i literally am not checking anymore. Seems stupid but I am just happier this way.

i used to never check. now i do it daily. its annoying.

i'm not checking either.

checking, but only because i'm picking which assets to buy buy buy buy buy

i should own the stock market (all of it) in a couple of weeks if this keeps up.

I've been 100% in cash since April, so me too.

Not a chance, I actually locked my self out of both my IRA and my 401k online. I check it once a year and only to make sure its still there

I've looked but no touching, haven't touched since I rebalanced in March.

I've actually luckboxed the last 2 pay periods into my retirement account (auto deduction of 6% from my salary + 8% add on by my company) in that the "buy day" was on a dip instead of a false rally.

40 years to go, long run, yadda yadda

Haven't looked at my 401k in months, really don't want to either.

I think I'm down like 40%, here's to hoping I won't be needing ~14k in a hurry

I was forced to look at my 401k a few weeks ago because I was rebalancing. Otherwise, I look probably once a quarter at most.

I saw my 401K yesterday. Shouldn't have looked.

It's pretty ugly. The International Fund was particularly gruesome.

I considered transferring from the stock funds to a money market or bond fund (before we crash to oblivion) or from my bond funds to my stock funds (before a new rally begins) and decided I had no clue and just left everything where it is.

If I get a clue, I'll probably move some stuff (i.e., 50% of bonds to stocks or 50% of stocks to bonds)

I did change my future contributions to 85% money market/bonds.

I'm 25, and happy that I'm getting an awesome discount on stocks for my 401(k) right now. I've taken a hit but I don't care. All the idiots in the world yelling "sell, sell, sell" right now are handing me money.

I am so happy that at age 27 I'm getting a chance to buy in a market like this. Makes up for the fact that I've only saved a couple of stacks of high society in the my 401k in the past 4 years of working. I'm going to hit the maximum 401k contribution next year and from now on.

i wont check my portfolio till an big upswing. any money i can put aside is going into cash for quite a while.

Selling out because you're in panic mode is dumb...just not looking and thinking critically is even dumber. Your first instinct, "seems stupid" is correct.

You should have a fairly good overview of everything you own...from the balance sheet to cash positions to markets to product pipelines.

Well, if you've decided that you are not going to sell because of the market crash then not looking for a while makes sense.

I mean, how does it benefit me to check how much VWIGX has gone down today (another 5-8%, I'm sure...)?

And if your 401k is full of giant funds, checking balance sheets and such is nearly impossible.

looked today, down 41% in stocks and down 33% in my roth ira

Mutual funds are for lazy investors. Yes, you want to be diversified and funds are an "easy" way to do that. There's nothing wrong with that, but you want to be at least reasonably sure that you can trust the fund manager.

One way to try to do that is to find dumb investments on purpose. For instance, if last year you were to think of the 100 dumbest stocks to own, you probably would have come up with Countrywide as one of them. If you owned a fund that owned Countrywide, then your fund manager could not be trusted because he was either too stupid or he was not looking out for your best interests.

You can always be wrong, but, at the very least, if you own funds, you should check it against your "I wouldn't invest in _____ right now" list. If one of those is on it, you should find a new fund.

Mempho,

What are the 10 dumbest stocks to own right now (or 10 of the top 100)?

Agree 100% -- but it's my company's 401K -- I only get to choose the options my company and Vanguard have agreed to make available to me.

Unfortunately, those options are limited to a bunch of big giant stock and/or bond funds (only about a dozen to choose from with tons of overlap between them), a money market account, or my company's stock.

So the only individual stock I can own in my 401k is my company's (and I don't).

For my non-401K investments, I own individual stocks and I do follow them closely -- although at the moment I'm 75% cash and only own 4 stocks (2 of which I wish I didn't own but don't want to sell now).

That's a problem across the board and I don't think it's by accident either. 401k plans were a good idea but allowing them to be "locked and boxed" (my term) created pools of liquidity that were held hostage by large institutional investors...thus allowing large investment banks to have even more control and thus creating a Pandora's box of problems.

As for you, is there any way for you to roll over some of your existing 401k in order for you to have more control?

However, even if your're locked, your money market option does give you a haven of respite in times of severe overvaluation. Of course, the long period of overvaluation might be coming to an end now .

This really depresses me.

Ah the optimism of youth.

I think it is funny that you call those who have sold recently "idiots" when they have likely saved their 401k at least 10%, probably more.

Are you really that confident in the long-term fundamentals of the US economy? Or have you been drinking the "buy and hold" kool-aid?

Those of us in our 20's (I'm 28) can only tell our selves ^^^^^this to keep our sanity! I refuse to check my holdings(last time was 6 months ago), but I imagine I am down 30% as well. If you pulled out your not an idiot, nd if you stayed in your not an idiot either!

In the end, we can either be right or wrong. Time will only tell....

Is that possible without changing jobs? Would be nice, but I've never heard of it (without penalty).

I'm getting 50% match on contributions from my employer, so I suspect they want me to stay in the plan as long as they are doing that.