Hi, Personal Finance. I’m a relative novice to investing, but have thrown some money into the market pretty regularly since last year. Before that, I had really only put money in on a handful of occasions, whenever I had money I felt would be better invested than spent. My portfolio is just around $30k, and I’m investing money every month in order to ensure I’m dollar cost averaging whatever isn’t doing so well but has promise, and throwing more into the things that are doing well. In addition, I’m also reinvesting my dividends and not selling anything I hold.
That said, I got pretty lucky over the last few years and found a few ETFs and stocks that have since taken off because I happened to invest at a few key points when the market was at its lowest (boy do I wish I had put more in). I wish I could say it’s because I know what I’m doing, but I just see it as really good, accidental timing. I’ve got some stocks and ETFs that I bought because of good dividends, and others that I bought because of a potential upside in the future.
I’ve found myself continually adjusting the dividend side of my portfolio, but doing nothing with the growth stocks and ETFs that took off. I feel like I should continue to invest in those, beyond dividend reinvestment, but seem to have a mental block because the price per share is so drastically different than when I first bought. Do any of you struggle with this? How do you get over it? What’s a good way to keep investing without just chasing success like a drug? Four items in my portfolio account for 74% of my growth portfolio value, despite only making up 39% of my total growth portfolio shares. I’m torn on whether to invest more in what’s working, or leaving those alone and continuing to diversify.
Unless you’re doing market research that gives you more knowledge than 95% of the people investing, you’re just getting lucky. You think you’re waiting to time the market: so are millions of other investors just like you trying the same strategy, and you can’t all win.
Once you realize that, you realize that almost every strategy people talk about is just BS. The one that works? Blind investing, preferably in an ETF.
Just ask Bob:
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2015/08/27/the-inspiring-story-of-the-worst-market-timer-ever.html
What’s a good way to keep investing without just chasing success like a drug?
Realistically?
The short answer is ETFs.
My growth and dividend portfolios are already mostly focused on ETFs, such as LIT and QCLN. The problem is that LIT and QCLN have done so well that they took over my growth portfolio. Selling to rebalance could be one option, but feels like giving up on something that worked, and since they’re ETFs and not stocks, I don’t feel the need to really sell them since, as you pointed out, they should be relatively safe thanks to being ETFs.
You should have a target weighting in % for all your ETFs, and you should rebalance to that target either when it goes out of range (say 5% or 10% over), or every 6-months or a year. Your outperforming ETFs won’t outperform forever. If you think there’s a bullrun then let it ride, but know that eventually there will be a mean reversion.
