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I’m looking to add another stock or two to my portfolio, any recommendations?
[Discussion] How will AI and Large Language Models affect retail trading and investing?
[Discussion] How will AI and Large Language Models Impact Trading and Investing?
Would it be a bad idea investing in the same investments in a Roth IRA and a regular brokerage account?
Is it ok to never have bonds if you start investing early?
Anything I should know about investing in Vanguard ETFs on Fidelity?
What would you all recommend for second year of IRA?
Let's go! For most, the best investment route is to just purchase a S&P500 index fund/ETF and hold on (*while adding to it often and extra when markets are in a down-cycle). Vanguard's VOO and VFINX have low expense ratios % and are great choices! VTI / VTSMX are also good (total market) options.
Let's go! For most, the best investment route is to just purchase a S&P500 index fund/ETF and hold on (*while adding to it often and extra when markets are in a down-cycle). Vanguard's VOO and VFINX have low expense ratios % and are great choices! VTI / VTSMX are also good (total market) options.
Let's go! For most, the best investment route is to just purchase a S&P500 index fund/ETF and hold on (*while adding to it often and extra when markets are in a down-cycle). Vanguard's VOO and VFINX have low expense ratios % and are great choices! VTI / VTSMX are also good (total market) options.
I hit $100,000 in Broad Market Index Funds (mostly VOO and VTI) this Jan
QQQ or VOO which one will you choose ?
Question about ETFs: What happens if the provider goes under as a business?
Wife's IRA has positions in high-expense ratio funds. Sell and buy VOO?
i want to start investing and i don't know where to begin
Looking to invest savings in VTX and VOO. What should I invest more in.
After watching Nvda go up up and up some more, i dove in at 600 a share. 🤔😳
What stock/suggestion have you gotten from this sub that actually WORKED?
As a whole this sub is overly negative on taking profits and building a cash position
What to do with $300,000 just sitting in my checking account?
What stocks(s) did y’all buy recently and when was it?
100% stocks is not universally good advice. Stock market indexes are not always the right benchmark for your performance.
Is FZIPX same as AVUV? Looking for Low ER small cap ETF
Is putting $50 into VOO every 2 weeks (for the next 20 years) a good or bad idea?
What index fund do I pick for my Roth IRA?
12m Emergency : 100% CD/Tbills vs ~25-75% VOO & rest in CD/Tbills?
Is it normal for the index funds to be weighted this heavily by mega caps?
Where to invest 10k leveraged from CC cash advance (5% fee)?
As a non-US resident is it worth getting Ireland-domiciled ETFs?
Advice for a 27 year old trying to leave the nest?????
Any advantage to buying VOO through Vanguard rather than Schwab?
What are y'all's plays on tomorrow's CPI news? Any calls being made?
Looking for long-term investment suggestions, 30yo • $1-2k / mo.
What is the difference between some EFTs like Vanguard S&P 500?
Mentions
You should open a Fidelity account because they support fractionals. Buy as much VOO on an auto weekly basis as you can stomach. Start with what is comfortable, then push yourself to do more than comfortable. Here is the important part: only sell if you have an urgent expense to pay for. That expense might be a house. Cross that bridge when you get there. Use the Fidelity planning tab to link your banks and credit cards to track expenses. Data is useful. That’s it. That’s all it takes to be financially secure, spend less, invest more auto, don’t panic sell. You will learn more stuff later, but it all flows from that fundamental principle. Best of luck!
VOO and VTI are *not* "low risk" especially over a short time frame. By all means stick with your brokerage, but you can use something like SGOV as a quasi-HYSA.
>or should I go low risk, and put it in VTI and/or VOO? While lower risk than individual stocks , VTI and VOO are still considered high risk , they are not "safe" investments in the short term.
\> "what's the point?" If you can't beat the S&P500 with your equities, yes, you are doing it wrong. Just buy VOO/IVV/SPYM. But also, you have to include your cash in your calculations of your portfolio return. Obviously if you are 99% cash and your portfolio beats VOO for the other 1%, that's not saying much.
Your risk adjusted returns are likely similar, but yes VTI is a more diversified fund. If the market drops, VOO will likely drop more.
Your portfolio YTD is off due to the cash idling but also due to the selected investment’s fees and expenses mirroring the S&P 500 (e.g. $SPY is 0.0945%, $VOO is 0.03%, etc.)
Ideally you rebalance once or twice a year between your big etfs. When VOO is doing great, you trim it and move the trim into your VTI that may not be doing as well. When VOO is doing poorly, you trim your VTI that may have other sectors and buy VOO. The other goal is risk aversion. VOO is heavy on tech /mag 7, and if those tank you could lose tons overnight. Meanwhile VTI isn't as heavily concentrated in tech. For the rebalancing, i think folks usually do VOO and an international fund thinking US and internationL may not move together (us stocks might go down but rest of world is ok, and vice versa). Bc the US is so big we usually saw intl go the way the US did. But other countries are gaining ground.
It would be called VTI, VOO, or QQQM which are all large index funds that pull from diverse stocks
Looked into wheeling which is what you refer to? Do not see the risk reward for it. Could buy VOO instead
VOO ... its expense ratio is lower than SPY.
Sounds like you've got a clear framework now: \- 65-35 ETFs/stocks makes sense \- GOOGL as a "safe stock" is fair - it's basically 5 companies in one \- barbell approach (safe core + speculative 10x bets) is a legitimate strategy \- 7-10 stocks keeps it manageable on trimming: if you're moving to 65-35, the math kind of does itself. trim PLTR/NVDA/RKLB until you hit that ratio, move proceeds to VOO. on the 7-10 stock limit: if you're hunting for 10x, the new additions (LUNR, ASTS, IONQ, etc) are where that upside is - not the established winners. so if you need to cut, the question is which of those speculative bets you have most conviction in. sounds like you know what you're doing, good luck.
If there is a correction the VTI will be less volatile than VOO or QQQ. VOO is heavily weighted in the magnificent 7 stocks. With less volatility and risk you are trading some upside but when the market corrects you will be better off than those holding risk on assets.
> My income is over the Roth limit so that is not an option. Except that you can contribute to an IRA and do a backdoor Roth conversion. And don't sleep on an HSA, if you're eligible. > what is the best strategy to reduce risk in my (eventually) heavy-weighted VOO portfolio in 20+ years when I am closer to retirement? In a taxable account, ideally it's through contributions. Figure out what you might want your retirement-time portfolio to look like, and work backwards to figure out how long you can gradually get there. Like maybe starting 10 years out. You will also have occasions through market declines where you could potentially sell existing positions for offsetting gains and losses and use that opportunity. Or perhaps if you have similar-and-correlated-but-definitely-not-substantially-identical holdings (VOO and ITOT?) and do some loss harvesting strategy that you can carry forward to mitigate taxable gains at a future rebalancing point.
I don’t understand why anyone would select QQQI when VT VTI VOO vug and so many other good performing ETFs exist. Personally I’d pick VOO and add some vug for a time frame such as yours
First off - having PLTR and RKLB grow 6-7x and then another 2-3x is a problem most people wish they had, don't beat yourself up for taking profits along the way. On the actual question: the core issue- you designed a portfolio with stocks as 15-20% satellite allocation, it's now 50%. That's not a portfolio drift, that's a completely different portfolio. The question is whether that's intentional or accidental. option 1 (rebalance within stocks): Your proposed target still keeps you very concentrated - PLTR + NVDA + RKLB + GOOGL = 69% of stock allocation, you're not really diversifying, you're just shuffling the concentration around. If you're going to stay concentrated, might as well stay with the winners. option 2 (trim to ETFs): This brings you back to your original design. the argument: you've already won, lock in some gains, let the core ETFs compound. emotionally harder but structurally cleaner. option 3 (do nothing): The "let winners run" approach. Valid if you have conviction in PLTR/NVDA/RKLB thesis. The risk: you're now 50% individual stocks when you originally wanted 15-20%, if one of these gets cut in half, it'll hurt. My take: I'd do a modified version of option 2, trim the top 3 back to something like 15% each (not your proposed 19/20/10) and move the rest to VOO. this: \- locks in gains \- keeps meaningful exposure to your winners \- gets you closer to your original allocation intent On the speculative names (LUNR, NBIS, ASTS, IONQ, IREN): to be fair, PLTR and RKLB were speculative when you bought them too - and that worked out. If you have conviction and size them appropriately (looks like 1-3% each), that's reasonable. Just know you're keeping the high-risk approach that got you here. No wrong answer here - but be honest about whether you're an index investor with some stock picks, or a stock picker with some index exposure, right now your portfolio says stock picker.
Its because VTI is more volatile than VOO and its more diversified. However diversified doesn't mean higher returns.
You're doing great! Keep automating those VOO purchases and maxing your company match. Consider increasing to 15-20% total savings if you can to catch up on lost time.
I like FXAIX, its cheaper than VOO, performs a little better than VTI
People generally choose VTI over a SP500 ETF for further diversification, not for outperformance. Yes, SP500 has been doing better bc the MAG7 makes up a slightly larger piece of the pie. And that’s been the primary growth driver for any US broad ETF in recent history. I don’t think there’s really any good reason to think small caps will ever consistently outperform the rest of the market esp if we don’t see those ultra-low interest rates again. But that still doesn’t mean diversifying into them is a bad idea. Who knows if tech will continue performing as it has or if it will suffer a targeted correction. Even then, the difference between VTI and VOO is relatively small, there’s no point in debating one scenario over the other.
yea - because we are all good investing goys here who only buy long shares of VOO and other ETFs.... wrong. Think about the fact that every person in here is juiced to the gills with the highest beta meme stocks possible. So a .28% SPY drop is usually a 2-5% drop. Multiple that by about 2 months of chop and down, and you will find that me and my other hulkamanics are probablly all down 20-30% since October highs.
Just started my Roth a week ago. Did 80/20 VOO and QQQ. Already down 1% :) retirement here I come.
I am retiring from being a retard and will be buying VOO only next year good luck fellas
Lump sum VOO or Brk-b whatever DCA any volatile stock like Rklb or Tsla
And VOOG has outperformed VOO
This year yes, but not over the past 5Y lol. It has severely underperformed in the 5Y Vs VOO. 53% for VT vs 83% for VOO
This year yes, but not over the past 5Y lol. It has severely underperformed in the 5Y Vs VOO. 53% for VG vs 83% for VOO
Buy QQQM or VOO in your Roth. Dividends are not free money (Google it). It’s a Roth, you can sell and change to SCHD later, when income is actually needed. You’re giving up a ton of growth by being in dividends so young.
Internationals has been on a tear this year. VXUS almost doubled VOO at 31.85 vs 16.89.
VT (Total world) which is even broader outperformed both VOO and VTI, 20 vs 17 vs 16, so strictly speaking for last year US small caps were underperforming, while the largest diversification of VT proven valuable
Compare 2 funds with portfoliolab.com Buffet said VOO. Fidelity has an excellent one too.
Fidelity is better broker. Supports fractionals on everything. I like Vanguard. And you can do fractionals on VOO there, but on nothing else. Vanguard would prefer you buy VOO at Fidelity, let Fidelity take the service calls and complaints.
Of course, SCHG and VONG are growth ETF's while VOO and SPY are blend ETF's,. It's an apples to oranges comparison.
I use SPYM the fee is 0.02% while VOO is 0.03%.
Loss harvesting isn’t just selling losers, it’s selling losers and buying back into a similar equity. You bank the losses and don’t lose the opportunity for a bounce back. For example, if I’m holding VOO at -10k, I’d sell that and buy into VTI. On paper I have 10k less to pay taxes on, but when the market rebounds I have lost zero equity.
The steps I'd recommend - Step 1: Figure out how much YOU spend monthly. - Step 2: Keep 6 months or 1 year worth of the above money in your savings. - Step 3: Rest into S&P 500 or QQQ or VOO (similar ETFs) - Step 4: Learn about high yield savings account, bonds, mutual funds and other stuff. As you learn, experiment with some money there. - Step 5: Ensure all passwords and accounts are backuped, and you have access to all (Bitwarden is a great App for this). Make sure you have your parents as your Nominee. - Step 6: Learn about documentation, legal implications & How to file your taxes. - Step 7: Optimise all of the above. BEFORE you do riskier stuff.
This is clearly written by AI with a heavy 'anti-Robinhood' bias. This prompt response isn't doing a whole lot of convincing for me. Almost every broker has had regulatory issues and SEC fines. Also, nearly every other broker paused trades or had outages during the meme stock frenzy. I don't care about mutual fund access because I'm 90% VOO. $50 for gold for $210 in IRA matching is an easy math equation. Additionally, gold gives you higher interest rates. I have 7-figures on the platform, and I don't care about the "casino" when a majority of my trades are index ETFs.
The S&P 500 is an *index* -- just an on-paper listing of 500(ish) of the largest US stocks. They make sure all sectors of the market are represented, and they weight the stocks by market cap. S&P 500 funds just copy what that index says. There are MANY S&P 500 index funds. I don't know how many, but I assume without checking that there are well over 100 of them. For the most part, it doesn't matter which you choose because their holdings will be nearly identical, their performance will be nearly identical. The list (off the top of my head) of why you might care: 1. Expense ratios. These basically get subtracted from your return each year. SPY has 0.09%, VOO has 0.03%, so in theory, VOO should outperform SPY by 0.06% each year. But there's so much random noise because maybe they rebalance on a slightly different schedule, on different days, etc. that it's almost irrelevant for such low expense ratios. It is something to look out for if some financial advisor dude is pushing an S&P 500 index fund with like 0.7% expense ratios though, because that's insane. 2. ETF vs mutual fund. Again basically the same performance, but one might prefer one to another. 3. if mutual fund, are there trade fees? For instance, I have Schwab. I cannot trade Vanguard's S&P 500 mutual fund (VFIAX) for free. I can Schwab's S&P 500 mutual fund (SWPPX) for free though. So if I wanted mutual fund over ETF, SWPPX would be the one for me. If I didn't care about mutual funds, I could buy any ETF for zero trade fees, so IVV, VOO, whatever, all fine. 4. If I want to play options games like selling covered calls on my S&P 500 fund holdings, I'd want SPY, full stop. VTI is also an index fund, but it's a different index. Instead of including 500 of the largest US stocks spread across all market sectors, it has several thousand US stocks spread across all market sectors. But since it is also weighted by market cap, that means those 500 largest that comprise the S&P 500 also make up the majority of this other index VTI uses... three fourths? I'd have to look, but that's a reasonable ballpark. And the several thousand smaller companies tend to follow the same trends as those 500 largest ones, so their returns are... not identical, but nearly identical. In theory, VTI will outperform if small cap companies outperform those mega-giant companies, and VOO would outperform if those giants outperform smaller companies. But in practice, it's mostly just all cancelled out over the long term. TL;DR: VOO or VTI, doesn't matter.
SPY for sure if you ever plan to use options strategies such as covered calls, plus the spread on the equities market is going to be tighter as well. Really both expense ratios are rock bottom. If you look at the difference in returns even over a long horizon its only a few hundredths of a percentage better for VOO, which is probably made up for by the better spread on SPY.
VOO is solid! It’s low expense and tracks the index well. Can’t go wrong with it.
Quick PSA first: VTI is the plus-one who brings every single coworker to the fancy gala, not just the S&P 500 A-listers. Now, stop overthinking which fund to pick! Grab the lowest expense ratio option from your broker and set it on auto-pilot. Obsessing over that 0.015% gap between FXAIX and VOO is like arguing which brand of bottled water tastes better when you’re just trying to stay hydrated for 40 years straight. Go touch some actual grass instead of refreshing this thread every 10 minutes.
Quick correction first: VTI is total market, not S&P 500 — it’s the friend who invites everyone to the party instead of just the top 500 cool [kids.As](http://kids.As) for which to pick? Just grab the lowest expense ratio option from your broker that tracks the S&P 500. Overanalyzing the 0.015% difference between FXAIX and VOO is like arguing over which brand of bottled water tastes better when you’re just trying to stay hydrated long-term. Set it on auto-buy and go touch grass instead of refreshing your portfolio 10x a day.
SMH, VTI, VOO, VGT, QQQM. Save your money.
VOO is the S&P500, as is SPYM and FXAIX. VTI is the total US market by weight, which is close to the S&P500, but not identical.
If it’s a taxable account it’s better to buy VOO. If you ever decide to move your account to another brokerage in the future you would have to sell FXAIX since it’s only available at Fidelity. VOO is available everywhere.
I am in a similar boat mentally. My marriage, my job performance, panic attacks... everything is almost the same. I had 50k in gold and cashed out 25k of that to invest in January 2025. Gold had its bull run, but my portfolio got wrecked during the Liberation Day period. Then I panicked and sold all my GOOGL, AMD, Intel, Micron, and uranium stocks; I flew to safety and bought Berkshire and VOO. All of my previous stocks went flying just like gold did before. I was down about 20 percent at that point. Luckily, I got my courage back and bought some silver miners before silver went crazy. That not only covered my losses but I was up like 50% at the top. I was feeling like a prodigy. When silver went down from 54 to 45, my portfolio saw -20% again since miners were behaving like they were leveraged. I was 100% invested in silver miners at that point. Again, I panicked and sold 80% of my silver miner stocks and bought Berkshire, VOO and gold. I probably should sell the rest of the silver stocks and dollar cost into VOO. Maybe I should even sell Berkshire to buy more VOO, since that is stock picking as well. I mean, I don't want to sound like a dick since I did not lose any money and I am still up about 50%, but I am mentally wrecked. I could have just kept all of my gold and had about the same result without this mental deterioration. I hurt my wife; I blamed her for not helping me during my panic sells and blamed her just because she was not interested in trading. She forgave me in the end, but I cry every time I remember how badly I behaved toward her and the things I said that I wish I hadn't. I was a top performer at work, but now I fear that I could get fired. In the end, I learned some lessons, but very expensive ones. I concluded that stock picking investing is not for me because I panic sell every time. I will just keep buying VOO and gold. Advice: Stop looking at the stocks for a while and focus on your life. We both learned that the market doesn't just take your money, it takes your peace of mind and changes your behavior toward the people you love. Apologize to your partner again and again, not because of the money, but because she/he is your real safe haven. Accept that you (and I) are not built for active trading. The best thing we can do is move to boring investments like VOO or gold. A peaceful life is worth more than extra profit you might get from stock picking.
Check the expense ratios. VOO is generally the lowest. That’s what I’ve typically bought.
And SCHG and VONG have consistently outperformed VOO and SPY. If you have a long runway, either is a better place to sit then VOO.
VOO’s solid for long-term, but don’t sleep on SPY either. Both track the S&P pretty closely.
That's exactly what I do... SPY for options and VOO for buy and hold
I’d go with SPYM if your broker doesn’t allow the purchase of fractional shares and you aren’t able to purchase whole shares of VOO.
VOO is the best pure S&P 500 index ETF. If you want to focus on S&P 500 growth stocks, look at VOOG.
If you think 2026 will be another 15+% gain , VOO is no brainer. By the way, that would make it four year in a row higher than historically average and double digits gain, very rare. Or you can go with RSP, USMV purposely tame mega cap weighted VOO, just to sleep better at night. SNP is about 88% gain last five year, some 40% drop can wipe it out. Sure that is highly unlikely, how about 20%, 10%? 2027 and everyone’s beloved 2055 is to the moon for sure, just 2026 what do you think?
I Agree. VOO and SPY buy the same stocks. VOO has a slightly lower expense ratio so you make like .1 % more per year. When you are looking at 9%+ returns Either one is a good choice. EFT’s sell instantly verses mutual funds which take an extra day or two. So either one is a good choice.
They track the exact same index. Functionally identical, SPY has an expense ratio of .09% and VOO is .03%. Thus the slight edge to VOO, IVV, and SPYM. SPYM is .02% but lower trading volume and wider price spreads. In other words be careful with SPYM market orders, better to use limit order to be safe.
Of these three S&P 500 index funds/ETFs FXAIX has the lowest expense ratio. Expense Ratios: FXAIX 0.015% (Fidelity) SWPPX 0.02% (Schwab) VOO 0.03% (Vanguard)
Appreciate the honesty—it already shows you’re course‑correcting. Treat options/leverage and concentrated bets as tuition, then hard‑code rules: DCA the majority into low‑cost index funds (e.g., VOO/S&P 500), cap high‑volatility themes to a small slice, no adding to losers, no chasing hype, no intraday emotional trades. Add “no‑screen” market hours to protect work and life first. At 22, having 70k is not a failure—it’s restart capital, and time + compounding will do heavy lifting. Wishing you a steady reset back to a simple, long‑term, repeatable plan. Thank you again for sharing; I've learned a lot.
VOO has performed better over the last 10 years but SPY is very close.
I've been doing the same going from individual stocks to VTI and VOO.
Open a Fidelity account. Buy whatever you can easily afford of VOO on an auto weekly basis. Work to increase that weekly auto amount. Here is the important part: only sell if you have an urgent expense to pay for. That’s it, that’s all personal finance is: spend less, invest more, don’t panic sell. There is tons more to learn, but that is the foundation. Get started today. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it doesn’t need to be. Best of luck!!
VTI is not an S&P 500 fund, its a total market fund. It doesn't really matter. VOO is a fine choice. As long as the expense ratios are similar they are al about the same.
Yes, you could buy $2,000 worth of VOO and $1,000 worth of SGOV
I did. Sold a shit ton of puts post-Liberation Day and am 100% invested in VOO/VTI.
VOO is up 17% YTD. All of these predictions were wrong.
32% YTD - very happy with a largely balanced strategy of ~60% VOO and another five or six stocks rotating at any one time which all outperformed the index. First full year actively reviewing and investing… also acutely aware this was a good 12 months. Repositioning and throwing 25% of the portfolio in GOOGL in June and continual re-ups since was the catalyst. Options are a difference beast and beyond me. Dabbled small amounts a couple of times to test the waters but timing of realizing a gain or bailing/waiting for a turnaround on a loss required more focus than I could be bothered with (for now). Enjoyed this sub for feedback and general discussion, so thanks to plenty of y’all.
Why is VOO and QQQ dropping so much what happened?
Most people who say real estate is king are selling you a course. Real estate is for leverage and people tend to not panic sell because of its illiquid nature. Stocks are too easy to sell. And when the money gets big the emotions get bigger. Real estate can be useful for taking advantage of leverage. But many people lose money on real estate as well. Or miss what would have just been easier with VOO and chill. Buying real estate to save on taxes is like getting married and having kids to save on taxes: NUTS… Similar to buying a home just for the sake of “not paying someone else’s mortgage”… salesman talk…
Thank you. I do have equity in two startups, with one looking rather promising so that’s my hopeful edge-case to reach my goal. I have done research on Google and ChatGPT and they do say what you’re saying, however I also see other entrepreneurs say real estate is the king of methods to getting rich. I think there’s so many tax breaks and transferring sale $ onto a next investment that allows for explosive growth, so that’s why I’ve come here to ask the people. I agree with you and I appreciate your advice, the cost of repairs, insurance and all those things could be a huge setback, and aren’t unlikely at all. VOO is what I have most of my investments in.
The market is a better at growing wealth. Just ask Google or chat GPT. Successful start up > Nasdaq > sp500 > real estate > cds > cash This is the order of best return with highest risk to lowest. A home is the best investment if you know you will live there for 20 years, or if you have a family (endless reports in how stable home provides better outcomes for two parent households yada yada). If you buy a house, you will never know what that house costs you. Taxes, repairs, furnishing you would never buy for an apartment, roof, hvac, floors remodel kitchen. Houses do not save you money. Being a landlord sucks but can be a nice landing pad years later. But again, you will spend more than you think and growth would be faster in VOO and chill (assuming you don’t panic sell).
Most people aren't actually invested in anything tbh, like 40% of Americans can't even cover a $400 emergency. The "everyone" doing VOO and chill is mostly just finance bros on Reddit
QQQM or VOO and chill. What you should really do is just automate. Buy your lump sum, that’s fine. But you should setup auto so you don’t accumulate large cash positions in the first place. Best of luck!!
You’re over thinking. Just VOO and chill once you have income in excess of bills. Sell only when you have an urgent expense or high return opportunity. You had that opportunity. Discomfort is normal for business owners. When is it bad management: when you’re all equity in startup and refusing to deploy cash in diversification. This doesn’t sound like you. You will diversify when cash flow allows. Normally business owners are terrible investors, you’re not making any of their normal noises. I think you’re good.
Splitting your funds between VOO and QQQ is fine. If you want a lower cost ETF that acts like QQQ, look at VONG, top growth stocks from the Russell 1000.
You lost 10k not really that big of a deal. You got greedy and should have put that money into VOO when you were at 200k.
> If you bought VOO for eight years and **then got back into AGQ when the market started to recover** LOL. So I should have busted out my crystal ball and timed the market. Yeah, timing the market always works out so well. That's not gambling at all.
If the market wasnt manipulated against its participants, there would be billionare-made option traders. But it doesnt work that way. I can see behind the scenes, i work in institutional trading. Whenever a large number of market orders fill - the market resides. Whenever an option is bought at market, the price is set up to where the client gets the worst deal possible, or just misses the mark entirely (thus cancelling the order). The exchanges themselves have become a black hole of information that very few can comprehend. But it all leads down a path of lost money for the masses. Long term holders make money becouse the market floats upwards due to inflation. Neither SPY, VOO, QQQ kept up with inflation though. Cost of food energy and living in general is up 300% over 3 years regardless of what the data shows. Doesnt take a genuis to see a house worth 60k 4 years ago is worth 300k today.
And obviously you should have done something like that. What you did was financial suicide. How can you not see the math? If you bought VOO for eight years and then got back into AGQ when the market started to recover, you would have about $150,000 for each $10,000 that you have now. If you bought other things like SMH it would be even better. Learn from your mistakes. Don't defeat yourself.
Seriously? 12.5 of the past 14 years were booming for the market... and you lost money year after year after year for zero logical reason. Again, if you wanted AGQ the past few months, then buy it then! You also said 15 years ago, not 2016, but at the beginning of January 2016, you let $10,000 or whatever uselessly sit for 8 years, breaking even. In that time, if you would have put the money in VOO you would have had $27,450 at the stat of 2024. Or, if you had put it in SMH, you would have had $63,800. If you then put that $63,800 in AGQ at the start of 2024, you would now have about $400,000. Instead you have something less than the original $10,000...
🤷♂️ Everything in my portfolio is Roth and Traditional IRA, Roth 401k, HSA, and brokerage, either RKLB (~22%), VOO (~67%), or my company's RSUs (~11%). Just looking into branching out in '26 (but not having it turn into loss porn posts).
Buying during run up = FOMO in. The panic selling out, that would have been to other investments you likely made, the actual reasonable ones like VOO or VT that I was replying to. You don’t seem to understand what opportunity cost and counterfactual are. Which is fine. You don’t even know to be embarrassed to say you held something during a historic 15 years of the market. Best of luck to you sir.
Anyone working a 9-5 as a financial advisor doesn’t even know how to manage their own finances. Block his number and just DCA in VOO
Sell now, invest the earnings in VOO, and never play options again.
Look - I do think you're getting \*wrecked\* by some of the comments, but they're also not wrong. You're background whining about more or less being an incel and 'woe is me,' before the market losses, and I get it - life can be a bitch. However: 1. You're young. You've got plenty of time to improve your life and to make better choices. 2. You're employed. A ton of people aren't - a someone who has been hiring in tech over the past years, it's been damned obvious the entire market (including hiring in AI unless you have a \*very\* special/unique pedigree (e.g. leaving Deepmind or a few others) has been utter crap for at least 3 years now. 4 years ago, couldn't get submissions. 2.5-3 years ago would get 300 submissions in 2-3 days. Make yourself seen in a \*useful\* way at work. 3. I see you've already posted about 'maybe coming back in a bit and trying again' - this doesn't sound like 'lesson learned,' it sounds like 'once I have enough money to gamble, I'll do it again.' It's your call, but hey, S&P is up 18% or so and VXUS even more - you could have taken the cash, or profits and dumped 90% of it into VTI or SPYM/VOO and VXUS or DFIV and had - <something>. I won't even ask if you've got retirement accounts, but there's a reason for the mantra of emergency savings, pay off high interest debts, max retirement allocations, etc. before brokerage or trading accounts. RE: no friends, no dates, blah blah. Try to take a look at yourself from the outside. Are you obsessed with trading that any convos you have are about that, or do you actually listen to other people? Do you give monologues or actually interact when you engage with others? Do you bathe, shave, wear clean clothes, etc. ? These are all things you can work on. Look at Meetup groups or equivalents, hopefully for something besides options trading. Get out of the house/apartment/etc. It's ALL work, man, but the endless 'woe is me' is a self-perpetuating cycle, and even real friends can get tired of hearing about it if everything they get from you is negatives. You can take lessons from the past, but nothing good comes of obsessing over it as it can't be changed, but you can change in how you look at things, and plans for the future. If you want to jump back on the options train, how about limiting it to for example, 10% of your holdings max, no matter what happens? It's all on you if you take any sane lessons away from this, and use it to improve your own future, or stay in the 'woe is me, maybe I get fired, no one likes me' mentality. And you're not the only one - many of us have had serious ups and downs in their lives, and had to 'adjust' as to 'now what?' I've moved across 10 states or so not knowing a soul - a whole lot of lonely 'new starts from scratch' with accompanying moments of loneliness and 'wtf am I doing?' at times. Came damned close to losing a house, temporarily lost a career in one of the big crashes, but you don't give up - you take the lumps, the lessons learned, and move the F on. Good luck!
Need advice. Have been maxing out my Roth IRA for several years, and now finished grad school and have a job where I have enough to also invest in a brokerage account. I invest in VOO, VXUS, and BND for my Roth, and will likely do mainly VOO, VXUS, and maybe QQQ for brokerage (still researching). I have around $30k I want to pull from savings to invest as well. Should I lump sum invest all of it now, or spread out throughout the year (e.g., invest weekly/monthly)? Will also be investing a portion of my income monthly into the brokerage as well. Does anyone have any advice? What are some great ETFs to invest in for a brokerage account? General pointers/advice appreciated as well. (27 years old, employed with $110k salary, not super risk-seeking, and looking for medium/long term).
Need advice. Have been maxing out my Roth IRA for several years, and now finished grad school and have a job where I have enough to also invest in a brokerage account. I invest in VOO, VXUS, and BND for my Roth, and will likely do mainly VOO, VXUS, and maybe QQQ for brokerage (still researching). I have around $30k I want to pull from savings to invest as well. Should I lump sum invest all of it now, or spread out throughout the year (e.g., invest weekly/monthly)? Will also be investing a portion of my income monthly into the brokerage as well. Does anyone have any advice? What are some great ETFs to invest in for a brokerage account? General pointers/advice appreciated as well. (27 years old, no debt, employed with $110k income, not super risk-seeking, and looking for medium/long term).
You do realize prices don’t magically go down right? Prices going down fast means lots of people sold, you get that right? The covid crash happened because a ton of people sold. Yea, they bought again before year end. But if Covid would have happened in July/August instead of early march, I doubt it would have recovered before year end. It is also irrelevant. If someone doesn’t need a money manager, great. I wish everyone would VOO and chill. That is such a small part of what I do as an advisor. It is more about planning and helping people stick to the plan. Increase effort. Motivation. I was just pointing out managers won’t beat the index, they’re not designed to. Comparing their balanced (watered down) portfolio return to 100% aggressive equity is nonsensical. That is my only point.
TSSD expense ration, .65%, VOO expense ratio, .03%.
VOO is up almost 18%, nothing sad about that. Particularly compared to 2022, which was 18% in the opposite direction.
Just do VOO or vt you idiot
Have you considered DCA into VOO over a course of 20 years?
Wow man ridiculous over the top post considering you lost 500 bucks, or nothing as some have commented. You can't sweat what ifs. I sold RKLB for a small loss at $7 and lost more than $500 and didn't lose my shit. In fact I rarely think about it. Shit happens with trading. You're young. Aside from play money, put most of your investment funds in QQQ or VOO and you will be set. I can only wish I had your trading opportunities when I was your age.
I agree with the other user pointing out that VT is the entire stock market. So you're doubling up on VOO and VXUS by sticking with VT. Personally, I would probably just toss that money into VOO or spit it amongst VXUS and VOO at you desired balance. Others may have different opinions.
What's the point of holding VT when you already have VOO and VSUS?
Thoughts on my current ETF split: VGT 11% - VOO 51% - VXUS 24% - VT 14%
I’ll even let you say you lost the 100k but at the end of the day that’s a drop in the bucket over your lifetime. You learned a hard lesson and hopefully you won’t have to learn it again. Life isn’t defined by your losses it’s defined by your ability to persevere despite hardship. Get up get your ass back to work so you don’t get fired and start investing in normal things VOO and BTC you’ll be alright. Good luck out there you got knocked down but you’re not out.
Contact Robinhood support. Tell them to permanently disable options on your account. I know it sucks but I promise people have lost much much more. VOO and chill when in doubt zoom out. You Got this my friend
VOO and chill or you lose the rest