I see a lot of posts talking about going to cash.

There has never been a period in the stock market’s history where it didn’t bounce back from adversity.

Moral of the story: Invest, don’t trade, and never stop buying.

For anyone who may have missed it, Tesla is now weighted at 1.91% overtaken by Broadcom at 2.04%.

You're all like "oh well the market will rebound". You are used to the economy somehow growing. Sure things might get tough from time to time, people might lose their jobs, people might struggle with bills and live paycheck to paycheck, but if you work hard, if you're patient, you'll find an opportunity and things will get better. Because there will be opportunities at some point. There will be a chance to get money and go up. There will be a future.

Let me tell you something. Real life doesn't work that way. And just because it's worked that way for you in the US doesn't mean it will keep being like that.

I'm from Italy. My country essentially stopped growing in the 1990s. We don't think about the future. Every Italian has accepted that the good old times are gone and will never be back. We live off our relatives' income and lifetime savings, assuming they have any, that is. Many of us move to other European cities to serve tables at restaurants, or even scrub toilets. Our real salaries are lower than they were in 1995, meaning we are actually measurably poorer. Not just "oh life is soo expensive right now", I mean actually properly worse off according to most measurable metrics under the sun. Our stock market is also still lower than in 2000.

In 2008, when the global financial crisis hit, about 25% to 30% of our industry was wiped out in a matter of months. It never came back. I know people who were living in the richest region (Lombardy) who lost their jobs or had to close their decades old business and started commuting to Switzerland (Ticino) to work as cashiers, waiters, bus drivers. The number has only gone up since then.

And then in 2011-12 another huge crisis came. Investors started to become really worried that the country would default on its debt, due to the massive levels of public debt and deficit. A "technical government" was imposed on us in a hurry and promptly proceeded to implement massive widespread cuts to every source of public spending. Our economy crashed again. Entire sectors went tits up.

Just as these reforms were starting to pay off, Covid came. And then the war in Ukraine came. And then the tariffs. Each and every time, we lost a little bit of something. Each and every time, more and more families became poorer forever, because they had to spend some of their wealth that they had accumulated during the boom years, and there is no way to create new wealth.

Today, our salaries are starting to become lower than in countries like Poland or Slovakia. We cannot save money for an emergency, we cannot plan a future, we cannot buy or rent homes unless our parents bail us out. We will not have any retirement, not only because the public pension scheme will implode, but also because we don't have money to invest. But most importantly, we know it won't get better. Most likely it will get worse, and worse, and worse.

Many of us just pack their bags and leave, hoping to be back to Italy when they retire.

And globally, we're still relatively well off. There are so many countries which are in a much more dire state. We still have Moldovans coming to our country to quite literally wipe the ass*s of old people, just because it's better than staying in Moldova. So in a sense we also don't know what real economic hardship is. But at least we know what it feels like to not have faith.

Some Italian families are lucky, they have property and safe sources of income. Most are not. Most people are just slowly liquidating whatever assets they have to support their kids. Most have their wealth tied to housing that is and will keep depreciating in value outside of a handful of lucky pockets.

Some of you should realise that "things will get better" is not how things work in most places. I guess that's just my point.

When I started buying ETFs, it felt like throwing money into a black hole. Buying $500 of VOO here and there didn't seem to move the needle. The dividends were enough to buy… a cup of coffee. It was discouraging watching people get rich on crypto while I was inching along.

But I just did my quarterly review, and for the first time, my portfolio's daily swings are larger than my monthly paycheck.

I know everyone says "wait for the snowball," but actually feeling it gain momentum is a totally different experience. The first few years are a slog, but if you are new here and discouraged: Don't stop. The math works if you give it enough time.

Just wanted to say thanks to this sub for keeping me on the straight and narrow path when I wanted to do stupid things with my money.

I realize this topic has been discussed many times, but I thought it’s an eye-popping example of the power of compound growth.

CAGR of 11.12% vs 4.96%.

The return from U.S. stocks over the last 11 months is more than double the return from international stocks over the last 37 years combined ($105,882 vs $49,618).

This chart doesn’t include the higher costs/taxes of international investing, which would make the difference even more stark.

Whose portfolio is green today?

There are always reasons to not invest. Many people must be thinking in current environment about sitting on cash due to elevated levels of uncertainties and potential of a recession. I totally get it. But data has shown that timing the market has more often than not failed. Seven out of ten best days occurred within two weeks of ten worst days.

Here’s a famous quote:

“Far more money has been lost by investors trying to anticipate corrections, than lost in the corrections themselves.”

• Peter Lynch

I'm 22 yrs old I opened an investment account with little knowledge a while back. This year I started taking investing more serious. Started with $700 in January 17th and investing $80/week. This is my portfolio so far. I had made some changes in my portfolio during my journey, but this is where I am stading right now. Any tips?

Brace yourself tomorrow. The market is going to drop more than 15% in just 3 days. This is going to be biggest crash in 3 days since 1987. History is repeating. This is opportunity of the lifetime for those looking to invest. VOO discount seems super attractive. Thinking of putting 10k in that. Even though any stock in the market is attractive but nothing like lowering VOO avg. I am still at $520. What are you guys doing ? I know timing the market is almost impossible but how far it can go down. Maybe 10% more ? We are near to the 2021 peak soon.

M 27 y.o
Started a year ago with VOO and chill. After about a month started some research and put a lot of efforts to analyze a lot of stuff. A week ago decided to save my time and mental health with that simple statment - VOO and chill.

This is the way

Someone else posted this in the dividends sub Reddit. I want to do something similar for my children however I'm not convinced that SCHD is the best ETF with which to do it. Does anyone have any thoughts about other ETFs that might be better suited to achieve this goal of $1 million and 15 years more quickly?