I'm new to Texags and to this board but wanted to ask for some advice.

I'm 28 and I've worked at my company for 5 years. I have $35,000 in my company's Merrill Lynch 401K, with my funds 100% allocated in Merrill Lynch's Goal Manager under the "Aggressive" funds model. I was told that was the way to invest due to my age. I've noticed a lot of talk about market corrections, fall-outs, and general doom and gloom...

My question is, with all of the market uncertainty should I rethink my "Aggressive" approach to a more conservative one before a massive correction occurs? Thanks

No. You are 28.

I've slowly realized you can't time the market reliably, but you can be sure you get the most match and dividend you can, and you can periodically protect some of your profit on more aggressive investment by moving bits of it to secure investment over time.

keep an aggressive AA. when your allocations get more than 5-10% out of wack, reallocate back to where you desire to be

boom, done

Yeah the market will go up and down many times before you retire. You want to stay the course, so that you invest in the same thing when it is up and when it is down. That is how you will get your 10 percent return. You start micromanaging, you are more likely to get the short end, and lose some compounding gains that you would have otherwise gotten.

Road the market down in 2008 and then back up. Quite happy with my current status about 7 years to retirement. If I had jumped out in first quarter expecting a correction would have not been happy. If you know this is a substantial correction right now then by all means get out, but you don't. It could stabalize and go up another 10% before a 5% correction. No one knows. Think long term. At 28, do you believe 30 years from now market will be much higher? Yes, than stay in. No, then buy guns and bury it.

[This message has been edited by Clavell (edited 6/21/2013 1:39p).]

Thanks for the feedback.