The Liberal Gun Club Forum

I'm wondering if anyone here can shed some light on my 401k? I monitor my balance pretty regularly and since Trump's been in office i've seen significant gains. But, the last couple of months have been a little weird. 2 months ago my vested balance was up. I noticed last month that it had gone down $2000 and when I checked this morning it had gone down an additional $3000. The confusion stems from the fact that when I viewed my balance this morning it continues to show gains -- green meaning good and red meaning losses (of which there are none that I could see).

So what gives? If my account is still showing gains how is it that my vested balance has gone down $5000 in 2 months? Just curious if my 401k company is engaging in illegal activity and dipping into my funds, or if there's a logical explanation that isn't apparent to me. Any ideas?

How is the vested balance 'invested'?

25% large blend
35% large value
10% mid cap blend
5% natural resources
15% world allocation
10% world large stock

what do you mean by "vested" balance? Is that the company match? That could be invested differently than the remainder of your holdings.

It seems that the gain or loss reflects the status of your account based on ALL the money you put in from the beginning of your 401K. If you have had the plan for a while, you would have gained money while the market was up. If it shows a loss, then it basically means the down market has wiped out all your gains over the years.

The stock market has been swinging up and down lately, and it has definitely been down since October. The good thing for you is that your plan has accumulated enough, so you're still not in the hole. For people who started their 401K in October, they will definitely show a loss.

Have you been cost-averaging your contributions, making them regularly? If the market indexes you're invested in go up and down cost-averaging really works. Because when the market is down, you buy more shares, and when it goes up, you buy less, all for the same fixed amount. But the larger # of shares you bought low will go up, but the ones you bought when it was high are fewer in number so the loss is less. This doesn't work with crashing or exploding stocks, unless you had bought a lot before they shoot up, or sold before they cratered.

Well-run funds tend to mitigate losses, but be careful of unscrupulous fund managers who, having missed a stock rising, buying it into the portfolio late SOLELY for "portfolio dressing" to look smart when they were actually stupid. Not illegal fraud (AFAIK) but fraud nonetheless.

Your 401K is entirely dependent on the stock market. The market has lost all gains from 2018 over the last two months. China, rate hikes, tax cut... Welcome to the world of investing. If you’re young just ignore it I guess. If you’re nearing retirement plan to work some more years.

Buy now..it's near the shitter. It's gonna come back eventually...maybe not at the bottom yet.

Unless it continues to slide and all the companies go out of business. In which case Capitalism has finally failed and we have way bigger problems than money.

The current market is correcting and it's *way* over due. Sit tight. It'll all be fine when they impeach Trump.

VooDoo

If it's anything like my Scottrade account, the gain/loss indicators are day to day. If I lost $500 yesterday and gain $2 today, it'll show green.