Mid this year, I started trading forex with 5k.Just exited my last trade for the year (b/c bank holidays), turns out I made 1.5k.<p>Friend is -3k with 12k account size stock investing (thanks to fb & nvidia)<p>How did you guys do this year? stocks, ipo, forex, real estate...etc? Curious as to what you guys invest & how?
My investment approach is stocks, for long-term investment, based on fundamental valuation metrics (CAPE etc).<p>YTD result is roughly -5% on paper, before tax. Current allocation is about 40% stocks, 22% bonds, 3% reit, 35% cash. Ignoring the cash, YTD result is about -8%.<p>I sold ~ 1/4 of stock portfolio in January and moved moved the resulting cash into bonds or saving accounts. At the start of this year I believed that US equities were over-valued compared to their historical valuation, I still believe they are. The current large allocation to cash is to give flexibility (to e.g. buy cheap stock or for a down payment on a house) in scenarios where there is a large drop in stock market prices and I need to avoid selling any stock for 5-10+ years until prices rise.<p>Some interesting reading for stock market valuation:<p><a href="https://www.starcapital.de/fileadmin/user_upload/files/publikationen/Research_2016-01_Predicting_Stock_Market_Returns_Shiller_CAPE_Keimling.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.starcapital.de/fileadmin/user_upload/files/publi...</a><p><a href="http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2018/01/future-u-s-equity-returns-a-best-case-upper-limit/" rel="nofollow">http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2018/01/future-u-s-equ...</a>
I only do index funds, (Target funds with 401k and VTI in brokerage).<p>This is a long term play, I suspect I'm a bit down right now but I deliberately don't look at it often :)<p>I stay away from individual stocks.
I started investing last year, mainly indexes and tech stocks. Everything is in the red except Tesla, which is exactly the reverse of what it was the entire year until recent events which I found weirdly ironic. Overall, I'm down about 10%.<p>I'm planning on holding everything long term so I'm not terribly troubled by it.
Forex only in the form of small eur/usd scalping when the markets are volatile because of bad rumours. If any, I enjoy the ride but results are mixed ehehe.