Market's tanking. Time to buy?

[ChapInTokyo]

Stop reading, or even glancing at Forbes. Which is nothing but pure clickbait.

i.ibb.co/x8crYCW/2024-12-21-20-37-15-www-forbes-com-ac26a33b6ad7.png

That's true. Ever since the press moved to the web, the headlines have become more exaggerated.

In comparison, the Wall Street Journal's "stocks fall sharply" is more neutral.

[beanhead]

Market rises.
Market falls.
Financial press has to write about these things as it is what they do for a living.

World keeps turning.

[captainspoke]

...

Sure, but a for chart like that one from WSJ--expand the time scale to a year, two, or longer, and the drama of the moment completely disappears.

[Tsumitate Wrestler]

Forbes has been using A.I to produce content for the last 5 years or so. They were way ahead of the game.

They have their own model for it, they just plug in the days index results and out comes an article.

But, anywhere, why are we using the DOW or The Nikkei 225 as any sort of market barometer?

They are just out of date.....

[ToushiTime]

Further to the FOMC news and the tanking of the US stock indexes, the Tokyo market's tanking this morning too.

Could be a good time to buy, say Tokyo Electron at a nice price, as a long term buy and hold? What do you reckon?

I don't own Japanese stocks but am curious, do you also invest in US stocks?

For my fun portfolio, I spent some spare cash on a handful of quantum computing stocks including IONQ a couple of years ago.
Thanks to recent media coverage, they have gone through the roof recently.
I regard them as "moonshots" that are just a small part of my investments and that will be interesting to watch to see if one of them blossoms.
I am not a Boglehead puritan and have to scratch that itch sometimes

I was thinking of accumulating more today, but resisted the temptation as they are already on a tear, and I set myself limits.

Same here. I’m generally risk averse so quite happy to have a core portfolio aligned with boglehead-ish conventional thinking, but also like to have a satellite portfolio of good companies rather than entire market of the good and bad companies.

I don’t do stock picking with US stocks though. Seems to me that beating the S&P500 will be much more difficult than beating TOPIX…

As for moonshots, I suppose my holding of drug discovery outfit Peptidream comes closest to being something which might go really big.

Other than that, I’m drawn to Japanese companies like Ulvac, Keyence or Tokyo Electron who are already at the top of their game, but trading at a discount due mainly to the cyclical nature of their sector and the uncertainty about the recovery of China as a market.

True, beating TOPIX is easier but at the end of the day I care about absolute returns. TOPIX rose 57% but S&P rose 84% over the past five years, so beating the S&P by less could get me the same result. Your Japanese stock picks look interesting. If you had the time to intensively research Japanese small caps, you might find some bargains as the information available to foreign investors is limited. I am more interested in tech/software and AI which is one reason why I stay away from the Japanese market other than via index funds.

I started my fun/satellite/YOLO portfolio in 2022. It's currently up 179.31 %, which is not even counting the gains I took when moving some weight from big tech to highly risky but fun quantum computing stocks. I think this portfolio is now down to 5% of my overall investments because I have trimmed it a lot.

* If anyone else reading this jumps in screaming "It's all priced in! You plebs can never beat the market!", I repeat: this is just the fun part of my portfolio, and I have very little conviction that I can actually generate any alpha! I accept it could all fall through the floor. It is a small allocation to "scratch that itch" and prevent me doing something daft with the other 90-95% of my investments. It's also fun and interesting!

[captainspoke]

...
* If anyone else reading this jumps in screaming "It's all priced in! You plebs can never beat the market!", I repeat: this is just the fun part of my portfolio, ...

I call this part, where I can play, my sandbox.

Mostly, I use it to show myself that what I've done with the rest was the proper choice.

[ChapInTokyo]

Same here. I’m generally risk averse so quite happy to have a core portfolio aligned with boglehead-ish conventional thinking, but also like to have a satellite portfolio of good companies rather than entire market of the good and bad companies.

I don’t do stock picking with US stocks though. Seems to me that beating the S&P500 will be much more difficult than beating TOPIX…

As for moonshots, I suppose my holding of drug discovery outfit Peptidream comes closest to being something which might go really big.

Other than that, I’m drawn to Japanese companies like Ulvac, Keyence or Tokyo Electron who are already at the top of their game, but trading at a discount due mainly to the cyclical nature of their sector and the uncertainty about the recovery of China as a market.

True, beating TOPIX is easier but at the end of the day I care about absolute returns. TOPIX rose 57% but S&P rose 84% over the past five years, so beating the S&P by less could get me the same result. Your Japanese stock picks look interesting. If you had the time to intensively research Japanese small caps, you might find some bargains as the information available to foreign investors is limited. I am more interested in tech/software and AI which is one reason why I stay away from the Japanese market other than via index funds.

I started my fun/satellite/YOLO portfolio in 2022. It's currently up 179.31 %, which is not even counting the gains I took when moving some weight from big tech to highly risky but fun quantum computing stocks. I think this portfolio is now down to 5% of my overall investments because I have trimmed it a lot.

* If anyone else reading this jumps in screaming "It's all priced in! You plebs can never beat the market!", I repeat: this is just the fun part of my portfolio, and I have very little conviction that I can actually generate any alpha! I accept it could all fall through the floor. It is a small allocation to "scratch that itch" and prevent me doing something daft with the other 90-95% of my investments. It's also fun and interesting!

One thing I considered when choosing to put together a satellite portfolio of Japanese, rather than US, stocks was the possibility that the yen might strengthen against the dollar again (like it did between June 2007 and January 2012 in the example below from the S&P's Index education pages).


https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/docum ... sting.pdf

Although stock prices of export driven Japanese companies will probably decrease along with a strengthening of the yen, I decided to substantially increase my yen denominated stocks holdings in the hope that at least the dividends will continue to be paid out at a steady or even an increasing rate, and the stock prices will not decrease in yen denominated terms as the stock prices of a US company under the same circumstances. Time will tell whether this bet pays off or not...

[ToushiTime]

Thanks, I just noticed this comment. The email notifications never work.
Yes, I think the long-term trend of the yen versus the dollar will be downwards but there could be long stints of yen strength. I recently increased my Japan weighting beyond the one in the MSCI ACWI for this reason.