Down goes the Dow

You must be filthy rich, like flagpole! 🙂

We have not come close to beating the SP500 with our investments.

I fall into the same category, but getting pretty steady income off my EM Bond CEFs.

At the moment I am outperforming any Big Swinging Dicks.

Flagpole insists he beat the Dow Jones 35 of 37 years. I calculated the odds and it is about 1 in 6 billion. So he is the one person on Earth who was able to do that - though many were too young.

Can you list all your positions so we can assess the accuracy of your claim?

Well, you must be very popular with the ladies, Igy!

Good luck with the investments, too.

My YTD return is about 7.5% higher than what VOO has returned YTD. I feel like that's pretty good.

Only my wife.

I believe that is a line from Lewis’ Liar’s Poker.

^ BSD

What is BSD?

Big Swinging Dick
(Very) informal and somewhat derogatory; a trader who believes his methodology is perfect and will always result in sizable profits. However, it originally was a term of self-designation for major bond-traders. The term was popularized by the book Liar's Poker, which describes the author's experience as a bond trader on Wall Street in the 1980s.

We went over this a month or two ago. I have beat the market, on average, by a fair bit for more than 10 years now. Some years more or less match the S&P500, and some years I beat the S&P500 by a little or a lot. People told me I am either a liar or 1 in a million. I have a fair bit of data suggesting the latter at this point.

You got that all wrong. I am not calling you a liar, and Big Swinging Dick is not, in my view a derogatory term. In my time in the business a successful trader was also referred to as a Heavy Hitter. I would personally be proud to be called a Big Swinging Dick, which I was today with my leveraged shorts. If one of the rookie financial advisors in the Bull Pen pulled off a big trade, or landed a big account, the jealous colleagues would say “ain’t he a big swinging dick,” or some equally colorful langage.

Let me give you some schooling. Liar’s Poker is I believe writer Michael Lewis’ first book. It outlines his experiences as a bond trader during the 1980s Junk Bond Bubble. Anyway, Wall Street prefers smart, young, and aggressive traders, for stocks and bonds. There is no history of bad markets, and the traders are trying to make it in the business.

YTD return for me for brokerage accounts is approx. 2% higher than SNP 500 return.

I'm ready for a little Santa Clauss rally if you don't mind.

Bring it.

Do you mind if I call you a BSD?

My portfolio for the last 10 years has been split between either voo and bnd or vti and bnd (I tax loss harvest from vti to voo and back again), so while the stock portion has basically kept pace with the S&P500, my total portfolio has lagged due to my bond allocation. I'm perfectly fine with this.

Okay. Thanks for the clarification.

Well, that's easy enough.

Pronouns, on the other hand - let's not go there, okay?

Forget I even mentioned it.

-seattle prattle, BSD.

I have posted about this for years. Why do you think politicians have gotten so rich? Subsidizing markets has been a National policy priority, and one to be traded on. Government deficits and outright theft has benefitted the political class most. The justification being getting their slice of the pie. Why not, the Billionaire Class gets theirs?

researchaffiliates.com

Financialization: How Deficits Inflate Profits and Equity Valuations | Research Affiliates

Chronic fiscal deficits stimulate consumption and flow into corporate profits that are then recycled into price-indifferent passive funds, inflating market valuations.

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