Reading this thread makes me happy I have a guy that manages my portfolio for me.

Karma's great.

....and Zoom is up today. A lot. shit.

I don't follow them, but wow, 20% bump in one day for their first earnings report is something.

By your "made a few grand" comment, I'll assume you still did alright percentage-wise, though, so don't beat yourself up about it.

 

I've owned Nintendo and AMD for the past few years and they have been killing it for me. Just my two cents.

I mostly invest in funds. Most of my money is in growth funds and I have a reasonable amount in an S&P index funds. My retirement is likely 30-35 years away, so I want to be more aggressive than just matching the S&P. I also work for a dividend aristocrat, so I've saved my RSU awards and will keep letting the stock grow unless I see long term negatives for my industry.

yeah. Relatively new to the market, and prone to OCD fits, so I'm happy with how it turned out. But still... damn. It's a hot one to follow right now.
 

Same. Cool hobby if it’s interesting. Seems like a major time dedication to do well. I need an expert!

 

The hardest part is staying up on everything too. Its not just “learning” , you have to be on top of it. I do pay attention from time to time though just of the stuff that I have my money in. 
 

If you are just using mutual funds and ETFs in something relatively simple like a 3 fund or 5 fund portfolio, the only thing you really need to pay attention to is rebalancing a couple of times per year.

I would be surprised if your advisor was doing anything more complicated than that, and charging you 1% AUM for the privilege. (Vanguard's advisors are quite a bit cheaper than typical though at 0.3% AUM)

That said, paying for the advisor (assuming they are an actual fiduciary) is worth it if the alternative is inaction or decision paralysis, since the cost of being overwhelmed is way higher than the usual fee (unless you have someone like Merrill Lynch or Edward Jones fucking you over a barrel for 3-4% in fees)

Probably not, but don't you pay attention to long term trends so you can decide how to rebalance?

No, you are talking about timing the market.

Rebalancing is you simply shifting funds back into the ratio you decided on for your portfolio at either set intervals (ie quarterly, or every 6 mo) or based on some other trigger (ie more than 10 or 15 percent out of allocation).

The idea is that time in the market is worth more, on average and in the long run, than attempting to time the ups and downs.

"Cash" can be part of your allocation based on risk tolerance, and if the market is down to where your cash percentage is higher than your plan calls for, it is a natural push to buy stocks while they are down though.

But that is a bit different (and more disciplined) than trying to guess the peaks and troughs, where if you get it wrong you can miss out on years worth of gains.

Edit:. This is coming from the standpoint of trusting the economic research regarding very long term trends and the back testing of all sorts of allocations -- a good starter is the research around the Trinity Study which is the cornerstone of the FIRE movement. There are quite a few caveats to it, and side research that improves the applicability, but the underlying concept is really useful in terms of seeing the probability of a portfolio "succeeding" over a long period of time.

If your concern is a total long term move away from current major markets, well that isn't an outcome I am currently worried about.

My opinion is always subject to change, but it isn't the kind of thing I would try to anticipate, and it certainly isn't the kind of thing a retail grade advisor would be helpful with either. (So isn't a for or against on diy vs having a fiduciary)

OK, now I understand rebalancing in concept.
Who selected your stocks? I've never heard of half of mine.

I'm in it long term. I just glanced at charts. Today (yesterday?) is good, this year is not, this five years is. I am right along with you on the longevity strategy. When I log in and see lots of falling numbers, I don't worry about it. My accounts were started for me by my father, when I was a kid. I keep an eye on things but I never touch them. Except to contribute the max to my IRA every year, and once when I wanted to help the down payment on my house.

Mutual funds, ETFs, 3 or 5 funds... I can read about these things, but it's always just a lot of jargon to me. I can see that I have cash reserves, a four in one index, a municipal money market, and a bunch of stocks. If that tells you how simple or not things are.

I am kind of surprised that your advisor is trading individual stocks.

Personally, I wouldn't want to own any individual stocks that I didn't understand the plan for, but if you have "a bunch" you probably have enough to cover a decent level of diversification.

3 fund portfolio is very easy to execute, and is written up pretty well on sites like bogleheads

The idea is a total market etf, an international etf, and a bond etf, where the allocation might be 60/20/20.

5 fund subdivides it more where you might break out small cap and large cap separately.

But the idea is that you find low cost (ie no load, and low expense ratio) funds so that your costs don't drag down your returns.

I don't know what your advisor charges, but the drag from management fees can be immense over the life of the portfolio. In some cases it is worth it, but unfortunately you can't really know until after the fact.

In your case, you could at least compare your returns against a couple of benchmarks to see how they stack up, though.

And for what I own, I have bought it myself. My big mainstay is vanguards Wellington Fund, but they closed it to new investors a couple of years ago because it was getting too large to maneuver. (Might still be able to buy in directly with vanguard though)

But for basic ETFs I just go with Schwab's since they are who I have my accounts with so there are no transaction fees. (For Vanguard, Fidelity, and Schwab the major ETFs are all pretty similar, so you just want whatever is cheapest for your situation)

More recently I have a couple of REITs I have added to get some explicit real estate positions, but those involve some reading to track down.



For someone who wanted to do basically no research, the "easy button" would be to open an account with Vanguard and just buy Target Date Funds, though. (They are self balancing and are a container for a bunch of other Vanguard funds under the hood)

I don't know if they trade individual stocks, how often they might buy and sell, or whether they're bundled together in a fund. I only know that when I log into Fidelity, I can see individual stocks. I have an IRA as mentioned, and an "Individual" account (I don't think so, but maybe that means something, in a Fidelity context, regarding the model re: dealing with stocks? Shit, I'm just free-associating now) The advisor is Seger Elvekrog.

I said this seems like it takes a lot of time, and you have thence described caveats, research, theory, and tracking down reading. I think you enjoy it, gaining financial security is cool but it takes time like a hobby does.

Yes, the easy button is what I would want if I were to set up something additional. How much money do you think a guy should/ needs to throw in to start one of those? 10 grand? More? Say 40 years old, $300k in existing financial products, middle class job with (laughable) pension potential, mortgage on 2-flat will be paid off in 7 years.

I am more inclined to invest further in real estate. Not the buy/refinish/sell turnaround game, I mean rental property. Long-term. Knowing my tenants. Issue with that is, higher entry barrier. But I understand it more.

Seger Elvekrog was an investment company, now they are called Provident.

I checked their fee schedule and they are hitting you for 1.25% per year. Though is mitigated by the fact that they are individual stocks rather than a basket of funds that all have their own fees.

So for active trading services that may not be too bad.

I would definitely go through the exercise of comparing your portfolio performance against some benchmarks to see if they are really earning their fee or if that 1.25 percent is dragging you down versus something more passive.

It may well be worth it to stay with them, but you have no idea if you don't do some kind of analysis on the track record.

And even if they are beating benchmarks, it is an exercise well spent to understand where your money has been spent and to what benefit.

In terms of Vanguard target funds (or any target funds) the minimum buy in is usually between 1k and 3k. Idea being they are for everyone.

That said, target date funds tend to have fees as much as 0.8%, so you might easily find your current advisor is making up the difference between that and their current fee.

The really ugly fee schemes are guys like Merrill or Edward Jones. They are insane fee structures from the old days that are in the 4 percent range once you add up their direct fee with the underlying expensive funds they put you into.

Only other thing I would check on your current guys would be their disclosure confirming that they are actual "fiduciaries" in the legal sense.

Edit:. Thinking about it some more, if the fees really are 1.25 percent to trade actual stocks directly and there are no extra fees (like a share of gains) then that is pretty good for true active management, as roboadvisors tend to be in the 1% range and they will likely trade in ETFs that have other fees on top of the management fee from the advisor.

I would still verify I was getting my money's worth against other options, all the same.

REITs are great. I have positions in nearly a dozen and have had great success with COR, OHI, and O.

My biggest gain last year came from a marijuana REIT of all things.

But, yeah, I wanted to echo the Target Date Fund comment. Absolutely one of the easiest ways to get started with no knowledge / no desire to do any research.

That or naked puts.

Edit: Typos

GME below $4...



Anyone been watching the craziness of BYND?

They have a great product, but their valuation is just stupid.
(and read some news that they are in the process of setting up a second offering to let some of their insiders cut in line on their lock-up period that wasn't originally going to expire until October)





In other discussions of "dividend traps" (i.e. what happened with GME) -- I recall PSEC used to get a lot of discussion a few years back.
(they've had two sizeable dividend cuts in the last few years and are still at a 10%+ dividend)

Same with CLCT (looks like they halved their dividend at the end of 2017).

Did you guys get out in time, or get stuck holding past the news of the dividend cuts?

What was it when it seemed like a "decent buy"?

Also, are Gamestop and Thinkgeek two separate stock entities?  

I assume Thinkgeek is fully rolled into Gamestop at this point.

I don't have an answer for your first question.  I would have thought the writing was on the wall for them as soon as the first digital marketplaces showed up for home consoles, and each subsequent generation (with increasing downloadable content) has been another nail in the coffin.

Not that there weren't opportunities to make money on the stock in that time... just that it is hard to imagine that company having a long-term future and not eventually going the way of so many other obsolete retailers.

 

That'll be the only thing that could save them, if Thinkgeek can finally get their formula right instead of having seemingly half of the stuff they release end up on the clearance shelf.
 

Yeah, I certainly think that Thinkgeek has a future.

I just have very serious doubts that future includes anywhere near the amount of retail space Gamestop currently occupies.

That is the kind of product/store that should probably exist as one instance per city, rather than seemingly in every single strip mall in the country, where you might have two Gamestops practically across the street from each other.

 

The number one stock market quote... "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." So true.

You can take a stock with an intrinsic value of $10 (if you could perfectly measure the value of a company, but you can't) and it could trade anywhere from $5 to $30 IMO. Hype could take it to 3 times where it should be and bad news could take it pretty low too.

GME rents their space and most leases left are in the 18 month time frame so it's easy for them to exit low performing locations. MS and Sony both confirmed physical media next gen and backwards compatibility, so GME will thrive when the HW sales take off. Management also doubled down and did a stock buyback ($10M? $20M? can't recall) at $5.20 about a month ago. Everytime I read an article comparing it to Blockbuster I just shake my head as the analyst didn't really do much "research" when publishing their article.