So...Recession?

[gorzek]

I see we were saying last month Trump is likely to cause a bad recession... and one seems to be coming now!
Here are my most straightforward investing tips:

• Don't invest more than you can afford to lose. I really mean that. Think very hard. "Am I going to be distraught if all this money evaporates?" If so, shove it somewhere it can't do that, like into bonds or something.
  
• Remember that most things don't go to zero. Panic selling a falling asset will almost always leave you worse off. In the long run, most things go up.
  
• So, if in the long run most things go up, you should be fine. The alternative is everything is bad forever, meaning our society is basically collapsing, in which case you will have far greater worries than your stock portfolio so, honestly, don't sweat it.
  
• Use dollar cost averaging.
  
• Don't underestimate the power of stocks that pay regular dividends. Put those dividends back into those stocks. Eventually every time they pay a dividend, you end up with multiple additional shares of that stock! At some point, you are pulling in a pretty good quantity of cash just from those.
  
• Riding daily fluctuations is hard. Making money that way is challenging. People who are able to do it are usually very lucky.
  
• Be careful with penny stocks. They can have fees involved that you don't see coming, like administrative fees for reverse splits, which will eat anything you might otherwise make off of them. (Penny stocks are also very likely to go to zero.)