- A 10 dollar investment in Berkshire-Hathaway in 1965 would now be worth about $ 500,000 large. Not bad. Or, to quote the late Bob Newhart, ” Oh boy.” ( no exclamation point)
- A very financially unsophisticated woman in New York worked for the same company for 67 years, never earning very high salaries, and when she passed away a few years ago, she had a net worth of almost ten million dollars. Long Term Capital Management had tremendous computers, graphs and charts, very hard working and wise financial geniuses, etc., and they ended up collapsing. ( they had extremely high leverage ratios, and that was not very wise)
- One of the most intelligent men, ever, Isaac Newton, was not a very good investor.* He originally made money on The South Sea Trading Company, but as the mania grew , he wasn’t happy with his gain, reinvested, and lost it all. After that, he forbade anyone to speak the words, ” South Sea”, in his presence. (Newton , basically on a dare, created a new branch of math, after a friend asked him why the planets behaved as they did, he created both differential and integral calculus to get the answers. It took him about 3 months)
- All of the gold ever mined on Earth, would fit on a baseball diamond, a cube , 90 feet to each side.
- It is truly amazing what some people try and do for money. Buying lottery tickets, frenetically trading stocks at light speed and the like. However, one individual stands above the rest,as far as not being prudent, that would be the guy whom kept antagonizing Mike Tyson on an airplane, a bit ago. After several warnings by Mike to the not wise person, to knock it off, all were in vain, Mike resorted to physical means, and that did not end up well. There is zero amount of law suit money, in my opinion, to justify that incident. Buying penny stocks, using leverage are passive and wise when compared to some methods of making money. ( Me and some friends, a long time ago, watched Tyson pummel a heavy bag, two big guys were holding it, but often the force of the punches knocked all 3 backwards, a bit.)
And since the Constitution prohibits cruel and also unusual punishment, I shall end my typing forthwith, and thank you.
* Sadly, I will not mention any names, but, having a much lower level of smarts than Newton, does not automatically make one a good investor, either. That is a known known, and he is working on it. And that smell is not someone frying liver and onions, he is thinking!
Did you mean “Mike Tyson on an airplane, a bite ago”?
I made another error. 5 so far today, and it is early. I use only index funds for the vast majority of the money, I still own 2 active funds, but both are in a Roth. Wasatch Micro Cap has a superb record, and it also has a sky high expense ratio. And I have Wasatch Long-Short Alpha, also in the Roth. WALSX. Its expense ratio is not good.. Those funds are about 2% of the total, and that shouldn’t be too bad.
Thanks for the intriguing — and amusing — list.
Thank you, Jonathon. I appreciate your compliments , to no end. And your HumbleDollar site has helped me so much .I finally only use index funds, no longer chase hot funds, and I have eliminated most of the less than desirable conduct of my past.
My one wish is for the investment companies is to more prominently publish the after tax returns of active funds. I was horrified to discover , fairly recently, that 2 active funds that I owned in traditional accounts had such great pre-tax and such, er., putrid net returns.
Wasatch Micro Cap and T.Rowe Price Capital Appreciation both were gold rated from Morningstar, etc., but, I no longer own PRWCX and have a smaller position in WMICX, but in a Roth. Of course, the information was all there in the prospectus, on pages 37 and 51, respectively.
Finally, following your advice, VXUS, VTI, VGSH, etc. now make up the portfolio. Also, your strategy of half of the bonds in TIPS and half in Short term treasuries, sounds perfect to me. Thanks so much, again!