Eng12345

That's unreal. Makes me thankful to be in the US where something so brazen would result in significant outcry. At the very minimum have chat gpt write you an email to your reps. The benefits of living in a western democracy.

They just full sweep money out of your account? That's absolutely insane for me to comprehend! And I complain about my property taxes - paying money to own something!

Are you gifting to cover the cost of your kids' plate? IE you+wife+3 kids = ~$1250 If people are saying no kids though - it damn well better be open bar and one heck of a party! I can understand the intent from that angle. That said - asking for payment is tacky.

An update from last year: It seems my biggest changes (which I knew) were AEGXF price appreciation, SMNEY, exiting C, and an increase in JOE position. I would like to get my cash allocation down to ~15% which will be mentally difficult as I will be exiting SMNEY once long term cap gains kicks in in March.

Yeah the inflation in expectations is real. I grew up in the 90s in a 1970s home that was 1800 square feet including the basement. It was a nice neighborhood and I'm sure was spectacular in the 70s. I have now purchased a mid range home in my area that is 3 years old and is 2700 square feet not including the basement. The housing unaffordability crisis is consumer driven. It's what the people want.

You're missing the point. Are you buying the market or are you buying stocks? And even then: What is a 50% draw down on money you don't need? Opportunity. And if you need the money: well then, you're not rich enough. Hence why cash flow is everything (especially so in your personal life)

I just read the last few pages and a 5 years ago when I was simply indexed into my 401k I probably would have loved the content and discussion. Now I read the last few pages and can't help but think how brain numbing. I credit this forum for that change in mindset. I guess my general thoughts are: Why should I care about the market value? I'm not buying the market. I'm buying stocks. Yeah sure in some super macro event I may draw down ~30% but if you're not ready for that you're not ready for the volatility of great returns given by concentrated positions. The US dollar is going to collapse. Oh really? What is the world's wealth going to flow to? The euro - where they are mired by in fighting amongst different member countries and even after a decade of losing world strength and influence cannot manage to shift focus to why. Oh I guess the wealth will slowly shift to the yuan? Yeah, no I don't see that happening as the world has shifted views over the past few years. Maybe some of the BTC guys will say the worlds wealth will shift to some unbreakable blockchain - but the truth is if that happens every government in the world will likely be against that. Hell on the BTC topic - I wouldn't be surprised if the NSA already has it compromised in a severe way. Nevermind the very real energy consumption issues with it (hint: energy consumption is a transaction cost). (BTW I'm sure the BTC guys will come and attempt to put my head on a pike for saying something along those lines but my overarching point remains) The reality is the world is likely to revert to its natural state - fractured. And in a fractured world the US has some of the biggest unchangeable advantages of the world. I'm not talking about education. I'm talking about geography - we're uninvadable (especially once Canada is the 51st state ) and the natural resources of our country are for the most part unmatched and untapped in comparison to other areas of the world. So even if I play this macro view crap - what is the risk to the US dollar? But even if all that horrible crap does happen? What does it matter to me? I buy individual stocks with a goal of buying them when they are cheap.

Sold TLN and bought JOE and AEGXF

Brett - I listened to a podcast you did on the book. It was excellent and wanted to share with the board, but cannot find it again. Nonetheless, I purchased the book and look forward to reading it.

Thought this was an excellent book though and perfectly explained why I think so many utilities are un investable. If you have questions about how the grid is run or why we won't ever get to 100% renewables, I suggest reading this book.

This was a good read on a snowy day here Spek. Thanks for posting.

Hahaha thanks John I should have known better than to assume anything was black and white. Nothing in life is.

I think I've attempted to touch on this before but want to make sure my understanding is correct. Say I have two brokerage accounts Etrade and Fidelity with multiple cashflows over a year. Etrade publishes a 20% TWR for the year Fidelity publishes a 10% TWR for the year I'm assuming I cannot combine these returns as they are both geometric means. However, thinking about it I can't verbalize why you couldn't assuming the two TWRs are over the same period, and you weighted them accordingly for size of account. But I'm not confident that would be a correct approach. Gut is telling me no. The problem I'm trying to solve is attempting to incorporate my inactively managed funds (current company 401k) into my return calculations. This year I was able to calculate a 26% TWR because I didn't have a lot of cash flows on my active investments and recorded balances appropriately but I'm not able to incorporate the inactively managed funds. edit: The document @John Hjorth posted a few pages ago is actually more helpful. It seems XIRR is the best method really. Thanks for the eye-opening conversation on all this. I never really thought about quantifying returns being so open to discussion. Thought it was a bit more black and white, but realizing now it has some grey area to it.

I'm 32 year old engineer. I've always been interested in investing but never really knew where to get started. I decided to get serious about investing a few years ago when Tesla was making up something silly like 4% of my index funds and I didn't like that. Had read a few books before but ordered 3-4 more sat down and read them. Scoured reddit for alternative sources of info and saw a comment mentioning this forum. Shadowed the what are you buying thread for a few months before plopping my $50 down which ultimately ended up being the best investment of my life. I may not post as much but I'm reading nearly everyday. Somedays more intently than others, but I can't underestimate the amount I've learned just from reading/osmosis. Thanks to everyone on this forum and HAPPY NEW YEAR. Good luck to all in the new year.

26.5% TWR Mainly driven by two of my smallest positions - SMNEY.DE and TPC. Dragged by SAVE in January of 24 and dragged by JOE. I'm not upset with matching SP500 when I was ~35% cash for most of the year out of pure laziness.