I know what you mean. My wife wanted to move her pension fund this week into bonds or a money market, but I talked her out of it.
As for my 401k, over the last couple of years I've been slowly skimming the 'profit' off some of the funds which have been moving up, such as the small and mid-caps and a couple of international funds. I've set a limit value on each fund and every couple of months, I would take whatever amount was over these target limits and move them, half to a money market account and half to a retirement oriented fund heavily weighted in bonds and other less volatile instruments. Before this last couple of week's activities these two funds accounted for about 45% of my total 401k (of course, after what's recently happened they now represent a larger portion). Note that since I'm still working, payroll is automatically adding to this the maximum amount allowed ever 2 weeks out of my paycheck (which is 10% for the regular contribution, 4% company matching and the maximum amount for the over 50 year old 'catch-up' contribution, which this year is $5500). Most all of this is going into equity funds with only about 25% going into the money market and bond funds.
Since I plan, God willing, to work for another 3 years or so, this continuous stream of regular contributions will be leveraging any dollar-cost-averaging upside if and when the markets rebound.
Note that I also have 3 defined benefit pensions currently 'in the bank' just waiting for me to trigger, which the longer I hold off, the more valuable they become, but since they are fully taxable I would like to wait until I'm in a lower tax bracket (after I actually retire) before starting them. Unfortunately, my Boeing pension (actually my 11 year McDonnell Douglas pension) automatically starts paying at 65 (a year from now), no matter what I do. I haven't verified this yet, but this may be the same situation with my 14 year pension from when I worked back in Michigan. However, my 12 year EDS pension (which will now be paid by HP) can be delayed as long as I wish, while continuing to increase in value at a 'guaranteed' minimum rate of 5% per year.
Anyway, we'll see how things go and hope for the best.
OCU
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