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Comment by cpncrunch | Hacker News Reader

It's certainly a good idea to buy when stocks are undervalued. However at the moment they are likely still overvalued, and it's also quite early days in this current sell-off.

I just sold my entire portfolio (apart from retirement funds) earlier this morning, as we want to buy a house later in the year and don't want to get trapped if the stock market completely crashes.

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Congratulations on the future house. We shall see about the market, but today's crash is POSSIBLY where can you can make money.

I’ve been watching for a sell signal for about 6 months, and I also got (mostly) out this morning.

The chance of you actually timing getting back into the market at the right point is really low. Miss the best days of a run up and you're giving up 75%+ of your returns.

Far better to hold steady.

It’s been 10 years. Pretty epic bull run. I’ll cross the re-entry bridge at a later date.

There are other strategies to protect long positions if you have cash or an appetite for risk, this allows you to realize the gains from holding during the entire runup.

It does require a good exit strategy for whatever hedge you choose.

Do you want to list some of the ones you’re thinking of? I’m trying to level up on hedging strategies for retail investors.

I was thinking of buying VIX on Friday, and am kicking myself for missing out now.

There are a range of ETFs that aim to have inverse daily returns to different things. I bought some SPXU, which aims to offer 3x the inverse daily return of the S&P 500. It works for this use case, betting that the S&P will fall. There are risks to using leverage, and inverse ETFs are meant for short term bets (a few days at most).

Curious what instrument you were going to buy the VIX through? $VXX? $VXX was only up (coughing) 33% while the CBOE VIX was/is up nearly 100+ %.

I hadn't looked into all the options to be honest, VXX was on my radar. So was TVIX[1], but figuring out how to optimize decaying short-term bets like these felt like too much for a non-expert. I'm certain there are smarter and less risky ways to hedge a market that seems overbought.

[1] https://sixfigureinvesting.com/2015/10/how-does-tvix-work/

Sell calls against long stock positions. If you're really scared, use the credits on the calls to buy further out puts.

You can also just buy puts. Puts on SPY increase in value as SP500 declines.

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