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Does anyone want to talk about stocks/options?
Just curious since the recent DeepSeek panic.
What do you like? Companies/ETFs?
What do you do? Buy and hold/Trade/Options (Calls/puts, LEAPs, spreads)?
What areas do you think will see massive change (gain/loss)?
Pretty sure this is my first or second topic post, so apologies if the opener is too short.
Pretty boring. I buy and hold index funds or ETF's, and a few stocks I like for the long term. No changes. Isn't this panic already priced in?
This is me. I hold VTSAX primarily, which tracks the entire US stock market, and about 10% of VTIAX, which tracks the entire international stock market. I get RSUs from my job that I immediately sell and reinvest in the above funds. My 401K is in a Vanguard target date fund which is mostly 80/20 stocks to bonds, so it has a little less risk tolerance than my regular brokerage account. Essentially, the Bogleheads' three-fund portfolio weighted more heavily toward equity since I have a relatively aggressive risk tolerance.
Show me an active fund that consistently beats the market, pricing in all fees, and I'll consider moving some of that.
I mostly buy into the Boglehead worldview, but in practice, procrastinating about exercising stock options and selling RSU's has been very good for me, so my personal experience argues for a different strategy, even if it wasn't all that well thought out at the time.
There was a lot of "I should diversify more, but so far I'm glad I waited, so .... maybe next year?"
As a result, I don't have strong views on what's best.
Yeah, I've heard that from a lot of my colleagues who aren't in the automatically sell on vesting camp... but I think I'd still feel very anxious having all my eggs in one basket, who also happens to be my employer. That's a lot of risk all in one place. (Besides, my employer makes up a not insignificant part of the US stock market anyway, so my index fund holdings still have a lot of them.)
Yes, and even people who don’t do same-day sales will still want to diversify enough not to worry about it too much. I did have other money in index funds, etc, but my portfolio seemed to unbalance itself on its own.
Hey I have a similar portfolio with mostly VTSAX and VTIAX. Except I’ve held onto most of my restricted stock for too long (it’s outperformed the total market though fortunately for me).
What do you do for bonds though? I should have more but they’ve been underperforming for years. I have some VBTLX, hasn’t been great. I thought of trying to get some TIPS but I don’t want to do the auction thing.
I have some of my vanguard in the digital advisor which lets you set a risk ratio and seems pretty good. And it lets me not think much about the bad bond market. Vanguard digital advisor has lower expenses than the similar Bettermint which I used for a while.
I'm the same but even more boring. I buy and hold just one all-in-one ETF. Passive investing is boring and that's ideal.
Can I add unto this chain? I think mine is even more boring; I invest with a broker, who in turn invests mostly in ETFs. I don’t know which, but it’s very diversified. I do have nice returns with them though, and the stock market isn’t something I want to learn about in order to invest by myself.
Just curious, what do they charge? An ETF which charges 0.2% isn't the cheapest.
I pay the broker a base 1% per annum, which is discounted to 0.6% because of my investment horizon. I have a small amount of money invested, so I don’t qualify for extra discounts, but they are there for me to take advantage of in the future. I find it to be worth it because they manage my portfolio and I have good returns (so far).
I work in a finance adjacent industry and you're most likely going to be better off investing in a well diversified passive index fund with a low expense ratio. There are a lot of them out there, your brokerage likely already has one and at rates around .1% or less. The dirty secret is actively managed funds rarely perform better than the passive index funds. .6 vs .1 probably doesn't sound like much but it adds up to a lot over the long term
You should! You could almost certainly save on fees and passive investing is incredibly easy these days.
I literally just hold VT, which is (IIRC) a 60%-US 40%-international whole-market ETF.
Yeah, I just hold XEQT in Canada, which holds Canada, US and emerging market equities.I buy more every pay cheque automatically.
The panic already happened on Monday, Nvidia, TSM, Broadcom and some others tanked. I think Nvidia was down maybe 17%?
They have all since recovered slightly, but not completely.
I got a good discount on more Nvidia stock cause of it though :)
Nice. I went for LEAPS on a few semis, seem to be doing ok.
Yep I bought the dip also!
They're still down ~15% ytd. But honestly, it's all just speculation until we know if it's going to actually hit their revenue or not. Nvidia has seen insane revenue growth since 2020, and it seems to all be because of AI. If Microsoft finds a way to continue their AI programs without buying 500,000 new AI chips from Nvidia every year, they're going to see a significant decline in revenue. They'll probably be in a bit of a slump until their quarter closes and people see some actual numbers to feel reassured that sales are still strong. It's likely to take a while for companies like Microsoft to pivot their AI to less power hungry models even if they do come to fruition.
Personally, I wouldn't go strong on Nvidia. But I don't personally invest in single stocks because I'm so conservative when it comes to financials.
I do a bogle style three fund portfolio of stocks, bonds, and international. I am like 90% VTSAX or VOO because I’m nowhere near retirement.
I tend to stay away from individual stocks but I’m trying to get into it with a fraction of my portfolio because I want the little bit of hope that gambling provides.
I switched from VOO to VOOG a few years back and have been extremely happy with that decision. Both are great, though!
Why the switch? What motivated it?
Well it was a bit of a philosophical realization. Nothing too crazy, given how similar the stocks are. Basically:
[My reply ended up being a lot longer than I thought it would be, but the gist is that I held VOO happily for years, then discovered VOOG was more in line with what I wanted, and seemed to have better returns. So I switched and have been happy ever since.]
longer explanation
A long long time ago I was young and in college and learned about stocks and began messing around with individual stocks (and eventually options and crypto and anything else that sounded interesting)
After a couple of years of just messing around, I learned how complicated the stock market (and entire financial world) could be via lots of trial an error. Learned about the bogleheads method and index funds and bonds and much safer/wiser investment decisions.
At that point I was pretty jaded with society and capitalism at large and figured 'well if anyone is going to keep making tons of money it'll be massive corporations with no regards for anything except unchecked growth', so I figured I would invest in an index fund of the top 500 companies in the US and just trust that they would each act in their own best interests and prioritize growth at all costs. Hence my initial investing in VOO for a few years.
One day I discovered VOOG and realized that it was essentially VOO but with even more emphasis on the largest companies that just want to grow grow grow. After looking at previous returns, it seemed like my dumb hypothesis was correct (big companies like money and will do anything and everything to get more of it). So I switch over everything I had in VOO to VOOG and it has done tremendously well since then.
Whenever VOOG isn't available (typically employer retirement accounts that limit me to specific funds) I try to go for whatever the closest thing is, typically a growth-oriented large cap fund, preferably passively managed (don't want to pay fund managers for selecting obvious companies like Apple and Google and Microsoft when an algorithm can do it automatically and objectively better).
So yeah that's mostly it. Both are great options. I've also held varying amounts of VT and VTI among other things. All are solid bets, I've just gotten way more returns from VOOG than anything else, so I've evangelized it for friends and family members alike. The standard caveat to investment talk is that past performance does not equal future performance, but even in the low points of the last decade (2018, then 2020 with a global pandemic, and 2022/23) VOOG recovered and thrived within like a year or two. I would never recommend this strategy if you think you might need the money in the near future, but for money that you can set aside for a decade or three, that's my go-to.
And here I thought I was smart with VGT...might need to switch.
Also yeah, capitalism is basically the blob.io game with money instead of blobs.
Edit: Not switching VGT has even more ridiculous returns, but maybe VOOG over SPY?
VGT is good too, but a bit narrower in scope. Though given the success of tech stocks in the last couple decades, VOO and VOOG are already very tech-heavy. I considered VGT a year or two ago (even bought a bit just to test it out) but ultimately felt like I had way more than enough IT coverage with VOOG. Slightly lower returns but way more balanced it felt like to me.
Well, I just switched from SPLG to VOOG, I feel like it suits my profile more (although I am not a fan of how high up TSLA is in the holdings). Thanks for pointing it out.
I strongly believe in pretty much every human advance somehow being linked to science and technology, so I am ok taking a riskier approach.
Buying SPY LEAPS on red days, and rolling out and up months for profit in the future is my preferred "safe" bet, besides SCHD and such.
I tried the boglehead thing, seems statistically smart, I actually enjoy options too much though, which leads one astray. Too many shinies.
I was actually looking up some stuff this morning, so great timing. Does anyone here have experience with derivative vs dividend income? I have a decent amount of experience with growth index funds, but am getting to the point in my life where I might want some income from my investments as well. I'm torn between derivatives (covered-call etfs like JEPI or XYLD) vs dividends (value index funds like VOOV or SPYD).
I've taken a 'porque no los dos' decision and just bought a bit of each to figure out which does best over the next few months. But I'm curious if there's something else that I'm missing.
I like dividend ETFs myself, I know they are technically not great due to being taxed as income, but it also makes my life a lot easier now having a small amount of money always coming in each month.
I have tried, and tracked most of the popular ones, and the ones that somewhat mathematically looked the best and felt the best were:
JEPQ, XDTE, and maybe GPIX (I am still tracking this one).
JEPI didn't do great in slight downturns and the dividends felt bad.
QDTE is realllly bad IMO, NAV erosion, wildly variable dividends, it just felt bad.
Stay away from YieldMax funds.
Yup this is exactly why I'm thinking of going this route now that I have an established portfolio of growth funds. Want to keep the growth etfs for long term, but start amassing some income etfs for some passive monthly income.
Have heard of a few of these (purchased JEPQ and JEPI as part of my experiment) and will research the rest, thanks.
I've heard this before too. Any particular reasons why? Are they too specific / not broad enough? Or is it something else.
Thanks for the detailed reply.
The YieldMax funds give very large dividends, but then the share price tanks over time. E.g. 4 dollar dividend per share? price of share drops by 6. They do this over and over until you've lost more in share value than the dividends provide.
I tried a small amount in YMAX and ULTY and only lost money.
This should make it more obvious:
https://stockanalysis.com/etf/compare/ymax-vs-jepq-vs-xdte-vs-ulty/
JEPQ goes up, XDTE sideways, YMAX down, ULTY way down on the price % chart. The dividends on the last two do not make up for the negative slope.
....MSTY is interesting, but a massive gamble (because MSTR, the underlying, is a ponzi scheme that appeals to cryptobros, and has a lot of volatility).
Thanks for the insight. And yikes, those expense ratios don't entice me either. It's a pet peeve of mine to pay high expense ratios for actively managed funds. Time and time again it's been proven that actively-managed funds don't out-perform passively managed trading algorithms, yet funds love putting crap like "with a combined 134 years of experience managing stocks, our team blablablablabla..." meanwhile they take over 1% for doing what a computer can do for .1%.
Is there a particular reason you’re averse to simply selling a set portion of your growth stocks?
I've got no problems selling my growth stocks and have done so many times before when needed. The reason I'm looking into alternatives is that I've got almost all of my investments in growth etfs like VOOG. It's been great to me so far, but as I get older I'd like to start building a bit more income into my portfolio so that it's not so affected by market fluctuations. But since I've never really paid much attention to these income etfs, I wondered if anyone here had more experience with them.
A bond ETF (or just owning bonds, but the UI for buying bonds sucks and you have to do it in increments of 1000) might be more up your alley. Dividend companies are still volatile in the end, since they can always choose not to hand out dividends. Bonds revenue is consistent rain or shine.
I've thought of bonds before, but my understanding was that their returns were much lower than things like dividends or cc etfs. You get less in returns, but get a way safer product. But with interest rates as they currently are, bonds don't feel that much different than say a HYSA or some Treasury Bills that both are sitting at around 4% yield. So I was looking for something sort of in the middle ground between the high returns of growth stocks, yet the stability and safety of HYSAs and T-bills.
But I'll look more closely at bond etfs since I've never really done much research on them either, thanks for the suggestion!
Howard Marks, is a legendary investor who predicted the last three bubbles
He he says we’re not in a bubble yet, but the warning signs are flashing.
So why the concern?
US markets have become too concentrated:
The "Magnificent 7" stocks make up 39% of the US market. The US market now accounts for 70% of the global index. This was published a few weeks ago, so these numbers changed a little recently.
What should investors do now?
https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/memo/on-bubble-watch
Sooo $IWM?
Just off the top of my ass, VTI, VXUS, REET & BND?
IMO this gets too much into timing the market. It could be a bubble, it could not be. It could pop, it could not.
Shiller has been saying the same thing.
Watchout.
By which he means diversify.
Of course, Shiller has been saying this for years now.
To add on to point 1 and 2, investors should look for stocks that have a negative correlation to the magnificent seven. If you balance your portfolio, you should have some stocks that typically go up when those seven go down to hedge your risk.
Another boglehead here. 90% stocks, 10% bonds. 20% of my stock allocation is international. My main holdings are VOO, BND, and VFFVX (2055 Target Date Fund). I enjoy following the stock market but gave up on picking stocks a while ago.
I mostly buy and hold companies/ETFs since all transactions have to be approved prior to execution due to the line of work my spouse is in. Before that, I was just getting into options but needing to get approval for every buy/sell transaction stopped me from learning too much about it.
I tend to buy stocks that pay a dividend (and have it automatically reinvested in the same stock) and also have a positive growth potential.
Oof, that would be a painful way to trade options.
I like JEPQ, the monthly dividends pays for my VPN and Netflix.
I invest in managed fund and let them manage the portfolio internally. Its growth was obscene last year but generally does about as well as a normal fund does. One of the more stable index funds.
I also have some in an S&P 500 ETF, and hold some MSFT and KO. Just small positions in the individual stocks though, too risky for someone like me.
I don't trade individual stocks anymore, but I used to set aside a pool of funds to take the odd flyer investment alongside my indexed or sector funds. A combination of fun, learning exercise, and opportunity to capture asymmetrical upside.
A few years ago I had a lucky options play where I bought pretty much every cannabis stock and ETF you could, plus a handful of distant options, maybe 12 or 24 months, I don't recall. I figured most would stay the same, but one or two would really take off. I expected that over a five year period the industry might boom because of continued liberalization of drug laws in the US and Canada. I expected to hold these stocks for years, and assess the options as they aged.
About two months later the whole sector exploded. It was like a meme stock push like with GameStop or AMC. I watched my forecasted gains hit, and then keep climbing. After a little bit longer I cashed out the stock and exercised my options. The price continued up a bit further, and then cratered.
So moral of the story, if you set aside funds to actively trade, set a sell target and follow through. Don't fomo. Realize your gains. Also, don't mess with options unless you know what you are doing.
Im invested pretty much exclusively in an SP500 index fund (SWPPX) and a Korea index fund (EWY).
Why did you choose EWY? Is it good?
I just bought a few shares of KWEB to watch due to the BABA rocket today (didn't want to put money into BABA alone, Chinese stocks swing like crazy).
Yes, this is definitely an underreported topic on Tildes
I'm heavy on ACHR, I got a lot at $8 but mostly $9. I secured profits with the news Chinese drones may be banned, so it's all heavy from here.
Earnings 2/24 and I don't see a world where $11 is the ATH so planning to sell after the next good jump to pocket some cash, then hold the rest as long as I can manage.
Oof, I am not sure about these drone taxi/space companies. They are pushed a bit too heavily by WSB/AH types. Too risky for me.
Yeah that's fair, I do admit I'm dubious of their plans to make consumer transport at work. I'm betting on military relevance over the next few years.