Hello everyone. Thanks for all the activity on this forum. It’s been a great help to me.
I’ve been a Stock Advisor member for about 3 years now, and it has been very helpful in getting my retirement plan back on-track. You see, in '08 during the crash I fired my Morgan Stanley advisor and put everything into my control at Vanguard. The issue was, out of fear of further losses “which are certain to happen soon” I stayed too much in cash. Then as I realized that imminent second crash is not coming I moved into a targeted date fund. I read 3 of Jack Bogle’s books and bought the story that you can’t beat the market so just try to match it. Oh, and diversify too. Then in late 2015 I decided this wasn’t working well enough I put some of my money into some REITs (self storage, health care). A 9-month experiment with that was an eye opener. Shortly after I joined SA and started buying individual stocks and got entirely out of anything of a bond, and for now REITs.
In 2016 I beat the S&P 500 fund (VOO) by almost 4%. In 2017 I nearly doubled that. This year I’m up almost 21% (compared to the 8%-ish for the market). So I now feel confident, at 51 years old, that I can catch up and correct for my mistake years back.
In the last 4 weeks I’ve started to get myself into some of the growth stocks many of you are discussing here. I have about 22% of my IRA devoted to some of these names.
I have been benchmarking myself to the VOO index fund for the simple reason that, as being new to this, I needed to know if my work is paying off or not. If I can’t beat the index then I need to either learn and change, or stop trying. And I set a goal to beat the index by 1% per quarter over a long period of time, including dividends. That 4% beat, over the next 15-16 years, will make a substantial bump in my final balance. And now I believe I can hit that mark and do even better over a long term. Thanks everyone. I mean that.
Here is where I am today:
AIEQ - 35% allocation. I still want a diversified stock fund to anchor the portfolio, though that may change in a year or so. And I like this fund better than VOO. Its a very interesting fund, powered by an AI engine running on Watson using natural language processing and sentiment analysis to choose 30-70 stocks at a time. Not quite 1 year old, it’s beating the market by roughly 6% year to date.
VMMXX - 8.7% - money market holding a small amount of cash for purchases.
NVDA - 8.3%. I’m a big believer in the company overall, though I am expecting someone to disrupt the GPU in this space in the next 5 years. At times I’ve had 12% of this stock. I probably trade around in it too frequently.
AAPL - 7.2%. I’ve used Macs for 20 years, iPhones since the 3, and worked there on mobile GPU development (for the 6) for not quite 2.5 years. I feel they are a bit “lost” right now but still a good stock to own.
AMZN - 6%. Love them.
MSFT - 4.3%. I actually think the new CEO is doing a bang-up job and that the company is getting its former glory back.
AYX - 4.1%. I’m in this after extensive reading up on this forum about this company and quite happy.
NFLX - 4.2%. Used to have more of it, but I’m getting leary of their content spending and possible saturation in the market. I mean, my family watches as much original content on Hulu and Amazon as we do Netflix these days. Not gonna sell but don’t want more.
MDB - 3.6%. I learned about them 3 years ago while working at Oracle (on SPARC processors, RIP) and recently bought into them. I think the relational days are in a slow decline and see no end to that myself.
TTD -3.2%. Learned a lot about them from these boards and other places. I’m optimistic but a bit cautious, as I really don’t understand advertising biz.
NEWR - 3.0%. Lots of noise here about them, and on Mad Money.
PYPL - 2.8%. Bought them due to Stock Advisor recommendation and I have a high conviction on them. I want to buy more soon.
SHOP - 2.4%. Bought them due to Stock Advisor and it has done quite well for me. But I am watching them closely to see if they regain some upward momentum.
SQ - 1.1%. I’ve seen their stuff everywhere for years now. I am adding more soon to my holdings.
OKTA - 1.1%. Bought in due to SA recommendation, but not entirely sure what they do, really.
CRM - 1.1%. Bought them back while still working for Oracle because, honestly, I saw them kicking our butts. I have high enough conviction that I really need to raise this to 4% of assets.
ANET - 1.1%. Been looking at them for months now, and recommendations here were enough to push me into my first buy.
NTNX - 1.1%. Between here and Mad Money I decided to pull the trigger here. Looking to add more.
WIX - 1.0%. SA recommendation here. Bought a small stake to test the waters and deciding I like it enough that I would like to add more.
PSTA - 1.0%. Again, a recommendation here making me test the waters, but not wanting to add more yet to this.
I’m really keeping a close eye on AIEQ. So far it is impressing me as a diversified anchor that outperforms the general market with roughly equivalent volatility. I like having some broad exposure without having to pick yet even more stocks to hold. And I’ve learned over the last 2 years that I start getting nervous when one holding exceeds 10% of my assets, even if a great name like an NVDA, NFLX, AAPL or AMZN. And I’ve also learned that if I hold too many names I tend to get a bit lost in what I’m doing. So, find a good, profitable anchor for the portfolio and then goose the returns with the rest. It’s been working for me so far.
My goal 2 years ago was to average 12% returns for the next 15-17 years. I now think this goal is lower than it needs to be and can be achieved.
Thanks everyone.
Bill Jurasz
Austin, Texas