It depends whether or not you want to lose money. I moved my entire 401(k) into cash-related investments in December 2006, so I’ve been earning 4% on my 401(k) while most other buy-and-hold mutual fund owners have taken their 20% bear market loss. (I did my best to try to tell everyone this was coming, along with a bunch of other Freepers, all of whom were more or less ignored, but I digress...)
Some would say it is too late and we are near a bottom so you might as well just keep dollar-cost-averaging. I think we have another 15% to go down before the bottom, if not more (these markets often bottom out way lower than they should in response to panic at the exact time people should be buying back in.)
Somebody posted a guess of 1100 on the S&P 500 Index. I think that is a very likely guess. So I don’t agree that it is too late to move to a safe cash-related investment like a money market fund. You won’t earn much of anything, but you will protect your fund from further loss. The liquidity crisis has much further to go and it will continue to drag down the economy and markets with it.
I would go into cash for the next year or so.
I was with you on this. I have a friend who cashed out 500K and is now my best friend. He had to fight his broker and family to get it done. Now look. I also had a great call to short google at it's highs and got rolled on by a bunch of "experts" on the Free Republic.
I see the Dow in the sub-10k range also. And it will end up there so fast that getting out will be impossible.
If you have a stock that is still making you money, chances are it is in the black for others as well. They will be taking profits to offset their losses very soon. Why wait? What is the upside for yourself? Another 3-8%? Face it, the downside is 20-30%. Tell me why that stock is worth holding?
After reading this thread once again I see many folks who have no business trading their own money.