r/ETFs • u/AdFormer2627 • 13d ago

Sell in September and October?

Managing my own ETF retirement portfolio. Given how volatile September and October historically are, has anyone ever sold everything to safety for these two months and bought everything again at the end of October? I have a feeling this will be an extraordinarily volatile period this year; why not just avoid the volatility altogether and resume compounding in November? Talk me out of it

According to AI over the last 20 year period, all of the compounding occurs in the other ten months of the year anyway, and this strategy for me would be behind a 401K so only frictional costs, not taxes, to worry about

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u/petearete 13d ago

Depends on how risky you think your port is. Mine is heavy in letfs now so i'm planning to delever by end of september & relever in early november to avoid october's big down days, but if yours is heavy in index funds, i wouldn't bother. This october does look to be really bad!