mathjak's daytrading adventures

[doodle]

Also important to remember how frequently hedge funds lose money as well..even those with staffs of trained analysts with their finger on pulse of wall street get it wrong, freuqntly. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose...that's part of playing the game. The last few years were very good. The next few might not be. I don't know...and neither does anyone else. What is for certain is that you, me and everyone on this forum will be dead in due time and I think it would be a waste to spend our precious time on this earth fretting (worrying about things we can't control) over all the potential things that could go wrong.

The PP is a decent strategy...as good as any other I've seen. It's not the equivalent of building a house on the side of a volcano as many who have plowed their life savings into Bitcoin are doing.

You have saved a lot of money and have a solid cushion. At this point in my opinion you can rest easy knowing no matter what may come (even years of subpar returns) you will be just fine.

[mathjak107]

I come from the camp of the less I have the more Important it is to get things right ..

I came from a nyc housing project ...starting with nothing once on my own I had to take the litte bits I could save and get things efficient as I could ...with decades to go I was not worried about dips ....

I needed to make sure my money compounded as best as I could to grow those bits to more meaningful sums .

100% diversified stock funds were the most efficient investment I could use to grow money over decades .

Not only did I not take my money lightly but with something so important as my financial future I wanted to learn and monitor it .

Our money and our health are likely two of the most important things in our lives , they are certainly worthy of some attention.

I mean as I pointed out earlier , since I started in 1987 a hypothetical 100k in the pp grew to 1 million , the same in a mix of diversified fidelity funds is 4 million ...that includes not only the Great Recession but an entire lost decade for equities...

So for me. , the price is way to high to mitigate temporary short term dips that have no meaning to an investor going out decades ..

So I believe the less you have the more important it is to match investing goals and needs to what you do and not just take the easy way out that someone recommends because it may be wrong for you ...for me the pp is for after I made my money , not to make that money .

Others with high paying jobs who can do A lot more savings may not need as efficient growth

[doodle]

I come from the camp of the less I have the more Important it is to get things right ..

I came from a nyc housing project ...starting with nothing once on my own I had to take the litte bits I could save and get things efficient as I could ...with decades to go I was not worried about dips ....

I needed to make sure my money compounded as best as I could to grow those bits to more meaningful sums .

100% diversified stock funds were the most efficient investment I could use to grow money over decades .

Not only did I not take my money lightly but with something so important as my financial future I wanted to learn and monitor it .

Our money and our health are likely two of the most important things in our lives , they are certainly worthy of some attention.

I mean as I pointed out earlier , since I started in 1987 a hypothetical 100k in the pp grew to 1 million , the same in a mix of diversified fidelity funds is 4 million ...that includes not only the Great Recession but an entire lost decade for equities...

So for me. , the price is way to high to mitigate temporary short term dips that have no meaning to an investor going out decades ..

So I believe the less you have the more important it is to match investing goals and needs to what you do and not just take the easy way out that someone recommends because it may be wrong for you ...for me the pp is for after I made my money , not to make that money .

Others with high paying jobs who can do A lot more savings may not need as efficient growth

I hear you. My money too has been hard won. This didn't come easy for me either...I worked 70-80 hours a week for over a decade..a LOT of sacrifice and scrimping and saving whatever I could. You got lucky with your performance...I haven't been as much (although very lucky in many other ways) None of that was a foregone conclusion...you could have retired into a massive market decline like 2000 as my dad tried to and lost a ton of money in the nasdaq and enron and all that...and then had to go back to work for another 10 years. Consider the fact you were able to amass what you did a blessing.

What you have now with social security places you easily in the top one percent. You could lose half your money and be just fine....I know this because my parents live a very easy and relaxed life with plenty of travel and indulgences and eating out and essentially whatever they want to do on half what said you have.

...even if you do lose money for the next few years. You can't take it with you when you go anyways....and if you have kids well, hopefully they are smart and capable enough to do what you did! Personally, I'm not expecting to inherit a cent that I didn't earn and I think that's the way it should be. I believe in the american idea of a meritocracy...not aristocracy.

I think covid has created an unhealthy degree of paranoia across the world. I know that I feel more uncertain and fearful than I have at anytime since the crash of 08....but that turned out ok and I'm sure this time will as well.

[doodle]

How is it not technically true?

I just see it as a truth upon which no course of action can be taken besides finding some rational diversification strategy because the future is unknowable.

[doodle]

How is it not technically true?

I just see it as a truth upon which no course of action can be taken besides finding some rational diversification strategy because the future is unknowable.

Why it's not technically true is because if you're not going to use that money, the volatility of those funds is meaningless.

True..it's interesting how we accept large movements in stock heavy portfolios with faith that they will come back but don't feel the same way with other assets or allocations.

[mathjak107]

How is it not technically true?

I just see it as a truth upon which no course of action can be taken besides finding some rational diversification strategy because the future is unknowable.

Why it's not technically true is because if you're not going to use that money, the volatility of those funds is meaningless.

True..it's interesting how we accept large movements in stock heavy portfolios with faith that they will come back but don't feel the same way with other assets or allocations.

Other asset classes have been known to run cycles of very very long periods of time ....stocks with only few exceptions tend to cycle way quicker

[mathjak107]

Well the other models did well for many many years and if they keep doing well and the pp doesn’t for two years then yep , shot myself in the foot with a poor choice ...

Like I always say , the source of your investing dollars that is committed each day is irrelevant...it is always x-amount being acted on at the ring of the bell ..markets don’t care if it came from investing and includes last years gains or the last 30 years gains or that you never invested before , or even whether it came from your job ,or you stole it .


Last years money is used to eat with this year , this years money feeds me next year ...each year determines how much I get to spend . It determines my next years pay check ..

Would you want a pay cut at work ? Of course not ..we’ll pay cuts in retirement amount to the same thing ...except your money is your employee .

Each year stands on its own for me .

Your money working for you producing nothing or little is not a good choice in employee. Worse is when that employee costs you money instead of bringing in money and you had better employees to chose from ...

So each day It either adds to that invested balance or takes away

No absolutely not, what MJ says is not technically true at all.

If your investment timeframe/mindset is only on a yearly basis. You should only be looking at treasury bills.

A yearly mindset ? Nonsense...tracking investments has zero to do with how long you are in for ..I have been tracking investments for 33 years but that is still long term money.
Anyone is free to sit in investments that are poor-year after year if they don’t care .... but most investors take an interest in how their money is working for them at least yearly.

That does not mean you have to change a thing ..I think some may not understand the difference between just monitoring performance , or goals changing so the portfolio changes ...

[mathjak107]

most investors take an interest in how their money is working for them at least yearly.

And how are most investors doing?

Depends ...those that don’t exhibit poor investor behavior do fine ...those that do , don’t.

Your trying to make a poor comparison here between different issues ...poor investor behavior know no bounds ..in fact morningstar data shows even those in conservative funds exhibit the same bad behavior as investors in more aggressive funds ..they just have lower trigger points

[buddtholomew]

Oh boy, you’re going to have to back that statement up with some evidence since I haven’t seen any poor investment behavior.

[Vil]

That always remind me of a Soros cite “It's not whether you're right or wrong, but how much money you make when you're right and how much you lose when you're wrong.”

Apparently MJ was right big enough and for long enough ...

[mathjak107]

I have been quite successful as an investor over my 33 years ...my core portfolios have had only occasional fund swaps and obviously for the better since they blew a total market index fund away or an s&p 500 fund and that is well documented since I have been using the newsletter since 1987

Nothing wrong with my investor psychology other than I don’t believe in giving investments credit until they prove to me what they can do in my time frame , with my money.

Like watching a new employee , they have to prove themselves and they are under the watchful eye of a grunt supervisor until they do

[Cortopassi]

I have been quite successful as an investor over my 33 years ...my core portfolios have had only occasional fund swaps and obviously for the better since they blew a total market index fund away or an s&p 500 fund and that is well documented since I have been using the newsletter since 1987

Nothing wrong with my investor psychology other than I don’t believe in giving investments credit until they prove to me what they can do in my time frame , with my money.

Like watching a new employee , they have to prove themselves and they are under the watchful eye of a grunt supervisor until they do

We may have covered this in a way. My yearly returns for the PP since 2014 are below.

Your mindset would be to continually compare the pp to other strategies? The other strategies being those couple Fidelity ones you've mentioned in particular? Do you open yourself up to a universe of other potential strategies, or only are comparing to those because they've done well for you? Just curious.

[mathjak107]

I have been quite successful as an investor over my 33 years ...my core portfolios have had only occasional fund swaps and obviously for the better since they blew a total market index fund away or an s&p 500 fund and that is well documented since I have been using the newsletter since 1987

Nothing wrong with my investor psychology other than I don’t believe in giving investments credit until they prove to me what they can do in my time frame , with my money.

Like watching a new employee , they have to prove themselves and they are under the watchful eye of a grunt supervisor until they do

We may have covered this in a way. My yearly returns for the PP since 2014 are below.

Your mindset would be to continually compare the pp to other strategies? The other strategies being those couple Fidelity ones you've mentioned in particular? Do you open yourself up to a universe of other potential strategies, or only are comparing to those because they've done well for you? Just curious.

Obviously he is of the opinion that he has made money throughout the years in a sum that to himself personally is satisfactory and that's all that matters to him.

I only compare to what i owned , debated staying with but wanted more down side protection....it is like the bird in the hand in that sense since that has been my model for years since pre retirement

[mathjak107]

I have been quite successful as an investor over my 33 years ...my core portfolios have had only occasional fund swaps and obviously for the better since they blew a total market index fund away or an s&p 500 fund and that is well documented since I have been using the newsletter since 1987

Nothing wrong with my investor psychology other than I don’t believe in giving investments credit until they prove to me what they can do in my time frame , with my money.

Like watching a new employee , they have to prove themselves and they are under the watchful eye of a grunt supervisor until they do

We may have covered this in a way. My yearly returns for the PP since 2014 are below.

Your mindset would be to continually compare the pp to other strategies? The other strategies being those couple Fidelity ones you've mentioned in particular? Do you open yourself up to a universe of other potential strategies, or only are comparing to those because they've done well for you? Just curious.

Obviously he is of the opinion that he has made money throughout the years in a sum that to himself personally is satisfactory and that's all that matters to him.

I only compare to what i owned , debated staying with but wanted more down side protection....it is like the bird in the hand in that sense since that has been my model for years since pre retirement

I used a mix of the 25% income model and the 100% equities growth model as a retirement portfolio. Total allocation runs from 30-40% depending if we are in a correction or bear market ..I tend to run 30-35% equities when like now markets are higher and 35-40% when they are lower like March .

Up to pre retirement the growth model has been my portfolio since 1987

2014 growth model up 9.70 , income model up 7.10, pp 4.04

2015 growth up 1.60 , income up .10 , pp down 3.26

2016 growth up 6.70 , income up 6.67. Pp up 6.17

2017 growth up 24 , income up 7. 4 ..Pp up12.97

2018 growth up 6.20 , Income down 4.80. Pp down 4.09

2019 growth up 29.80 , income up 12.70....pp up 18.66

2020 growth up 33.70 , income up 11.60,, pp up 20.07

2021 growth up 4.80 , income up 1.69. Pp for me down 3.00%

Growth model zero down years since 2014

Income model 1 down year since 2014 ...

Pp so far 3 down periods.

Which is why I said the fact the pp had two up years in a row and now its okay to be down is irrelevant, so what ....the other models all have many many years up in a row so I don’t consider that fact criteria.

You know the saying WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY ? That is my investing mantra when it comes to my investments

[doodle]

You are evaluating your stock heavy models performance in the middle of the longest bull market in history. Will that continue, who knows. The permanent portfolio is hedging against a variety of scenarios and pays a price for that.

[Cortopassi]

You know the saying WHAT HAVE YOU DONE FOR ME LATELY ? That is my investing mantra when it comes to my investments

Ok, hypothetical...

Tomorrow starts a stock downturn, slowly drips drips drips until DOW is back at 20-25k over the next year.

How long from now will it be before you say those same capitalized words with regards to stocks? 1 week? 1 month? 1 year?

[mathjak107]

You are evaluating your stock heavy models performance in the middle of the longest bull market in history. Will that continue, who knows. The permanent portfolio is hedging against a variety of scenarios and pays a price for that.

Well why do you think I switched models to the pp ? I wanted more protection in case we fall ..

on the other hand If I was heavy equities which I am not , I would have been waiting since 2008 for stocks to have a down year severely limiting growth ..

so the what if this or what if that are just hyperbole until they happen . I don’t dwell on what if’s . I deal with them when and if they happen ... I just try to position things as best fits the big picture ... I think after 12 years stocks had a fabulous run and it was time to get a bit more protective .. stocks have grown my portfolios more than I ever imagined and we did great in our real estate business so it is time to reign things in a bit ..at least until maybe after a nasty drop

But on the other point , you called my model stock heavy ? My models are less equities than a butterfly at 30-35%.

Both models added up run 30-40% equities....that is hardly stock heavy

[amdda01]

MJ,

Thoughts on TLT?

It's getting ridiculous.

[buddtholomew]

MJ,

Thoughts on TLT?

It's getting ridiculous.

Get the hell out!
I’m tempted to buy into TLT to restore PP allocation as I can envision a flight to safety where bonds will save the portfolio. Question is do I sink the boat before the wave arrives to capsize the vessel or wait until the storm has passed? I choose the latter.

[Cortopassi]

MJ,

Thoughts on TLT?

It's getting ridiculous.

Get the hell out!

Or back up the truck?!

Looks like a pretty bad day all around, but since google quotes are broken, I don't know. Maybe not a bad thing.

[mathjak107]

MJ,

Thoughts on TLT?

It's getting ridiculous.

It has been ridiculous.... it has no bottom . Until it does losses are heavy ..1% is now 13k for me

[doodle]

From my perspective I wouldn't be completely shocked to see long bond rates rise back up into the mid 3's....I'd be very surprised if we get back over 4% though. All of that hinges on so many unknown events that it's almost a waste of time trying to predict. Would be lovely to finally rebalance into an asset that kicked off those kind of yields again! My retirement plan centered around 5% long rates....that has required some delays and adjustments for sure!

[mathjak107]

We are doing fine in retirement because we have not had a down year since 2008 ...but Gld and tlt have now pulled us about 125k lower ytd

[doodle]

We are doing fine in retirement because we have not had a down year since 2008 ...but Gld and tlt have now pulled us about 125k lower ytd

Every human has the same basic needs...but different wants. As far as needs go you will be fine short of total apocalypse. That should be reassuring to you ....it is for me. I will never be hungry, without shelter or basic necessities of life. For many if not most humans on this planet just having that would be heaven.

As far as the wants, luckily those are entirely adjustable. The great news is that scientific studies of human happiness show that they really don't matter all that much. After a certain point the diminishing returns make any additional luxuries completely negligible to your happiness and at the end of the day isn't that what it is all about? To me, worrying about things we cannot control will destroy more happiness than losing a chunk of my money (which I had no way to prevent anyways) that I didn't even really "Need". It isn't like I'm not going to eat dinner tonight or go to sleep or walk my dog because long term treasuries are down 1%.

You have worked hard to build an enormous cushion around yourself so you wouldnt have to worry about things that were outside your scope of control...why not enjoy that?

[doodle]

I'll add, even though GLD and TLT are down Im still happy I have them. They help me feel safe because I know in the event of real inflation or deflation...I'll have something that will do well.

That's the way the portfolio works. If you're truly diversified something is going to suck.