Milu

At the end of the day the investment returns don’t care if you are a nice guy or an asshole. I also don’t think a short term period(less than 5 years) of underperformance or overperformance matters either. All I care about is most recent 10-year CAGR as a minimum, after that 15, 20 year or longer. If anybody can point me to the returns data of Pabrai, Chou etc where they have demonstrated outperformance on such timeframes then that might change the story from nice guys to good investors.

Another datapoint that could be helpful is how does your portfolio fit as a percentage of total net worth? For example some people could have a business, house or other asset that comprise of the vast majority of their net worth. If person A has a fully paid off house worth $1m, a business worth $2m, and then have a ‘portfolio’ of stocks worth 500k that they trade in on the side I’d look at things slightly differently than person B with a $3.5m stock portfolio and no other assets. A 50% return for person a would be $250k and represent an increase of less than 10% on their starting net worth, whereas for person B it’s an increase of $1.75m. Person A could likely take a lot more risk and possibly look like a superstar if it pays off due to the fact that any mistakes would not damage their net worth too much, whereas person B could blow up after a few bad years.

Mohnish Pabrai is one of these supposed 'legendary' value investors. Never made sense to me. I'm sure he's a nice guy and all that but I've never been particularly impressed at any of his insights or talks. Looks to be a good businessman who grew and sold a successful business, then decided to become an investing guru. His lunch with buffett was probably his best 'investment' as he did end up building quite a good career on seemingly mediocre returns.

That's great, congrats! I guess you didn't get the memo to put most of your money in bonds and low risk stocks and get your high single digit retirement returns I'd say not too many retired 60 year olds knocking out 100%+ returns on what I assume is a decent nest egg. Look forward to see how the returns progress over the coming years, I assume you are quite concentrated in certain positions so you'll be dealing with lots of volatility. Should be a fun ride!

What is a momentum stock anyway, is it just something that goes up a lot, or can a stock that goes down a lot also be called a momentum stock. For example is Nvidia a momentum stock, Amazon, or how about Meta? Genuinely curious as I've always questioned why people bucket stocks into Value, Growth, Momentum and decided to focus or avoid certain buckets.

I have a google sheet and use the XIRR functionality which seems to to best way of tracking IRR on a series of irregular deposits and withdrawals. I have my funds at a number of different brokerages so I consolidate things into one sheet. I pull in all the live stock prices into the sheet so everything updates in real time, then any time I add some funds to the portfolio or take funds out i'll add a new line to a deposits/withdrawals tab. It's quite rare that I withdraw funds as I am still well off retirement age, and seeing as I have two young kids I don't have much cash lying around monthly to add to the portfolio, so might only have a couple of deposits/withdrawals per year. I probably don't need to bother tracking any returns really as I should have more than enough at retirement age, it's more for me to get some metrics and see if I am actually a decent investor or would be better off sticking things in an S&P 500 index fund. So far I am coming out ahead (9 years of tracking things), so jury is still out on whether it's luck or skill.

I entered 2022 with about 35% Cash and 65% Stocks (mostly tech). The stocks portion of the portfolio was down about 50% and I was gradually deploying cash to pick up bargains (Meta, Alphabet, Amzn) and set me up for future returns. I was strangely quite relaxed during the year even though everything was plummeting. I fully expect to have another couple of 30%+ drawdowns over the coming decade and it's good to know I can handle it quite calmly. In fact when things are just rocketing upwards like the market has done over past couple of years I tend to get a bit bored and lose interest in investing, then when there is panic brewing I tend to get back in the game.

Did well again this year with 47% return. Last 5 years have been volatile but an enjoyable ride. 2024: +47.38% 2023: +46.72% 2022: -33.42% 2021: +21.55% 2020: +53.27% 5 year CAGR of 21.8%

Not too sure what swing trading is but I'd have thought the majority of bitcoin holders would have done well by simply just holding the asset through the ups and downs. Anybody who has bought over the last 3, 5, 10 years would do fantastically well just sitting there doing nothing, and likely have done a lot worse attempting to trade the ups and downs.

When BTC market cap is still roughly 10-15% of the market cap of Gold my sense is there is still a long runway of large gains ahead. Perhaps when things get to 500k per coin what you have said might make more sense but we are still early in my opinion.

$5m CAD or €3m EUR depending on where I end up living.

Northvolt round 2

The country one lives in and it's cap gains rate has a massive influence on the optimal investment approach. I assume that John lives in Denmark which I believe has a 42% cap gains rate (highest in Europe, possibly the world). Ireland where I live is also in the upper end (33%). With that level of tax any kind of short term buy and sell strategy is doomed. Not having many tax sheltered options here in ireland is counterintuitively a potential big benefit in that it forces me to be super strict about any new position I get into as I likely want to hold it for decades to avoid having to sell and pay such a high tax rate. And also during times where you have doubt in a position, but are sitting on substantial unrealised gains it results in you being super cautious before ever deciding to pull the trigger on a sale. I think if I had the ability to get in and out of positions tax free like in those type of accounts some people have it would potentially shorten my time horizons and may even result in me having worse after tax returns than just doing my buy and hold in Ireland and paying the cap gains whenever I do sell a long term holding. It's quite a fascinating topic.

That's great, congrats. Similar story for me, about 15 years of investing for me, last 5 years have also been the best compounding so far (23% CAGR on the overall portfolio, while having cash balances between 25-50%). Some similar stocks too (META, GOOGL, LULU, BRK) but also Amazon, Apple, Tesla and BTC have helped. Cash percentage is down at it's lowest level ever for me at 23% which is new for me. No immediate plans to sell any existing holdings so I expect my cash percentage will go up or down based on how the markets go over coming years. It has been quite pleasant having a large cash holding and being able to pick off any screaming offers the came up (Berkshire at $180 during covid, Meta sub $150, Amazon $85 in 2022, Lululemon at $250 this year. This seems to suit my personality, just relax and read for the majority of the time and then every couple of years go on a binge when things go on sale. I'm still waiting for the 'big one' (50%+ multi year downturn a la 2000 and 2007) but the central banks seem to flood the system with so much cash these days that they've succeeded in stopping that for the time being.

My completely unscientific investor's intuition is that things 'feel' a little frothy at the moment. Crypto markets are on the tear again, memecoins and memestocks are back in action. Stock markets hitting high after high. Expectations for a golden age during trumps presidency. Credit spreads quite low. I'm not going to be selling any of my positions but I always start to get a bit fearful during these times. Not doing too much stock research either. Might just put the feet up for a couple of years and let me existing holdings continue higher and then come back once the next crisis kicks off. Cash as a percentage of assets has declined from about 30% to 23% over the past while purely down to increases in my stocks and other investments.

Rough weightings as of today, Cash 24%, Crypto 17%, Meta 16%, Tesla 13%, Alphabet 8%, Lululemon 5.5%, Amazon 5.5%, Nintendo 3.5%, Dominos 3.5%, LVMH 2%, Gold 1.5%. I swear I'm a traditional investor by heart I just has some big wins on some of my larger positions and didn't do much selling. It's been quite the ride these last 5 years. 24% is actually my lowest cash percentage ever.

That one of the main reasons why I have avoided investing in Chinese companies. Sure their numbers may looks good in their financial statements but I don’t have feet on the ground in china, don’t know who the founders are or feel like I have the ability to get to know them well through podcasts or earnings call, and no real sense of how their perceived or actual moats are increasing or eroding.

I always get a sense of smug satisfaction anytime Berkshire follows me into a position. First time happened with Apple and now dominos. Probably wasn’t Buffett through as not sure he cares to concern himself with small $500m positions.

Just wondering if any of my fellow bitcoin holders have any exposure to Ethereum? I have a little bit that I bought in 2020 (as a small gamble, rather than having any particular vision). It's up about 14x on my original price so have unrealised capital gains (33% cap gains rate in Ireland) I would need to realise if I sell it all. It's still only about a 2.6% of total portfolio position so I'm between two minds as to whether to just let it ride or just sell it down for cash and take the 33% hit.

That's a good approach and would have worked out well for you. I did all my buying over a 6 month period from April 2020 to November 2020 at prices of €7k-15k per bitcoin. Haven't made a trade since as I have a bit of a mental block about averaging up on an investment. Old habits die hard!

I wouldn't recommend now and don't think you should sell any of your existing stock to do so. If you are not fully invested and maintain a cash or fixed income percentage then maybe you could look to buy a small amount (1% of portfolio position), but that should only be done after you have read some of the books listed previously (Bitcoin Standard, Broken Money) to get a general understanding of the potential of the technology. Nobody should ever buy something they don't believe in as they would be unlikely to hold on during bear markets.

Yes, you are more likely right, I probably hedged my estimate a little bit to not put off the skeptics too much. I'm trying not to give them too much ammo to jump on even though I mostly agree with your viewpoint Any of these prediction about it becoming a global reserve currency, or having a part in everyone's portfolio are almost too grand of a pronouncement, so I tend to just stick with the Digital Gold comparison for now as it's the easiest one to 'get' for the people who are curious.

To echo some of the comments from above, I was also a massive bitcoin skeptic. It was only after I read the 'Bitcoin Standard' book in 2020 that it finally 'clicked' for me and I took a small position. That small position has grown into a decent sized position. For any of the skeptics I would say to read that book with an open mind and by the end you will either 'get it' and perhaps decide to hold a small amount in your portfolio, or decide it's not for you which is a perfectly valid decision too. I think the fact that I was a small bit of a gold bug before realising the value of bitcoin that made the transition easier for me. I don't see Bitcoin or Gold as investments really, more suitable for maintaining purchasing power. Although I expect bitcoin to do a lot better than just maintain purchasing power due to the fixed supply and ever increasing demand from global institutions/investors. Eventually this will find an equilibrium but that could be years off.

I took the plunge and finally bought some LVMH at €585 per share. Price is at the upper end of the range I am comfortable with so intend to average down should things drop to the 500 or 400 level.

Yes, I don’t think trump is going to stand for Europe’s constant regulation and fines of large US companies. He will use the full force of tariffs and various other measures to quickly quiet down any perceived overeach.