Quote:
Originally Posted by Fairplay
Im thinking of taking a couple of my mutual funds and selling them. Keep the money in reserve, until the economic outlook is better. Yesterday in the news most of the economists agree we are heading into a recession (newsflash)  , . Any opinions on if i should or shouldn't do that? |
How long would you be able to leave the money alone? If your thinking 10-15+ years, then mutual funds are on sale right now. Short-term hiccups are irrelevant to me, I'm trying to scrounge up extra money to dump into my portfolio. When everyone is panicked and negative is when you are generally supposed to buy in, but human nature prevents us from doing that.
As long as you have money in everything (large, mid, and small; value and growth; foreign and domestic; etc) then youll be fine. If your going to wait it out because you think stocks and mutual funds are still going down, then you go from being an investor to being a market timer. Even if you are right, you still have another timing decision to make: when do you get back in? When stocks recover, they dont do it slowly, and if your late getting back in by a week or two, you miss out on a huge chunk of gain.