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Comment by mkoubaa | Hacker News Reader

Posts like this make me want to hurry up and buy a farm

Ahh, we can all buy the farm together. ;)

I've been watching my investment accounts, particularly the TSLA fraction, and see-sawing between "This has got to collapse soon, I should..." and "You cannot time the market, idiot".

I'm dissatisfied with the inaction, but I can't come up with a coherent theory about how I should act... Bleah.

Recognize that holding is an action and a choice, too.

If you don’t have a coherent theory to {act}ively hold an asset, you probably shouldn’t be acting to hold it, and be acting to sell it.

This is equally true for TSLA and NVDA as it is for VOO and BRK.

Why? Because when prices are too low you need to be able to hold (and ideally buy) with conviction and when prices are too high you need to be able to sell with conviction, although the latter is less important if you have steady income.

If you don’t have a theory of value, you’ll be able to do neither effectively, and risk loss of principal and opportunity in a downturn.

I understand your point; but against it I lay the truism that every time a retail investor trades, value is destroyed. ;)

My own personal financial history has been more damaged by actions taken, than by forbearance and waiting. "Time in the market beats timing the market", style. So I wait for the moment when I've got Something Better To Do with the money, and then I act. And try not to second-guess later.

I don't think we're at odds here!

One possible solution to my framework is (1) to only buy things for which you have a coherent theory (2) that coherent theory holds water over the duration of your investing life.

It's possible that you had a coherent theory for purchasing TSLA at a certain price. If that price has out-run your theory, there is no contradiction in selling that TSLA and parking it in some place you have a coherent theory for, like VOO. This is maturity and humility, not hubris.

If I were in your position, I'd try to ask myself: does this decision to rollover TSLA into something I better-understand (e.g. VOO) fall inside or outside the pattern of "my own personal financial history has been more damaged by actions taken".

FWIW, "Time in beats timing" is a truism that applies to market-spanning indices, not a choice between individual securities. It would be a mistake to apply that logic to individual positions, unless you've given yourself the arbitrary restriction of only buying or selling TSLA and nothing else!

Yep, I’m sitting on the same fence. We can all see the circular deals in the high tech sector which has been the recent engine of the stock market. It’s all uncertainty, everywhere you look.

Hurry, then, while your money is still worth something and there's farms to be had. I did and never looked back, no mortgage, no loans, no nothing. Use your money to become less dependent on future money. In the end it is independence which gives you security, not money in the market or on the bank.

I support this view, though in my own deep thinking about it all, I've come to see that all things are leased. Life itself is leased. We are all on borrowed time with borrowed resources and social contracts.

This affects me because the urgency toward ownership and being less dependent on future money is prudent in some ways, but also naive in others?

When I think about owning property and being free of monthly rent, there's a truth to that. And it feels nice to say we've achieved generational wealth. But maintaining the property costs money and property taxes are recurring, forever. So I've relaxed on this idea that it'll be markedly different from rent.

Curious how you think about it?

Maintaining property takes time and costs some money, true. Farm property is (meant to be) productive though so if done right its maintenance has a negative cost, i.e. it makes you money. This goes for the traditional products you might think of - for us, silage from the fields, timber and firewood from the forest - as well as more recent things like electricity from solar panels - we've had negative electricity bills since I installed panels on the barn I built some 5 years ago. We're close to energy independent, once I've arranged some storage solution we will be independent. We have our own water, our own waste disposal facilities, a forest full of deer and elk and swine and the rest for when we might feel the need to tap that resource, enough land to feed the family and the means to store and prepare it without the need for external power - I've been cooking on a wood-fired stove for the last 21 years and prefer it over the alternatives we also have at hand (resistive electric and induction electric hobs). I've baked my own bread for much longer than that so I gradually moved into this 'lifestyle' - and that is what it comes down to, living the way we do is a conscious choice. Sometimes it is a lot of work, sometimes a storm brings down a hectare of forest, other times the water facilities freeze solid, sometimes a moose or deer pulls down the fencing in the middle of the night, sometimes there's weird critters trying to make a home under our roof, etc. All in all it is more than worth it for me.

Owning and living on a farm is not for everyone as it does tie you down more than a random apartment somewhere. If you're the type who wants to fly off to some trendy destination on a whim a farm might not be for you.

...yeah, there is always a post giving you that feeling..

Maybe, we should start with putting solar on the roof :)

Just because there is a risk of apocalypse, doesn't mean it's a good idea to try and time it.

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