Last week, John Rekenthaler of Morningstar wrote an article on worst alternative investments of the decade. Market-neutral funds were among his top-five worst investments. Average annual return from the funds in this category was 0%. He wrote this, tongue in cheek: … … [Read more...] about Market neutral investing
StockOptions
Investing amid volatility: My 4Q update
What a quarter that was! The US stock market first reached a new high in October and then dropped 10%. It bounced around for a while. And then in late December, it dropped again -- this time more than 15% off its peak. By some measures, it actually dropped 20% briefly (intra-day) … [Read more...] about Investing amid volatility: My 4Q update
Revisiting my dry powder strategy
As I explained in my previous post on dry powder, I have cash that only gets deployed when stocks go down by a certain amount. How much cash to deploy and when? From the same post, you can see the rulebook I follow. If stocks follow historical averages, I may be able to deploy … [Read more...] about Revisiting my dry powder strategy
Get more out of your cash
Most of my capital is invested in stocks. You can see my portfolio here. I keep some cash as rainy-day fund and also for my dry-powder strategy. In today’s low-rate environment, cash does not return much. Short-duration CDs yield 1% to 1.5%. One-year treasury bonds return about … [Read more...] about Get more out of your cash
A deeper look into my portfolio
We take a deeper look at my investment portfolio in this post. A majority of my investments are in stocks or stock index funds. I have been working on my investments for last 20 plus years. These investments have evolved over time – initially all I had were some stock and bond … [Read more...] about A deeper look into my portfolio
What my portfolio contains today?
As you can see from the pie chart, about two-third of my portfolio is invested in stocks. Mostly in either individual stocks or stock index funds. I have some real-estate investments but they are about one-sixth of the portfolio. I keep some cash for my near-term needs and the … [Read more...] about What my portfolio contains today?