Hi All,
Just curious how folks are managing their investments. Is everyone doing it themselves?There are a lot of robo-advisors like Vanguard Digital Advisor and robo-advisor hybrids like Personal Capital and Vanguard Personal Advisor Services.
Warren Buffet has said it makes the most sense for most people to just invest in the S&P 500 but I know folks on here are not most people :)
I have been managing everything myself so far but have been considering using something more hands-off but high-growth potential so I can focus more energy on hobbies.
Thank you in advance!
Who manages my money? TQQQ has been managing my money for the last 7 years. Almost exclusively at this point given the fact that every other position now pales in comparison.
Fuck everything but tech in your long term long vol PA. The best of the best companies at unfortunately the highest of the high valuations. Who cares - it’s still what will be the clear winner 20-30 years from now.
We’re not pension funds, we don’t have constant liabilities or need nice sharpe ratios and low volatility/smooth monthly/annual returns. We need pure % and $ returns. Fuck alpha and fuck beta.
Can you please explain why TQQQ is safe long term? Because I asked this question a month back and was roasted for even considering a levered ETF for long term holding? They started talking about decay and all this stuff. Also I suppose a 33% fall in the index would wipe you out but can this be mitigated with stop loss or something? Thank you
Same question
I dont think so , look at the chart during COVID sell off, fell hard then rocketed out. It rebalances every day so the 33.3 percent fall would half to be in a single day to wipe out the fund i think. People say hold the index and buy no matter what yet if you invest in a 3X index your all the sudden crazy, this seems like cognitive dissonance to me.
Assuming you've been dollar cost averaging TQQQ? Instead of putting in one lump sum 7 years ago?
Put a lump sum initially when I decided to transfer all the liquid assets that I could (including 401k rolled over into IRA). Then dollar cost averaged for a few more bonus cycles. Then stopped for a couple years until 2020 when I legged some more in.
This is golden lmao liquidating all my shit and moving into tqqq and spxl thanks random man on the internet
Godspeed brother. Put all the money you can afford to not see in 30 years, and we'll catch up in 2051.
Man you guys on some oversaturated market shit. Go search any MSCI frontier market. Hire some local consultant to give you the best company with P/B >1 and a solid EBITDA and project. x4 your money in max 2 quarters bruh
Thoughts on $SOXL?
It's a great one too, but a little bit more cyclical/volatile given the sector. also only up 9000% ITD vs 18000% with TQQQ. They launched within a month of each other so maybe that month made all the difference :)
Hey man. I'm in a similar position – have a big PA ($20mm+), still in 20s, been working at a l/s fund for a few years. Your story is a lot cooler than mine, but basically I ran a startup and sold it.
Have a question for you, and it’s something I’ve been struggling with — why do you still work? I’m a sr analyst at my shop, most I’ve ever clipped was last year, ~$2mm. I just don’t see a clear path to partner at my shop, and idk maybe you’re in a similar situation. From here, the only way to “hit it big” is launch my own shop, but I’m too young haha. Like you, I’m no Jamie Sterne or grant wonders.
At a bit of a crossroads here, part of me wants to grind it out until I’m mid 30s or so, and then spin-out / launch own shop, and the other half wants to just quit and manage PA. Interested in your take.
Also just thought I’d share — I own a little TQQQ. I’ve got 10-15% of my PA in there, the rest is a mix of stuff w/ less vol and then 10-15 of my best longs.
I'd say your story is a lot more interesting than just buying and holding one ETF lol. I'm very curious as to why you decided to go into finance after what was a relatively successful exit from a startup? Most of my college friends are in the tech startup space and have done amazingly well (some are multi-bn NW liquid as a result - I say some but I mean 1), they love running their own business from the ground up and the ones that have sold to other tech companies and even left $30-5mm on the table in vesting to quit early and start a new venture. If I thought I had the talent, gumption and passion for that sort of life I would be doing that in a heartbeat instead of public markets investing. I would totally just start another company if I were you - VC money is so frothy right now.
I still work because I just enjoy the work mostly, and I wouldn't really know what to do with myself otherwise honestly. My other friends are still working and some could retire as well (granted they have much cooler roles). It's not as stressful either really knowing if you get fired it doesn't really matter. I haven't stopped to think and map out a plan yet, but I'd imagine I'll take a look at 40 and see if it still makes sense to work. I'd have to readjust the PA obviously before and that comes with tax considerations etc.
I will invest in cryptocurrencies, which will keep my fortune growing
That is not a bad idea at all. Probably a bit more risky overall but there's several times more upside to that trade as well.
How has your PA been holding up YTD? TQQQ down big
He said he doesn't really hedge, so his PA should be down ~22% from when this post was made in September.
Genuinely curious... How is this going?
The dip is more significant now.
congratulations on your success! I'm curious about the psychological aspects of this. unless you desire to own a fleet of rolls royces and boats, you've hit fuck you money, you no longer have to work, so I've got some questions for you. no judgment, I think there's plenty of money to go around for everyone and I hope everyone has the same success you've had
It’s not just that something like that would wipe it out. Loses compound more, so after a big drop like during COVID, it takes much longer to recover. Volatility hurts you even if things stay flat (unlike with the underlying unlevered ETF)
You are right IF you model it out stochastically using say a Monte Carlo simulation with a mean return of 0%, then yes of course the losses compound more, the stock is path dependent and you have decay due to the volatility. Look what happened during covid. Down almost 70% peak to trough - look where it is now baby ;). The reality is that QQQ is not a randomly moving stock index and it does NOT stay flat, and there are far more up days than down days and so the compounding works well in your favor despite the volatility decay math we all know of - so for example in the last 10 years TQQQ is up 100x while QQQ is up 7x.
Basically, I see no down side unless you are planning on holding only for the short term.
yo where tf you work at, i need to you be my advisor for my PA. send me a DM if ur comfortable, i wanna follow u for future posts
The fed
Yes money will cease to be free in a years time…and QE will most likely end in November, equities have not priced this in AT ALL. For those that made money in this insane bull market, that’s great. For new investors, this is not sustainable in a stagflationary environment. Terrible time to buy TQQQ, great time to buy MZZ
Your problem is you're trying to use your finance education and theory to impart some logic on things. That logic would tell you to short things and buy bonds and shit. That is all fucking wrong and you know it. Over any 30 year period, equities, going balls to the wall long, has been much much more lucrative than any other asset class. You go ahead and short the market, see how well that takes you.
I used to do long/short in my PA. I used to look at value stocks and short RX plays and do options and all that shit. And you know where it got me? couple points above the market some years, couple points lower other years. Am I a bad long/short investor? Maybe Maybe not? - most l/s portfolios return low single digits Is long/short the way to maximize returns? Fuck to the no.
Ultimately - people should not be trading in and out in their PAs running long/short hedge fund portfolios. You don't have risk limits, duration limits, max drawdown constraints, volatility targets, fucking pensioners to pay for. You are NOT a hedge fund. Your job is to make $ in any way by possible by X age without regards to how and when that happens. No one cares about the sharpe or the path dependency.
Brokerage is 100% in SWTSX, Schwab's total market fund. Retirement is like 80% in SWTSX (or similar total market fund), 20% target date retirement fund. I should probably increase exposure to international equities.
I manage cash, taxable accounts and retirement accounts for myself (~$1mm), my father (~$5mm) and my father-in-law (~$10mm+). They handle their own real estate investments.
I started off trying to act smart by buying individual stocks, options, allocating some cash to international and certain sectors. In a couple of years I finally learned the lesson that Warren was trying to teach us. The vast majority of all that money is in vanguard 500, vanguard total stock market and vanguard extended market.
With the ten year bull run we have been on my dad and fil think I am some sort of investing genius and I have out performed 85% of my active investor friends.
The truth is that unless you work for a hedge fund or something you have no chance. You’re not going to discover the next google and you’re not going to win the lottery. The retail investor is at a large disadvantage compared to the funds that get all that inside info.
Another benefit of passive investing besides owning 75% of active funds is that it requires none of your free time to manage. Active investing is like sex, poker or fashion sense, everyone thinks they are awesome when in reality most people suck at it.
I needed to hear this - thank you!
I'm coming to that realization as well. I'm 30 so it's not too late for me. lol :)
Recently moved all of my 401K to an S&P 500 index (previously has some small and mid-cap mixed in) and thinking about moving my IRAs to Vanguard Total Stock Market and be done with it since Total Stock Market is just a mix of Vanguard 500 and Extended Market (I think).
You are correct. Total stock market is 80% the 500 fund and 20% extended market.
I just give a larger weight to extended market cause I’m still trying to find a little alpha.
But if you compare vanguard 500, total stock market and extended market over the long term, the returns are all similar.
I think if you make a lot of money or will get a decent inheritance cause your parents worked hard, then you don’t need to make money fast. And passive investing over 30 years is almost fool proof.
Only downside is that you won’t get rich fast.
How do you own 75% of active funds?
When I say own I mean beat or outperform.
I'd guess about 90% of this forum is underperforming VOO this year net of fees/taxes.
Count me in on the "mostly passive" train. Here's the breakdown of my portfolio:
Retirement Accounts - 100% $VOO & $VTI. In case I'm wrong about international outperforming this next decade, I don't want to lose out on 10 years of compounding. Plus, these funds are cheap and obviously well diversified, so it's not the end of the world even if US returns stagnate like I think they will.
"Safe" Personal Account - 100% $VT and $VWO. Reason being I'm of the unpopular mind that the US market is quite overheated and there will likely be money flowing abroad to chase new yield/returns. I'm particularly bullish on emerging markets, which is why I'm indirectly overweighting them by buying $VT (which already has an allocation to $VWO) and purchasing additional shares of $VWO to complement the $VT position.
"YOLO" Personal Account - This only makes up to 10-15% or so of my account and will gradually decrease to 5% as I get closer to 50. This consists of a hodgepodge of individual positions I'm wheeling options into, private investments, and crypto. The idea is basically that if this portion goes to $0, I won't be ruined financially, but on the off chance some of this pays off quickly, I could really accelerate my semi-retirement goals or give me some passive income to fund some of my travel/activities. Index investing is historically the highest percentage way to build wealth over time, but I also am starting to see the wisdom of potentially becoming rich when you're young, so why not? Plus, it's fun as shit.
Thanks for posting Lester! I appreciate the insight. I really like the differentiation between the safe and yolo personal accounts.
I'm currently in crypto but would like to start investing in real estate, agriculture, and art once I am able to max out my 401K. I agree that it is fun as shit! lol
If I wasn't saving up for a condo/house I'd probably have more in crypto right now.
I was thinking about VT as well. It's interesting how much VWO has gone up since COVID really hit the US.
VT is the only true passive approach. Everything else involves some sort of active bet. Might as well be passive with your passive allocation and active with your active allocation.
How to you find investments with that sort of risk/return to make it worthwhile?
Nobody wants to take that much risk for a few BPS alpha on an early retirement account.
Honestly, my active allocation record, outside of my ETF sector picks, isn't that great lol. I'm a bit of a boomer and still believe that valuations/cash flows matter, but I've been dead wrong for an entire decade now, which is why I started just heavily allocating my funds to the aforementioned funds. I've kind of realized that I'm decent at understanding general trends (i.e. I have a feeling rates will go up, so I'm buying financials right now), but I'm really bad at picking individual companies. At this point, I literally only buy individual stocks for fun and essentially assume that my pick will fail and put in what an amount that I'm content with going to $0. To tilt my portfolio, I lean heavily on ETFs, to be frank. This still gives me a good balance between enjoyment and being responsible.
GOOG, FB, MSFT, active and passive ETFs.
Thoughts on holding FAANGs? Seems like good r/r, not crazy tech valns and monopolies with significant economic moats
Makes sense to me. FB seemed more affordable when I looked earlier in the year but with these big tech stocks I feel like you just need to dive in. They just keep on going up. lol
What kinds of ETFs are you using and who are the issuers?
Yeah FB is great value with lot of upside optionality. I saw lot of HFs buy AMZN. Obvs a phenomenonal biz but takes so long to DD.
I hold VAS and based in Aus so I hold RF1 and IOZ.
Tee-Cue-Cue-Cue. Why u ignoring me TechnoPanther lol. It's ok I'm just semi-trolling at this point on this thread (but I still advocate for TQQQ). Whatever you want you tech allocation to be, just put 10% of that allocation into TQQQ. You'll thank me.
Boring as shit but I read this newsletter for Vanguard investors and I think its like $180 a year. https://adviseronline.investorplace.com/
Gives me a model to follow but I try to pick more concentrated funds. I'm highly restricted from single names and ETFs sadly.
I just started managing my Roth IRA account and I plan on mostly investing in VTI and make small investments on the side (mostly fundamentals based, maybe some with macro themes). So the alpha generation is on the small investments, which won’t affect the portfolio that much if it goes down. The only risks I can currently think of are market risk and liquidity risks during a downturn, but if u are cautious enough and have a good read on the markets you could just make defensive plays when u think the markets are too hot (don’t try to time the markets btw) and preserve most of your capital.
Generally speaking, just go with long only since u don’t have the time and effort to make complicated trades.
I guess another strategy is just going long vti but buying puts along the way to hedge against market risk. Still that strat prob requires a lot of skill and the put option contract costs are going to add up and not worth it in terms of price rn. God it’s really hard to invest in this period when everything is so uncertain. And if u don’t invest at all, there’s the risk of inflation staying to eat up your purchasing power (but more likely to be transitory unless it sparks a demand side inflationary spiral). China used to be a good investment but the government fucked that up. I guess I’m long LIT.
Interesting - I hadn't looked into LIT before. Just looked up - it's been kicking but the past couple years
I'm tempted to put a little in there as I'm a huge advocate of EVs. They still take a lot of fossil fuels to make but I'm assuming the reliance will decline over time.
Would you consider VTI for non-retirement accounts? Or would you invest in something more aggressive?
I would say that VTI is a great holding overall no matter the type of account you want to open. Of course, you have to understand that VTI follows the S&P500 + some US tech holdings so you are essentially betting on the prosperity of the entire US economy. If you want to go for even more aggressive investments, just make sure that both the fundamentals are really solid, there’s a good risk to reward ratio, and you have risk management measures such as stop losses to prevent heavy losses. Like one of my biggest mistakes so far for my Roth IRA was investing in DiDi and I would have lost less if I had proper risk management. Luckily DiDi made up only a small portion of my portfolio so my losses were manageable. But yeah good luck
$34 million at 29? Yeah, I call bullshit.
You too can get to the level where people call BS - I believe in you. You have what 5 years before you hit 29 if you're a 1st year associate? Buy the magic TQQQ. It's not like I fucking saved $34mm in wages. I'm not Grant Wonders.
You're getting a bad rap here - I believe you. If you guys actually crunch the numbers, it makes some sense. I respect the story man. Would love to chat over PM, just had a few questions for you, or bro, you should make a Q&A thread - I'd love to hear about your path.
Wells Fargo
Do you have a financial advisor through them?
Or is that just who you have your investment account with?
OSTK
most undervalued stock in tech/consumer in all of nasdaq or the sp for the matter
Wow! - OSTK shot up like a rocket after covid started! It looks like it's normalized now but I wonder have much runway it has left.
and here I thought Zoom was a good investment when covid first started. What a time to be alive
undervalued still - diversified business and went through new management. very likely we see it hit 115/125 within 3-6 months
see the thing w/ zoom is everyone jumped on. That's not the case w/ ostk and it got oversold
Loving this discussion. Very interesting point on TQQQ.
As a passive investor, with majority of stock portfolio in SPX and BRK, this rational for TQQQ seems pretty strong to me, and if not a large portion, putting at least part of portfolio in this seems like a good choice to me. But thinking pragmatically, what about 2x levered Nasdaq? Dropping 50% which would wipe out position seems reeeally loow chance, and in long-term it will beat regular index investing strategy.
Besides stocks, I'm long crypto. Not the biggest supporter in general, but gain are gains.
Agreed - I think starting small makes sense, especially for those who haven't invested in leveraged ETFs before (such as myself)
I feel like once I see the growth firsthand in my portfolio I'll be more likely to grow the position over time. Still hesitant to put any IRA money in TQQQ but definitely some of my non-IRA money. I'm ok with volatility but at a certain point it does make me nervous and paranoid about drawdowns.
I'm long crypto as well and have the same stance as you. lol
Not sure how more I will put in crypto at this point. There are some crypto ETFs coming out and Titan has a crypto fund, but for now I think it makes more sense to invest in individual currencies until these new funds have more of a track record.
Again - in your scenario, the NASDAQ 100 would have to drop 50% in a SINGLE DAY. not from peak to trough, in a SINGLE DAY. That is mathematically impossible given the 20% S&P 500 daily circuitbreaker and how much % of S&P is also in the NASDAQ 100.
Levered ETFs are DAILY leverage (unless said otherwise - a few are monthly leverage).
I think that liquidity management is needed. In the past, I deposit foreign exchange for trading, and then invest in some real estate, and conduct some business flows, because during the COVID-19 period, if I deposit a large amount of funds Flow, then my life will be very bad, because I feel that the company’s losses are very large. Now I am a recently developed DEFI project that is deposited in the blockchain. It is obtained through the DEfi product on the Ethereum to provide liquidity. Mineral income. And can withdraw cash and make payments at any time, especially in many places in today's society, where monetary payments are possible. The only drawback of this project is that the income is not very high, and it is not as high as Bitcoin, but it is higher than that of banks. , More stable than Bitcoin
I literally have my entire 401k balance, about a million, in vanguard extended market.
My partner hahahaha
In general, this is quite an interesting topic and I myself was curious to learn more about it, since I just started investing. I reread a lot of forums, asked my friends what could help me succeed in this. And I stumbled upon Streetbeat by chance, this is an application that makes stock offers based on real data and machine learning algorithms. If you don't know how to trade, then streetbeat will help you. Invest as with Robo-advisor. They are also an investment advisor registered with the SEC. There are a lot of advantages that will help you and tell you how to succeed in this business. Good luck!
It depends on the context. It could be a conservator (Like Britney Spears had). That is generally appointed by the court when it is believed that a person can not take care of those responsibilities themselves.
It could be a Money Manager, Business Manager, Fiduciary, or some other sort when you pay someone to take care of that business for you. Many times you will sign a “Power of Attorney” for them to take control of your finances, sign your checks and so on.
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