I sold all my SP500 yesterday morning | Hacker News Reader

I sold all my SP500 yesterday morning

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35 pointstosh44 comments

The bigger question -- upon selling anything really -- is where to put the proceeds??

[update] And how does the selling affect your tax liability (of course it does)

Yup, I learned all too late in life that it's not really about buying and selling, but about allocation. Sounds like they dramatically increased their allocation of (US) cash? I don't think that sounds like a better place to park your money right now..

Metals/commodities?

High inflation and and high interest rates with debt this high means that eventually the Fed will print (IMHO).

To quote Gremlins 2, "we're advising our clients to put everything they've got into canned food and shotguns."

AI CEOs are literally encouraging people to start prepping: https://x.com/harris_edouard/status/2108633900503253293

For the tiny portion of my savings that I actively manage, a good chunk is in chip stocks.

Even if fab capacity deals are canceled due to overleverage or funky accounting, I am gambling that the capacity will find a new buyer. Maybe by making DDR5 I can get as a consumer.

It looks like this article author thinks similarly.

To be clear, this question is as much for myself as for anybody else, in these super turbulent times.

A bulk of my retirement (and non-retirement) account is in S&P500 index funds, along with other, tech-heavy investments (VGT, AAPL, GOOG, some NVDA, BRKB, etc). Every time I've diversified (whether on emerging markets or FTSE or elsewhere), I've "lost", so to say, compared to the S&P500 (and tech, of course).

Which is why the bigger question above ^^ is top of mind.

I dont have any great answers myself :-/ Just hoping to hear different perspectives.

Thanks

Use the proceeds to open a short position in the market. And if you aren't confident enough to do that then you shouldn't have sold in the first place.

even pros hate shorting the stock market. I personally know of a fund that swore off shorting.

A sober analysis, but this is the same story that's been told for years at this point. I haven't been buying new shares, but I'd rather avoid the capital gains tax if I can.

I have been thinking of selling my S&P500 fund shares for a little while (at least a majority). The past few years have been dips followed by sharp rises seemingly fueled by news events. The US midterms are a big event and if, after the election, there is an increase of hostilities in the middle east I think that might cause a drop. Of course the S&P has mostly gone up the past few years and trying to time the market is maybe not the best strategy.

This is exactly what call options are for, right? You can write an in-the-money call option dated for next year and lock in the price now, expecting them to be called away at the exercise date.

> Increasing interest rates is new information which surprised everybody

The people I know who pay attention to AI and finance, including both bulls and bears, near-unanimously agreed that AI would cause interest rates to go up.

Example: "AGI and the EMH: markets are not expecting aligned or unaligned AI in the next 30 years" [1] – their argument (written in 2023) is that if the market expects AGI soon, then interest rates should be high.

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ngpC5PFAgxHJMhicM/agi-and-th...

If you review FOMC projections from June 17, 2026 [1], you can see that fed funds rate expectations indeed shifted upwards since March.

  Percent range |    2026    |    2027    |    2028    | Longer run
                | March June | March June | March June | March June
  --------------+------------+------------+------------+-----------
  2.13-2.37     |            |            |            |
  2.38-2.62     |            |     1      |            |
  2.63-2.87     |     1      |     1      |     2      |     2
  2.88-3.12     |     2      |     3    1 |     3    1 |     7    9
  3.13-3.37     |     2      |     6    4 |     7    6 |     4    3
  3.38-3.62     |     7    1 |     4    3 |     3    2 |     3    3
  3.63-3.87     |     7    8 |     3    2 |     3    5 |     2    2
  3.88-4.12     |          3 |     1    5 |     1    3 |     1    1
  4.13-4.37     |          5 |          2 |            |
  4.38-4.62     |          1 |          1 |            |

[1]: "Figure 3.E. Distribution of participants' judgments of the midpoint of the appropriate target range for the federal funds rate or the appropriate target level for the federal funds rate, 2026–28 and over the longer run"

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomcprojtabl20...

Circular financing at times of high inflation and geopolitical instability is risky. Company A invests in Company B, B invests in C, and C invests in A. If A is forced to sell its shares in B to raise cash, B's price drops. Now B is worth less, so C now loses money too. Self-reinforcement.

That's been pulled a number of times in the AI stocks and surrounding companies. MS invested in OpenAI mostly in the form of compute credits, etc.

> At the moment, I'm building Star Path.

> Star Path is an AI guide that uses your astrology birth chart to help you understand what you're feeling, what it's happening, and what to do next. [...]

> My take on astrology is that it's a framework that some people can use to live a better life, and it's worked: many of our users thank us for helping repair their relationships, catapult their businesses, or just feel better about who they are.

In case you're interesting in following this advice and want to dig into the author's credibility and credentials.

That explains things. "The stars told me to do it" would be a more coherent thesis than what they posted.

I don’t know anything about astrology. But, just as a curiousity, I plugged the birth times and lat lons of my wife and I into a frontier model and asked it to generate our charts and personality profiles. Then, created 3 more from random inputs. 5 people who know us well (including us) independently guessed correctly. I’m sure there was information leakage. If anything, it was a fun game. But kind of eerie.

Hi, OP here.

I sat with this for a bit, and I was going to ignore this, but my wife's honor is on the line, so I just can't.

Frankly, whatever attempt at ad hominem here is uncalled for, and not befitting for HN.

My wife built a product over two years ago and hit a massive need after over a year of crawling over broken glass. I had recently left my previous startup and was going to take a break. But she needed my help. There was one week where ChatGPT's custom GPTs had terrible uptime, so she asked me to built an actual web app. And that's how I was recruited.

I was skeptical at first, given I don't believe in astrology, but I believe in the results. Not a week goes by that a user doesn't reach out to us to let us know that Star Path has had a massively positive impact on their life. Star Path has saved marriages, helped users gain the confidence to start the career they've always wanted, and more.

I also studied applied math and economics at Yale (where I met my wife, actually!), and have been investing and building software for 20 years, as both a founder and engineer.

Anyways, I'd love to keep the conversation and debate focused on the points I made, and not whatever preconceptions you might have re: astrology. Thanks.

How is your wife relevant to the conversation? No one even mentioned her on this thread or knew of her existence before you somehow decided her honor was being smeared.

Because you are insulting her. You conveniently cut out the part of my bio where I explain she's the reason I'm working on this business.

Now, your turn: how is the startup I'm building relevant to the conversation?

Note that I didn't mention your wife at all, nor did I pass any value judgement about your beliefs or profession. Any offence you took was due to your own insecurities, and getting hyper defensive about it isn't helping make your case.

I do think it's very relevant to bring up someone's background, education, profession, beliefs and more when deciding whether to make a life-changing decision based on their advice. I'm sure there are >0 people who are thinking about selling their stock portfolios right now, and this post might be the one to tip them over. They deserve to know whether you are a financial analyst or an AI founder, and whether your own decision was made fully analytically or based on the position of the planets and stars.

You cherry-picked text from my about page on my personal website, then vaguely suggested for readers to "dig into the author's credibility and credentials", and now you're trying to act as if you're not engaging in ad hominem.

Like I suggested earlier in this thread: please engage with my points if you have a well-reasoned critique, which, as it seems, you do not.

I did not read the article yet but adhominem attacks is against what I thought this community stood for. It even saddens me more that you suffer this because you worked with your wife. Not all nerds are like this, take heart.

Agreed. Thank you :)

If I am reading a blog post written by an MD about medical advice or whatever, then their next post is extolling the virtues of alchemy, it IS going to make me question everything else they have said, regardless of their professional credentials. Like, maybe you are able to encapsulate and separate the real from the pseudo-science, but it at least welcomes closer scrutiny.

I used to think the same but if the moon can affect tides, why can’t it affect humans.

I mean the mechanism there is not a mystery. Gravity is known to affect humans.

Nevertheless, IMO the placebo effect is still an effect.

That's the thing, you're calling it a placebo effect when there is a clear mechanism. I'd rather say I don't know and it could be interesting if true.

I don't buy that AI is at saturation. From the usage the labs have internally its clear that when cost isn't a constraint they launch 10k agents. I don't see why other companies wouldn't want to do the same

millions of other people also sold their s&p500 shares on the open market yesterday. who cares?

Not only that, but we don’t know for sure that this person on X actually sold their $VOO and $SPY. They just claimed they did.

They also claimed it was yesterday, surefire post-hoc analysis.

Timing the market is a bad idea no matter how sensible your reasoning sounds.

There could be a 15% market dip tomorrow and your investments would still be positive from a year ago.

There could be a 30% dip (among the top 5-7 market crashes in history) and you'd be set back less than 2 years.

Everything being said about the economy today was also true last year and the year before that, but holding was still the best decision. Unless you are retiring in the short term (in which case you shouldn't be so deep in the stock market anyways) panic selling is always a terrible move.

Could be re-investing. Trading slowly isn't better or worse than trading quickly, unless there are tax loopholes being missed as a result.

I do think that cash, savings accounts, and even CDs are a scam.

Did you even read the twitter post?

This is not panic selling. This is someone who has done their own analysis and determined the situation does not look sustainable and it's time to get out.

This is also someone who any way try and prove they got out. Only claimed to.

VOO and SPY aren’t the market though.

It’s totally reasonable to say “I think I am too exposed to US large cap companies, I’d rather take my gains now and diversify more to international and mid and small cap.”

He doesn’t say what he’s reinvesting in - or whether he’s still exposed to large cap companies through something like VT.

Hi, OP here. :)

I reinvested all proceeds into long-term zero coupon U.S. treasuries.

Anyone have the plaintext? Twitter randomly decided my unused account is a bot

/They/ cant let it fall until they are out.

FYI, selling everything is never a good choice unless you can foretell the future, which no one can. Selling everything and buying back in may work once in a while, but not for long-term investors. If you are a long-term investor, i.e., investing for retirement, stay the course. You will be rewarded.

Anyway, good luck to all. Bottom line, it's all guess and hope.

Meh, boom and bust cycles.

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