A Bear of a Market

The premise of today's post could be completely negated by a market upswing, which by the way would suit me fine.

But the truth is the stock market has me worried. And has for a while.

Mind you, in comparison to the big boys, I'm only playing with bottle caps. But they're my bottle caps and I'm gonna need as many as possible to avoid ending up at the Filthy Floors & Dirty Towels Retirement Home.

So, about 8 months ago, having ridden the Bull for a good long while, I started taking some money, er...bottle caps off the table. A slow, methodical retreat against the "better" advice of my financial advisor.

I sold what little stock I had. And I instructed the advisor to move my pittance of money from Growth funds to less volatile Conservative funds.

I'll be the first to admit I don't understand the ins and outs of investing. What I do know is gleaned from movies like The Wolf of Wall Street and the more recent the Big Short. Not a ringing endorsement for those in the finance industry.

And while I'm not up to speed on price to earnings ratios or dividend distributions or upside potential, I am able to read a room. Or in this case a planet. And I don't like what I see with the Chinese economy. I don't like the expanding Russian sphere of influence. And I don't like the proxy wars in the Middle East, where logic and reason have as much value as Enron stock.

And so, like a responsible teenage boy, I'm pulling out.

Even though I have the resting heartbeat of an Olympic Athlete (51 BPM) I just can't take the wild swings of the Dow Jones lately. This is problematic, says my advisor, who wonders aloud...

"I understand you're nervous, Rich. But it's impossible to time the market. How will you know when it's right to get back in?"

Get back in? I thought.

Listen up Jordan Belfort, I'm sinking whatever shekels I have, into these...