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Great job, I can imaging how it must have grown all those years.  Compound interest in any investment if left alone grows indredibly fast.  Buy and hold is working extremely well for me.

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Dion wasn’t useful, rather just read articles fron CNBC, much faster than watching a video.  Morningstar was interesting but just an overview.  I learned from a book and mostly online for particular topics I was interested in.

Currently looking for exit strategies for both rental home and long term capital gains in stocks.  And what financial steps to take when transitioning to retirement.  Bogleheads had many topics/threads that I read to get detailed information.

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bogleheads was quite useful.  I wish this site wasn’t a ghost town.  Learned so much here.

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Looked at the stocks I own compared to the top SP500 companies and about 90 percent of my money is in the top 20 so I suppose I’ve been doing all this work and it is bascially a varaiation of the SP500 index fund.  Outperformng SP500 because I am mostly in tech so my account usually moves in sync with Nasdaq instead of SP500.

This is an interesting idea, so basically I chose mostly tech stocks and make my own Nasdaq index.  So anyone can customize what they want.  Be deversified or concentrate on certain sectors.

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Doesn’t seem to be worth management fees just to do some tax loss harvesting.  Perhap these funds would be useful to those who do not want to invest in evil companies and still have an index fund.

Tax loss harvesting isn’t that great, I noticed on my brokerage accounts that because of me selling off losers, I have now more tax liability gains then actual gains so it still has to be paid.

Long term gains for me currently is 18.8 rate.  When I retire, if I should get 0 for some of the gains and a good portion of it would be at the 15 percent rate which will reduce my taxes.  Perhaps that isn’t really tax loss harvesting but averaging your gains to take advantage of progressive tax rates.  Kind of the reverse I suppose, now selling the deferred gains earlier than needed to take advantage of low tax rates during retirement.

Unlikely humans can beat the indexes but most likely AI can, I suppose it depends on the cost of all that compute power and the fees that need to be charged.  A low cost AI powered fund would be what would interest me.

 

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Yes it does seem like I can’t win. Last year was really bad and this year actually is kind of good but wouldn’t call it a win. I should have kept buying more AMD/NVDA instead of tbills. I’m confident it will end up well long term for stocks. Positioned more for survival with bonds than making a fortune with stocks but that’s probably a good thing in this unpredictable environment. So prepared if I don’t win but hoping to finally win big.

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I wasn’t clear. They did do it for me. Took about 40 minutes for 20 bonds. It was raining hard at the time so they weren’t really busy at all and did all of them. My wife has a couple of bonds that I might have to mail in to cash since she doesn’t have an account with Chase. But at least those are still earning interest although only 3 percent so there is no hurry.

Would have wasted time to drive to Del Mar even it they have faster equipment so that wasn’t a good option. Thanks

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I suppose the Chase branch I went to didn’t have the fancy machines to verify. It was all manual. They said there’s lot of fraud so they only do it for members who have an account for over a year. They only let me make an appointment when they have extra staff because it takes a long time to process a stack of them. And they will only do so many at a time if it gets busy.

Paper savings bonds just not worth it. Stupid bond drives.

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Nice. Now you go gamble it in Vegas. I suppose its a thrill to win. For me I’m just happy if I don’t lose and I don’t bet much so its boring. I don’t see the point in gambling, better odds buying stocks for the long term.

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Good move. Makes sense to buy when low but I’ve never really taken advantage of stuff like that. Just never had the confidence or perhaps the charging skills to know when its going to bottom. I hate gambling even in Vegas. But buying bonds instead is so boring.

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Most of my cash is in 13 week Tbills now so there is no problem staying under the limit. Stocks, there isn’t much you can do about it so those will just always be at risk. Seems like an extremely small risk compared to small and regional banks.

I think I’ll keep the money in swvxx in case there is a buying opportunity in stocks soon. But most likely I think this will blow over without any more damage. It doesn’t seem significant enough trigger a market crash.

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The Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) was created to protect against the loss of customer assets at brokerage firms. SIPC offers protection of up to $500,000, including a $250,000 limit for cash, if a brokerage firm fails and covers most types of securities, such as stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

But from what I read it seems like having more than 500K is ok as money/stocks are kept separate. I suppose that means that they can’t take your stocks and cash and do bad things to make money off your assets. So there would not be stuff like FTX occurring.

I suppose banks are different as they are supposed to lend out your money. Surprising how banks can fail since they pay so little interest and loans should earn much more – unless the loans default but that wasn’t the case with SVB. SVB was a lack of liquidity I suppose. If there wasn’t a run on the bank, everyone would have been safe and SVB wouldn’t of had to sell their bonds before maturity for a loss.

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So it’s much worse than I realized. I was just thinking exposure due to SWVXX but if Schwab fails then there is the stocks in the brokerage accounts of Schwab and TD Ameritrade (they merged last year I think but accounts are still separate).

I wonder how it works, would brokerage accounts use your stock equity to loan out money? Perhaps loan out the shares if that is how shorting or buying on margin works.

I thought they just made money on the trade commission and some market maker payments.

So should I get paper certificates and put it under my mattress?

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With all the news about banks going under due to rising rates, Is SWVXX safe? Not sure how rising rates will affect SWVXX.

CDs aren’t that safe any more it seems with the news on Silicon Valley Bank and Silvergate. At least I think FDIC will cover up to 250K but I doubt there is any insurance for Mutual Funds since its not a bank deposit.

I’ve got SWVXX and TBills. Would it be safer to go all TBills although it would be less liquid?

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I wish I learned my lesson to sell and not worry about paying taxes. Big gains can turn into losses so quickly. But it did work out very well in not selling my ESPP/RSUs but it was a big gamble when I decided to go all in instead of selling and moving to other stocks to have some diversification. Decided to put most of my cash into stocks so it isn’t basically just one company. It’s now only about half which is good enough I suppose.

Now I’m going back to increasing cash, buying bonds instead of stocks with any money I save. More diversification but less future returns.

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