How to lose money (the snowball is melting)

A lot of money! (on paper)


This seems like a bad year for investors. My own portfolio is going up and down by several hundred thousand yen every day (and trending downwards). Luckily it doesn’t really bother me much (I can sleep at night in investors lingo).

As I wrote about about in the post about the stock market here, having an investment plan and being aware of your circumstances make all the difference.

Josh Brown has a nice post about how investors should think about the market depending on their stage in life.

Andrew Hallam writes about buying opportunities when stocks fall (if you are young, the best thing that could happen is a prolonged stock crash).

Right now unfortunately I don’t have any cash to invest so I am hoping the markets stay down until later in the year. How about you?

Stay safe out there and enjoy the bargains.

6 Responses

  1. Sitting on paper losses on about 12% on a very small portfolio – only started investing since last July.
    Good thing is that the strong labour protection laws in Japan means that the paycheck keeps coming in monthly which will allow averaging down.
    Personally ignoring all the noise ever since the markets started dropping, since I have another 35 years to go before drawing down on the portfolio at retirement age. Not to mention that times like these are the best opportunities for inter-generational wealth transfer!

    1. Having a paycheck makes all the difference, eh? 😉
      I find the idea of drawing down the portfolio uncomfortable enough that I am not planning to do it -just spend the interest/dividends in due course…

  2. Two words come to mind: Cha, and Ching. 😉
    It’s hurt to be sitting on a stack of uninvested cash while I got my finances back home sorted, but it’s purely sublime to just be finished sorting it out now. Impeccable timing. USD-JPY rates are improving lately as well.
    Nothing left to it but to do it, and sort out my allocation.

      1. Your portfolio is already years ahead of mine–I’m still playing catch-up! No better time than the present though.

  3. I am feeling double the pain: my investments are melting, I have no cash to invest at this point, and I plan to go back to Japan soon. With the yen getting stronger and my investments being in dollars, I lost 20% of my portfolio (yen) value compared to December