Down goes the Dow

Forgot to mention it but I only recently bought EMD, so I am decently in the green--which was not my goal in having purchased it, but it beats the alternative.

VGR helping me out today, finally.

Still waiting for BASF to do anything worthwhile.

What was your goal?

Divs, derived from coupon yields, jurisdictional diversification, asset class diversification. Still all in USD, am also looking at local-currency em bond funds for currency diversification in the asset class.

So far this year, the Dow is down 3.72% YTD, but as of today, my stuff in total is down 8.88% YTD. I typically track ahead of the Dow each year (having lost to the Dow just once since 1989), but right now I am doing worse than the Dow.

Kind of interesting, but I don't really care. 2021 was a good year. This one might turn out to be a bad year. Meh.

Dow has limited exposure to growth names, and higher exposure to value (dividend stocks). The financial services industry benchmarks against the S&P 500 for domestic large companies.

Also dollar weight of the Dow versus market cap weight of S&P 500 and NASDAQ. The difference magnifies the exposure of the large mega cap growth names (FAAMNGT), which helped you in 2021 and hurting you in 2022.

Easy, and yet you offer nothing, except to dump all over the GWN. To each their own, of course.
We are currently on an advanced recce for retirement living outside NA. You could name your top ten, no doubt there wouldn’t be complete overlap with our top ten, but it might spark interesting discussion. We are interested in spending much of the year in Europe, but in the warmer, Latin influenced parts, not so much the colder northern parts. And in places where a middle class expat could live comfortably, so not Switzerland or the playgrounds of the rich, famous and oligarchs.

Market goes into tank mode for last 5 minutes of the day.

Why?

Crappy end to a crappy 1st quarter

The odds of you beating the Dow every year (about 34 years) since 1989 but one is just not possible. You really don't know much about the market if you can make that claim. Index funds beat actively managed funds the majority of the time and the rare times that actively managed funds beat the market is just happenstance. It is very rare for them to beat the market often. I know you have a few Vanguard funds but not sure what else (but we had a discussion one time and it seemed that you really didn't have many funds) which makes it that much more implausible that you could beat the market 98% of the time. Your goal (as a buy-and-hold investor) is to mimic or match the market. It is extremely difficult to beat the market with regularity. Please list some of your investments and we can track how well you have done versus the market in the last 34 years. Again, to make that absurd claim of beating the market every year but one in the last 34 years reveals that you really don't know too much about the market. Just not possible.

You do understand why I offered none, right?

We are also considering Villefranche/Mt. Boron, Faro, etc. The problem in places like the Algarve is all you expats, especially the Brits, who needs them. Unfortunately they are throughout the mountains come ski season. Parts of Turkey can be absolutely great, if you are not afraid of Turkey, and vacationing Germans. Barfelona is amazing save for the tourists, lol, especially the drunk Brits. Tuscany can be really nice but you have to know your place and imo nearby places like Bologna, Pisa, and Genoa suck. Rome is unrecognizable from 20 years ago, ugh. Porto is ok for what it is. Marseille sucks, and so can Nice. Montpellier is better. Biarritz is tourist carrap. Badalona sucks but the beach is great. Madrid landlocked, but interesting. Corsicans absolutely hate foreigners. Mallorca, Eos, Santorini, fuhgeddaboudit. I need to check out more of Greece, but the locals can be resentful of foreigners with more money to an them. I like parts of Roquebrune right beside Monaco, in fact we are looking there. Were I a billionaire I would have a place on Cap Ferrat, with a secret submarine base. I know someone with a place there, you wouldn’t believe the setup. Or you can try Sharm-el-Sheik, the weather is great and the people welcoming. Tons of tourists, of course. Lots of Russians, like Monaco.

Of all places, Morocco can be fantastic, and incredibly affordable—just stay on the coast, don’t go into the mountains.

Most of the alps are incredibly dreary at the moment. I get the desire for sun and reasonableness. Did I tell you I know a Swiss banker who is retiring to Spain because Schweiz is too expensive? By the way I am buying in France, not Schweiz—that is across the road, and at least twice the price. In fact, 5x the price and more, for what I am looking at.

Any specific places on your short-list?

Mas, I haven’t the first clue why you didn’t offer any. I don’t know you except as an enigma, as I have not dug into yearbooks to try to work out who you are. You have me at a disadvantage, which is fine.

I’m not sure we have a short list. Still working on it. We’ve been to many of the places you’ve mentioned and I think I like most of them more than you, at least based on the way you’ve characterized them. I can’t make out what kind of environment you would enjoy, you seem quite particular. We are pretty happy most anywhere, as we can amuse ourselves fairly easily. That, and most glasses are at least half full, in my experience. My main objective is to avoid the cold. I hate being cold…

You guys must have done something right or I have been cursed. A chateau in the alps, a beach house in Monaco. And here we have Igy’s retirement: started painting the house interior today. I have to say, the hardest task we getting the Mrs. approval on colors. 😹

Igy, I think I married up, but our retirement plans are far less glamorous than maybe is being implied. No beach house or mountain chateau for us. And I’m not sure we will move abroad or just travel extensively, still a lot to figure out. And nothing wrong retiring close to home, that’s where the heart is. And to each their own.

Mas mentioned Monaco… I’ve been through there a few times without stopping, and visited that part of France a couple of times. Once I stayed outside Nice for a couple of nights, and went for a run up a hilly road one evening. On the run back downhill it was getting dark, and I heard something running along at a fast pace in the woods alongside me. Pretty sure it was wild boar, which scared the crap out of me. Two other times I was that spooked on solo runs, both times in the Arctic, once because of the possibility of polar bears and an absence of shelter along the route, and the other time when I was five miles out of the small Inuit settlement when wolf howls started to get close. I’ve also run past Arctic foxes (not scary) Arctic hare (bigger than the foxes, not scary but also not scared of the foxes) and sled dogs, which were terrifying, even chained up. To bring this back to running…

I have been on a couple of similar runs. One by our local ski area and the other at Lake Louise, both summer and more imaginary. New Years Day in the snow above Boise I ran into a pack of wolves or coyotes (solitary animals). They were a couple of hundred yards away. I was alert and ran with some pep in my step until I got closer to home. Ran with a club sized branch for close to a mile.

Monaco was exotic as a stamp collecting kid. I obviously enjoy peddling around the house, and the wife appreciates my efforts. Like you said, we each have different tastes/interests. I try not to take anything for granted. We moved here when I was 45, so the intention was a last move. During my coaching and running years we lived in a half a dozen different parts of the county. Many of them quite different in climate and culture.

1) INCORRECT! Possible, and HAVE. Remember that I'm talking only of the Dow here even though I don't ONLY invest in The Dow. There are a lot of indices other than the Dow. The "market" isn't The Dow. I just use the Dow as my measuring stick. Why? Why not?

2) You are correct that I don't know much about the market. I have never claimed to. I just invest and keep track of my investments. Making money in the market takes persistence and consistency...and of course investing enough. That's pretty much it. We invested half our income for the first 7 years of our marriage, and then we have averaged more than 25% of our income since then...including retirement accounts and non-retirement mutual funds.

3) I have said a TON of times that I invest in Vanguard and Fidelity funds. You are incorrect that I have very few. I have MANY mutual funds all spread out into different categories.

4) I have also explained in the past that I am NOT a buy and hold person. I am a BUY and BUY and BUY and BUY (oh, and BUY) and hold person. What does this mean? It means that if the market goes down a lot (usually has to be more than correction range), I will put in more money than planned. This is how I have turned some potentially bad years (compared to the Dow) into positive ones for myself. I have explained this before.

5) I haven't held ANY single fund for 34 years (would be 33 years for one, not 34). But, I didn't enter the world of Vanguard until 1998, and then I didn't add Fidelity to my portfolio until early 2000s (not sure of the exact date off the top of my head). Then, I have added funds since then, so I have a lot of funds that I have owned for less than 15 years.

6) So, you're just wrong...and again, The Dow is not "the market." Such a big error from such a wannabe pedantic source.

7) I know you think you bother me, but trust me, nothing is further from the truth. Usually I ignore you, because you are worthy of being ignored, but sometimes I respond if I feel like it. Today, I have actually been looking into our investments a lot (and it's OBSCENE), so I felt like responding. I'm sure you're good at something. Go find it. Trying to one-up me isn't it.

I appreciate your lengthy and reasoned response. I have followed the market (and I usually use the Dow as a measuring stick as well) for many years and just think the likelihood of beating the market for 32 out of 33 years is around 0.00001%. Again, if you have a number of index funds you would be very surprised how closely they mimic the overall market. To beat the market one year is almost like a coin flip. To beat the market 2 years in a row is harder. 3 years in a row becomes much harder. 4 years in a row really unusual. To beat the market 32 out of 33 years is just beyond the realm of believability. I am not going to beat a dead horse so will let this die. Peter Lynch is considered one of the best investors of all time and if I remember he had a return of 29% annually over about 20 years which was about double the S & P. But, he wasn't beating the market year in and year out. Just not possible to beat the market 32 out of 33 years. Regression to the mean. Again, don't plan on beating a dead horse.