Wow, did you see the big stock market move in October? The worst monthly S&P 500 performance since 2011! When you’re still working and contributing to your retirement savings it’s easy to lean back and relax: you can buy equities at discount prices and you buy more shares for the same amount of savings when prices are down, a.k.a. dollar-cost-averaging. Now that we’re retired things are different. Sequence Risk creates the opposite effect of dollar-cost-averaging: you deplete your money faster while the portfolio is down. I have been writing about this theme for almost two years now and now it looks like I might become my very own poster child of Sequence Risk.
So, are we worried having retired at (or close to) the peak of the market? Well, take a look at the title image: an ERN family selfie while vacationing in Angkor Wat (Siem Reap, Cambodia) in October. It doesn’t look like we’re too concerned about the stock market! And here are a few reasons why…
1: We don’t apply the naïve 4% Rule
Retiring at the stock market peak is only scary if you start withdrawing too much money. My research shows that by shifting the initial withdrawal rate closer to 3% works wonders in securing long-term retirement security. By simply withdrawing around 20-25% less than under the naive 4% Rule (my kind of flexibility!) you’d easily hedge against even the worst historical return patterns, e.g., a Great-Recession-style stock market drop or a repeat of the 1970s and early 1980s. In other words, even if we were at the precipice of a stock market cliff like September 1929, a low enough withdrawal rate, somewhere in the low-3% rage would survive for long enough.
Of course, I’d have to lie if I told you that I’d be completely cool and collected and emotionally unaffected by a prospect of a Great-Depression-Repeat even when using a 3% initial withdrawal rate! But are we even close to the precipice? Nobody can say for sure! And keep in mind that back in 1929 a lot of “experts” agreed that the prospect of a stock market crash was extremely slim. But I’m still going out on a limb here and argue that we’re probably not that close to a repeat of the Great Depression. And that brings me to reason #2…
2: Macro fundamentals are still solid
As I wrote in a post earlier this year, macroeconomic fundamentals matter for equity expected returns. Granted, there are a lot of naysayers who, quite correctly, point out that the correlation between growth and equity market performance seems quite spurious. But that’s a red herring! It’s missing the forest for the trees! I never claimed that during economic expansions the stock market can only go up. Quite the opposite, even outside of recessions we can have sharp drawdowns, e.g., October 1987, the Asian crisis in 1997, the LTCM crisis in 1998, and more recently the Chinese devaluation in 2015, the Fed scare in early 2016, and again in 2018. I mostly said that the stock market drops that eventually became a Sequence Risk nightmare all have one thing in common: the stock market drop coincided with a recession. And not just any garden-variety recession; we’re talking about a deep recession like the Great Depression or the 1970s/80s!
So, let’s look at the three macro indicators that I like to monitor. One is looking a little bit shaky but the other two are still extremely strong:
1: The yield curve is not (yet) inverted. But it’s getting close! The gap between the 2-year and 10-year Treasury bond yields has narrowed quite a bit since I wrote the post earlier this year. But I can show you plenty of examples in the past where the yield spread had narrowed to around 30bps and the next recession was still many years away, see chart below:
2: Unemployment claims are at historical lows. And so is the unemployment rate. If a major economic downturn was around the corner one would expect to see this series moving upward very steeply. Certainly at the start of a recession and sometimes even noticeably before the recession. That hasn’t happened yet. So, we’re probably still safe!
3: Business confidence (as measured by the PMI index) is still very strong. A level of 57.7 as of October 31. This does not yet look like a late-cycle slowdown of business activity. And notice that this is despite the uncertainty about tariffs and trade wars, uncertain midterm election outcomes, etc.! That said, business confidence can change rapidly. There have been precedents in the past where the PMI melted down from above 60 (=strong expansion) into the low 40s (=likely recession) within a few months. So, I’ll be monitoring this indicator carefully.
Granted, these are only three indicators. But trust me, I developed much more complicated models when I was still working in finance, monitoring dozens or even hundreds of indicators, using all sorts of sophisticated statistical tools. And I can happily report that the Pareto Principle is alive and well. Looking at the three indicators you gain 80% of the information for 20% of the effort. Actually, much less than 20%, maybe 0.2% of the effort.
3: I diversify with Real Estate
Real Estate is only a small part of our portfolio but it’s growing. I like the asset class because it will likely provide stable cash flow and diversification benefits. Our real estate holdings right now are comprised of the following components:
- We hold several private equity real estate funds, mainly invested in large multi-family housing properties. We enjoy the steady cash flow and tax advantages through depreciation allowances early during the ownership. I haven’t written much about our experience on the blog here but I’m working on a more detailed post coming up in the future. For now, if you like a sneak peek, listen to the Fire Drill podcast episode where I talked about the topic with Gwen and J.
- We just became homeowners again! In two previous posts, I detailed why I think owning a house can (but doesn’t have to) be a good investment (“See that house over there? It’s an investment!” and “My best investment ever: Homeownership?!“). Especially for early retirees, exchanging a big chunk of money (ideally at the stock market peak!) and transforming it into an asset that reduces your retirement expenses by not having to pay rent can be a pretty good investment. I think of homeownership as getting tax-free rental income from ourselves. It’s a hedge against rental inflation and especially Sequence of Return Risk because we eliminate a large mandatory budget item! What we bought and where and why will be a topic for a future blog post, stay tuned!!!
- We are also in the market for sampling some of the crowd-funding platforms and their offerings of both equity and debt deals. Stay tuned!
4: More diversification: volatility can be great for alternative investments such as option trading
Talking about diversification, one other technique I’m using in my retirement planning is option-writing. I wrote about this topic before, two years ago! In fact, the post where I detail my own options trading strategy is the one single post with the most comments (300+ and counting). It has even more comments than any single post in the safe withdrawal series (though the SWR series still has more comments combined, of course). Well, long story short, the options trading strategy actually performed pretty well despite the drop in the stock market. Selling naked put options is a great way to generate income in sideways or even downward moving markets. Especially, when the rise in volatility is gradual and doesn’t come out of the blue like in early February this year. In October I was able to sell puts with strikes far enough out of the money that even the big drops didn’t cause any sizable losses and we eeked out a net gain for the month!
But just for the record, exotic investments such as put writing or related strategies should be used only by experienced investors and only with the proper risk controls. Last year, I warned about a Credit Suisse fund using a “short-VIX strategy” (related, but not identical to naked put selling) and sure enough, that was the fund that blew up on February 5 this year and wiped out 96% of investor money!
5: The Shiller CAPE ratio is heading down
One advantage of the drop in stock prices: The Shiller CAPE Ratio will move down into a more reasonable range. From its temporary high of almost 33 right around the peak of the market, it’s now moved to just above 30. If you’re using a CAPE-based safe withdrawal rate the drop in the equity portfolio is partially offset by the slightly better-looking valuation. For example, if you’re using a CAPE-based Rule
SWR = 1.5% + 0.5*(1/CAPE)
then the safe withdrawal rate went up from 3.03% to 3.15%. Doesn’t sound like much, only 12 basis points, but it’s a 4% increase in the withdrawal amount. It offsets more than half of the drop in the equity portfolio!
And even better, as I’ve written about previously (see this post, item #4), in the Shiller CAPE ratio, we’re now replacing the really low earnings from 10 years ago with much better-looking numbers, so the denominator in the CAPE ratio will continue to rise and likely (hopefully!) push the CAPE below 30 again before too long!
6: After a large enough drop, even the 4% Rule of Thumb becomes sustainable again!
In historical simulations, you’ll notice that the 4% Rule fails mostly around the market peaks. After a large enough drop, of course, even the 4% Rule of Thumb becomes safe again, see the output from the Google Sheet in “An Updated Google Sheet DIY Withdrawal Rate Toolbox (SWR Series Part 28)” below. Failure probabilities and the fail-safe withdrawal rates are grouped by where the S&P500 stands relative to its most recent peak: at the all-time-high or at various percentage ranges below the peak. At the peak, the 4% Rule has an unacceptably high failure rate of almost 20%. But at 10-20% down from the peak the failure probability is down to 3% and at 20-30% below the peak it’s almost down to zero! Of course, let’s hope we won’t see a drawdown by 20-30% because that would put us in the range of 2,050 to 2,350 in the S&P500! But if it does the 4% Rule looks pretty safe again!
7: Roth conversions become cheaper
For tax purposes, the year 2018 is – pardon the pun – still a complete write-off for us. I got my base salary, a large bonus, deferred compensation and all of that puts us into a very high marginal tax bracket for the 2018 tax year. But come 2019, we’ll start from scratch with no (or very low) W-2 income and we’ll look into doing some tax moves like Roth conversions. Just as a recap, in a Roth conversion, we’d move pre-tax money from a 401k into a Roth and owe the tax the conversion amount. For us, the arithmetic is pretty simple: Unattended, our 401k accounts will likely grow to a large enough account by age 70 that will likely create required minimum distributions so large that we’ll get pushed into the third tax bracket, currently the 22% marginal federal tax rate (and maybe more in 25 years!). Any conversion we can perform now that keeps our current taxable income below that dreaded third federal income tax bracket seems like a great idea.
Anyhow, if our plan is to shift a certain dollar amount of our 401k every year starting in 2019 then a slightly decimated 401k will mean we can shift a larger portion of the pre-tax retirement savings into the safe haven of the Roth every year. Of course, the market might have recovered already by 2019 and this whole point is moot. But if this drop in equities becomes a drawn-out correction or even a bear market we can find some (small) solace in being able to perform Roth conversions at a faster pace. It’s the last bit of “dollar-cost-averaging” we can still use while in retirement!
Conclusion
So, there you have it! Seven reasons to not get worried too much about the October market volatility. I’ll keep you updated and let you know if and when we change our mind!
Well you seem to have every angle covered. Thanks for the assessment on the current state of the investment cycle, seems we are indeed still doing well be getting towards the end of it. Curious as to see what the trigger will be. Anyhow, enjoy the well deserved time off (and associated travelling)!
Thanks, TeamCF! Yeah, what will be the trigger this time? Maybe the Fed raising interest rates too aggressively?! Hard to make a forecast. But we should see it in the three series! 🙂
In any case, greetings back to Europe! Let’s get together again next time we make it to the Netherlands!
You have a deal!
Another great post. I have always debated when I will be able to do a Roth conversion. Fortunately I make a great salary, but the downside is that the Roth conversion will not happen anytime soon.
Congrats on the new home. We are currently debt and property free after selling our lot last month, Once we make our move across the country in December I suspect we will slowly be looking for a home. I am hoping for a slow down in home prices and suspect within 2 years prices will be cooling.
Thanks, and best of luck with your move to Tennessee! I used to live in Georgia and always enjoyed the area in the mountains in North GA and TN!
I have 20+ years to go until retirement so I’m not worried about the declining stock market, but if I was in your situation my thought process would probably be different. Even though a declining stock market isn’t going to change my strategy, I still do find your assessment of the current market conditions and what it means to a possible coming economic downturn interesting, so please do have follow up posts as the conditions change!
Thanks! Oh, yes: a downturn during the accumulation phase, 20 years before retirement, is probably a good thing (if you can stomach the temporary drop). But things get a bit scarier in retirement. Which is why I monitor momentum and macro signals. I will certainly write something again if my assessment changes! 🙂
It’s very reassuring to have you as the poster child for retiring potentially around a high of the market. Who better to live and tell the story. It is nice to know that your 3% withdrawal rate is very reasonable and safe. Not only that, but it sounds like due to your bonuses and such, this particular year you are not needing to sell much.
Interesting that you purchased your home while you are traveling. I suppose that allows you to reduce your California state tax a small amount of the year. Knowing you, it might have been a factor.
Thanks, Susan! It turns out that the decision to buy a home was more mundane and had nothing to do with tax planning (we will simply claim our standard deduction this year). We simply found a nice home we liked and made an offer. We will have a home waiting for us when we come back from our trip. Not a bad price to pay: two months of a house sitting around vacant is nothing in the big scheme! 🙂
We are a long way off too and will just have to enjoy the bump ride for another decade or two. I’m glad you are on “our side” and conjuring up a strategy with a high likelihood of success. Keep calm and withdrawal 3%! good luck! 🙂
Thanks! I hope my bumpy ride now makes other people more confident to choose the same route we get to the same point 10 years down the road! 🙂
Great Analysis and I’m certainly hoping you’re right! I’m in the same boat with the recent draw down coming at a inconvenient time of no/minimal income. It sounds like you guys may have bought your house at a great time in terms of the market cycle in general though which is awesome.
I love the picture. We arrived in Siem Reap yesterday and are heading to Angkor Wat this week, just trying to decide between the 1 or 3 day pass. What did you guys do and what would you recommend?
Thanks! Oh, wow, we missed each other by just a few weeks!
We ended up getting a 1-day pass only. It’s enough to cover the main sites: 5 locations in one day (plus lunch in between). We rented a tuk-tuk for the day to drive us around ($20 plus we gave a generous tip).
We were all totally spent and exhausted after that day and spent the other whole day at the hotel by the pool and in the city. 🙂
But if you’re staying longer, maybe go for the 3-day pass?! Maybe explore on days 1 and 3 and take a rest on day 2?
I appreciate it! I was leaning toward the one day pass and just making it a really long day and seeing as much as possible so I like your idea. $20 for the day seems to be about the going rate for tuktuks here although we were considering doing a sunrise tour with a group which is about the same price.
I checked your itinerary a while back and there were several places where we almost overlapped but never quite did. I hope you guys are having an awesome time!
Wow, congrats on the new house and all the confidence (MMM must have gotten to you a little or maybe it is just math … it is probably just math). I can see why you are so comfortable given the US market history. This is another comprehensive and compelling post.
I found something new (to me) and scary to keep me up at night and keep us working perhaps well beyond a 3 percent withdrawal rate. Do you have any thoughts on why the S&P 500 is not the Nikkei? As one of your previous posts points out 150 years of US equity returns is not that much when planning for a 60 year retirement. But looking at other developed countries for historical data is pretty scary for trying to plan for a reasonable safe withdrawal rate. Have you given some thought to if or how to include worldwide equity data into a retirement simulation? I would love to hear your thoughts in a future post.
I can plan for a lost decade early in retirement, but it seems impossible to account for 29 lost years and counting. It is probably time to look into some of the diversification options you discuss here and earlier.
Thanks!
What baffles me about the Nikkei’s issues is that you don’t hear many stories about struggling retirees there. In fact wealthy Japanese tourism has remained a ‘thing’ almost 30 years on. Where else were they earning returns besides the Nikkei?
I think they are not retirees living off a financial portfolio. Japan still has generous public and workplace retirement systems.
The Japanese do not invest heavily in the Nikkei — they are generally risk averse and have a high personal savings rate. In fact I’d venture to say that very few nations have tied their retirement systems so closely to equity markets … which is how it was in the US a few decades ago and should be food for thought to all who think that the stock market is the most logical place to store one’s life savings.
Well, someone has to hold the $23 trillion or so of equity wealth in the U.S. Pension funds on the way out and the 401k money has to be invested somewhere.
Besides, my research has shown (see SWR series) that the highest rate of success comes from investing a minimum of 70-80% in stocks, especially over long horizons!
Given all that, I’d argue the stock market IS the most logical investment vehicle. Rental Real Estate might be even better but it’s not for everyone! 🙂
Thanks!
The Japanase lost decades problem is something on my mind, too. Japan had pretty crazy lofty equity valuation at the peak, even wrose than the dot-com bubble in the U.S.:
http://i0.wp.com/siblisresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Japan-Shiller-PE.png?zoom=1.25&resize=785%2C289
That makes me a little bit less worried about a Japanese scenario for the U.S.
I’m more owrried about a 1965-1982 repeat. A long span of so-so market returns with bad recessions in between. None of them as bad 2008/9 but the whole two-decade period would have destroyed a lot of FIRE dreams…
But with a 3-3.25% SWR you would have survived! 🙂
Thanks for your post. Love it! Very insightful and logical. Please keep blogging.
Thanks for the compliment! You rock! 🙂
I like the 3% withdrawal rate. That’s super safe. For us, we plan to avoid drawing down the principal until we’re 55. That should work pretty well too. More about the house, please. 🙂
Thanks, Joe! 3% seems pretty safe even in the most unpleasant market conditions. And who knows, maybe this was all just a blip because the S&P went above 2800 again today. I guess I posted this at the right time! 🙂
About the house: I’m writing a post about that next month! Stay tuned!!!
Re your point 1 above (Initial W/Rate (IWR) of c. 3%) and the comment about your “kind of flexibility” – I thought we agreed in discussion of your Part 25 that even at 4% IWR you’ll have to find about 2.5-3.0 times annual consumption of “flexibility” in the form of lower consumption, work or cash buffer. How people come up with it is up to individual preferences. And, of course, any less “flexibility” will not work. Or, did I misunderstand our discussion?
I am not a fan of the so-called 4% rule – but would just like to see the whole picture set out around “flexibility”.
That sounds about right. The 4% Rule works if you have a large enough cushion, but that means you’re using an EFFECTIVE withdrawal rate much lower than 4%.
I don’t keep much of a cushion and simply keep our assets all in productive assets and start with a 3% SWR initially.
A great post, again! Keep them coming, too!
I learned that our company doesn’t allow to keep 401k with its administrator after we leave the company. It must moved to an IRA within a year. So, if I’m correct, this puts me at the big disadvantage from the tax perspective, correct? Any alternatives in such situation?
Just to have a full understanding what I’m trying to say/ask, here’s a brief story.
If I leave my job, I’m forced to move my 401k to an IRA within a year (or faster). In my understanding, it’s not worth (tax wise) to convert it to a Roth IRA as my spouse doesn’t want to retire and his income is much higher than mine.
When both spouses retire and move their 401k’s to IRA’s, is there a benefit to convert them slowly into Roth IRA’s? If so, in what cases?
I’m staying tuned for your article about the house. I will bet that you’re a resident of NV :-).
Safe travels!
Well, it means that you should do the backdoor Roth before all that money comes from the 401k and into the Rollover IRA. Once the 401k becomes a Rollover IRA it’s counted when calculating the cost basis vs. taxable ratio for future Roth conversions.
But it might still be attractive to do Roth conversions. It simply means almost all of it will be taxable as ordinary income…
A slight point of clarification here, but your pretax IRA basis is counted as of the last day of the year, so whether or not you do a back door conversion before or after your pretax 401k->IRA in that year doesn’t matter, you will be screwed by the pro rata rule. For example, see https://www08.wellsfargomedia.com/assets/pdf/personal/investing/retirement/taxes-and-retirement/pro-rata-rule.pdf (“… as of 12/31 of the distribution year.”). OP, see if you can have a side hustle and open your own self directed 401k and roll to that. As an aside, 401k might offer stronger creditor protection in some states, vs IRAs.
Big ERN, you are my hero. Some others in the FIRE movement are credited with “godfather of the FIRE movement” and so on, and I think we should coin a title for you. Maybe “Quant of the FIRE movement”. Thanks for all your analysis on these pages.
All excellent points! Thanks for the clarification on when the IRS counts the cost basis. Very useful!
And thanks for the compliment! That makes all the effort worthwhile! 🙂
Very good article! Thanks for posting… I just turned in my notice today and definitely needed the reassurance that my decision is the right one given recent gyrations in the market. 30 days from now we’ll be joining you on the other side in my early 50s! After the holidays here in the States we’ll strike off for India in January and be in Cambodia in February, so it’s very cool to see Angkor Wat pictures as a preview of what we can expect… and I’m prepaying as much of that as I can now so that we enter the first days of early retirement without incurring big costs.
Awesome! Best of luck in your early retirement!
Also a wise decision to pay for future expenses (to a degree at least) now when the market is still high. This will help with sequence risk!
Great post ERN. I’m a relatively new reader (UK resident with a couple of years to go before I quit). Planning a bit of a splurge during the first few years of retirement (from age 59) then settle back to 3.5% or thereabouts. Numbers looking good at the moment, but agonising about asset allocation! Happy travels!
Thanks Joe! Nothing wrong with a temporary splurge! But 3.5% seems very solid long-term. Especially for a 59-year-old!
Best of luck!
Interesting post – I recently discovered your blog and have spent many an hour reading your take on SWR’s and early retirement. Love to see your very analytical approach! I’m retiring on December 31 (age 51) and there is that concern about retiring at a market high. But of course, the market is often at an all time high so probably not that unusual. One question though – you are keeping a close eye on some of the macro-economic fundamentals. What do you intend to do if the signals point to an imminent recession? Move out of equities and into something else? Or just reduce your withdrawal rate?
Thanks again for the thoughtful writing.
Excellent question about the impending recession signal. Right now I use this signal purely as a “don’t panic” signal to soothe my nerves that nothing truly bad is lurking around the corner.
If we do get to the point where I convinced myself that things get bad I MAY consider moving part of the portfolio out of stocks and into bonds/short-term bills. But even that is not straightforward. What if stocks already fell by 30% at that time? Is it still worthwhile moving out at that time? I will think about the options when we get to that point! 🙂
Kinda follow-up questions to show I do read some comments 🙂 Interesting hint at the difficulties of market timing, I know I’m inexperienced!
Doesn’t having actually historically predictive market indicators push up the realistic SWR returns a bit?
Also, I’m curious on your opinion on using options to amplify the returns from mostly-knowing that market downturns/upturns are coming instead of just adjusting your asset allocation. I’m not experienced enough yet in options to implement it unfortunately, but hoping you could cut it off at the pass and save me some time 🙂
Well, if you do market timing and you’re good at it, it should allow you to set a higher SWR. I did some simple simulations with a momentum cross-over rule and/or getting out of equities during recessions (with a certain lag) and both enhance the SWR. But I only did that with getting out of the stock market not through options, which is much more complicated to get historical quotes for. 🙂
Very very interesting articles (only just found your site so just spent a few hours so far:)) and I love the fact that someone is actually digging in to these numbers to a BIG BIG thank you!
Find this one particularly interesting as I am in a similar position but do not have your mathematical background (although finance) and the SWR to me often feels way to simplified and “historical”. At the same time, it makes it easy for FIRE aspirants to find a number to work towards.
My personal concern is more that I don’t know what I don’t know and given the current market situation and the buildup we have seen over almost a decade, I personally see a lot of asset valuations very stretched and “free” money everywhere. Feels like we have been kicking the can further and further down the road and leveraged up. Individual leverage, corporate leverage, municipal leverage and government leverage…..With rates still very low and in the western world extremely low, there is really not much power and even if they were to keep low rates and continue to print, eventually something would break and it would not be pretty.
First question, do you think that the next recession will be “better or worse” than 2008 and if you can elaborate a bit, that would be brilliant.
Secondly: What do you think about the implication of these now very large components of certain indices and for example the three largest companies in the S&P stands for 10%, pretty significant concentration risk if those would have “it-bubble” like draw downs. How do you think there or you invest much broader?
Thirdly: Have you looked in to JP Morgans study on timing? The did a study on stock market returns 1995-2014 and concluded the average returns were 9,85% but if you missed the TEN best days, your average returns were 6,10%. I would really love to hear your comments thoughts on this, sounds crazy but after 20 years in the market I think I might have learned that timing is not a thing I should spend my time on…
If you were to think that a scenario worse than 2008 was not unlikely and potentially even a Japanese scenario, how would you think about your allocation? (guessing, still stocks but also more properties and potentially more option strategies as the cool thing with selling puts is that you collect the premium and if you are hit bad, the following premium will be significant due to the increased volatility so if you are consistent you should have a nice consistent uncorrelated (or even negative) return (not read your post on this topic yet)).
Anyway, love the depth of your posts so very interesting to continue learning from you, a massive thank you and let me know if you ever pass by Sweden:).
Best Regards,
Jakob (www.athhw.com)
Thanks! Great questions!
I would suspect the next recession will be a shallow one again. Hard to imagine how something as destructive as 2008 would repeat again anytime soon.
2: I’m a little bit troubled about the large tech weights too. If you look at the non-IT stocks this year they would have fared much better than the index.
3: the fun stats like “if you’d missed the X trading days with the lowest/highest returns, then your portfolio return would have been Y instead of Z” have been around for a long time. But nothing actionable can come out of them since you don’t know when the days will be. You can turn the stat into an argument against market timing (missing out on the 10 best days would lower your return a lot) or in favor of market timing (missing out on the 10 worst days significantly increases your return). So, it’s a useless stat, by a useless analyst, but it always gets picked up by some journalists because the story sounds sexy.
I don’t think a Japanese scenraio is likely. Valuations are still more attractive here even at a CAPE>30.
So, I’m still in stocks. And real estate. But I do concede that the SWR should be a little bit lower due to the high CAPE.
Option selling will do well in a sideways moving market with a lot of vol. See my posts on the topic! 🙂
Hi Big ERN,
Just wanted to thank you for all the great information you consistently put out; I have gained a wealth of knowledge and am looking forward to digging through all of your posts.
I wanted to get your take on the following:
A concern of mine is the unprecedented influx of capital into theses popularized low-cost broad based index funds and what affect that may have on the ensuing market. Jack Bogle recently expressed his concerns with index funds becoming too large of an overall market share. As passive investors may one day become majority owners, who will be making the calls at shareholder meetings?
I am in my late 20s and have just recently espoused FI living with deploying all disposable capital into a total stock market index fund, but I am worried about the financial pundits predicting sub-par annualized returns and an overvalued market.
Any thoughts or insight would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you,
Aaron
Thanks!
It’s on my mind too, that too uch indexing might interfere with corprate governance. I don’t think that we’re even close to where this will make a significant difference.
If you’re in your 20s you probably don’t have to worry about low expected returns (yet). By the time you retire things will lok very different, for sure! 🙂
And if stocks are still this expensive when you retire, you’d have to accept a lower withdrawal rate as I always stress in my SWR series posts.
Good luck!
how do you feel today?? 11% down from the highs.
11% down vs 8% down, so slightly more nervous than when I wrote this post. I’m watching the 10-2 yield spread and it’s pretty close to zero now.
I have heard some about the inverted interest rate, do you believe it is a bad thing and a sell signal?
The 10y-2y, 10y-1y and 10y-3month spreads are still positive. Some not so knowledgeable journalists have toured the 5y-3y going negative but that’s not such a big deal.
But to be sure, the spreads are all tightening and I’m getting marginally more nervous about an economic downturn.
It’s pretty simple really.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.” Charles Dickens, David Copperfield
Very nice saying! Thanks for the reference!
Where can I find CAPE (Month-End) values?
Check the SWR Series Part 7, Google Sheet. It has the CAPE values in the tab where the asset returns are stored.
Or use the Shiller data directly: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~shiller/data.htm
OUCH, the bears are here. Glad I had the one more year syndrome.
Good for you! If you still enjoy your job it’s best to keep it for a little bit more and see how things shake out. And contribute some more cash to your stash! Good luck!
Dear ERN,
Greetings from the UK. Firstly thank you for all your work to date and many congratulations on your excellent website. I wanted to ask you a question on how you feel following the recent falls in equity markets.
As my username shows, I am not yet at ‘FIRE’ although I continue to make solid progress. As a result although my NAV has fallen significantly following reductions in equity markets, I do not feel concerned or suffer from ‘loss aversion’. Instead I am pleased about the opportunity to buy US shares at lower prices and UK / European / Emerging Market shares at bargain prices thus accelerating my route to FIRE in the coming years. However, if I had FIRE’d this year, I am unsure how I would have felt.
Your Math is sound (I am sure and backed up by other third party work) and so no doubt you are sleeping soundly at night. But I suspect I might be emotionally a little less happy than I am now. After all, you have moved from a strongly accumulating phase to a gently de-accumulating phase. So my question is, do you still feel completely comfortable? Any niggling concerns at all? Do you feel, if only I’d stayed a bit long and accumulated more at these cheaper prices (I hope not). At what level of decline do you think you might start feeling more nervous. As your analogy says, you’ll complete the flight but is the journey starting to be any less comfortable than you thought it might be?
This is not a critique by any means, looks like to me you have made a great decision. After all, you can always work again if you had to, to top up your earnings in extremis e.g. you could easily do part time consulting work no doubt…I am just wondering how you feel about things.
There is so much info on ‘accumulation’ and so little on ‘de-accumulation’ – particularly the psychology aspect that any insights are extremely useful / interesting to read.
HNY.
Best wishes
Seeking Fire
I will post a new article on Monday with some commentary putting the drop in the stock market into perspective.
My way of feeling better about the stock market drop is that valuations now look better as well.
So, after the drop and the still strong earnings , I’ve also adjusted my expected equity returns upward.
But I hear you: Just because we might still all make it in the end, could still mean we have a scary and unpleasant experience. See #5 in this post: https://earlyretirementnow.com/2018/06/27/ten-things-the-makers-of-the-4-rule-dont-want-you-to-know/