daze823
Member
Hi all!!! I've been lurking around the site for about a year, and decided that I am going to start my own thread. I warn you now, I have none, to negative, technical market knowledge, so you won't find any technical anaylsis here. I will probably use this more for jotting down notes from things that I'm seeing in the market, and from articles that I read. Using it to go back and review for lessons learned in the future.
I would like to take a second to say Thank You to all of you who take the time to not only analyze the current market, but also the time to post it here for the rest of us, and even give some commentary on how you came up with your analysis. I have really appreciated reading through everything, and getting my feet wet with controlling my account, rather than my past buy and hold. I ended the year (partial year starting in April) on TSP Auto Tracker with a gain of 8.37%, even cracked the top 100 for the year, but could not have done it without the information shared on this site.
About me: I'm 9 years and 4 months into my Federal Career, and manage my TSP account, and my wife's TSP account (lucky enough to work together, unlucky enough to have her office right next to mine). I have had some luck in our TSP accounts; First lucky break was that I started working for the feds in Sep. 2002, and knew enough to put in as much as I could into TSP and keep it all in stocks (I correctly guessed that the market could not go much lower), and saw nice percentage gains, but not enough money in the market to take full advantage of it. Second lucky break came in 2009, after my wife and I got married and I started handling her TSP account, I found that she had been saving her TSP all in the G fund for 7 years, giving us a good amount to play with near another market bottom. I won't claim I got her all in to stocks at the market bottom, but I figured again (like on 02) that it couldn't get much worse and she (We, now that we're married =) ) got some nice gains out of it.
So this year, and going forward, my realistic goal is to stay above 7% increase every year; 7% being the magical number to double your money every 10 years. I would love to hit above 10%, but won't count on it as realistic average. Anyway, last year was the first time that I really took a very active roll in trying to manage the TSP account(s), and found myself utterly confused. I found that I would read one article and it would be all gung ho for huge gains with all these impressive charts to prove it.... and then I would read another article with the same charts showing how the sky is falling... grrrrr I found it so frustrating, but I did notice that if I went in, the "sky is falling" article gave me an idea of what to watch out for in case it went bad and get out in time, or before it was way too late. So I found myself making incremental steps up the ladder, with the losses usually not overtaking my gains.
So to end this ramble, my specific goals this year are:
1. Figure out if going all in works for me, I usally go 35 - 75% in. I usually keep some in G fund with the thought that if the market goes down, I can buy in with the rest at a lower price, however, it really limits gains that can be made.
2. Spend some time really looking over others technical analysis, with the goal of understanding how the anaylsis was made and try to gain enough knowledge to do some analyzing myself.
3. Relating to #2, figure out where I can get the charts to anaylyze
4. If all else fails, I'll start trying to lose money in my TSP. I figure it always seems to do the opposite of what I want, so if I want it to go down, it will dissappoint me and go up!!!!!
ps - I promise this will be the most i'll ever write...
I would like to take a second to say Thank You to all of you who take the time to not only analyze the current market, but also the time to post it here for the rest of us, and even give some commentary on how you came up with your analysis. I have really appreciated reading through everything, and getting my feet wet with controlling my account, rather than my past buy and hold. I ended the year (partial year starting in April) on TSP Auto Tracker with a gain of 8.37%, even cracked the top 100 for the year, but could not have done it without the information shared on this site.
About me: I'm 9 years and 4 months into my Federal Career, and manage my TSP account, and my wife's TSP account (lucky enough to work together, unlucky enough to have her office right next to mine). I have had some luck in our TSP accounts; First lucky break was that I started working for the feds in Sep. 2002, and knew enough to put in as much as I could into TSP and keep it all in stocks (I correctly guessed that the market could not go much lower), and saw nice percentage gains, but not enough money in the market to take full advantage of it. Second lucky break came in 2009, after my wife and I got married and I started handling her TSP account, I found that she had been saving her TSP all in the G fund for 7 years, giving us a good amount to play with near another market bottom. I won't claim I got her all in to stocks at the market bottom, but I figured again (like on 02) that it couldn't get much worse and she (We, now that we're married =) ) got some nice gains out of it.
So this year, and going forward, my realistic goal is to stay above 7% increase every year; 7% being the magical number to double your money every 10 years. I would love to hit above 10%, but won't count on it as realistic average. Anyway, last year was the first time that I really took a very active roll in trying to manage the TSP account(s), and found myself utterly confused. I found that I would read one article and it would be all gung ho for huge gains with all these impressive charts to prove it.... and then I would read another article with the same charts showing how the sky is falling... grrrrr I found it so frustrating, but I did notice that if I went in, the "sky is falling" article gave me an idea of what to watch out for in case it went bad and get out in time, or before it was way too late. So I found myself making incremental steps up the ladder, with the losses usually not overtaking my gains.
So to end this ramble, my specific goals this year are:
1. Figure out if going all in works for me, I usally go 35 - 75% in. I usually keep some in G fund with the thought that if the market goes down, I can buy in with the rest at a lower price, however, it really limits gains that can be made.
2. Spend some time really looking over others technical analysis, with the goal of understanding how the anaylsis was made and try to gain enough knowledge to do some analyzing myself.
3. Relating to #2, figure out where I can get the charts to anaylyze
4. If all else fails, I'll start trying to lose money in my TSP. I figure it always seems to do the opposite of what I want, so if I want it to go down, it will dissappoint me and go up!!!!!
ps - I promise this will be the most i'll ever write...
