Thoughts on my investment Strategy

Thanks @pippen . Yeah I’ll take the close of day price. Had enough of trying to time the market within a few months let alone trying to pick the best time of the day to buy.

 

@Big A

I'm pretty sure this is one of my impressive picks from individual stocks back in the day, see the day I purchased, talk about market timing, I find solace in turning the chart upside down though

 

Lol. Nice work @Redwing . You still holding it?

 

Nah, I realized I'm crap at picking stocks, had some winners, some losers, some IPO gains and losses, at the end of the day. The hard part about investing is trying to ignore the financial porn (investment media) hot tips (friends) and your own gut instincts (ducking when you should weave, talking when you should've listened) our instincts can lead us astray.

There are two ways the stock market makes money (a) through capital appreciation and (b) through dividends. FWIW it's easier to invest in an index rather than get seduced by the siren call of individual companies.

 

Wise words @Redwing . So rather than experience the same losses I could just learn from your losses and stick to dca into index funds.

Thank you sir redwing. A few years from now when I am reaping the benefits of a no market timing simple passive investment strategy I will have to shout you guys a beer with all that passive income.

 

The wholesale version has a higher MER that would probably trump your ETF monthly transaction costs if you hold it long term, especially if you have a large sum. Plus you also have to pay a buy / sell spread in the wholesale version, basically the same as brokerage of an ETF.

 

There are two ways the stock market makes money (a) through capital appreciation and (b) through dividends. FWIW it's easier to invest in an index rather than get seduced by the siren call of individual companies.

There are lots of markets, if you mean the predominant stock market in Australia, the ASX, by "the market " it only makes a paltry $5m from dividends out of revenue of $1000m, $200m is from interest the rest is from services. Capital growth is a result of revenue not the cause of revenue. Dividends are the distribution of revenue or capital, not the creation of it.

 

I did not calculate that. Then what’s the point of being a wholesale fund? Are you not suppose to be getting an advantage by going the wholesale route and investing a larger amount?

 

I suppose some people like to use the wholesale fund for a set-and-forget strategy, as you can bpay small amounts automatically. For a large portfolio you should probably do a quick calculation of how much extra you would be paying in fees though.

 

Not necessarily a bad thing.

As a young inexperienced investor prior to the 87 crash I owned a number of unlisted Funds being shares and Property Trusts. Tried to sell the lot when the **** hit the fan. Sold the share funds but couldn’t redeem units in property trusts as they froze redemptions due to illiquidity. When the dust settled I had sold and lost money on the share funds which continued to offer liquidity during the crash. By the time the less liquid property funds were open for redemptions price had recovered resulting in a profit covering much of the losses from the share Trusts.

I think there’s a message in there somewhere.

 

Rumour is there will be a fee reduction for Vanguard unlisted Funds in the near future.

 

@pippen: with the wholesale Vanguard, can you reinvest the dividends ? Thanks.

 

Yes you can. I do that with the wholesale version of VAS.

 

So to answer your question. Am I in a better place now then I was when I posted the above quote. Tough one. Depends what you mean by better. Am I ahead financially. Cant give an exact figure but I did remove $1.5mill to cash out of the portfolio over the last 5 months. The portfolio value peaked at just a touch over 3 before I started moving cash out. Most of that has sat in cash until recently. I have now moved a good chunk of that into property trusts. Based on the market movements I would say I might be slightly behind on pure performance measure compared to if I had stayed fully invested and not moved the cash out of equities.

Thanks for your time to post the up--date..When one looks at this post from the start after some of the initial guarded responses and in superficial way this post invade's everyone's investment territory ..

For a green tea drinker like myself,and like everyone who was brave enough to post their own investment path even the high end ''lcarus'' power-sliders that post everyone has the capability of self -analysis and once you master that process it would not matter which way MrxMrs Market runs as this sideways market can also go into the bull up the stairs don't miss out zone that's what i'm thinking the 7000 will be broken as in America bench mark Dow Jones INDEX is maybe start the xxxxx longest bull run in 75 years..imho..

 

Ha that looks like my investment in Yowie. At least it’s going better than my investment in QUINTEX.

 

Thank you @willair . Even though this attempt of market timing has proved futile it has been a great learning exercise. I have started moving cash from the super high interest bank saving account ( 1.3% ) to the BT Panorama platform, ready to dive back into the market this week coming. I will give the market once last chance to do what I want it to do these next few days. If it refuses to give in to my demands then I will wave the white flag. Mr Market might have won this battle, but long term I shall hopefully win the war.

 

Why do you expect the market to do what you want it to do?

Or am I missing a sense of humour - both mine and yours?

 

Lol. Sorry mate. Did it come across like I was seriously expecting the market to do what I want? Maybe it didn't translate well in the post.

 

Ha! I got the sarcasm. Apparently the lowest form of humour but its all i know!

 

In saying that after reading my post again I can see how it can be misinterpreted.
It was a serious sort of post then the joke was just thrown in.

@SatayKing , I’m just imagining you reading the post and saying, look at this clown, Thinks the market is going to what he wants it to do.

Maybe the post needed more smiling face emojis. But seriously can’t the market just do what I want it to do? Am I asking too much?