Oreo

I see Apple as the weakest of that group; one that I'm least likely to own.

BTW the royalties on these ETFs would blow your minds. I can see why Pabrai wants a piece. Paying for any of these ETFs that cost 40-90 bps more than the SPY is flat-out crazy, in my view, especially if you plan on holding the ETF for decades. That fee difference will compound and destroy your cumulative. The only ETF / MF where that level of fees could be justified is something like Greenblatt's Gotham long/short (e.g. 170 long, 70 short). But expense ratio there appears to be 2%, which is still way too high.

With a classic value ETF like QVAL, you are paying 50-80bps and the ETF then holds stuff like Cisco, Apple, Wyndham, HP (last I checked). Compare that to the simple S&P500 ETF tracker from Vanguard. Yes, you hold the S&P. But you pay 5bps (10-15x less). And by the way, for some weird reason, it keeps outperforming QVAL and its ilk by a significant margin. Why do people keep complicating things?

I used to take VIC a lot more seriously initially, but over the years my view became more nuanced. One, it seems a fair proportion of VIC members take what they read on VIC and reproduce it on SeekingAlpha, COBF / etc, sometimes packaging and selling that as 'premium' / subscription products and earning $$$ from it. Kinda devalues the value of the effort that you have to put in to get in and then post 2 ideas a year so that you don't lose access. The air of exclusivity is gradually deflating. The board is also not immune to the occasional hard pump (& dump). Also, I get the sense that legit HFs / LOs do not really use VIC, COBF or any of these message boards and consider them low signal-to-noise. Real life interactions with other investors, calls to sell-side and attending conferences is where it's (ostensibly) at. Having said that, if you are stuck in a geographical/industry location where you cannot get access to other people who do stocks for a living or are interested in stocks, VIC is great. Otherwise, real life interactions/gossiping about stocks is kinda better. It's all about the opportunity cost of time and what else you could be doing with your time other than hanging out on message boards. For instance, I find that Twitter is a good place to be to keep a finger on the mood of the analyst / PM community.

Everything that was said + PayPal Amazon eBay, to a certain extent. Now that I think about it, float-y companies have always been a big part of my portfolio. They just don't screen as well on a P/E basis, usually.

I get that but given that we're (almost) all anons here, the bias is nowhere near as prevalent as elsewhere in life, at least to me. I've had remarkably frank conversations online with people I've never met who are anons and it would be difficult for me to recreate that if the veil of anonymity was lifted, online or IRL. It's also much easier to cast a vote in a poll - the voter's choice cannot be traced to the voter.

Earlier in 2016 I remarked that I believe CoBF members on avg would outperform mutual and hedge fund managers. I remember at the time someone expressed slight incredulity at that assertion. I think the great returns here overall are testament to the quality of CoBF (occasional blowups like VRX/ZINC notwithstanding) and to much that is wrong with the institutional money management business.

Overall: +8% across multiple accounts. That's before fees, too. I could list a bunch of reasons why it's this unimpressive but in the end, it is what it is. Main detractors: - went aggressively short the market at the absolute bottom (winter 2016). - shorted a bunch of momo names that went parabolic and still have not crashed. If you put on a 3% short that goes up 3x, that's still a 6% loss, and that's before you account for the considerable cost of borrow. So even a 3% cost basis couldn't save me because the discipline to cut the loss was not there. - was very long tech ahead of the election. Still am. All self-inflicted, avoidable mistakes. I'm definitely not as skilled as I thought I am after 2015, at least not at shorting or varying my net & gross exposure "tactically".

I mostly just invest in Amazon (AMZN). And then there's some other stuff.

Samir/"theperks", Great post. And I had no idea that you started college at 13 - kudos. Safe to say that your path (e.g. going to college so early) is far outside of the 'norm' or what people have generally come to expect of fund managers, and that's probably one of the reasons internet randos like me end up starting (or replying to) internet message threads titled "The 22 year old hedge fund manager". I hope stuff like this does not discourage you or cause you to lose any sleep. Good luck out there.

In any case - I don't want to take away too much from this young mind. Running his own LLC is an achievement that is multiples of what I had achieved at age 22.

The other thing I'd say is that experience has value. Not everyone can be a young investing genius like WEB. Most people are actually more likely to maximize their lifetime investment success by first spending a few years working under someone as analyst. If you were cynical, you could interpret this Asteladden guy's relentless pitch and desire to run other people's capital by himself at such a young age as a sign that he wants everything and he wants it quickly. That's precisely the opposite of the message that he probably wants to send, i.e. that he's a 'patient, rational, time-arbitrage'-kind of guy. This incongruity is probably part of the reason why some of you feel unease when you look at his story. Remember Buffett's quip about Rick Guerin wanting too much too fast (and ultimately experiencing a blow-up, learning a valuable lesson) vs WEB and Charlie always knowing that they will be long-term rich so not hurrying themselves too much? The parallel applies here. These kinds of signals are telling me to stay away from this guy for now. Let him prove himself over 7-10 yrs of auditable track record and then reassess.

I've met a fair share of relatively young folks who have achieved disproportionate success. my 2c: - this guy clearly carries a fairly big chip on his shoulder and has an ego. He watched a big chunk of his age cohort graduate from Ivies, go off to feeder bulge bracket investment banks and then hedge funds. He probably does not consider their success deserved (born with silver spoons in their mouths, were privately schooled, etc). Why else would he feel the need to compensate by re-emphasizing his amazing test scores? He thinks he needs to put that info out there to 'get on a level playing field'. I mean, Stanford MBAs with analyst experience at Tiger cubs don't say what their GMAT scores were or that they worked directly under Anthony Noto whilst at Goldman's tech practice. This Asteladden guy does not have that credentialed 'pedigree' so feels the need to pad out his online self-marketing like this. i can sympathise. When you are 19 and lack experiences, you look for anything you can find to throw down on your resume, because your conventional experiences barely fill-up half of an A4 page. But still, saying that he barely studied for the GMAT but still aced just reeks of insecurity, I must say. - if I was him, I'd just emphasize track record. If can't disclose his since-inception time-weighted IRR on his account(s), then just show the rank on TipRanks or PWP. Track record is how the really good young managers became great mid-AuM managers - track record and word-of-mouth. The pitch here is kinda weird and off-putting, though I may be a tad more sophisticated than his average buyer.

On a more serious note, although I may get flamed for saying this, I think shorting these 'safe', 'bond-like' consumer stocks like Hershey, Nestle and their ilk is a tempting opportunity.

When I browse the forum on my iPhone (full webpage, not the mobile version), the banner is indeed blocking some context / is mildly inconvenient.