The Long Term Investor

Very good post TireSmoke. I think what you are I are seeing is the norm all across the economy.

 

SO....I just looked at my actual account. It is UP nicely and doing very well today. I have five stocks in the GREEN right now....led by NVDA, of course, up by 3.28% today. The other green stocks are.....AMZN, MSFT, AAPL, and COST. A KILLER DAY.....in the neighborhood.

AND......I recently took my last account that I manage......my siblings old IRA account.....and moved it into my Portfolio Model. Up to now it was just siting 100% in the SP500. It had now grown enough that I felt it was time to add some stocks. The portfolio is....right now.....basically my Portfolio Model.

Actual numbers......53%.....in the SP500........47% in my USUAL nine stocks. All the stocks are about equal in weight except for NVDA which I put in as a triple weight. In this portfolio I weighted CMG and PLTR as full weight positions.

I made the move into the individual stocks in that account on 8-12-24.......the result so far.....+17.05%......in only two months. Of course those two months include all of the DREADED month of September and the second most DREADED month of October.

I went all in all at once on all of the above trades for the individual stocks as is my habit, and in line with the academic research.

A very good start to the stocks in this account......but....of course it is only the SHORT TERM.

What will matter is the long term for this account. My sibling is in the same situation that I am.......all stock market money is fully invested for life. She does not need to use or get any income from her stock markets money....since she is set with other sources of income for the rest of her life.

 

You know....when I look back in hindsight....we are ALL significantly impacted over our entire lives by how and where we grew up. It is part of our psychological BIAS.

i grew up on ARMY bases. It allowed me to live in Germany and see all of Europe from 1958 to 1961. We moved around, but, due to my dads job in the military.....Medical Service Corps (not a Dr)......we got to live on one extremely large medical base....off and on..... for 12 of my first 18 years and go to the same school for all of High School.

Everyone I knew lived on Post. Everyone knew what everyone's dad made since military pay scales were public and routinely published in the Army times newspaper. We all went to the same Army medical clinics and hospital and ALL shopped in the PX and commissary. We went to the Post movie theater and the Post sports arena and the Post Library.

Basically EVERYTHING we did from school, to the swimming pool, to sports, to shopping, to Boy Scouts, to church, was on Post. Once in a while we would go to the Mess Hall for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner.....when dad worked for the day in the Mess Hall so his men......... the young, unmarried troops, that were probably away from home and family for the first time in their life.... could be off for the "special" day.

My dad was an Officer.....after his service in WWII......a Captain in the Korean war running Ambulance Companies in Korea. After that, he got his Masters Degree in Hospital Administration through the Army and worked in the military as a hospital Executive Officer in Viet Nam during the war, and Inspector General at an Army hospital after.

As kids going to school on base we were ALL a very cohesive group. None of us worried about the rank of our fathers....we were all simply Army kids....our fathers were all Army officers, or higher ranking Sargent's, or Warrant Officers..

In fact our schools on base were INTEGRATED racially, way before the public schools. Our small High School on base had about 100 kids in each class and about 98% of the graduates went to college.

We tended to be OVERACHIEVERS......perhaps because being Army Kids we were outsiders in the cities where we lived and grew up in the Army. In fact....a good percentage of the kids that I grew up with, later became officers in the Army themselves after college.

We were grouped by rank in terms of where we lived. Sargent's lived in single family homes in one area. Captains and Majors lived in one big housing area....mostly in duplexes. Lt Col and Col lived in large, nice, two story single family homes in another area. The Generals lived in BIG historic homes in another area.

No one was rich....no one owned a business......no one owned a house. Everyone's dad was basically working toward their Military Retirement. My first contact with civilian kids and living in the civilian world was when I went to college....but I continued to live on base in the summers.

Of course I did have a small taste of Civilian life through my Grandparents on one side that lived in isolated, dirt poor, Appalachia......and....my other well-to-do Grandparents, that lived in a big house in a medium size town in New Mexico.

My mom was probably one of the ONLY people of anyone I knew as a kid...... that was a stock and fund investor starting in the 1950's

The above is the life long basis for much of my thinking and personality and drive to be successful. It is the GUTS of my investing BIAS.

 

Yes....we visited West Berlin, and basically ALL of Europe that was open for travel...if Russia allowed it. Some of the Eastern countries were under Russian control and could not be visited, obviously, and it was the peak of the post war cold war.

When we went to West Berlin....there was a single train that the Russians allowed to cross East Germany to get there and it was guarded by Russian soldiers. We were allowed to take a bus to East Berlin and the city was basically STILL a bombed out shell.....very different from West Berlin.

It was a very old-school time in Europe. The war had only been over for a little more than ten years and Europe was STILL totally old-school Europe with very little American influence.

We lived in Heilbronn....near Stuttgart.... and Kaiserslautern in Germany.

It was very much an eye-opening experience to live and travel extensively over there for those three years. Something very few American adults or children had a chance to do. I am thankful that my parents saw to it that we traveled everywhere possible. To this day it gives me a very different perspective on the world and Europe compared to most people.

Things were kind of TENSE at that time with the Russians......we had go-bags and evacuation routes and plans for all the American wives and kids. We would go to the West toward the English Channel and all the American Military men would be holding in place or going East to try to slow down the Russians and allow us to get out.

PLUS.....it was my first introduction to GUMMI BEARS.....way before they could be bought in the USA. How I missed them when we came back to the states. If only I had been old enough to get the import rights for the USA.....sigh. They were a HUGE favorite of all the American kids.

 

Interesting:

China ETFs join Cathie Wood's as biggest wealth destroyers in US

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-etfs-join-cathie-wood-140929730.html

 

I hung in there through the afternoon FADE to end up with a small gain today. Five stocks GREEN and four stocks RED. The red.......COST, CMG, HD, and GOOGL. I did beat the SP500 today by 0.28%.

ANY gain is a good gain.....so we move on to the end of yet another week as we march toward ELECTION DAY and YEAR END.

 

To continue with the memories...

We flew to Germany from New York in 1958. The plane we were on was NOT a jet......it was a big four propeller plane. The flight from New York to Frankfort took about 24 hours. The entire flight was military men, wives and kids.

I found out later when I was older, that our flight was delayed for a while. My dad was a Captain and randomly happened to be the ranking officer on the plane.

The army wanted him to sign to be responsible for everyone on the plane and the "equipment".....by "equipment" they meant the....plane itself. He refused to sign to be responsible for a physical.......airplane.

Eventually we left New York.....flew to Greenland to refuel......then to Ireland to refuel.....and than to Frankfort. We left one day....slept all night on the plane....and than got there the next day.