Down goes the Dow

seattle prattle wrote:

To give you an idea of how hard it would be to beat the Dow Jones Index (DJIA) most years based on an annual basis, I searched for a really good investors results, and Warren Buffet was mentioned earlier, so I chose Berkshire Hathaway, his investment company.

So, how many times has Berkshire Hathaway beaten the DJIA in annual performance in the last 20 years? We know that he is amongst the very best. Certainly better than FP, right?

Well, get this:

The Motley Fool wrote:

Over that two-decade span, it has beaten the Dow in 13 of the 20 years

So, FP has managed to do it in at least 17 of the last 20 years, and FP has beaten Warren Buffet's signature fund/company track record by an astounding 25% of the years in that time period.

tl/dr:

How many years beating DJIA on an annual basis in last 20 years:

Berkshire Hathaway: 13 of 20

Flagpole: at least 17 of 20

And furthermore:

Berkshire Hathaway has outperformed the DJIA 65% of the last 20 years, and

Flagpole has outperformed the DJIA 91.6% of the last 36 years.

link to article referenced above:

Link:www.fool.com/investing/2022/10/03/bett...

Flagpole wrote:

seattle prattle wrote:

To give you an idea of how hard it would be to beat the Dow Jones Index (DJIA) most years based on an annual basis, I searched for a really good investors results, and Warren Buffet was mentioned earlier, so I chose Berkshire Hathaway, his investment company.

So, how many times has Berkshire Hathaway beaten the DJIA in annual performance in the last 20 years? We know that he is amongst the very best. Certainly better than FP, right?

Well, get this:

So, FP has managed to do it in at least 17 of the last 20 years, and FP has beaten Warren Buffet's signature fund/company track record by an astounding 25% of the years in that time period.

tl/dr:

How many years beating DJIA on an annual basis in last 20 years:

Berkshire Hathaway: 13 of 20

Flagpole: at least 17 of 20

And furthermore:

Berkshire Hathaway has outperformed the DJIA 65% of the last 20 years, and

Flagpole has outperformed the DJIA 91.6% of the last 36 years.

link to article referenced above:

Link:www.fool.com/investing/2022/10/03/bett...

Nope. Doesn't matter what others have done. Only matters what I have done. To start with, the first 12 years of my working life (after graduating from college), I worked primarily for two different companies (with a couple of short stints in there that I abandoned). Both of them were very young companies and both of them provided a 6% 401k match in company stock. I wasn't fond of that arrangement, but with a match, I took what they offered. Both of those companies were on fire during the time I worked for them, and both eventually were purchased by larger companies that you have heard of (making the founders very wealthy). In those 12 years, that stock that I received was a large portion of my overall holdings simply because I hadn't yet built up the huge pile that I have today. In most of those years, that stock was my best performer. After I left the second company, I rolled that 401k into an IRA filled with mutual funds. I took a new job that matched only 3% and allowed us to put that 3% wherever we wanted. So, the first 12 years of my investing life was bouyed by company stock that happened to do super well. After that, I was a very active investor, changing things up a lot annually for several years. I made some moves that worked out. I didn't make those moves to try to make things better...I was just trying some different ideas. Got lucky. Eventually, my stuff reached a level where I decided to just be as diversified as possible. I hit a point where I could have retired once the Dow hit 22,000, but I kept working and investing beyond that. Now, even though I am retired, we still invest a good portion of our income because my wife still works.

seattle prattle wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

Nope. Doesn't matter what others have done. Only matters what I have done. To start with, the first 12 years of my working life (after graduating from college), I worked primarily for two different companies (with a couple of short stints in there that I abandoned). Both of them were very young companies and both of them provided a 6% 401k match in company stock. I wasn't fond of that arrangement, but with a match, I took what they offered. Both of those companies were on fire during the time I worked for them, and both eventually were purchased by larger companies that you have heard of (making the founders very wealthy). In those 12 years, that stock that I received was a large portion of my overall holdings simply because I hadn't yet built up the huge pile that I have today. In most of those years, that stock was my best performer. After I left the second company, I rolled that 401k into an IRA filled with mutual funds. I took a new job that matched only 3% and allowed us to put that 3% wherever we wanted. So, the first 12 years of my investing life was bouyed by company stock that happened to do super well. After that, I was a very active investor, changing things up a lot annually for several years. I made some moves that worked out. I didn't make those moves to try to make things better...I was just trying some different ideas. Got lucky. Eventually, my stuff reached a level where I decided to just be as diversified as possible. I hit a point where I could have retired once the Dow hit 22,000, but I kept working and investing beyond that. Now, even though I am retired, we still invest a good portion of our income because my wife still works.

That's interesting and thanks for that.

The investor you are describing here doesn't sound like the one you have conveyed before.

The investor before didn't move stuff around much, bought funds and generally stuck with them, and directed the new money to new funds if they wanted to change things a bit. Excuse me if I misunderstood, but that sure sounded like what you described in general. It was not an investor that was regularly moving their money around.

Seriously, now we are to believe that you were "a very active investor"?

Before you said you went rather diversified and didn't worry about it - you said you had better things to do with your time.

If I have this wrong, my apologies. And if so, you should have been in the business because you have achieved a track record like no one I have ever, ever!, heard of.

Flagpole wrote:

seattle prattle wrote:

That's interesting and thanks for that.

The investor you are describing here doesn't sound like the one you have conveyed before.

The investor before didn't move stuff around much, bought funds and generally stuck with them, and directed the new money to new funds if they wanted to change things a bit. Excuse me if I misunderstood, but that sure sounded like what you described in general. It was not an investor that was regularly moving their money around.

Seriously, now we are to believe that you were "a very active investor"?

Before you said you went rather diversified and didn't worry about it - you said you had better things to do with your time.

If I have this wrong, my apologies. And if so, you should have been in the business because you have achieved a track record like no one I have ever, ever!, heard of.

I have been investing for nearly 34 years. I have said time and time again that I didn't just inherit a portfolio and keep it the same since 1989. I have mentioned several times that I changed things around especially initially. Your (and others here) level of interest in the history of my investing is far beyond what I would have ever imagined. I am a buy and hold guy, but that to me means I buy and then don't sell to take profit. It doesn't mean I buy a fund and hold that FUND forever, and I don't buy individual stocks, so that doesn't apply here. Every penny I have ever put into the stock market has never come back out to me. I have also said several times now that since I am now so diversifed and do NOT change things up every year like I did once upon a time (it takes a lot of TIME to become as diversifed as I am the way I went about it...adding new funds, changing percentages that I put into certain funds), that I likely will not continue to have the same success against the Dow as I have in the past...to wit, I lost big time to the Dow in 2022. At this point, it doesn't matter to me at all. I have more money than I will ever need.

I began to "not worrry about it" in 2017 when the Dow hit 22,000 for the first time and I had enough then to retire (and have my wife retire) if I wanted to. I wasn't ALWAYS in that position, and I have never said I was.

Since you are so interested in minutia, let me define "active investor". I have been "active" in the early years only in that I switched funds a lot at the end of the year. I did NOT put a lot of time and effort into that and I did do it somewhat randomly, just looking to be different than the year before, especially with the year before was great. I do not and never have BOUGHT individual stocks and traded them. MUTUAL FUNDS are what have enabled me not to have to put a lot of time and effort into my investing. So, being an "active" investor in those early years involved probably less than an hour of my time at the end of the year to move stuff around a little bit.

Methinks you haven't heard of enough investors. In one of my early companies, I was in an investor club that consisted of other members of the company. We ALL had that company stock match, and the younger of us did better than the older ones because that well-performing stock was a bigger percentage of our portfolios at the time. Among those younger invetors, I was doing worse than average if my memory serves me well.

Your level of interest in this is really odd. You have said you have done better than me over this time period, and yet I have ZERO interest in what you have done...doesn't affect me, and I have my own pile of money.

seattle prattle wrote:

Flagpole wrote:

I have been investing for nearly 34 years. I have said time and time again that I didn't just inherit a portfolio and keep it the same since 1989. I have mentioned several times that I changed things around especially initially. Your (and others here) level of interest in the history of my investing is far beyond what I would have ever imagined. I am a buy and hold guy, but that to me means I buy and then don't sell to take profit. It doesn't mean I buy a fund and hold that FUND forever, and I don't buy individual stocks, so that doesn't apply here. Every penny I have ever put into the stock market has never come back out to me. I have also said several times now that since I am now so diversifed and do NOT change things up every year like I did once upon a time (it takes a lot of TIME to become as diversifed as I am the way I went about it...adding new funds, changing percentages that I put into certain funds), that I likely will not continue to have the same success against the Dow as I have in the past...to wit, I lost big time to the Dow in 2022. At this point, it doesn't matter to me at all. I have more money than I will ever need.

I began to "not worrry about it" in 2017 when the Dow hit 22,000 for the first time and I had enough then to retire (and have my wife retire) if I wanted to. I wasn't ALWAYS in that position, and I have never said I was.

Since you are so interested in minutia, let me define "active investor". I have been "active" in the early years only in that I switched funds a lot at the end of the year. I did NOT put a lot of time and effort into that and I did do it somewhat randomly, just looking to be different than the year before, especially with the year before was great. I do not and never have BOUGHT individual stocks and traded them. MUTUAL FUNDS are what have enabled me not to have to put a lot of time and effort into my investing. So, being an "active" investor in those early years involved probably less than an hour of my time at the end of the year to move stuff around a little bit.

Methinks you haven't heard of enough investors. In one of my early companies, I was in an investor club that consisted of other members of the company. We ALL had that company stock match, and the younger of us did better than the older ones because that well-performing stock was a bigger percentage of our portfolios at the time. Among those younger invetors, I was doing worse than average if my memory serves me well.

Your level of interest in this is really odd. You have said you have done better than me over this time period, and yet I have ZERO interest in what you have done...doesn't affect me, and I have my own pile of money.

Okay.

I see a couple of issues here but you are right in observing how much attention i've invested in this, so I'll leave it at there.

Good luck with it and happy trading.