james22

Poetry.

Good question. Retired, I withdraw from my investable assets for expenses. So I do simply compare year end to beginning. Undervalues my "investing" returns (+20%), but more fairly reflects my reality (+16%). Makes it hard to compare to others, maybe, but I'm also less aggressive now then when working. And much less aggressive than the college kid gambling with his $1K Robinhood portfolio.

I watch and read a lot of of financial news, but mostly for entertainment. Only really moved by big picture arguments though: ESG (Energy position), Reshoring (BRK position), "Second Half of the Chessboard" (Tech position, no International position), etc. None of which would I source from the real world. Extending duration (MMF to ITT) back in October was probably the only tactical move I've made based on "news" in some time.

I expect the average Boglehead probably has better returns than most professionals.

+16% Funny year.

+100

Whoops. (Did manage to finally pivot to a 20% position in Tech halfway thru the year.)

Seems reasonable to assume some tactically invested at least new money (from income) into cash (MM funds) paying higher rates than they'd seen in a long, long time early this year when facing rising interest rates, a forecast recession, and after suffering market losses in 2022. Seems just as reasonable to assume those same investors will shift that cash to equities now that interest rates are predicted to fall, there's little fear of recession, and after suffering the opportunity cost of being out of the market in 2023. I assume the money that moved into cash above was otherwise earmarked for long-term investing, not emergency funds. This is the conventional wisdom, yeah?

US Small Value Energy Utilities Berkshire

Hussman is a genius. So?

$6T cash on the sidelines.

Exactly. No one makes a more convincing argument than Hussman, but ...

Nah.

It's starting to look like China regrets its private-enterprise crackdown China held its annual Central Economic Work Conference, or CEWC, on Monday and Tuesday. It was attended by all of the country’s top leaders, including President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang. A document released after the conference sets the agenda for China’s economy — the second-largest economy in the world — for the next year. And strikingly, this year’s readout acknowledges that China needs to prioritize economic development. “Next year, we must persist in seeking progress while maintaining stability, promote stability through growth, and establish the new before breaking the old,” states the meeting’s official readout. The wording in this document suggests “hints of remorse at overzealous growth-negative policy implementation,” Rory Green, the chief China economist at GlobalData.TS Lombard, wrote in a note on Wednesday. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-crackdown-regret-central-economic-work-conference-readout-analysis-economy-2023-12

^ That's great.

... there’s a school of thought where the central bank and fiscal policymakers ought to err on the side of doing less - in both directions - so that we can allow the economy to heal itself against minor scrapes and bruises. We forget sometimes that there are 325 million Americans who mostly wake up each day seeking to better their situation, ease their troubles, fill their bellies, support their family members, enjoy experiences and acquire higher status. This is hardwired into the culture, into our DNA. So when an economic shock occurs, it will temporarily impact these pursuits, but not for long. Eventually, we want the things that we want again. Someone is going to make money selling them to us. This is how the economy can stumble and then heal. https://www.downtownjoshbrown.com/p/economy-like-human-body-let-heal

The "risk" few ever see are those that result from compounding (Housel's chapters Overnight Tragedies and Long-Term Miracles, Tiny and Magnificent, and The Wonders of the Future).

I'm guessing we won't hit the top this year until Dec 29th.

China’s economic plan is bankrupt The model that created a superpower is failing https://unherd.com/2023/12/chinas-economic-plan-is-bankrupt/

No disrespect, but I've always hated that chart. If the purpose is to confuse customers, i.e. to claim that fund class does not matter, then this chart succeeds. However, on closer look, one might observe that three of the 12 classes showed up disproportionately at the top rank so the chart is somewhat misleading. Directional evidence is buried in the palette of colors; but how to separate the noise from the signal? The "best" graphic is one where form matches function. If my goal is to help customers understand their expected return and risk for different fund classes over the last 15 years, then the side-by-side boxplot works wonders. https://junkcharts.typepad.com/junk_charts/2006/05/boxplots_to_the.html The idea, I guess, is to be able to see which asset classes have done relatively well or poorly over time: within each year, the best-performing asset class is at the top and the worst is at the bottom. If you pick out a single color, it’s barely possible to follow how it has performed (relatively) by seeing where it sits in each year … sort of mentally connecting the boxes into a line graph. ... This is a very bad graphic. Although the actual performance for each class in each year is given numerically, the graph itself gives no information about this, which is after all the most important characteristic of an investment. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2006/05/23/post_8/#more https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2006/06/06/displaying_fina/

Good. The psychology is the difficult thing - can't be too sensitive to risks or the stress will create another problem.