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Bumping this - struck me that this thread was basically right at the TOP - imagine that many of these 'regrets' might not be as relevant now. Not much to add - just I suppose a reminder that a lot can change in a year. Though that's not to take away that if you bought stuff in March 2020, it was a brave and probably successful move.

I think we don't! This is certainly how I see it. Of course, people will answer this depending on how they define 'impact'. For me, this means when it will impact an ordinary person on the street. I think there are a lot of smart people doing lots of interesting things in the space, but it doesn't feel like there's a 'killer app' yet, and I think it's hard to say who will endure. If you're a certain age, you'll remember when Yahoo was THE browser, and Google didn't exist, so in the early days, it's much more difficult to predict the longer-term winners. This is not to say that one shouldn't invest in Crypto, but one should probably size accordingly.

Amen, brother. Similar situation here. It's been pretty excruciating thinking for years, 'Well anyway, I'm too late to get in now', and then seeing another phenomenal quarter from MSFT or CSU. I've put some money in a Brown Advisory fund, as being the 'US Growth' fund I'm most comfortable with: 1) 30 holdings only 2) Decent omissions - no FB, no Tesla. But increasingly MSFT and GOOGL seem the ones that are hardest to take down - I've thought this for a while, and the past week has been another confirmation of it. And then, I think, what edge can I possibly have with stocks like these against a lot of smart people with big teams of analysts... And then, there's also the argument that if inflation & interest rate rises continue, the Growth stocks could continue to come down/decompress, and Real Estate, Energy (& Financials?) will have their day for the rest of the decade. So perhaps this is the wrong time for you to shift. I suppose ultimately all one can do is keep an open mind, and keep looking for the one-foot hurdles. Visa sub-200 was the only one of late that was OK for me, but they don't come along often.

The latest letter was on Reddit yesterday if anyone's interested. Haven't read it yet.

Sounds about right. I'm not smart/confident enough to do options sadly, otherwise I'd be doing this. I was rereading a Druckenmiller talk from last May where he was talking along these lines & saying how crazy everything was. It's aged pretty well. My way of playing this is through a closed-end Macro fund with a great long-term record. It struggled in 2013-17 because.... there wasn't enough volatility. This seems like the right environment for it.

What a man. I regret never having seen him live. I used to listen to Ragged Glory a fair bit, but also Weld (such an incredible version of Cortez, as I recall, and Rust Never Sleeps. Not to mention the pretty awesome Deja Vu with CSN&Y.

I am starting to add to a QQQ 'proxy fund', which might be of interest to some - the Brown Advisory Sustainable Large Cap Fund (I'm buying the UCITS in Europe, but there's a Mutual Fund). I see it a bit like QQQ 'without the bad stuff'. The top holdings aren't as concentrated, but it only has about 30 holdings. Top stuff is MSFT, GOOG, INTU, DHR, AMZN, AMT etc. The UCITS has pretty much tracked QQQ which is decent given no Tesla. I have a funny feeling that the Mutual Fund hasn't performed quite so well. I think this may sometimes happen as the UCITS is a fair bit smaller so can be a bit nimbler changing things. I am normally a bit suspicious of anything called 'Sustainable', but in this case, it seems to be more about the 'Quality' rather than being overly 'woke'.

Modeselektor - Happy Birthday LP Crunchy European Electronics.

Ha Ha - yes, well as long as I've been organised & have cash.

Yep. Our memories are short.... some time last year, I ended up reading some posts from Jan/Feb 2009 - it was really educational - people scooping stuff up when they were dead cheap, and then seeing the price plummet further. That was proper fear in the market, and frankly I hope we never see it again (though it's bound to happen eventually).

Please can we get back on topic to Value Rotation. Discussion of single mothers not relevant - some do OK, some don't. Just like some nuclear families do OK, some don't. Think that's all we need.

Yep, this has been the case in London too.

Yes, I do! I've just been re-reading The New Money Masters, and remembered how impressive he is. I'd forgotten that he is very much my favourite type of quality compounding investor, like Akre, Terry Smith, Lindsell Train etc. Cheers for these links - I plan to dig around the internet for more features/interviews with him when I have a moment.

Interesting thinking. I imagine that this would be good for something like TPL?

I I mean, obviously, nobody knows, but I will point out that there are some crypto tail risks. There WILL be more crypto hacks, which will reduce trust - and this is pretty much all about trust. I'd bet there will be more hacks than gold bars stolen. (of course, the discussion about whether all gold ETFs hold as many bars as they say they do is another topic altogether...).

There's some good stuff i.e. some of it looks incredible. There's some good tension in the middle. But yes, overall, given the hype, very disappointing. I am unbelievably stoked for Succession Season 3 next week.

I sympathise - it's simple - I'm against double taxation. But I'm also jealous. In the UK the threshold is below US$500k!

Chapeau!

I'm not sure about ETFs - I think China currently has relatively inefficient indices, so you're arguably better off going Active. There are some interesting boutiques (most that I know are non-US), but JP Morgan have a solid team - their China fund is a bit like a Growth ETF (i.e. not that concentrated) but most holdings are decent quality. I see it as a decent high-ish beta play. Baillie Gifford have, I think, a new-ish mutual fund in China A-Shares which looks really interesting - concentrated portfolio. They are a Growth house, just set up an office in Shanghai, & while I sometimes disagree with their thinking, overall they're a pretty decent firm.

One obvious side point is that those of us who remember it were a lot younger then... There are some things e.g. Crypto that remind me of the time i.e. people having crazy paper profits in a very short time. But Crypto is still relatively niche. Back then there was a whole sector of the stockmarket where day traders could make crypto profits with tech companies, and the feeling that anybody could do it. Even with the SaaS froth last year, it didn't feel like loads of ordinary people were doing it. And as mentioned, there was the valuation disparity which isn't apparent now. I was young and got a valuable lesson, buying 2 stocks tipped separately by a Financial newspaper in 1999. One was a small-cap, racy tech stock. The other was a very cheap, high-yielding large-cap utility... But as people have said above, nobody really knows in advance - you just can't time these things. That's what makes it interesting.

Many thanks for these, chaps.

To start with, I'm incredibly grateful to this board, especially Gregmal & Pupil, for providing amazing info about small-cap RE opportunities. I want to learn more, and wondered if there were any good funds etc to learn from (or even decent concentrated portfolios to get ideas from). e.g. I'm quite fascinated by things like STORE i.e. the great CEO letters and the BRK stake. The only one I can think of so far is Rhizome, which is a small indy operation that has some CoBF friendly cos. Otherwise I'm stuck. In the UK, we have TRY - a LSE-listed closed-end fund, which has outstanding, long manager commentaries in the Annual Reports. I recommend this if you want to learn about Euro & UK RE. It's a big fund now, so has to restrict it's small-cap exposure - but does discuss them - he calls this section the... REIT Petites. Thanks in advance. I don't know why the UK doesn't have any decent US RE funds of its own - a real gap in the market.

Yep, I got this from a Commodity fund letter (underlining is mine): We have explored ETF alternatives such as KRBN, which provide exposure to various carbon markets but are not comfortable with the structure’s shortcomings.

Congrats, Greg, this was on my list of RE to check, courtesy of your good self - I've got to speed up!

Paging Liberty... he's been talking about Obsidian on his newsletter. I've downloaded it but not got round to trying it out yet. But thanks for highlighting this - I really need to update my work methods, and you've put some good ideas for me.