Funny. The 1 year return on my 403b, from 8/31/2010 to 8/31/2011, was 13.7% -- and that's with me doing absolutely nothing other than making my automatic bi-monthly contributions.

Does market timing really pay off?

Did the 13.7% include contributions? If not, I'd say that was pretty good. The 15% does not include contributions. Today when I checked it, it was at 15.59%

Also looking at 9/27/2010 to 9/27/2011, if that matters. From 8/31/10 to 8/31/11 it was only 10.27%.

Normally, when I do nothing with my 401k, I'm looking at around -4% to 4%.

After thought: Probably all the fees they take out of it is sucking it dry. I've complained about that for a long time. The only way I have of fighting back is market timing.

Cat, I think you'll find this BBC interview interesting - BBC Speechless As Trader Tells Truth.

Peace

This is nothing new to me. Traders make money when the markets go up. They can make even more money when the markets go down. It's all about positioning yourself one way, or the other.

Most people wear rose colored glasses, and don't know and don't care about all of this. Their choice.

Well that TZA I bought a while back was defiantly a mistake. (TZA goes up when the market goes down. Goes down when market goes up.) But at least I reversed the damage by buying TNA (opposite of TZA, goes up when market goes up.)

My 401k is liking me though. I rode the market down in cash, and am riding it up in risk. Where most people are probably a little under break-even, I've made 20%, so far, in the past 3 months.

Could have been 40%, if I was fortunate enough to buy at the bottom. Experience helps. Maybe next time.

I'm old enough, I want to retire some day soon. Just doing nothing and letting time take it's course isn't going to work for me. I got started saving for retirement much too late in life. So now I need to supercharge it whenever I can. I'm also putting 20% of my own before tax money into the 401k. At the start of this year it was 15%. At start of last year, it was 10%. By the end of next year, I plan on contributing around 25%. I just increase it a little at a time. I can feel the pain from the decreased spending capability.

I just checked my 401k return rates and was amazed at what it was, compared to others in my company. For example my 1 year rate today is 17.66%, and another employee that I checked with was 1.43%

1/2 year = 6.51%
1 year = 17.66%
2 year = 20.25%
3 year = 42.53%

It could all be gone tomorrow...

If it is, then everyone would be hurting, and it would be misery loves company.

I doubt that the US dollar would ever be devalued that much. The US government would probably lie, steal, kill, whatever, to keep that from happening.

I can see a possible world bank in the mix. To me that would be a fulfillment of biblical prophecy in Revelations where it says, "blah, blah, blah, would not be able to buy or sell, etc, etc.". With no cash, and electronic means used only, and one outfit in charge, and they don't like you (with prejudice), then you might see your account turned off.

Booyah! My 401k is now 63 percent away from retirement. Up from about 75 percent at the beginning of the year. And up from 84 percent away 3 years ago.

One of these days.

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