My first ever dabbling in buying on dip during 2022 market downturn turned out to be quiet exciting endeavor

Wow!!! My first ever dabbling in buying on dip during 2022 market downturn turned out to be quiet exciting endeavor. I primarily bought iShares Semiconductor ETF (SOXX). Let me share my experience from this experiment.

Since I don't do market timing in general, I was not sitting on any cash for such buy on low exercise. Rather I used borrowed funds from HELOC at prime minus 1% (3% average APR during last year) rate. I kept buying little bit on dip each time SOXX went down by 8%. As SOXX dropped around 36% last year, I ended up buying for around 80K.

So far, with spectacular recovery of semiconductor sector this year, this experiment has generated almost 20% gain on my investment in it.

My plan is to start selling SOXX slowly as it reaches it's record high in near future and keep selling for each 8% increment thereafter. Idea is to slowly pay off HELOC and then repeat this excercise again during next market correction/crash. 

Glad to see my first buying on dip experiment going smoothly as per plan.

I was wondering as how my gain is 20% when so many of my initial buys were hardly profitable (as it kept going down after my each initial buy) at all. Well, credit goes to magic of dollar cost averaging. I kept my buy dollar amount same, hence was able to buy lot more shares as price kept dropping. After recovery, those bottom buys had highest effect on overall gain.

Here is dollar cost averaging magic in action in one of my accounts. Last buy at lowest point had biggest impact:


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How much one needs to save in retirement portfolio to retire comfortably in early sixties age

Wondering as how much one needs to save in retirement portfolio to retire comfortably starting with one's early sixties (say at 62 age) for next 25-30 years of joint longevity and be lucky enough to survive  extreme uncertain period such as 2000-2010 lost decade (with two major crashes resulting in virtually zero compounding )?  Needless to say, it all depends on household's ongoing expenses during retirement.  If one retires at 62, one can collect reduced social security pension (say 75% of full 67 age benefit). Non-working spouse can also collect half amount as spousal benefit at 62. Combined household reduced  benefit could be around 25K to 30K a year for professional workers like us. If household's annual expenses, including medicare/affordable-care health insurance co-premiums/copays (typically 5-6K annually for retired household for routine care) are in 60K range, then perhaps one needs additional income of 30K to 35K beyond social security pension. If one has retir
Read more

Why bonds must be always part of our overall portfolio mix

If one's retirement horizon is quite far away, they need not invest any retirement money in bonds. Bond's long term REAL (after inflation) returns are too low (just 2%) as compared to that of stocks (which is 7%). Note that above suggestion of not keeping any retirement savings in bonds for younger (below mid fifties) workers comes with a caveat. It's only meant for savvy  investors (with higher risk tolerance ) who are able to effectively manage pain of loss during stock market downturns and stay course  without losing any sleep. With 100% stock portfolio, pain of loss is expected to be most severe . So, unless you believe in long term potential of stocks and are willing to exercise patient, don't try 100% stock portfolio. Rather, like typical  retirement saver, stay with target date retirement funds (which typically has decent bond allocation) so that short term losses during crashes is emotionally  better manageable for your lower risk tolerance. Near retiree (tho
Read more

SPDR® S&P Semiconductor ETF (XSD) - Excellent small cap semiconductor index fund

Recently I came across another *semiconductor* focused low cost index ETF which seems quite promising index. It's called SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF ( *XSD*). Unlike iShares Semiconductor ETF SOXX ( https://financial-well-being.blogspot.com/2022/01/iShares-Semiconductor-ETF-SOXX-Passive-Semiconductor-technology-index.html ), which focuses primarily in *large* cap, XSD focuses into *small and mid* cap semiconductor companies of S&P Total index. It's *equal weighted* index and that's why it's average capitalization is in mid and small cap.Overall it's comparable or *even better* than SOXX. For example... - It's PE is comparable to that of SOXX - Dividend yield plus earnings growth of 16% as compared to lower 13% for SOXX - It's 3/5 year returns of 23/22% is 20% better than that of SOXX's 19/18%. It tracks *semiconductor small cap* sector which has been one of the top performer in technology sector with close to *20% annual return* for last 5, 10 an
Read more