What's your personal AUM?

jobyts · May 1, 2015

Including the brokerage and retirement account of yours and your spouse's.

I think the AUM has a big impact on one's portfolio stock percentage, number of stocks in the portfolio etc.

thepupil · May 1, 2015

Travis Wiedower · May 1, 2015

Highly doubt you get many real responses, that's a pretty personal question. And yes, AUM has a huge effect on one's returns, but knowing the personal AUM of posters on here isn't going to give you any real insight into that fact. Buffett has been talking about the huge effect that AUM has on returns for decades.

rkbabang · May 1, 2015

From 2012:

http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/general-discussion/anonymous-size-of-your-portfolio-poll/

Jurgis · May 1, 2015

Yeah, poll would have been better. But any new people can still vote on rkbabang's linked thread.

AzCactus · May 1, 2015

I think an interesting and in a way less personal way to get some information would be to ask what is your Aum/Age. This way you can get an approximate number and unless you actually know the age of the person posting you won't have a complete answer. The other key issue (from my perspective) is that it would be logical that people in their 40's/50's would generally have higher AUM than someone in their 20's. This would be based on a combination of compounding and earnings power.

oddballstocks · May 1, 2015

Why does this matter? There are so many factors that make these polls and numbers irrelevant.

Having $1m means something different for someone in NYC compared to Dayton, OH.

Some might have $200k in assets but are receiving a pension ensuring a nice lifestyle.

All of these things are relative. I wince when we spend $250 at Costco, for others it's $500, does it matter?

I'd stop worrying about everyone else, focus on how you're doing relative to your own goals. Most Americans will never have more than $100k in net worth, so if you can hit that or exceed that you've done better than most of the country. Who cares if there are a few who are wealthier?

We have this tendency to look above us and not below us. Looking above leaves us dissatisfied with what we have. Instead of looking at some poll where a few people have millions or tens of millions why not look at the vast majority of the US with less than $100k and be thankful?

AzCactus · May 1, 2015

Oddball---I honestly don't disagree with you. For my age I am comfortable with where I am at. And that won't change just because somebody on this board has a couple more 0's than me. However, I think that generally speaking though people are always comparing themselves to others--especially in their own age range. In the end though, the key is to be happy with what you and :)

writser · May 1, 2015

Why does this matter?

I do think it matters in some interesting ways (apart from having a ****-measuring contest). Suppose somebody on this forum is extremely enthousiast about a controversial stock (Outerwall comes to mind as an example) and allocated 20% of their portfolio to it. If that somebody has a job and a $20k portfolio then that would be a completely different situation from somebody who is retired and has to live the rest of his/her life from a $2m portfolio.

It's much easier to manage a high-concentration, high-conviction portfolio if you don't have any money :) . And I think that implies that a lot of discussions on this forum are probably a bit skewed towards risky behavior because a) most people have no money and b) old people are probably underrepresented on this board. Something to keep in mind when you read a topic about mind-boggling returns or about the next 10-bagger opportunity.

It would be interesting to do some research on whether this bias exists on this forum and a topic like this would be a potential starting point for that. Some interesting questions: is there a correlation between personal portfolio size and diversification / annual returns / portfolio volatility / portfolio turnover? I believe these could be some of the points the topic starter is interested in. That said, if a new forum member opens a topic 'how much money do you have' I doubt you will start a sensible discussion. I'm surprised he/she is not also asking for our addresses ..

ScottHall · May 1, 2015

These questions are a little bit odd. I have enough to retire, but with my definition of retirement, that doesn't necessarily mean what most people would infer from it. I could quit my job and live in a car at public rest areas digging food out of the bins at Safeway.

I'd be retired, but most people wouldn't consider that a desirable outcome. The most important thing is to have enough to sustainably live your target lifestyle. For me, that isn't much. For others, maybe it's a whole lot.

In general I support getting by with less than more for a lot of reasons, only one of which is sustainability, but I know I'm an outlier on that. That's why personal finance advice online really bugs me; folks act as though there's one acceptable way to do this thing, and you have to have a certain amount of money by a certain date or you're screwed.

This is pretty much hogwash. Tons of people live on Social Security and not much more, which is fine. You just have to have your expectations set to the reality you've created for yourself.

And, by the way, I'm not sure accruing a massive amount of money is particularly useful. If you want to have $100 million or whatever, go ahead, but keep in mind there is also an opportunity cost to doing that in that you can have less experiences along the way with your friends and family.

Maybe some folks don't value that, but to me, that's an important consideration when considering what to do with your money. Money is much easier to get more of, past a certain threshold, than time is to get back. Which is, as far as I know, impossible.

You're also probably going to die, so, uh, congrats on the billions. Uncle Sam thanks you for your patriotism.

jobyts · May 1, 2015

My interest in the question was mostly what Writser mentioned, sorry I did not elaborate much in the question. When I see someone's opinion about the number of stocks he/she owns in their portfolio, it will be more valuable to me if our AUMs are comparable. For this purpose, even anonymous voting will not help. Guess we have to live with this limitation with online forums. My intention is not to have show off competition. In fact compared to lots of other forums, this forum has much more matured members. I think some of the members here with very high AUM do not want to say it since it may look like bragging, even though they are not.

Another point is ,I remember reading in aaii.com, they had some page (cannot find now) mentioning the average AUM/age/profession of a typical member. The also have the AAII sentiment tracker as a contrarian indicator. I was wondering how much it is comparable to this forum.

Edit: Just found the aaii page.

http://www.aaii.com/journal/article/is-the-aaii-sentiment-survey-a-contrarian-indicator?adv=yes

The typical AAII member is a male in his mid-60s with a bachelor’s or graduate degree. AAII members tend to be affluent with a median portfolio size in excess of $1 million. The typical member describes himself as having a moderate level of investment knowledge and engaging primarily in fundamental analysis. This said, AAII has in excess of 160,000 members and simply due to the sheer size of our membership, there are wide variances in wealth, investment knowledge and investing styles. We also have many women members. This mix makes the AAII Sentiment Survey unique in that it conveys the attitudes of active, hands-on individual investors.

gfp · May 1, 2015

jobyts, did I miss where you shared your AUM?

Jurgis · May 1, 2015

globalfinancepartners, I don't think there is need to put jobyts on the spot.