I was getting that same feeling I got back in 2008. I knew things were getting too good. I was going to get out when the market collapsed. Now it is deja vu all over again.

I was going to move my 401K to a money market where at least I would not see a tax hit for selling. But I decided to stick again. Now it looks like it is happening again. I just hope things don't get as bad as 2008 and this turns around pretty quickly.

 

"That tells me we've got a ways to go," said Andrew Slimmon, senior portfolio manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.
Even after the yield curve goes to zero, the stock market doesn't peak for more than a year, Slimmon said.
"This is just a correction within a bull market," he said.

Our global monetary system is fundamentally flawed.

It is not sustainable.

 

Debt being built up in US, China with new empty cities, losses in oil rich
nations. No champagne needed anytime soon.

Regards, Dana.

 

You should see what's going on in the San Francisco Bay Area. The whole economy is being propped up by government money from all levels.

Furthermore, all that government funded capital isn't going into anything of value and it's essentially being squandered on useless stuff like advertising what a wonderful thing government is doing. I could write a novel on this upcoming financial equivalent of an F5 tornado headed toward the U.S. economy.

 

Frontline show tonight, States are short TRILLIONS in pension fund obligations.
Wall Streets term for pension funds, "Dumb" money. Money easily exploited. State
pension boards have tiny percentage of people who know what a hedge fund is.
Let alone the details of what they are being pitched. Then of course this ignores
whats happened with Social Security trust fund in US.

Sleep tight, soon we will all be homeless.

 

Sleep tight, soon we will all be homeless.

My family still owns a farm in Texas, I will never be homeless. Poor and well fed maybe but not homeless.

 

My family still owns a farm in Texas, I will never be homeless. Poor and well fed maybe but not homeless.

Aren't there property taxes in Texas?

 

I was getting that same feeling I got back in 2008. I knew things were getting too good. I was going to get out when the market collapsed. Now it is deja vu all over again.

I was going to move my 401K to a money market where at least I would not see a tax hit for selling. But I decided to stick again. Now it looks like it is happening again. I just hope things don't get as bad as 2008 and this turns around pretty quickly.

I'm not going to armchair quarterback the market. It's easy to see what you should have done after the fact once you know what the market actually did.

Numerous studies have been done on this and nearly all conclude that trying to time the market usually results in worse performance over the long-term than just riding it out because market timers tend to sit out significant market gains that more than offset what they "save" by trying (and not always succeeding) to miss the losses.

So don't be too hard on yourself.

I think a better strategy, long-term, is to use dips (and crashes) as buying opportunities to invest new money into the market.

 

Aren't there property taxes in Texas?

It's a farm, property taxes are minimal because of Agricultural Valuation.

https://www.southtexasranches.com/blog/everything-need-know-property-taxes-rural-property

 

It's a farm, property taxes are minimal because of Agricultural Valuation.

https://www.southtexasranches.com/blog/everything-need-know-property-taxes-rural-property

Then hope that, after this supposed crash, the government doesn't just take your farm using imminent domain and give it to some company on the basis that it will produce more tax revenue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

Many owners of family farms also disapproved of the ruling, as they saw it as an avenue by which cities could seize their land for private developments.

I don't know what Texas' current Constitution/statutes say. Many states made changes after the Kelo decision but apparently many of those changes are little more than window dressing.

 

Then hope that, after this supposed crash, the government doesn't just take your farm using imminent domain and give it to some company on the basis that it will produce more tax revenue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London



I don't know what Texas' current Constitution/statutes say. Many states made changes after the Kelo decision but apparently many of those changes are little more than window dressing.

If the state of Texas is taking farms in Hammond Texas then the stock markets are the least of our worries.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/H...78966880089184!8m2!3d31.0951837!4d-96.7138662

My family has owned this land since reconstruction. It once was part of a cotton plantation with slaves.
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hnh06

 

I was going to move my 401K to a money market where at least I would not see a tax hit for selling. But I decided to stick again. Now it looks like it is happening again. I just hope things don't get as bad as 2008 and this turns around pretty quickly.

Trying to time the market is a Fool's Errand. Unless you get lucky, you end up giving money to the Big Boys.

The key is to diversify your 401(k). If you're close to retirement, or retired, you should have already started transitioning a portion of your portfolio into safer investments.

Or pay for a money manager; that's what I did when I transferred my 401(k) to an IRA. To hedge my bet, I told him not to include the value of my home (which is paid off), or my stock account (which I still manage) in any of his calculations. So I still "manage" more funds than he does...

 

If the state of Texas is taking farms in Hammond Texas then the stock markets are the least of our worries.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/H...78966880089184!8m2!3d31.0951837!4d-96.7138662

You probably have little to worry about -- and I think that Texas has a stronger track record for not doing that kind of thing than many eastern states. But it would be MY luck that some out-of-state megafarm corporation would make some backdoor deal with some country commissioners and claim that they were going to build some huge operation that would employ hundreds of thousands of workers (perhaps many times the total current population within a hundred miles) and generate ten billion dollars a year in tax revenue for the county if they simply transfer all that land to them for a fee of $1/acre/year. Of course, after the condemnation they would suddenly conclude that they had slipped a few decimal points in their projections and sell all the land at market rates and walk away.

 

It's a farm, property taxes are minimal because of Agricultural Valuation.

https://www.southtexasranches.com/blog/everything-need-know-property-taxes-rural-property

You still need to be able to pay them. Minimal or not, property tax is the most evil tax out there.

 

Minimal or not, property tax is the most evil tax out there.

Really? So a tax on the accumulated wealth of the rich is more evil than a tax on income, the only means by which the poor can become rich? Good luck finding support for that position.

 

Really? So a tax on the accumulated wealth of the rich is more evil than a tax on income, the only means by which the poor can become rich? Good luck finding support for that position.

I love how anyone that owns a car or a condo is "rich".

It's not hard at all to support it. An income tax says if you earn money we (the government) will take a portion of it and you get to do what you want with the rest. Add a property tax and now it says that unless you spend money that we let you keep in the year you make it we will tax you on what you don't spend again, and again, and again until we have it all. So spend every dollar you earn as quickly as you can (and stay poor as a consequence).

I would say that more evil than the typical property tax (which usually applies to real property only in most places) are personal property taxes that many states have, particularly business personal property taxes. Those are a real pain and the bookkeeping required is far more onerous than the tax itself. Here the counties are required to collect the tax and it costs them more to administer the tax than the total that is collected, most of which goes to the state.

But as to which is the "most" evil tax out there, I'd have to give that quite a bit of thought since there are so many of them and a lot of them are hidden.

 

You still need to be able to pay them. Minimal or not, property tax is the most evil tax out there.

There are plenty of ways to exempt parts of the land like the wildlife property tax exemption or AG. Farm property total taxes are a lesser evil in Texas.

However, ag and wildlife properties are taxed at the full tax rate of the land’s productivity value – the income that can expected to be generated on the land. Typically, taxes on ag/wildlife acreage are $0.50-$2.00 per acre.

http://www.landmarkwildlife.com/wildlife-exemption/

 

But as to which is the "most" evil tax out there, I'd have to give that quite a bit of thought since there are so many of them and a lot of them are hidden.

Bingo. To a large degree I equate "hidden" with "evil". Taxes are a necessary evil in the world and part of becoming an adult is accepting that fact, along with your own mortality - death and taxes. And no matter how you apportion the tax burden, some will find it evil. But surely we can agree that taxes should be plain and clear to those paying them. It's one of the best arguments for a sales tax

Back on topic, I'm lucky enough to find myself between investments with a portion of my portfolio. So drops like today are handy buying opportunities. High or low, it's only a few percentage points and won't matter much in the long run but it sure feels good to buy at a slightly lower price. I only need market prices to be high once, the day I decide I want out.

 

I think society has a right to tax. But not continually tax. One pays his tax....one time only.....at purchase. And only after a subsistence amount has been spent.

True freedom from special interest(political bigotry) government.

 

Bingo. To a large degree I equate "hidden" with "evil". Taxes are a necessary evil in the world and part of becoming an adult is accepting that fact, along with your own mortality - death and taxes. And no matter how you apportion the tax burden, some will find it evil. But surely we can agree that taxes should be plain and clear to those paying them. It's one of the best arguments for a sales tax

We are in complete agreement on this point (transparency in taxation).

My ideal (which is not to say that I could actually implement it in such a way as to make it practical or so that it couldn't be gamed) taxation methodology would be to assess every congressional district 1/435th of the upcoming federal budget and require each person (or more likely head of household) to deliver to their portion of the taxes to their representatives office by midnight New Year's Eve. Your family has ten people, you pay ten shares of the tax. You're single with no kids, you pay one share. The government then has to live on the revenue that it can generate this way, which would be far less than what it gets today. Currently the federal budget is about $12k/person, which means my family should be paying $36k/yr in federal taxes alone.

Now, people would take my system and immediately start saying that this entity or that activity should also pay taxes -- and in many cases I would be strongly tempted to agree. But that's the road that leads directly to the convoluted complex tax code that just gets worse every time someone tries to "simplify" it.

Back on topic, I'm lucky enough to find myself between investments with a portion of my portfolio. So drops like today are handy buying opportunities. High or low, it's only a few percentage points and won't matter much in the long run but it sure feels good to buy at a slightly lower price. I only need market prices to be high once, the day I decide I want out.

Personally, I'm hoping the market continues to slide for a bit longer (read: I'm hoping to be able to make my annual contributions to my retirement accounts in the relatively near future).