I think one of the aspects of being invested during a big drawdown that is often overlooked is that if you are invested in quality stocks is the opportunity to participate in capital raises at the bottom. Often the money that you initially “lost” in the drawdown can be recovered relatively quickly during the recovery. So while it took 18 months to reach a new market high, individual companies made it back much quicker. The caveat here of course is you need to be in high quality businesses that aren’t hocked to the eyeballs in debt or have some kind of sustainable business model.

As a personal example I bought my first shares in Jan 2007, it was just after the first sell off that was a precursor to but prior to the GFC. I bought a commsec share pack (5k that they split between 5 ‘blue chip’ stocks) I think from memory they were Westpac, BHP, Suncorp, Amp and Brambles. All were going well they had recovered in price and were up 10-15% over the first 6-7 months of the year. I was then overseas doing field work and had no real connection with what was going on back home or in the broader world and was just getting snippets of the meltdown, anyway came back to my shares being down 40-60%, but then the cap raises started coming and I remember WBC raised at $12 or so, I thin SUN was around $4, I subscribed to these raises and and the recovery started, and WBC was back to $30 and I had made more money on the cap raise part than the initial shares were worth. The other shares were similar but took differing lengths of time to recover. Some of this was luck, but a big part was just not panic selling on the way down, not needing the invested cash to meet living expenses and having a reserve of cash available to deploy at the bottom.

This experience really taught me to try not to get swept up with the herd and to think about why I want to sell- if I didn’t think it was worth selling last week, what has changed this week to make me sell and if it is only the share price decline that has changed then I can ignore it.

Well here goes...... I just bought some FANG etf as I couldn't afford to buy bits of everything listed below.....

Historically March/Apr has been the best gains for NASDAQ..... fingers crossed.

@twofootedgiant, I think it was a long time coming. I read an interesting article this morning - Meta's Investors Get a Reality Check - which I think touched nicely on a lot of Facebook's issues at the moment. While hindsight is a wonderful thing, interest in Facebook (the platform) appears to be dwindling and appearing increasingly aged. I still wouldn't be touching them - in isolation - at this price and have concerns about their ability to overcome the 'staleness' that is starting to be associated with their brand (outside of the metaverse, of course).

@Hands, I am curious why you prefer FANG over NDQ? Is it more or less related to additional focus/exposure to the 'big 10' tech-enabled companies?

Edit - rephrasing

@Rocket6

Yes - I wanted the big tech. I think they have been oversold given their existing market penetration.

Mind you, I think small tech has been oversold too but will wait a bit longer as my belief is that the retail market will first head for big names to stack their portfolio (over the little names which are not considered VALUE at the moment).

NDQ is a good diversification, but I wanted tech-heavy option. Also I noticed the MER for FANG is 0.35% whereas MER for NDQ is 0.48%. This was not the deal breaker but it is worth noting.

Thanks for replying @Hands. I was tossing up with both of them for a decent portion of my super account - but elected to go with NDQ for the 'set and forget' benefits. I think there are a few FANG holdings that may be under threat - or risk being under threat - in the next couple of years. My view with NDQ is if and when some of these companies are disrupted - which I think is bound to happen - NDQ will hopefully provide exposure to the new kids on the block doing the disrupting.

Edit - accidentally pressed 'update post' before I had finished replying...oops

@Rocket6

Thanks for your thoughts too. It's nice to have a gage.

I think we are on the same page - I hold some other smaller cap ETFs on the side as well to play the thematics: HACK, SEMI, CRYP (a crazy firecracker).

But I have been looking for some names for individual investing.

I'm currently looking at Palantir(PLTR).... anybody with any thoughts? Since IPO, it has tripled, then come back down again in recent correction - all in 6mths. I'm very wary of the lack of earnings and it having been a market darling for a few months, then a rogue child (Ark Invest has just sold a huge chunk).

I had a look at palantir a few weeks back but didn’t make any notes so this is from memory.

The negatives are

• the share count is increasing massively
• still expensive
• growth is good but not great
• most metrics were hard to work out

i read a seekingalpha report on a comparison with DT (dynatrace) which basically offers a similar product as PLTR’ s foundry, and their conclusion was this was a better option. No dilution, market leader, profitable, under the radar, not expensive.

I have just bought METV (ETF) after the META update dropped the price a little! Expense ratio is a little high at 0.75% but increased exposure to metaverse players ( still has significant holdings of your large tech stocks as well)

https://www.roundhillinvestments.com/etf/metv/

@Chagsy - Thank you for your thoughts.

I was quite interested because of it's US Defense contracts. At times with threat of war, inflation, covid, weather patterns ..... - I was thinking anything with govt contracts was a maybe safer bet? Still thinking on this.

Will be looking into dynatrace.

I have owned METV for a while .... went up then went down .... haha.