Hi Dan,
I hope I didn’t come off as blaming Bear or Saul or anyone else, Bear just made a remark in his review that hit close to home (and I can’t post there)! I don’t copy anyone else’s portfolio, and I did successfully invest in the high growth, concentrated portfolio method for 5 years with what I learned from the fine folks at SID (with smaller amounts of money). Then as (bad) luck, and bad timing would have it, I came into much larger amounts to invest come 2020 and 2021 (the bad timing I talked about) through a couple 401k accounts that rolled over to IRAs. Heck, at the time I had a 3-4 year CAGR over 40%, why wouldn’t I invest the new funds into the same high growth companies (my decision)! I was a hero till Nov 2021, we’d hit well above the high end of our retirement fund goal, but I didn’t sell or trim anything mostly because I didn’t want to pay taxes on the gains. Well, my wish has come true, because I don’t have gains to pay taxes on now (lesson learned… if I ever have a gain I can take in the future, doesn’t feel like there will ever be one currently).
And I have a fairly high risk tolerance (thought I did, anyway), I weathered the previous 40% drops without much of a concern. But as the current shellacking of my high growth portfolio got close to 70% down from the high of last Nov (for the entire portfolio), anxiety did set in. But it’s not where it’s at now that bothers me, it’s the realization that the market indexes could go significantly lower as they’re only down 20-35% so far. If the Fed oversteps their rate hikes (which I think they already have) and cause a significant recession, the markets could go significantly lower, and I don’t think the high growth sector would be immune, even with how far valuations have contracted already, and how they continue to show some of the best growth around. This was always my nightmare scenario, that there would be a rotation out of high growth, followed by the general market tanking before high growth could recover, causing it to go down even farther. Well, it’s no longer fiction.
There has just been no good news for almost a year… supply chain issues, inflation, war, rate hikes, potential slowing economy/recession, etc. And the barrage of news articles never stops. And every time a new comment from the Fed comes out (even if it’s a rehash of what they’ve already said), the market reacts and drops from the same news it dropped previously from.
It all has just caused nothing but total frustration and anxiety. And there seems to be just no place to discuss it. Nobody is around on the boards anymore (here, for instance). Can’t discuss it on SID as it’s off topic (and I can’t post there anymore, anyway). I liked the MF daily email that dealt with the psychology of some of this stuff, but they stopped sending that out a couple weeks ago.
There’s just nowhere to turn. I do like how Bert puts out a weekly commentary on his thoughts of the previous week. I don’t always agree with his points, but kudos to him for consistently providing some dialog for subscribers!
