Talking stocks, trading, and investing in general

[jbarwick]

So you have an organized crime groups BTC which was worth over $400M when you confiscated it and now it is over $2B. Someone is either going to "hack" those BTC, government officials will end up dead, or some other crazy scheme where with a combination of theft and death.

 

[otc]

Does this mean there are billionaire silk road underworld folks out there? Figure these are just the bulgarians who got caught....

The US government got like 200k bitcoins when they shut silk road down...and for a while during its heyday, bitcoins were low double digits (or even single digit). If people were holding onto much of their income rather than immediately converting it...doing a few bulk drug or stolen identity sales back in 2012 could have been quite lucrative.

 

[otc]

I'm thinking about splitting off some of my Wisebanyan roboadvisor account into a lower-risk category.

I'm going to have to pay a whole lot of tuition over the next 3 years, some of which will be coming from ongoing earnings, some coming from investments/savings (not sure that's a meaningful distinction...if I don't pay for it from income, I am paying for it from investments, and if I do pay for it from income, then I am spending money that would have otherwise been invested).

I'm not worried enough about a crash to want to go to cash, but unlike my very long retirement time horizon, the timeline on these expenses is very short. Would suck to have to sell/spend at the bottom of a recession just because that's when the bill is due, but shifting the money to a more conservative profile would give some security.

Will have to think more about whether a separate pool with low risk is a better option than just lowering my average risk on the single pool.

 

[venividivicibj]

I'm thinking about splitting off some of my Wisebanyan roboadvisor account into a lower-risk category.

I'm going to have to pay a whole lot of tuition over the next 3 years, some of which will be coming from ongoing earnings, some coming from investments/savings (not sure that's a meaningful distinction...if I don't pay for it from income, I am paying for it from investments, and if I do pay for it from income, then I am spending money that would have otherwise been invested).

I'm not worried enough about a crash to want to go to cash, but unlike my very long retirement time horizon, the timeline on these expenses is very short. Would suck to have to sell/spend at the bottom of a recession just because that's when the bill is due, but shifting the money to a more conservative profile would give some security.

Will have to think more about whether a separate pool with low risk is a better option than just lowering my average risk on the single pool.

Could possibly just get some bonds and think of them as a 'savings account with more interest'

 

[otc]

Lol, Wisebanyan won't let me set a "Milestone" goal of more than $99,999...

Their recommendation for a 2-3 year time horizon seems to be about 83% bonds, 17% stock

 

[stimulacra]

Might consider Harry Browne's permanent portfolio (25% bonds, 25% stocks, 25% gold, 25% cash).

I like bonds (have a 30% allocation myself) but 83% allocation in a likely environment of rising rates would give me pause.

 

[venividivicibj]

Wow. that is about as safe/risk averse a portfolio as possible.

 

[stimulacra]

I wouldn't use it for retirement but it makes a lot of sense if preservation of capital or purchasing power in the near term is the goal.

 

[otc]

I suppose I also have the option of loans. If there were to be somewhat of a crash, I could shift some of the money over to student loans.

Not sure what would happen to interest rates, but I have good credit/income so I shouldn't have any problem borrowing. They wouldn't be subsidized loans but borrowing $30k or something after a crash with an intent to pay off in a year or two might be better than pulling money out of the market after a big correction.

 

[jbarwick]

Google Finance wasn't great but it worked well and now the new iteration sucks. I've tried Yahoo Finance and CNBC but nothing gives you a quick snapshot of the indices from a chart perspective. Anyone use something better?

 

[stimulacra]

Morningstar has a decent portfolio tracking tool (you have to enter it manually though).

Personal Capital and SigFig are two web and app based tools that lets you track all of your investments, I've poked around them a bit, they let you link all of your outside accounts but seemed just a little bit pushy with various upselling to premium features so I've never actually connected my personal accounts, just used fake data to play with the UI/UX and various visualizers. I'm a bit wary of start-ups having a real-time birds eye view of your entire financial picture. Also the random recommended asset allocations the robo-advisors spits out are slick and very specific but they don't give any reason or context as to why

At some point I'll use SigFig to track my entire portfolio but will probably opt to enter it manually (you lose the benefit of using their “guidance” tools for portfolio management. Main issue I'm having is how to manually account for fractional shares acquired via automatic dividend reinvestment.

For the time being I enter monthly running tallies into a Google spreadsheet and use the built in charts and visualizers to chart net worth progress and asset allocations. Maybe five minutes max a month to update some numbers.

 

[otc]

Google Finance wasn't great but it worked well and now the new iteration sucks. I've tried Yahoo Finance and CNBC but nothing gives you a quick snapshot of the indices from a chart perspective. Anyone use something better?

What did they change? Looks the same to me (but I know Google likes to A/B test things so you could easily be in a test group and seeing something totally different from me).

 

[c0de]

What did they change? Looks the same to me (but I know Google likes to A/B test things so you could easily be in a test group and seeing something totally different from me).

I see the same old one as well, but I received a notification last month of portfolios going away and the interface changing. I must be in the hold back test group as well (if indeed it has changed already for others)

 

[jbarwick]

@stimulacra - I use a Google Spreadsheet too but it is not great. I could probably make it better but it is fine. I am not even looking to track my entire portfolio, just get a make view (Dow, S&P, NASDAQ) with a line graph of the days action.

@otc - They changed it so the line graph is gone and the stock selection is based on search history. It is a weird setup...I guess I do not like change.

 

[otc]

Weird. Mine looks totally normal, both on the home page and on stock/index specific pages.

Although I did click through some "Google Finance" link from a google search the other day and got something strange looking that looked more like a mobile page (fairly narrow) and had a line chart that I could only choose from fixed intervals on. Was annoying because I was trying to look at 10-year information and the intervals were like 1d/5d/1mo/1yr/5yr/All History...