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Katarina Petruzzo's avatar

Question from me: how do you think about investing in ETFs that track s&p 500 and other major indexes while they are currently in oversold territory? Thanks!

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ETF Focus's avatar

Speaking just for me personally, I tend to be more of a long-term buy-and-hold investor. I make tweaks and pivots occasionally, but not often and certainly not of the "moving 100% to cash" variety. It might be more overweighting value stocks or adding to Treasuries for protection. Nothing terribly exciting, but I do make changes based on how conditions are changing.

So trading based on a relative strength indicator that looks at the last 14 trading days doesn't really fit with my personal style of investing. I tend to look at RSI numbers more for informational purposes, but not for trading purposes.

That being said, I do know plenty of people that trade based on the RSI and some even have success doing it. I don't really have a problem if someone tweaks their allocations a bit when something drifts into overbought or oversold territory. I'd just encourage folks to make small moves, not big ones. After all, everybody's crystal ball is cloudy!

Thanks for the question!

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Katarina Petruzzo's avatar

Super helpful! And with dollar cost averaging RSI is probably even less relevant

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ETF Focus's avatar

Not to mention that if you're constantly rebalancing and trading based on an indicator that can swing back and forth rapidly, you're going to create all sorts of taxable events that could make your life a living hell. Trading based on any indicator is really just a form of market timing and that tends to be damaging more often than not!

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