COBF Pain Index

[Cod Liver Oil]

The bear is on his hind legs. If you are long, you probably have some scars at this point. Now might be a good time to take an informal survey of the pain levels of the investors here.  Everyone has different pain thresholds and psychological comportment. The COBF community may be significantly different from the investing public. But investing is probably 3/4 a psychological game.  Self-reporting psychological states is hugely flawed but it would be cool to check in and see how much or little pain people are feeling and how it is affecting your behavior as an investor and consumer. Me: pain level 7, 70% long, buying more of my favorite companies, eggs in bulk and deadlifting 3x per week.

 

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by Cod Liver Oil

[DooDiligence]

Comfortably numb.

[boilermaker75]

20 minutes ago, DooDiligence said:

Comfortably numb.

 

 

[Jaygo]

I’m only down about 6 percent from my all time high. Not too painful nor excited about much yet. Still buying bits of aritzia and tjx. Both doing really well. trading around brk with hits and misses. 

 

I was kind of hoping for a swoosh down with lots of fear and angst to get long some North American industrials and a tech index. Nothing yet. 
 

I am looking pretty hard at alimentation couche tard thinking they may follow the path of auto zone with significant repurchases now that the market told them the carrefour deal was a no go. 

[DooDiligence]

23 minutes ago, boilermaker75 said:

 

 

 

Powell's lips move but I can't hear what he says.

[Spooky]

It's true what they say that losses feel worse than gains. I'm still up 10% on Goog since the point I bought in the pandemic but at one point is was up over 100%. I've taken a few lumps (especially on BABA) but am trying to ignore the short term and think long term. Deployed more into BRK, GOOG, VOO, and BAM. I've also been consistently buying CSU and VCN each paycheck as well as some broad equity ETFs through my spouse's Wealthsimple.

[Libs]

Down 20%, call it 6 out of 10 on the pain scale. 20 years ago, I wouldn't have flinched. Would have been 1 out of 10.

 

This morning I convinced myself my holdings can't go much lower-  they're on average probably 50% undervalued. Famous last words!

[thepupil]

I'm roughly flat YTD but maybe down 15% from peak. having some energy exposure, some buyouts in first part of year. owning conservatively financed off the run RE (like NEN/FRPH) have all led me to outperform this year. I am not in any real pain. have lost a few percent last few days. feel comfortably positioned and have been trying to use luxury of not being down to try to assess everything with new lens, and not get too wedded to any stocks/ideas (my tendendcy) or ideas of NAV/intrinsic value that may be stale....while (contradictorily) allowing for the fact that the world may not have changed...THAT much and things may reverse quickly....been trying to structure life/portfolio to be ready for most things. have built a bond portfolio, HELOC in place, LT fixed mortgage, trimming winners, adding to some losers...just trying to be measured and not overly bearish/bullish. 

 

It's very difficult for me to not get more bullish seeing a lot of frothy demons being exorcised from the markets, but I don't find high quality real companies to be incredibly cheap (or expensive). everything seems in realm of reasonableness to me (very US perspective, tons of very cheap stuff abroad, I'm just much more comfortable in US sandbox)....my biggest fear is probably a 10+yr reversal of USD bull market, I don't own enough non USD assets...that's probably what nags me most...like am i gonna hatemyself for not 3-4X'ing some $$$ on a small amount that I could put in china if that works out...i might...might i hate myself for not finding a bunch of great high quality small caps in europe that 3x over next  5 years nad have a currency benefit...yea i might...but i also don't want to be patsy at poker table.

 

in short, no real pain here. i don't think this is really all that bad of a "bear market". only people getting slauhghtered in a real way kind of deserve it in my opinon (like if you'rd down 80% on unprofitable dream of a tech some tech stock...you had the prior decade to make 20%/yr and get your nut...unless you just entered markets in which case you'll be fine because your whole life is ahead of you)

 

this isn't pain. pain is much worse in my opinion. it may come it may not. 

Edited November 3, 2022 by thepupil

[TwoCitiesCapital]

-25% this year so far. 

 

My stocks have actually done reasonably well relative to S&P. Largest positions are in Altius, Fairfax, and Exor and all are dramatically outperforming S&P. 

 

Trading around my commodity names has also been fairly successful YTD.  Collectively these have been ~5% of the portfolio (excluding Altius) so hasn't been hugely impactful. 

 

I have a large allocation to short term and intermediate bond funds which are negative YTD, but significantly less so than equities. Still feel pretty good about owning those. 

 

Biggest underperformers are my massive allocations to crypto (~20% of my portfolio) and emerging markets (~20% of my portfolio) which does make me feel pretty rough when I look at those individually. 

[Ross812]

The bulk of our money is in the following allocation:

 

25% - Utilities (increased from 20% this year)

20% - Healthcare

20% - Small cap consumer staples

10% - Berkshire

10% - Nasdaq

10% - Gold

5% - Small Value

 

The benchmark (with the representative ETFs) is down about 8% as of this morning. I am down 6% as I trade around in those allocations and play with lots of options.

 

My pooled trading account with OPM which I mostly discuss here is down 6.6% this year. I was up 15% at one time this year.  

[Gregmal]

Overall pretty chipper. These sort of situations to me just kind of set the table for whatever comes next and an environment where you have more options to invest than just stocks isn’t all that terrible. So bigger picture it’s exciting. 
 

Performance wise, modestly down. Been fluctuating every day lol. Q1 did over 30% and Q2 gave it all back. Since then pretty much just been gyrating with a slight downward trajectory. Biggest thing this year has been luck/skill(not gonna argue which!) and discipline. Preferred Apartment was a massive position and got bought and Bill Ackman has been a weasel but didn’t fuck PSTH holders. So both those anchored things and provided a lot of capital at really useful times. A number of other holdings got bought which was fortunate as well, or at least had bids which allowed for reratings in the face of a poorly trading market. In fact I’ve probably had more buyouts in the last 12 months I’d had in my entire career before that. 
 

Number of longer term holdings have gotten whacked but having the capital to rotate has just turned that into an opportunity. VRE and JOE for instance where both situations I really liked but just needed better entry points to make them big. So we got that. Only point of alarm really has been the degree to which things really can go absolutely anywhere on a short term basis. There’s so much short term nonsense and bad actors in the market that you really have to respect that. Something like VNO which I keep an eye on has really blown my mind. You’d think like COVID bottom doom at least somewhere represents what a peak negativity valuation would be…ok maybe +\-10-20% from the COVID bottom, and then boom, bottom falls out like twice as badly. MSGE too. Like you line up the fundamentals and over many years follow stuff and get comfort levels with stuff, and the game changes! So important to be disciplined and just stay nimble but also keep the bigger picture in mind. 
 

Trading I’ve done a lot less of, intentionally as late last year and early this year I decided to try to build a more durable long term portfolio. But trading as a whole, especially this year, reminder of rule number 1. How do you know a trade is over? When it stops making money. Important not to keep banging heads against the wall chasing past pots of gold when the opportunity has moved elsewhere. 

[lnofeisone]

I'm chipper as well. Overall, I'm down 10% from all time high but 0 to slightly positive overall for the year. VET and CVE have been holding me steady. I've been trading around some other energy names selling a bunch during peak in the summer. Could've sold more ahead of the sell off. Getting whacked on some of the tech and other stuff (e.g., ABNB, ATUS) but sizing has been key here. Unfortunately, I didn't get on the VRE component of Gregmal ETF but starting to look post energy (maybe Feb/March) to start rotating into the likes of Joe and BAC/WFC.

[CorpRaider]

This is fine.  

Edited November 3, 2022 by CorpRaider

[Ulti]

40 minutes ago, lnofeisone said:

'm chipper as well. Overall, I'm down 10% from all time high but 0 to slightly positive overall for the year

Very similar ;Energy  real estate ( thanks GMAL, thepupil and others for the education ) some consumer staples and healthcare; with an 18% brk which I added to in the $260's

However mentally , especially on the continual downdrafts, sometimes I feel like the beaten stepchild... Have been investing since the late "70's, lost my ass in 2000 (have since made up for it .)  I'm very impressed that folks on the board are fairly sanguine about the current situation.... For myself, its experience and increasing my knowledge that's helped psychologically. But I attribute this to old age and folks here seem pretty young... Are there any other factors that I'm missing? Or ,to use a baseball analogy, board members here are AAA or Major league level and I'm coming from a long time playing A ball ?

 

[Viking]

My pain level is zero. Portfolio is up a little over 15%. 
1.) went big into oil in Dec; Jan + Feb gains represent most of my gains this year (exited all my positions in Feb).

2.) got very defensive earlier in the year when it became clear Fed was going hard QT

3.) have done a lot of trading the past 6 months for minimal gain

4.) have been in and out of oil (smaller positions) 3 times since my initial purchase in Dec for nice gains. sold my SU today for a tidy 8% gain. 

Bottom line, oil has powered most of my gains YTD. Getting defensive early in the year largely saved me from the downdraft in the stock market. Fairfax, from this point forward, will likely determine how i finish the year. 
 

Currently Fairfax is my largest position. If the stock sells off post earnings - and i like earnings - i will add more. I have started to build out a position in big tech (GOOG, AMZN, Facebook, MSFT) - adding again today. Cash is a little over 40%. My guess is i will get lots of great opportunities to deploy more cash in the next 3 months. 

[Gregmal]

11 minutes ago, Ulti said:

Very similar ;Energy  real estate ( thanks GMAL, thepupil and others for the education ) some consumer staples and healthcare; with an 18% brk which I added to in the $260's

However mentally , especially on the continual downdrafts, sometimes I feel like the beaten stepchild... Have been investing since the late "70's, lost my ass in 2000 (have since made up for it .)  I'm very impressed that folks on the board are fairly sanguine about the current situation.... For myself, its experience and increasing my knowledge that's helped psychologically. But I attribute this to old age and folks here seem pretty young... Are there any other factors that I'm missing? Or ,to use a baseball analogy, board members here are AAA or Major league level and I'm coming from a long time playing A ball ?

 

I think the biggest thing is really understanding what you own. When you do it’s easier to understand market movements, especially knee jerk ones like we have seen a lot of this year, aren’t really meaningful. I always think “does Elon Musk or James Dolan sit around shitting in his pants because his company stock might be up or down next week or next month?”. Or you know during COVID when every piker and gambler shorted Simon Property and then after years of no interest in the stock basically every member of the board buys a boat load in the market at $50? Or look at VRE a few weeks ago? The punters and speculators bid it down to $10 and then you see insiders load the boat. Then a third party who knows those assets well offers 60% premium to those prices. Who panicked? Just the people who let the market convince them that their assets were worth the daily quote.

Edited November 3, 2022 by Gregmal

[Ulti]

6 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

Or you know during COVID when every piker and gambler shorted Simon Property and then after years of no interest in the stock basically every member of the board buys a boat load in the market at

Kept watching it but never pulled the trigger .....Didnt know the board loaded up and I did not have the knowledge.....Also ,if I remember correctly Valueline had an avoid on it...I agree 100% about knowing what you own...Sometimes easier said than done ; such as BAC TARP warrants (thanks ericopoly) ....bought with  little education and increased knowledge from there ( that took some effort )

[flesh]

Up 4% ytd. Have been 100% invested in either sold puts, shares, or leaps throughout. 12% margin for a few weeks twice. Zero margin now. All leaps sold. 

Max draw down was -9%. Down 1.5% from high. 

 

Still some pain though as I live off my gains and I haven't yet covered my costs for the year. Hoping for some raw sell offs but not for lasting economic

damage lol. 

[LC]

Been an ugh year. Missed the energy trade late 2021 and got into it only in early 2022, and held my nose with MSFT which has been a goober drag on the portfolio. Been trading pretty successfully which has mitigated a good amount of damage, overall down ~3.5% YTD which I'll take.

[james22]

Two years into retirement, I fear sequence of return risk, of course. But given the starting overvaluation, a sharp correction and couple year recovery is probably the best I can hope for. Much preferable to something like a lost decade.

 

-20% from peak, but after two year's expenses and one-time buys, I'm back to even. That's OK. The 90/10 allocation really only gave back its gains.

 

I've three to four year's expenses in cash (and a less than 3% WR), so right now I'm mostly happy BRK (45% position) has the opportunity to spend some cash and there might (finally) be a rotation into SV (25% position).

[treasurehunt]

I'm about 90% long and down 20% or so from the peak, but not feeling any real pain yet. The only exception is my allocation to Chinese stocks (Baba, Baidu, Tencent, BYD), where I am down big on the first three and feeling some pain because my conviction in these picks has declined. My investment portfolio provides the bulk of my income, so if the bear market continues beyond the end of 2023, I'll likely have some tough choices to make.

[Kupotea]

Up 26% YTD. Mostly well timed entries and exits into various energy related stocks. Currently 50% invested and 50% in cash. This year has been a completely different approach than buy and hold which I've stuck to in the past. I've held the mindset all year that the general trend is down and have tended to only stick my neck out there for obvious opportunities then sold at the first sign of weakness. I'm still torn between greed in relation to structural commodity shortages and the fear of a global recession.

[Parsad]

Down 5% from year-end and 10% from peak.  Heavy in Fairfax and mature tech, with some losses in tech offset by gains elsewhere.  Pain scale...maybe 3...been here and done this a few times now.  Around 5% cash left and expect to be fully invested in the next couple of weeks if things persist as is.  

 

I'm always restless when markets are like this.  Like a kid waiting for Christmas morning.  I go to bed really late because I'm reading, and then wake up after just a few hours of sleep to see what is happening in the markets and put any orders in.  Cheers!

[cwericb]

Last year up 34% so I felt I had a bit of a cushion if things went too far south. Earlier this year I was up 15%, but later on down about 3-4%. But with the latest rally, as of close today I'm up 3.7%.  Fairfax has helped level things for me. Could be worse I guess.

[maxthetrade]

Up 7.2% YTD, 100% invested.  Pain level 0 right now, was maybe 5 earlier this year.