Down goes the Dow

seattle prattle wrote:

There's been quite a bit to talk about, actually, imo, and I'm pretty sure that is not a good thing.

Be that as it may, it's totally the absence of Agip that has made the difference. He seemed to carry the day to day discourse, and even his frequent assessement of past market predictions and their degree of accuracy gave enough background noise to sustain the thread.

CG 3, congrats on your outperformance of the SNP500 at this time.

That's not really a metric I track on an ongoing basis. What I do track is where I stand relative to my own ATH, and as of yesterdays closing, I was exactly 2.5% below that.

I am happy with that given how choppy things have been this year.

I would probably be about even but I probably got a little too defensive on the downturn, and I tend to do that because I tend to be so heavily stock weighted, there aren't the more customary non-equity holdings to act as a buffer, if that makes any sense.

Interesting times, no doubt.

CG 4 wrote:

seattle prattle wrote:

There's been quite a bit to talk about, actually, imo, and I'm pretty sure that is not a good thing.

Be that as it may, it's totally the absence of Agip that has made the difference. He seemed to carry the day to day discourse, and even his frequent assessement of past market predictions and their degree of accuracy gave enough background noise to sustain the thread.

CG 3, congrats on your outperformance of the SNP500 at this time.

That's not really a metric I track on an ongoing basis. What I do track is where I stand relative to my own ATH, and as of yesterdays closing, I was exactly 2.5% below that.

I am happy with that given how choppy things have been this year.

I would probably be about even but I probably got a little too defensive on the downturn, and I tend to do that because I tend to be so heavily stock weighted, there aren't the more customary non-equity holdings to act as a buffer, if that makes any sense.

Interesting times, no doubt.

Thanks. Isn't the S&P500 THE benchmark for us all though? It's a standard metric that every investor can compare themselves to to determine if they are good or bad, should be passively investing or are the next Warren Buffet. It's also a metric that applies to every investor big or small since it's simply a percentage and not based on absolute value.

seattle prattle wrote:

CG 4 wrote:

Thanks. Isn't the S&P500 THE benchmark for us all though? It's a standard metric that every investor can compare themselves to to determine if they are good or bad, should be passively investing or are the next Warren Buffet. It's also a metric that applies to every investor big or small since it's simply a percentage and not based on absolute value.

CG 4, let me explain. I'm simply saying that I don't measure my return against the S&P 500 index on a day to day basis. That's not useful for me since I know that over the long term, i am exceeding that and it serves no purpose.

I manage my portfolio. That means maintaining the proper mix of stocks and stock funds/ETFs and fixed assets, monitoring their progress and developments, introducing new ones as appropriate, etc. and tweaking the proportion of each as the times dictate.

I do keep a close watch on how each investment is performing and get particularly concerned if it starts to slip into the red.

At the end of the year, and only then, do I bother to check how i did against the indices, and that would be against the SNP and the Nasdaq.

So that is once per year.

That's just how I chose to do these things and it's been working for me.

EDIT: in the interest of fairness, I should add that I do watch how the Indices are performing daily and how each of my holdings are doing by comparison on any given day percentage wise. But I don't add up my total portfolio performance against the indices except at the end of the year.

CG 4 wrote:

seattle prattle wrote:

CG 4, let me explain. I'm simply saying that I don't measure my return against the S&P 500 index on a day to day basis. That's not useful for me since I know that over the long term, i am exceeding that and it serves no purpose.

I manage my portfolio. That means maintaining the proper mix of stocks and stock funds/ETFs and fixed assets, monitoring their progress and developments, introducing new ones as appropriate, etc. and tweaking the proportion of each as the times dictate.

I do keep a close watch on how each investment is performing and get particularly concerned if it starts to slip into the red.

At the end of the year, and only then, do I bother to check how i did against the indices, and that would be against the SNP and the Nasdaq.

So that is once per year.

That's just how I chose to do these things and it's been working for me.

EDIT: in the interest of fairness, I should add that I do watch how the Indices are performing daily and how each of my holdings are doing by comparison on any given day percentage wise. But I don't add up my total portfolio performance against the indices except at the end of the year.

Okay. Thank you for all that. I dont compare my portfolio to the SnP daily either, but it's easy for me to check.

I've been posting here a long time but guess I don't really know what people's backgrounds are. Do you do this for a living? Like professionally I mean? I'm just a career scientist in his 30s who does this on the side, though I have put a tremendous amount of time and thought into it over the last 13 years. I'm not trying to be competitive. I'm just interested and curious.

seattle prattle wrote:

CG 4 wrote:

Okay. Thank you for all that. I dont compare my portfolio to the SnP daily either, but it's easy for me to check.

I've been posting here a long time but guess I don't really know what people's backgrounds are. Do you do this for a living? Like professionally I mean? I'm just a career scientist in his 30s who does this on the side, though I have put a tremendous amount of time and thought into it over the last 13 years. I'm not trying to be competitive. I'm just interested and curious.

Good to know.

I've been doing this for a long time as well, as in mid-ninties. It was at the time of my first real career type job and no, not finance related field at all. I do this on the side and always did, though now retired.

You know about the dot com internet boom and that was my starting point that drew me in. It has been worthwhile to make this a focus so I did.

I was in heavily to an IPO site for awhile and got favored status so I got a lot of ground floor offerings, read message boards along with other investors, and fell in with more than a few techies, entrepreneurs, investors, brokers, etc. And I read a little, too - maybe a few books.

Anyway, I shouldn't have said you check your portfolio vs the S&P every day, but I thought it might be the case when I thought you mentioned comparisons with it a couple of times in the last week or two. But maybe one of those was just a comparison with your gain from a year ago off of April '25 lows, come to think of it.

CG 3 wrote:

seattle prattle wrote:

Good to know.

I've been doing this for a long time as well, as in mid-ninties. It was at the time of my first real career type job and no, not finance related field at all. I do this on the side and always did, though now retired.

You know about the dot com internet boom and that was my starting point that drew me in. It has been worthwhile to make this a focus so I did.

I was in heavily to an IPO site for awhile and got favored status so I got a lot of ground floor offerings, read message boards along with other investors, and fell in with more than a few techies, entrepreneurs, investors, brokers, etc. And I read a little, too - maybe a few books.

Anyway, I shouldn't have said you check your portfolio vs the S&P every day, but I thought it might be the case when I thought you mentioned comparisons with it a couple of times in the last week or two. But maybe one of those was just a comparison with your gain from a year ago off of April '25 lows, come to think of it.

I check it regularly. I am almost always beating the S&P by at least 3%, so it's a confidence booster for me.