Any Other Investors?

We've got about $300,000 in the market right now, most of it is in S&P500 index funds, but 10% of it is in solar stocks. - ENPH and SEDG.

I also invest as part of my business.... I just sold off my shares of ENPH in the business, because they've decreased by 50% since I purchased them. I put the money in VOO (an ETF that mirrors the S&P 500) - but I'll keep my personal shares of ENPH because I could still sell them for a profit.

According to my online stock broker, even with this terrible market, my rate of return over the last 10 years is 14.4%
over the last 5 years, the return is 16.4% and
over the last 3 years, the return is 17.9%

How are your investments doing?

They went down but I am keeping them where they are because I expect the market to go up in the next 3-5 years.

I haven't been paying attention to them since they're all for retirement. But now I'll have to tap into one soon to start paying a Student Loan. When I used to follow them closely, it seemed that the growth was less than expected. Maybe it had something to do with fees. "Follow closely" means I would enter the fund prices and share quantities quarterly and compare what Quicken said against the yield reported on the statement.

Apparently, ChatGPT is pretty good at picking stocks.

ChatGPT can pick stocks better than your fund manager - CNN

I kinda freaked out during the beginning of the pandemic and sold everything. I bought everything back when I thought the worst was over. I'm usually a really patient investor... i just "buy and hold." The situation just seemed so dire there for a while.

I talked with the advisor who handles my traditional IRA. A few years ago we were talking about how crazy things seemed to be due to the pandemic, cops killing blacks and the former president's antics. So he set me up with a hedge fund, which somehow essentially provides 10% gain during a bear market. But during a bull market, you might get only 1% growth, for example. Well it came in handy last year; it limited the IRA's losses.

We think it will come in handy again this year. Some investors have been relying on REITs for growth and income. But the pandemic's Work From Home strategy left vacant office spaces, and some companies are not renewing leases. Plus we have the three recent bank failures. I think we're in for tough times.

Where I live, rental condos aren’t being built fast enough. Does that count towards REITs?

Yes, I imagine so! It seems there's still high demand for housing. It's the commercial real estate that we think will suffer.

I'll say I'm sort of an investor. I am a layperson investor, we'll say. Ha.

I really enjoyed reading "the Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham. I am somewhat wary of the idea that one can "beat the market" however.

My investments that I've made personally over time have grown, albeit by not that much, but still, it's a positive return overall (I think, I'd better check).

I am thinking of investing in an apartment, or better said, buying an apartment, but we'll see about that. I'd have to liquidate some stuff to do that.

I owned a couple of solar stocks for a while - ENPH and SEDG - but sold them off recently - as they've just dropped too much. I put the money back into S&P 500 index funds.