Sense of unease

[mikbone]

I have a small nest egg in the stock market and am considering taking my funds out of the market and placing them into something more stable.  My concerns:

1) Current US election madness and possibility of unrest after the election.

2) Israel planning to retaliate soon with Iran.  Nuclear facilities, Oil fields etc.  Outbreak of nastier middle east war.  And if US troops are heavily sent to calm things down.  Putin and China may become emboldened.  I have played the game RISK, I know how this goes.

3) USA has no financial support system for natural catastrophes.  We are so far in debt that we have no reserves

4) Global warming - It felt like summer lasted till last week here in CA.

5) BYU is 6-0 and looking strong. This is when we usually fall apart. 🤞🏻 

[zil2]

The question is whether your sense of unease is you alone, or also includes the influence of the Holy Ghost.

Before someone jumps in talking about not panicking, keep in mind that you don't know exactly where @mikbone's money is, nor what the Lord has in store for him, and so maybe he does indeed need to make some changes while others of us are fine how things are (or not).

I have been trying to worry about my own situation, but cannot.  I don't know if that's because I'm Spirit-deaf on this topic, or because I'm in a good position...  But I try to pay a bit of attention and consider prayerfully what things I should do next to prepare for whatever the Lord has in store for me and my furballs. (They're taken care of - if I die, they can survive by eating me. Hopefully they don't kill each other over who gets my liver...)

[NeuroTypical]

If you're gonna get out of stocks, now is a good time to do it.

I remember in 2008 at the bottom of the recession, I heard a similar LDS buddy in a similar LDS forum saying this: "My retirement has lost 32% of it's value.  I'm getting out while I still have something to lose."  Dude not only bailed at an all time low, he also missed the massive upswing that is the hallmark of a recession's end.   

It's all about fortune telling.   Over the next year, is the market gonna do this:

or this:

 

If the first one, you'll consider yourself a saavy investor.  If the latter, it might be partially due to an upswing in inflation, and you'll be kicking yourself for bailing and losing all that purchasing power. 

Happy guessing!

 

(Oh, also, what's "something more stable"?)

[mikbone]

59 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Before someone jumps in talking about not panicking, keep in mind that you don't know exactly where @mikbone's money is, nor what the Lord has in store for him, and so maybe he does indeed need to make some changes while others of us are fine how things are (or not).

Im not panicking just trying to be proactive.  Saw my stocks drop 35% with housing market crash.  And 20% with the start of the war in Ukraine.  The COVID scare also dropped it 15%.

I was just wondering if anyone else here feels impending doom.

[mikbone]

41 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

(Oh, also, what's "something more stable"?

Bond market until after the uneasiness settles.

[mikbone]

1 hour ago, zil2 said:

consider prayerfully what things I should do next to prepare for whatever the Lord has in store for me

I can’t bring myself to pray for financial guidance playing the stock market…

[zil2]

28 minutes ago, mikbone said:

Im not panicking just trying to be proactive.

That was my assumption, but as soon as you say "unease", someone always responds with "no need to panic"...

[Traveler]

2 hours ago, mikbone said:

Im not panicking just trying to be proactive.  Saw my stocks drop 35% with housing market crash.  And 20% with the start of the war in Ukraine.  The COVID scare also dropped it 15%.

I was just wondering if anyone else here feels impending doom.

A few years ago, when we still had young children living at home the wife and I decided to put our finances together (trust) in case something happened to us.  Two problems:  What to do with the children and what to do with insurance and investments.  Obviously, we could not leave our money directly to our children – they were too young.  When we met with our lawyer he asked an important question. (We had decided what to do with the children but not the money).   The question was – what are you more concerned about?  Your children or your money.  If those you have interested with your children cannot be trusted with money – Are you making the right choice?

Since then, I have decided that concern for money (and things) are the least of my concerns.  I have had impressions for some time that we are entering troubled times.  My concerns are not because of foreign wars, the uncertainty of stocks (the economy in general), or for current politics.   My biggest concern is the lack of moral clarity and not enough faith in our covenants.

As I read from my past journals – I can see a creep in my own moral clarity.  I have never been good at compassion.  I would prefer that my personal moral clarity be more accepted by others.  I always have.  But I am caring less and less about others making poor choices.  One may ask – who am I to determine what are the poor choices of others?  I have made enough poor choices to know about poor choices and that hoping for a beneficial outcome while knowingly making poor choices is not so different than thinking that the choices are relatively good concerning the circumstances.

My only suggestion is to adjust your focus – more towards the things that really matter most to you.

 

The Traveler

[Ironhold]

5 hours ago, zil2 said:

The question is whether your sense of unease is you alone, or also includes the influence of the Holy Ghost.

IRL, one of the big things I deal with is anxiety issues. As I've explained before, I'm high-functioning autistic and wasn't diagnosed until adulthood, meaning that I never got any of the counseling or therapy that most people who are diagnosed as children receive. Couple this with everything I've had happen to me in life, and I have a bit of a hair trigger. I'm actually coming down from a massive freak-out yesterday as a result of my credit union blocking payment to my anti-virus service; it was a regular once-every-several-years renewal, and because I didn't think to remind the bank ahead of time fraud protection intervened. 

Between my anxiety, the stress load I can be under in a given day, and the sum total of everything I'm worried about, I can quickly get overwhelmed mentally and emotionally. This can lead to me being so drained I have to dip into my physical energy reserves to function, and because of some health challenges I've had the last few years I don't exactly have large reserves to begin with. This means I can quickly become physically fatigued as well if I'm under prolonged stress, to the point that I can have to take a nap to reset myself. 

When you're in a situation like this, it's hard to feel anything *but* the panic and anxiety. A person needs to step back in order to gain perspective and allow the Spirit time to reach them, but when that person is in the thick of it they can feel like they have to take care of everything right then & there. 

[mikbone]

Thanks for all the responses.

I’m not anxious.  I’m not looking for spiritual confirmation.

I consult the Lord on issues like: should I take this job, should I move, is this the right surgery for this patient? etc.

I would never seek celestial counsel on betting on a blackjack, a football team, or a specific stock.

What I’m wondering is if y’all feel uneasy about: our government elections, the prospect of worsening wars in the world, the national debt, BYU football undefeated record?

 

[Just_A_Guy]

If many/most professionals can’t consistently beat the market, I’m certainly not smart enough to do it either.  Most of my retirement is a state defined-benefit pension (yay!), but the portion that is defined-contribution (the investment of which, I am allowed to direct) is in an S&P 500 index fund.

I will say candidly that I done see how the stock market can grow indefinitely when birth rates (and hence the labor force and, over the intermediate term, the pool of investors) seem to be in decline.  But so long as the Church isn’t completely jumping out of the market, I suppose there’s no call for me to jump out either.

Edited October 16, 2024 by Just_A_Guy

[JohnsonJones]

I'm not a stock broker nor have any good information on it.

With the 401K and such there are options on what you want it to be focused on. 

I understand that Tech stocks are the most volatile, but also have the possibility to give the best returns.

I also hear that government stocks...or whatever you want to call them...are the ones that are the least volatile and supposedly most stable...but also give the least returns. 

In times of volatility and craziness in the market you want to be invested in government funds, but when all looks sunny and roses...you want the tech stocks and other such things.

[NeuroTypical]

Yeesh.  Trying to buy a used car.  Trying to get dollars moved out of one account and into the checking account, so I can write the check.  Transfer request Friday evening, now it's Wednesday.  Transfer is still pending.  Called customer support, spent 20 minutes trying to verify who I am before they'd help me.  They got my social, my account number (after satisfying the website's verification check by sending a code to my phone).  I changed my security word while I waited on hold for a supervisor, so they could have that too, but apparently their system doesn't update real time.  The supervisor was finally able to send my phone another code, and they could finally get into my account to help me.  Spent the last 9 minutes hearing that transfers take 2-3 business days, and then I finally won the argument about how many business days I've been waiting (we finally agreed on 3).  Now, with all those obstacles out of the way, the customer support response is "wait until the end of day and try again".  

In other words, I take the sense of unease we've been discussing, and raise with my story.  Anyone got anxiety yet? 😨

[zil2]

16 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

transfers take 2-3 business days

Because, you know, computers and the internet shut off at 5pm local time and don't start working again until 9am local time (assuming it's not a weekend or "bank holiday").  But have no fear, your bank is making serious profit off your money while it sits in limbo transfer...

Edited October 16, 2024 by zil2

[Ironhold]

18 hours ago, mikbone said:

Thanks for all the responses.

I’m not anxious.  I’m not looking for spiritual confirmation.

I consult the Lord on issues like: should I take this job, should I move, is this the right surgery for this patient? etc.

I would never seek celestial counsel on betting on a blackjack, a football team, or a specific stock.

What I’m wondering is if y’all feel uneasy about: our government elections, the prospect of worsening wars in the world, the national debt, BYU football undefeated record?

 

My flagship newspaper literally can't pay me enough for me to live on my own due to how small it is and how financially struggling it is. There are several times in the past few years where we could have gone under, and even then we've had to go from "Tuesdays and Fridays" to just Fridays because we lost the major advertiser who was basically subsidizing the Tuesday paper. 

I could easily make more money elsewhere, but I really struggle with this as if I go the paper goes and the town might go with it. 

[mikbone]

I pulled the trigger.  

Sold a bunch of stock and will put it into a US Treasury 4.8% annual yield with a 3-month maturation date.  

Sense of relief.😮‍💨 

Edited October 16, 2024 by mikbone

[NeuroTypical]

Oh noes!  The US declared bankruptcy and dissolved!  The people who stepped into the power vacuum call themselves "the federated confederation of southern canada", and say they know nothing of this US treasury of which you speak of.  They direct you to China for further inquiries.

[Just_A_Guy]

18 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Oh noes!  The US declared bankruptcy and dissolved!  The people who stepped into the power vacuum call themselves "the federated confederation of southern canada", and say they know nothing of this US treasury of which you speak of.  They direct you to China for further inquiries.

As a state employee/future retiree who’s very sensitive to the possibility of a government default (my CA neighbor growing up was a firefighter who took a huge haircut on his pension when his city declared bankruptcy):  I console myself with the belief that if even fiscally prudent states like mine wind up insolvent, then the fed government will likely have collapsed and there will have been such a breakdown in law and order that any other form of investment will have similarly seen its value evaporate.

We may all be on the Titanic here; but some of you drips will be going into the water long before I will be.  

[Ironhold]

19 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

Oh noes!  The US declared bankruptcy and dissolved!  The people who stepped into the power vacuum call themselves "the federated confederation of southern canada", and say they know nothing of this US treasury of which you speak of.  They direct you to China for further inquiries.

There's actually a tabletop role-playing game called Twilight 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight:_2000

Depending upon which rules set you're using (the game has had a few updates and revisions), the premise is that between losses & damages sustained and the overall economic cost of everything, WWIII bankrupts the United States. Characters typically play as members of an American military unit stuck overseas, typically in Europe, as they try to deal with the implications. Basically, the characters have whatever gear, supplies, and vehicles they've got as they try to decide if they want to figure out a way back to the United States or carve out a part of Europe for themselves. 

[NeuroTypical]

47 minutes ago, Ironhold said:

There's actually a tabletop role-playing game called Twilight 2000.

I remember that game!   Right as we were moving from Steve Jackson's Car Wars, into Battletech.

Then college ended and I got married and everyone moved away and life stayed bleak until Mechwarrior 4 became abandonware and you could find it for free.  Then life was bleak again until MW 5, but it only un-bleaked things for a few months.  

These days when I have time to kill or thoughts to process, I play the old PC games 2003 Galactic Civilizations or 2006 Sword of the Stars.  

[mirkwood]

Twilight 2000.  The most lethal rpg I have ever played.

[LDSGator]

20 minutes ago, mirkwood said:

Twilight 2000.  The most lethal rpg I have ever played.

I would play the pc version for hours. 

[NeuroTypical]

Ooooo!   More abandonware I can get for free!

[LDSGator]

5 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

Ooooo!   More abandonware I can get for free!

Strongly recommend it. Still playable after 30 years. 

[Just_A_Guy]

9 hours ago, Ironhold said:

There's actually a tabletop role-playing game called Twilight 2000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight:_2000

Depending upon which rules set you're using (the game has had a few updates and revisions), the premise is that between losses & damages sustained and the overall economic cost of everything, WWIII bankrupts the United States. Characters typically play as members of an American military unit stuck overseas, typically in Europe, as they try to deal with the implications. Basically, the characters have whatever gear, supplies, and vehicles they've got as they try to decide if they want to figure out a way back to the United States or carve out a part of Europe for themselves. 

That reminds me of the fanfic—did the author call it “Rome Sweet Rome?”—about a US Marine brigade in Afghanistan that finds itself randomly transported (with all its equipment) to the outskirts of first-century Rome.

Edited October 18, 2024 by Just_A_Guy