Simple Q&A - NISA

[Bubblegun]

Not a question but a thought and maybe some can share their thoughts.
Its quite hard at the moment to be dropping in 10万yen into the NISA every month knowing that the s&p is sinking and may sink further into the red.(western color) (green Japanese color) having to wait patiently for any returns, but not seeing how much that will return. I know they say everything is on sale right now, just like the winter, Xmas sales, but at least at those times I can see how much I’ve saved and at the same time use what I bought. I suppose that the instant gratification part and the NISA might be the delayed gratification part. Before when I dropped money into my previous savings I never wanted to see it, and never followed it, I just dropped in the money and forgot about it. But now, in the days of the open internet, everything is there in front of our eyes and a simple click away. Pretty difficult just to wait, watch, and not have a known outcome.
I even tried to find a calculator to see if I had DCA in 2008, and waited 2 years, to see what the returns were.
Pretty hard to just watch.
Thanks.

Are you buying a low-cost broad market index fund? Then the answer is simple. Stop watching.

Setup your account to auto invest monthly. Turn off the broker alert. Delete the stock ticker app.

Update you books semi-annually and spend your energy on something that benefits you or your loved ones.

Yep. Just a simple S&P500 fund. I have an automatic pay in, but I had to change to the spot pay in as I used up the annual NISA allowance pretty early.
I don’t use the apps and I don’t use alerts . It’s just the darn will power not to look. And of course the news pumps it out, and the news feeds too. Maybe I’m harking back for the good ole days if just reading a news paper.

Definitely good advice on doing something with the family.

[sutebayashi]

It’s good news if the markets are down - it means you will be buying more on the cheap, than you otherwise would have been. Unless you want the money straight away, if you are in for the long term, you are winning when the market offers you these sell offs to buy more.

Personally I have extra cash that I have invested into the taxable account recently, and I am thinking it likely to see the market go lower still, maybe another 30-40% down even. If so, great! I will be buying even more in that case.

What you are doing is dollar cost averaging (with yen:)), and you won’t regret it 10-15 years from now.

[Bubblegun]

What you are doing is dollar cost averaging (with yen:)), and you won’t regret it 10-15 years from now.

Yes, I’ve been DCA averaging this year quite a lot especially since May, June, just dropping money in every few days or weeks. I suppose it’s been worth it. Sometimes it’s up but the drift has been down. I think the kids will more likely see the full benefits of this crash. As I’ve been popping in extra into their accounts.
Hopefully I’ll see something next year just to get that morale injection.

[sutebayashi]

If you are putting money in every few days, hopefully you are not putting in too much at once. Slow and steady!

The markets went up for many years since the bottom in 2009 after the subprime / Lehman shock financial crisis. We were probably a bit spoiled for a long time.

Globally stocks should / will recover eventually, but we could be in for an extended rough period… years even, not months. The inflation in the 1970’s was before my time, but it seems it took the better part of a decade to get that under control, before the next boom came.

[beanhead]

Globally stocks should / will recover eventually, but we could be in for an extended rough period… years even, not months. The inflation in the 1970’s was before my time, but it seems it took the better part of a decade to get that under control, before the next boom came.

This seems like pointless speculation.
No-one knows what will happen next month, let alone next year or a decade from now.

The other advice to the OP to just start small, probably DCAing, is sensible.

OP, find sums you feel comfortable with and start investing them.
Yes, you may see the value fall before your very eyes. But if you keep it in cash in the bank the same thing will happen, just more slowly and not so visibly. Even Japan has inflation...

[Bubblegun]

Globally stocks should / will recover eventually, but we could be in for an extended rough period… years even, not months. The inflation in the 1970’s was before my time, but it seems it took the better part of a decade to get that under control, before the next boom came.

This seems like pointless speculation.
No-one knows what will happen next month, let alone next year or a decade from now.

The other advice to the OP to just start small, probably DCAing, is sensible.

OP, find sums you feel comfortable with and start investing them.
Yes, you may see the value fall before your very eyes. But if you keep it in cash in the bank the same thing will happen, just more slowly and not so visibly. Even Japan has inflation...

Thanks sutebayashi and beachhead.
I'm certainly dropping in money every few days after the previous purchase clears. Slow and steady! Of course I could drop the whole lot in in one go, but since things were on the fall, it seemed more prudent to DCA over a year. I think the year ( and we don't know the future ) is probably a good time frame to get that DCA benefit but also that, time in the market bit too. Maybe I was just lucky to come into some extra money last year, and with Japanese banks paying peanuts in interest rates and inflation hitting 2.5% in Japan it's just worth giving them our money.
As you said, I won't see the fall in value or even feel it, but Japans inflation will eventually eat it away, ( and Japans future tax increases) So I will just keeping paying into the ETF regularly.

I'm not sure where I read this, but they said DCA when the markets slide over a year and to LSI when the markets go up is pretty good.
If anything, i need to put my mind way back into the 80s, when we went through high unemployment, then a boom.
Black Wednesday crash and then another boom.Then the dot come bubble, and then another boom, the Lehman shock with a big boom, which brings me up to date.
As they famously said "After all, tomorrow is another day!” ...

We live in interesting times.
And thanks for the help.

[TBS]

I'm not sure where I read this, but they said DCA when the markets slide over a year and to LSI when the markets go up is pretty good.

This has been covered in another thread, but the trend of the yen-based S&P500 has actually been upwards this year. This is because the strengthening of the dollar against the yen has, on balance, outpaced the fall of the S&P500. As a consequence LSI has beaten DCA for the majority of starting dates this year.

Others have made good points about why you might want to DCA, i.e. to manage the emotional side. But from a numbers side DCA only makes sense if you know when markets will slide. Which of course nobody knows.

Maybe you've been looking at Western media, dollar-based prices etc. and have missed what's been happening from a Japan-based perspective?

[sutebayashi]

This seems like pointless speculation.
No-one knows what will happen next month, let alone next year or a decade from now.

That’s the reason why DCA is a good strategy over the long term, no?
What I hoped to express, rather than a market view, was more that even if a market doesn’t go up, like say the Nikkei for say 1990 through 2015, doing DCA with a long term view would still have given positive results nonetheless.
At least myself, I like to take a conservative perspective that says markets could really suck for a while, and deal with that by having a winning long term strategy, which DCA is.

[TBS]

That’s the reason why DCA is a good strategy over the long term, no?
What I hoped to express, rather than a market view, was more that even if a market doesn’t go up, like say the Nikkei for say 1990 through 2015, doing DCA with a long term view would still have given positive results nonetheless.
At least myself, I like to take a conservative perspective that says markets could really suck for a while, and deal with that by having a winning long term strategy, which DCA is.

DCA is a winning strategy in the long term, yes, but also one that is expected to leave money on the table.

There will always be good and bad stock market periods, with the good outweighing the bad. There's no way of knowing which the short term will be. Holding money out of the market to drip it in slowly (DCA) leaves you with less, in the majority of cases, than just putting it straight in.

[TokyoBoglehead]

That’s the reason why DCA is a good strategy over the long term, no?
What I hoped to express, rather than a market view, was more that even if a market doesn’t go up, like say the Nikkei for say 1990 through 2015, doing DCA with a long term view would still have given positive results nonetheless.
At least myself, I like to take a conservative perspective that says markets could really suck for a while, and deal with that by having a winning long term strategy, which DCA is.

DCA is a winning strategy in the long term, yes, but also one that is expected to leave money on the table.

There will always be good and bad stock market periods, with the good outweighing the bad. There's no way of knowing which the short term will be. Holding money out of the market to drip it in slowly (DCA) leaves you with less, in the majority of cases, than just putting it straight in.

Vanguard has a great study, it's been linked in this forum a few times. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source= ... GhqX28B0ce

Statically speaking LSI beat DCA the majority of the time. The future is unknowable, so LSI is the "on paper" rational choice. However, if it's too much stress, then DCA is right for you.