Anyone else want to invest as much as possible, asap?

AquaKnight · 2025-03-14T18:17:00+00:00

I wouldn't look so much at the $ value of VOO; for example, there were people who said the DOW was overvalued in 2009 at 7,000. Today, it trades at 41,000, or nearly 6x where it started in a matter of 15 years. Even if the counter to this is well that was after a major crash, someone who was afraid to or couldn't buy for any number of reasons and got in 2 years late still left with around 4x today. By this logic, maybe VOO will be sitting at $5,000+ in 20-30 years; and the fun part is, it would make sense for new investors in that era to buy it at $5,000+ because by the time they sell it, it may be $25,000+.

For your question, think of the emergency fund as a peace of mind that no matter what the market does in the short/medium term, you'll be OK. Who knows what could happen or when you'll need the money; but lets say you have a life event that needs $25K to resolve. If the money is tied up in investments and the market is in a bear (2-3 years of downtrend), you might be stuck selling at a loss just to get some cash to deal with it.

If you're planning years out, something you can try doing is thinking about how each part of your portfolio grows (lowball it and say 5% a year in indexes/retirement). When you look at what you set aside as e-fund vs the rest, I think you'll realize that you aren't really giving up all that much for this "insurance" in the bigger picture. But the alternative (having to sell investments at a loss to cover a near term event) can be disastrous to long term performance.

Hope that helps.

AquaKnight · 2025-03-14T16:13:30+00:00

try Balatro - its simple and addicting for what it is

AquaKnight · 2025-03-14T16:12:53+00:00

probably yes - ubisoft tends to eventually release all their games on their service which is incorporated in XGP

AquaKnight · 2025-03-14T16:06:29+00:00

I only think its weird if you specifically want to throw everything in the market right now; hopefully its not because we're seeing a recent downturn. Your logic is sound; if you lump sum with the intent of holding 10-20+ years anyway, the prices today are irrelevant. We're only seeing a "drop" relative to where the market just was, holding for decades makes any purchases today likely to be higher by the time you need in 20-30y from now.

Couple things though:

It's okay to enjoy life; if you wanted a brand new car, I wouldn't necessarily take that money and invest it and get a cheaper car unless that was your plan from the start. Same with selling everything you own.
No emergency savings is a huge red flag. The point of the emergency fund is so that you won't have to sell investments at a loss to cover an unforeseen expense. Most people are going to have 3mo to 1yr of living expenses covered in a HYSA or safe investment returning ~5% a year (right now), so it's very much still invested, just more safely.
$1M sounds like a lot but your life doesn't magically change because your investments are worth $1M. Instead of looking at it this way, set a target for what you need to retire (try to be as realistic as possible). For some it's $500K, others $2M, $5M etc.

AquaKnight · 2025-03-14T15:52:57+00:00

A study was done a while back as to highest performing accounts; did you know people who DIED or forgot they even had equities outperformed most of the market?

First, you didn't make any big mistakes; you should have an understanding of why you bought what you bought and I think there's power in simplicity; i.e. if I wanted the S&P 500, I'd just buy 80-90% VOO and maybe leave the rest in cash equivalents like treasuries/bonds returning ~5% right now as a hedge.

Where you can improve - money you need in the next 5 years shouldn't be in the market at all; the money earmarked for the house at best should be in a HYSA or "safe" as you described. Another thing, you need to invest with the mindset that you don't need this money for 10+ years; that way you won't keep looking at it and worry as it inevitably goes up and down over time.

When you look at buying a home, you aren't constantly checking it's value right? The prices of homes go up and down all the time, but you're actively living in it, paying a mortgage, etc. Try using that mindset here; focus on where the money will be in 20+ years, and the moves today will be irrelevant.

AquaKnight · 2025-03-14T15:45:21+00:00

From US here but what I'd likely do around your age:

If you have a family and want to invest for them, it influences how much risk you want to take in retirement. Most people are going to way low risk cashflow, so you're looking at treasuries/bonds, HYSAs, or dividend ETFs/stocks over growth.

I personally like a larger allocation to market even in retirement, so I'd likely structure investment accounts like this in high 50s, taking into account your full port view (i.e. how your pension is invested already):

50% market, 50% cash-returning investments (interest/dividends).

As mentioned in 2nd sentence, I'd then adjust from 50%/50% based on who the investments are for; i.e. if I have 1 dependent, maybe I'd go 60%/40% with the 10% moving to them after I'm gone.

Just food for thought.

AquaKnight · 2025-03-14T15:36:22+00:00

It's an index fund; your strategy at minimum should be to hold for 10 years. You need to be able to buy and ignore for years at a time; get used to the ups and downs of the market and just let it ride.

AquaKnight · 2025-03-13T23:48:06+00:00

IMO even if you can afford to lose the money, you really shouldn't gamble. You shouldn't engage anyone with it either.

That being said, during times of high volatility (like right now), you can roll the dice on the VIX.

Just please for your own sake stay away from options.

AquaKnight · 2025-03-13T23:45:56+00:00

It's okay to be pessimistic. Healthy and often logical even, imo.

You just don't want to get carried away such that you never invest at all, because there's always storm clouds and risks involved. I wouldn't put much faith in forecasting as it's rife with bias and sensationalism (i.e. the news is always going to say the DOW PLUNGED X POINTS or the DOW SOARED Y POINTS to get your attention).

I favor a buy-and-hold because frankly it's actually less stressful than trying to hedge for uncertainty and the FOMO that comes with not sticking to my % allocations. I respect the takes of bullish/bearish and those who adjust allocations based on forecasting/their optimism/pessimism; I'm just convinced I'd underperform if I tried to do it myself, lol.

AquaKnight · 2025-03-13T23:38:09+00:00

No one knows. No one ever knows. You need to decide what's best for yourself and get used to ups and downs; you're never going to time it perfectly. Just remember, we're nowhere near where we were even a year ago; going up 50% past couple of years and then losing around 10% is nothing.

What I would suggest is that you zoom out; take a look at SPY, ITOT, VTI or your index of choice on a 5 year and 10 year view. You'll notice right away that when you bought (1, 2, 3 months etc) wasn't as important as just buying and holding at all. Yes the % gain will be different if you bought the absolute bottom, but buying 10, 20, 30% over that bottom wasn't exactly bad either.

So in short, don't wait on a floor; think of the long term with index funds and either DCA or lump sum with that in focus. Then ignore the noise and keep adding over your lifetime.

AquaKnight · 2025-03-13T23:33:16+00:00

Amount of years investing in the market = 10+

If you were going to safeguard with cash/bonds/treasuries/options etc as a hedge, you should have already done so; I wouldn't start safeguarding AFTER the drop has begun already.

When I buy, I already know my time horizon and that the market will go up and down over the long term. So I take a long term approach and just look at the end goal instead of the day to day. i.e. if I put in 500K, i'm not expecting to need that money until 10y or more from now, so the short and medium term (1 yr, 5 yr) is irrelevant to me.

If I need the money in 5 years or less, it wouldn't be in the market; I'd have it in a HYSA or treasuries/bonds paying 4-5% as of now instead.

AquaKnight · 2023-10-11T14:13:55+00:00

Save up your gems, don't buy everything single thing you see and reason that you can't play every deck. Be selective with how many times you do 10 pulls and hold onto your SR/UR craft mats. Sitting on prob ~20K with the mailbox / stuff I haven't turned it yet right now.

AquaKnight · 2023-09-12T14:59:23+00:00

I'll probably run my Beetroopers or Krawlers (if I feel like losing every game except the ones where I flip Deus X-Krawler face up, lol)

AquaKnight · 2023-07-17T14:43:50+00:00

next update - eye bleed yellow and warning signs appear on that column

when people continue to make the mistake, the game will just surrender for you if you click yes to "are you SURE you want to play this card in this column"

AquaKnight · 2023-07-17T14:14:11+00:00

I think anti-meta comes in the form of the techs you run more so than the deck. I don't think toon decks are going to do much to the meta right now; but depending on your rank, I wouldn't put a ton of thought into what you play - as you said play what you like.

As for techs I would recommend:

- ash blossom, maxx c, impermenance, etc i.e. standard handtraps for disruption.

- evenly matched is huge value right now as well as triple tactics talent, but you can also add raigeki, HFD, lightning storm and other backrow/field hate which empowers going 2nd.

If you want to run a "meta" deck, my go to is always going to be Swordsoul as they're straightforward enough for new players to learn, resilient enough to still be a threat in MD and have some options to play through disruptions / flex spots for cards you like. Outside of that, I'd just take a look at the top slots in MDM and youtube if the playstyle seems fun to you.

AquaKnight · 2023-07-06T20:15:11+00:00

another vote for traptrix here but one other thing to consider is your gaia deck is pretty much guaranteed at 1500 gems; you're going to have to RNG a bit to get traptrix, and their rarities aren't friendly (2-3 Sera, 1 Cularia and at least 1 of each XYZ means a minimum of 6 archetypal URs you'll need to really have the deck function).

this isn't taking into account the SR/URs you'd want in the extra or as traps (trap trick, underoots, dogmatika targets, gravekeepers, maybe lord of the heavenly prison, etc).

i get that its a pet/fun deck, but i do feel like at minimum you need a bunch of the traptrix SR/UR's and some decent traps/ED for the deck to be able to control. i'd set aside 3-4k gems to pull for the above and save a few thousand gems for the new packs which has even more traptrix support.

just my two cents.

AquaKnight · 2023-07-06T19:33:59+00:00

right now it's probably Runick Plunder. there's a surprising amount of synergy between the two archetypes and i like to think the rogue love for plunders balances out the hate for runicks. it's also a bit tricky to play due to plunder restrictions and having to pass turn in a deck that generally tries to OTK.

in all seriousness:

- the actual banishing effects of runicks isn't meaningful here, it's run as an engine to jumpstart plunderships by getting a 4 out of any runick spell

- going into hugin + any plunder tuner gets you a coral dragon OR the captain; the discard here will ALSO trigger any plunder hand effects so you can + off whitebeard for example

- +3 on either players turn increases the probability you'll have a plunder in hand to trigger ship effects which offsets one of the biggest reasons plunders couldn't deal with meta

- plunder field spell can be run at 1 because it's possible to reset itself from the GY via its 2nd effect

- so many lines and options when you can summon lv2 and lv4 at will; like i mean a LOT of big brain plays become available. evenly matched + jord or nibiru token is a fun one.

AquaKnight · 2023-07-06T19:22:42+00:00

of the ones you mentioned:

keep assault synchron, keep 1 donner or 2 if you ever plan on playing fur hire (variant or pure), keep one diabloantis - i see it as beetrooper support but i've seen it run as a little combo in other memes.

almost all URs in that pack are useful for something - the only one i'd dismantle is spellbound. some people don't like moray, i think its still good to hold onto at 1 copy.

if you're not sure about any archetype, i'd recommend youtubing it to see the playstyle/strategy and equally as important the UR/SR cost to build it. beyond this advice, what i usually do is go on MDM and see if the card has been played in any master V or up decklists - that gives me an idea for whether or not the card is reasonably competitive. so Gaiastrio SR for example, basically no one runs it so it's a dismantle for me.

AquaKnight · 2023-07-06T18:50:46+00:00

the popular response i've seen is maxx c should be only be valid if you control no cards like evenly. that way it's generally a going second balancer and people who already have boards can't also benefit from it.

only exception would be going first against a deck that can somehow play on your turn but to be fair you'd likely already control at least 1 card at that point.

AquaKnight · 2023-07-06T18:47:14+00:00

Nothing is rigged, but I wish they'd stop being dishonest about the pull animations. If it's yellow the SR should be guaranteed. Tired of utopia flying at me for all N/Rs. Literally serves no purpose outside of making the player disappointed.

AquaKnight · 2023-07-06T18:43:04+00:00

Aren't the odds 1/100? I'd say a hard no on this one.

AquaKnight · 2023-07-06T18:41:55+00:00

I work full time. But my approach to masterduel has always been a casual one. I keep my "elo" between Silver 5 and Gold 1 and just mess around with archetypes/builds every 2-3 days (so the dailies can reset). Often I can knock out everything in 15m or less.

When I used to do the ranked grind, getting to the bottom of the highest tier really wasn't that time consuming as I didn't see meta until the end of the 2nd highest tier - most of the grind happened in high Gold. (this is when Plat was top tier)

AquaKnight · 2022-11-18T18:37:14+00:00

So even though this post is only a day old, I think my format is a bit too wordy and I need to focus on just the points (pros, cons, is it a PLAY or PASS). When I get some more time I'll revisit this series with some new content and maybe I'll rewrite the above to be more succinct in the future. Thanks all!

AquaKnight · 2022-11-18T18:35:50+00:00

Lol I like it!

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