Retired from the military recently and am rolling over my TSP (government 401k) into a fidelity IRA so I have about $72k that I need to get into the market.

I am going to time-average the money into FNCMX, FXAIX, QYLD, and XYLD and share the results.  Dividends will automatically be re-invested.
I will buy FNCMX and FXAIX if the respective index is down more than 1/2% near the market close at the rate of $1k per 1%.  ie. if the nasdaq is down 1% near the close I will buy $1k of FNCMX.  
I will buy QYLD and XYLD once per day if the price is down more than 0.1% at the rate of 1 share per 0.01%.  ie. XYLD is down 0.87% then I will buy 87 shares.  

Any better ideas?  Anybody care to predict an outcome?

In amounts that I posted.  
I discovered xyld and qyld here a year or two ago.  I read up on them and decided to try them out in my Roth to avoid the taxes.  I've had a substantial amount of $ in them since last summer.
I do have some positions of qyld that are in the red, but the dividends have far outweighed the price decline of my first few positions(I started buying qyld first early last year as the market was headed down).  
With the dividends being reinvested they have performed similarly to the fxaix and fncmx mutual funds.  

I’m a pretty basic investor, I buy things when cheap and sell when they are less cheap.  Sometimes that happens in the same day and sometimes years apart.  

Everybody says these things provide income, but that seems short sighted to me.  Apart from differences in tax implications and risk it’s no different than a normal stock from my perspective.  

In the below pictures my positions of qyld and FNCMX are of similar timeframe.  The xyld positions are newer than the FXAIX.  
Up until a month or two ago the YLDs had outgrown the fidelity funds, the significant market bump over the last month or two elevated the fidelity funds faster than the YLDs.  (Ie. In a rising market the YLDs are less good like you say).  

I don’t care if the increase in value comes from individual shares being priced higher or because I get extra shares of the same value for free - both mean what I own is now worth more money.  

I don’t think the market will be consistently rising in the short term so I’m getting both.  I thought get both was the motto here!

IMO 72K is too small to slice and dice.  Just stick it in one or two funds and leave it alone.

Also, if you have non taxable contributions in your traditional TSP, watch where they end up when deposited.  They should go in your Roth IRA.  I had to do a couple emails back and forth with Vanguard for them to fix it.

That's what I'm doing.  I just hate to buy all at once so I'm averaging it over a short time period.  

I do have a small amount of untaxable money in my TSP due to no-notice travel while I was contributing to the TSP...  As I understand it simply remains untaxable after rollover, correct?  
All of the rollover I made went into the rollover IRA(none went into my roth).  I only rolled over a small amount when opening the fidelity IRA and just decided to roll it all over and get completely out of the TSP.  
Is there something I need to do regarding the untaxable money?  I definitely don't want it to become taxable again because the system can't accommodate untaxable money!  I will call fidelity today and ask....

ETA: when I did the rollover it TSP website gave me the option of sending all money to fidelity or sending only the taxable balance to fidelity and sending the untaxable balance to me via a paper check(but subject to the 10% penalty).  I opted to send it all to fidelity.
ETA2: Called fidelity, they received it as a single paper check with no indication of taxable vs untaxable balances.  They recommended next time to opt to send taxable balance to fidelity and untaxable balance to myself, then deposit the untaxable check into my roth ira within 60 days.  Fidelity is going to attempt to move the untaxable portion already rolled over into my roth.  Thanks for the tip, I would have never known the difference and probably forgotten about it when the money gets disbursed in a decade or two!

Only if Fido allows non taxable contributions in a TIRA and continues to track them as such.  This is doubtful.

My TSP was in three pots of money.  Traditional Pre Tax TSP, Traditional Pre Tax TSP contributed while in Iraq & Afghanistan so it was nontaxable, and Roth TSP.

In 2021 when I did the rollover, the paper form had a block to check on the Traditional TSP rollover section if my TIRA accepted non taxable contributions.  This was the box to leave blank.

From browsing bogleheads, I understand that the withdrawal process has changed.

To fix, you need to get information from both the TSP and Fido and act as the middle man to find a resolution which Fido will have to do on their end.  It was only a couple of messages for me, the TSP, and Vanguard to figure it out.  You might have an uphill climb if your check didn't indicate the tax free contributions.  

In my case, the check indicated the nontaxable money.  Vanguard either misinterpreted the rollover or something.

End result, all was fixed and backdated to when Vanguard got the checks.  Vanguard even sent me correct 1099s at the end of the year, which was a surprise considering the adjustment.


RE the 10% penalty.  In your next life, you probably could have classified that as an indirect rollover if you put that into your Roth within 60 days.  

I found my stuff from 2021.  Red arrow indicates the box to be left blank.  Again, I understand the process has changed but the new process might have similar verbiage.

Attached File

Sounds like my experience!  Maybe this will help somebody down the road.  For reference, this applies to traditional TSP.  I never did roth TSP.  

Fidelity lady I talked to was knowledgeable, she said she saw no indication from TSP that any portion of the rollover was non-taxable.  Fidelity received a single paper check for the full rollover amount.  I do not know if fidelity would/could have accepted non-taxable money into a traditional IRA.
TSP website was redesigned a year or so ago, everything is done online now(no physical paper).  The TSP rollover process only allowed two options if you have nontaxable money in your TSP: all funds to the new bank or taxable portion to new bank and non-taxable portion to me.  

Fidelity lady recommended when I rollover the rest of my TSP to do the second option and deposit the paper non-taxable check into my roth.  At the end of the year TSP will send a form that says you rolled over the taxable money and they paid you the non-taxable money.  Fidelity tax form will show a "within 60 day rollover" of the nontaxable money into your roth to avoid 10% penalaty.  Fidelity lady said rollover funds received like this would not apply to your annual roth contribution limit.

I sent a TSP statement that shows the taxable/nontaxable amounts of the rollover to fidelity, the helpful lady was unsure if it could be retroactively changed.  She said I would hear back by Monday.


Back on topic: markets were down the day of the OP but I submitted them a few seconds after the markets closed so missed the boat.  Markets have been up every day since so no purchases so far.  

1 month in - June was good all around, about 75% of the first rollover is in the market.

Markets tanked around 2% today.  Another similar day and I’ll sell it all.  
Did another rollover of a significant amount but not buying right now, just collecting 5% interest on it.

If it helps anybody, Fidelity appears unable to accommodate direct rollovers of tax free tsp money because tsp does not handle taxable and non taxable funds differently.  Tsp does let you send tax free money to yourself via check.  You then deposit the check directly to your fidelity Roth IRA and they properly handle it as a rollover (ie don’t count it against your annual contribution limit).  

The xyld and qyld show lower gains because this account was set to put dividends into the account rather than buying more shares.  
The top line is a CD, The red position is an experiment I’m trying out.  

I loved the idea of the quadfecta but lost my ass on them. Had I stuck with sp500 it would have made way more

It apparently got buried on somebody's desk at Fidelity, but a Fidelity guy finally called me back and retroactively moved my tax-free contribution from my rollover ira to my roth ira.  

The note above about tax-free money in your pre-tax TSP still applies.  The new TSP website makes it easy for you to change your money from tax-free to taxable when rolling over your TSP - be careful!

I’ve been bad at updating, but the markets have been so good that there’s not a lot to share.  
I sold almost everything to prevent going into the red and timed the buy back right at the trough around Halloween so it looks great now.

Just over 1/2 is in the markets and I’ve got small weekly buys of the assorted fidelity index funds that go through this summer and then I’m just going to stop looking at this account for a decade.

FYSA, TSP only lets you do a “split” conventional rollover (where your taxable money is directly rolled over and your non taxable money is sent by check to you) once per year.  I’m undecided on whether to rollover the other half or leave it in the tsp - but I have almost 1/2 year to think about it.