I got some advice here and elsewhere that I should do a reverse rollover of my IRA into my 401k so that I would be able to do a backdoor Roth. I ended up losing about 2% of my investments and counting in the process and it is not even over yet.
You have to liquidate your assets in your IRA in order to do a reverse rollover. For me this was investments like index funds and some stocks I had hand picked after finally starting investing this year at the age of 40.
I was worried about market volatility since I was going to be out of the market while the funds move from the IRA to 401k. I tried to do it now before December’s rate cut meeting approached so as to avoid having to sell low and buy high in case there was going to be a big rate cut rally.
Sadly right after I sold a rumor of a December rate cut started spreading and the market has been rallying about 1% a day. Had I just stayed put, I would finally have seen some gains or added to gain in my investments after having done a late start to investments in my life. It is discouraging.
PSA: while you may not be as unlucky as me be careful moving money in and out of accounts if it forces you to be out of the market even for a few days. This also happens when you switch employers sometimes. Someone said you can do futures trading to prevent being out of the markets but not all brokerage platforms allow that.