2877. Yesterday the S&P closed at 2800.

What I did in the last 6 months:

I started buying more S&P500 VFIAX as the market dropped and also dollar cost averaged monthly investment.
It's interesting back than I thought I would jump in and buy it all at the bottom. In reality, when the market dropped really hard I actually didn't buy that much. I thought it would drop even more, but then it took a turn upwards. I actually invest the biggest chunk when the market only dropped like 5-6%. All in all I did OK. This was my biggest investment allocation. Now that the market has recovered somewhat, I made a 6.9% return on the various tranches of money I put in during the last 6 month. This is not including dividend return.

Amazon did not go so well. Psychologically I has FOMO. I thought I might miss the ride so when it dropped to 1900s I bought a bit. Terrible mistake. My cost basis was 1938. Giving me a 10% loss so far. Just to comfort myself. I did have some Amazon at 974 a share so on average I am still up.

I invested some in VYM - vanguard high dividend ETF. Have a 6.3% return not including dividend.

Lessons learned:

I knew I shouldn't invest in individual stocks but I couldn't help it. Even a blue chip like Amazon is still unpredictable. 6 months ago we all thought Amazon was going to grow 20% a year. Well, during that time Jeff Bezo started divorcing his wife, the stock market took a dive, and Amazon backed out of NYC for HQ2. For me it is just not worth the time and energy to invest in individual stocks. It is just too unpredictable.

I still got nervous when the market took a very sharp dive. It's very difficult to have the discipline to invest when you are most afraid. I had a pre-planned investment tranches that forced me to invest as the market dropped without having too much second thoughts. But in the end I still chickened out when the market was at it's lowest. I'll have to dig deep and search for that emotion as the market tanked and remember in the future when I feel that way, that is when I should make the move.

All in all I did ok, but this journey is far from over. Who knows that the market will do in the next 6 months, 3 years etc.
 

swoosh

 
Banned
Invest for the next 3 years? sounds like get rich quick in three years. Very slim shot. Really, the best way to get rich is through years and years of growth through compound interested and smart investing. If you want to do high risk investments in the meantime and go with stock picking, you can always buy proven companies who face hard times. think southwest, volkswagon emissions scandal, Bp during the oil spill ect. With that said Boeing is down 10% right now and it might get worse over the next few weeks as the investigation unfolds. You'll need to risk somewhere between $70-150k on that stock to make any real money within three years however, but if you invest little amounts companies like this during their hard times, over 30 years you'll have a nice chunk of cash waiting for you. Thats just one strategy. Im not just saying this to sound cool. My portfolio is up 45% in the last 3 years.
 
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