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neogodless | on: Can the stockmarket swallow Anthropic, SpaceX and OpenAI?
In general you should never "sell your 401k." Period. (Short of using it for income during retirement.)

What you should do is have an Investor Policy Statement[0].

This should contain at least two things:

- your desired Asset Allocation (e.g. 30% U.S. stocks, 30% International stocks, 20% U.S. bonds, 20% International bonds) which should be decided upon based on specific, personal goals and risk tolerance

- your strict policy rules for if and when to do anything, if ever, e.g. (don't sell anything ever, or... rebalance your portfolio if one of your allocations is more than 2% from the desired goal)

Now... if say U.S. stocks took a big dump in the next 6 months (while other asset classes either grew, held steady, or simply didn't drop as much), when it would drop below 28% of your allocation, and you'd open a spreadsheet and figure out which other asset classes to sell a few percentage of, to buy the reduced price U.S. stock funds. (This is a policy-driven buy low, sell high strategy.)

[0] https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Investment_policy_statement

sebastiennight | parent | next
Thanks for being the voice of reason here. So many people make their investment/allocation decisions on the fly... it's only going to get magnified by these 3 big IPOs. (and their unexpected consequences)
throwawaypath | parent | next
Firms will look at your $600k 401k AUM, Investor Policy Statements, and laugh you out the door. They won't care, you have no say. Your 401k plan is between them and your employer.
neogodless | root | parent
A few things:

- yes 401k fund options are negotiated by people that don't know I exist, or care

- but... how I allocate my contributions to those funds is under my discretion

- and... I've never stayed somewhere long enough to have a $600k 401k balance. As soon as I'm gone, I roll it over to a private account that I have full control over (and much lower expense ratios.)

So I don't really care if I'm in the door or laughed out the door, because it has no material affect on how I manage my finances.

foobarian | parent
Not sure if OP meant literally sell, or just rebalance out of stocks. TBH I've been considering sliding over to all bonds for a time, since there is no tax event if funds stay in the account. But the numbers don't seem that high at the end of the day.
c22 | root | parent
If you try to time the market and you sell at the exact peak you still have to time the market again and buy back at the correct bottom. If you miss either of these you're likely leaving long term performance on the table.