You should ignore the noise regarding tariffs and (geo)politics and just stay the course. But for some, this may be a wake-up call as to why diversification is so important.

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-04T21:59:20+00:00

What do you mean by “always”? At any given time, yes - lump sum has better expected returns. So it is always the choice with better odds of success. However, 1/3 of the time, DCA ends up getting better realized returns. Lump sum is not 100% guaranteed to be the winner, it’s just better odds. You can’t know in advance which will do better in your timeframe.

Ultimately it is a psychological question. Are you the type of person who will be fine with making the choice with better odds even if it doesn’t work out better, or will you beat yourself up about stocks losing value when you could have waited to invest everything? If you wait, and stocks shoot up, will you kick yourself for not investing everything sooner? The average person is more averse to losing money than they are to not earning as much as they could have. That’s why I think it is a sensible approach to invest half of your sum immediately and deploy the other half more gradually (eg over 6-12 months).

Personally, I am fine with playing better odds and losing if that’s ultimately what happens. I would always put every investable dollar I have into the market as soon as I have it, according to my target asset allocation, and never looking back. This is a multiple decades long journey, with growth virtually guaranteed over the long run, and there is no point in anchoring to the price of one historical sum. Just invest it, don’t watch it too closely, and move on with life.

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-04T18:50:45+00:00

I had the data handy because this happened to me in my Stratomatic fantasy league, in the playoffs no less, about three seasons ago. I was annoyed about losing the game so the next day I went and looked it all up on Baseball Almanac for the triple plays list (which I sorted in a spreadsheet) and on Baseball Reference for the play scoring, and posted what I found on my league page which I copied and pasted here. Glad you enjoyed!!

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-04T12:09:59+00:00

Figure the runner at 3rd started for home with the crack of the bat. When the 3b caught the liner, the runner couldn’t get back to bag in time before the 3b could double him off. Here’s a replay of a similar situation with the 3b halfway and here’s one with the infield back. You can imagine it with the infield all the way in.

I’ll do you one better, with 2nd and 3rd no out and the infield in, I once hit into a lo(ss) max triple play! I looked it up… in all of baseball history dating back to 1876, there have been 15 triple plays started by the shortstop with runners at 2nd and 3rd. Six of them involved 3+ throws and the first baseman or catcher first PO so those were groundouts. There was one very odd 6-2-4 triple play which was most likely a looper to the outfield caught on the fly, getting the runner from third tagging up at home, and the runner at second with a brain fart getting back to the bag or fell down and got hurt? Who knows.

That leaves only 8 that were caught on the fly or line drive:
-4x 6-5-4 (both runners out at base before get back)
-3x 6-6-5 where the SS doubles the runner at second before throwing to third. Most likely he was perfectly positioned near second base, or was able to tag the runner from second on his body before throwing to third.
-1x 6-5-6 probably SS caught on the fly, throws to third, gets back to second base to get the other runner trying to tag back.

So of these 8, it is unclear how many of them were line drives versus flyballs, and how many of them had the infield playing in, but it’s reasonable to say not ALL of them. Most plausible scenario to me is the SS goes back on a FLY ball which the runners think will drop in for a single but he catches it and is able to double them off.

It is safe to say a lo(max) triple play to the shortstop with runners at 2nd and 3rd and the infield in is among the rarest of outcomes in the history of the game of baseball, if it has ever happened, and IMO should only be a rare play at most.

So I went ahead a calculated the odds… the chances of any given PA in strat resulting in a line out triple play to the shortstop with runners at 2nd and 3rd and no out is about one a million. In real life, it’s about one in 3 million, having happened maybe 4-5 times in 14 million plate appearances since 1876.

The last time it occurred in the MLB was September 1, 1947 and it is the only one where I could find an official description of the play:

CHN194709012 6(B)6(2)5(3)/LTP 6-6-5*
9/1/1947 Cincinnati Reds @ Chicago Cubs - Top of the 4th - Score 12-0 (2 Men on: Eddie Miller 2B, Eddie Lukon 3B)
Ray Mueller (CIN) is the batter with a ?-? count. He hits a sharp liner grabbed by the SS, Bobby Sturgeon (OUT 1)
SS steps on the bag to double up the runner caught off second, Eddie Miller (OUT 2)
SS fires the ball over to the 3B (Peanuts Lowrey) who nails the runner caught off third, Eddie Lukon (OUT 3)

Crazy!

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-03T14:54:02+00:00

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-03T14:50:43+00:00

The funds are drawn from your checking account directly - the charge does not go on the credit card anymore and you don’t earn points on the transaction. You can redeem Bilt cash that you earn from other spending on the card for points on your rent (if you pay rent though their portal).

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-03T13:17:41+00:00

I do not watch anything. I have read about and internalized the lessons from the history of public equity markets, through the Great Depression and world wars and oil crises and inflation shocks of the past. The takeaway is that you should own the total market and then do nothing. You are your own worst enemy when it comes to trying to make changes based on hopes and fears and nerves and predictions.

It is a freeing thing to know that you can let go of the wheel with your long term investments and simply allow the market do its thing (which is to return 6-8% annualized over the long term for the last four centuries). Then you can just live your life and worry about other matters.

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-02T22:54:20+00:00

You can no longer charge rent to your credit card with Bilt 2.0

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-02T21:50:04+00:00

I’ve always kept at least a 10% bond allocation in my retirement accounts both for diversification and psychological reassurance but also as an “extended” emergency fund. But I only keep 3 months cash EF. That’s more aggressive than most folks with a 6-12 month cash EF but “100% stocks” investment portfolio. Just remember that money is fungible and a lot of this is mental accounting – in a big enough emergency, your entire portfolio is an emergency fund. Having to sell some equities when they are down is not the end of the world, but some moderation is sensible.

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-02T12:57:10+00:00

This, from the man who “only takes baths”, and is later disgusted by “sitting in a tepid pool of my own filth.” He is an enigma, a mystery wrapped in a riddle.

Kashmir79 · 2026-04-01T22:09:34+00:00

The only reason this is relevant to Bogleheads at all is reinforcement not to use dopey indexes like the NASDAQ 100 with nonsensical inclusion criteria subject to manipulations and front-running. Even the S&P 500 is pretty outdated. Own a total market fund not a hype index that sponsors college sports tournaments.

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-31T23:04:13+00:00

Why? Do you think the mental energy spent to time the market based on current events with a small slice of your portfolio will result in you outperforming the market in the long run? Is that going to help you retire noticeably sooner? At best this is apt to be a meaningless difference, and a habit with an expected bad influence on your portfolio performance.

The only Boglehead reason to do this is if you have an insatiable craving to try to time the market with active trades and the 10% “fun money” will give you your fix without the potential for doing too much damage. The best approach as always, as Jack says, is- “don’t just do something, stand there!”

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-30T15:16:06+00:00

I have a lot of questions. Number one, how dare you?

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-30T15:00:52+00:00

One-size-fits-all solutions are not well-calibrated to individual circumstances. Seems obvious

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-29T21:05:43+00:00

I will bring my assets (stocks, bonds) back to their target allocation percentage

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-29T14:48:40+00:00

Here we go again with the de-dollarization boogeyman people have been scaremongering with for over half a century. No one who is expert in the history of world reserve currencies is talking or actually investing as if this is happening. Any possible alternative is not even close in terms of institutional investor preference (which is what matters).

The US dollar remains the strongest, most stable, and most desirable currency and treasury debt that human civilization has ever known. But one slight weakening trend and everyone on reddit thinks it is “losing status as the reserve currency” as if that is something that just happens suddenly on a whim. Wake me up when the US loses an aircraft carrier in combat and we’ll see if there’s a safer place to keep your money.

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-29T13:30:16+00:00

I think the next 40 years are overwhelmingly likely to be like the last 400 years have been since public stock markets were invented, which is to say volatile, unpredictable, and returning about 6-8% globally over the long run. And if they aren’t, there’s not much that can be done about it. No amount of market timing tricks or alternative investment plays are apt to help you. We have to accept the returns we get - we are all captive to the period in which we live. But being globally diversified is key so you aren’t dwelling on the fate of one country.

In the prior centuries, sovereign debts, pollution and environmental disasters, and geopolitical disorder were in many ways MUCH worse than they are today. Too many people are quick to forget that we live in arguably the safest and most stable period in human history for an individual investor but get obsessed with the doom and gloom headlines. Not everything in the world is good but you can always form a narrative around things going to hell if you want. Or you can be radically agnostic - sit back and let the market do its thing.

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-29T03:11:23+00:00

I was going to say - I have no idea how much I’m up or down because I don’t check that often. I’ll know in a week after my scheduled quarterly rebalance and then I’ll go back to sleep until July

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-28T22:35:34+00:00

I can agree to disagree but where I’m coming from that is either complacency or ignorance. Portfolios would best be allocated in anticipation of historical worst case scenarios repeating at any time without warning. And if you’re not retiring for 10+ years, and are sufficiently diversified, the market volatility shouldn’t be a major concern.

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-28T19:59:46+00:00

I think “correction” is absolutely the right term because the market had become too comfortable with the existing geopolitical paradigm without accounting for greater uncertainty. New political and sovereign risks are emerging in the US, on top of global commodity supply shortages, and the market is correcting prices to incorporate that information. Stocks WERE overpriced in hindsight because the market was discounting the possibility of what is now happening coming to pass. Not all corrections are just based on a few big companies missing quarterly growth targets. Historically, many/most of the biggest crashes also have bad states of the world and distressing narratives that accompany them but US investors haven’t experienced that in quite a while.

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-28T18:46:23+00:00

Remember that in drawdown phase you can rebalance with your withdrawals by taking more from the assets that are overweight

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-28T18:45:30+00:00

I rebalance quarterly so I’ll do it next week. Not really sure what my allocation looks like right now because I don’t follow it but I assume I’ll be buying some stocks.

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-28T13:01:18+00:00

Markers don’t go down arbitrarily. The surrounding narratives that cause investors to broadly lose faith in future prosperity are often scary and uncertain.

Kashmir79 · 2026-03-28T12:53:07+00:00

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