If your money is tied to a 401k investment fund, your options are likely limited by the terms of the 401k.
Many 401k programs offer "choices" to it's policy holders about what percent of their investment goes where. But these choices will be a defined list of fund accounts, and not the complete market.
Because of this, your choices are to choose among the funds defined by your 401k, or to cash out the 401 with a monumental penalty.
Some funds will offer precious commodities
futures as an option, but never simply buying these commodities. Futures may be safer in some respects than other investments, but keep in mind that these futures only have value, if the fund you invest with can actually cover the profits from the commodity.
Any serious bankruptcy or other financial shelter pursued by your fund could destroy any equity you have accumulated.
Read the thread on economic collapse in South America.
For those with their retirement hopes pinned on your 401k, this is only a guaranteed investment if the economy is strong and growing. A serious economic downturn means that these monies will evaporate in lost value and inflation.
What's worse, is that there is nothing you can do about it.
You're locked into your 401k by 50% or greater penalties for early withdrawal. So unless you fear an even greater loss from economic conditions, you have no choice but to remain in your corporate sponsored financial prison, and hope for the best.
Everyone should realize that these funds (401k & similar), are a financial vehicle designed to allow the financial power elite access to your money now, (which they lend to still more people at a profit), betting that the growing economy will allow them to return your investment many years later with interest.
If the economy tanks, then your fund goes bankrupt, your money is gone.
If you think this is impossible, ask the retired couple in Argentina (or any other from the 50% of the population that's below poverty level), what they think.
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I've been following the sell off myself recently, and am somewhat chilled by the volume of traffic.
Company executives frequently sell off company stock to take profits for whatever reason. But the recent avalanche of these sales should ping our radar. If this trend continues, it deserves major media coverage IMO.
<hint hint all you editors and reporters out there (I get to see the server log
)>
Hopefully these recent sales trends will table off, and amount to a massive coincidence.
But senior executives selling significant portions of their own companies portfolio, while their traders push the stock for investors, is an absolute warning flag of impending economic problems.
The problem is, of course, that not only is economics bankrupt, but it has always been nothing more than politics in disguise... economics is a form of brain damage.
Hazel Henderson