2023 First Half Update

2023 Second Quarter Update:

The first quarter was full of re-evaluations of financial goals and strategies and was full of fear over impending disaster in my family. Back then, we had to make difficult decisions and have difficult conversations.

The second quarter of 2023 was much milder.

New All-Time High

After a year and a half of being in a net worth drawdown, we emerged at the end of June at a new all-time high. We're just shy of $150,000 at $149,097/€136,162. That's a quarter-over-quarter rise of 10.05%/9.05%.

The 2022 bear market, although not extreme by historical standards, was the worst extended drawdown we've had to live with during our married lives. Despite some losses, there were no disasters in our portfolios, and the stress lead to some necessary reappraisals of how best to allocate savings. I'm grateful for the lesson and happy to allocate most money to an ETF/mutual fund asset mix. While my stock picking has done well this year, I feel safer knowing that all of our eggs aren't in that basket.

The drawdown was exasperated by the drawdown of our incomes. My wife has a lull in her business as she changed strategies, and my extra income opportunities at work dried up. As the market corrected, we were unable to add money in any kind of aggressive way. However, both of those states have started to change: I've found new sources for additional work, and my wife's new business strategy is starting to pay off. It's exciting.

Family Disaster Averted

After much Sturm und Drang back in January and February, it appears that PoorParent will stay put. Staying put means staying in an uncomfortable but stable situation with a family member who has health problems.

It's clear that PoorParent isn't thrilled with this, but they also don't appear to be angry at me and Sib.

Honestly, Sib did most of the heavy lifting. I helped Sib define their own boundaries and see how they weren't respecting their own limits and desires. This lack of self-respect led to Sib not respecting my limits. But once Sib understood this, they had the uncomfortable conversation with PoorParent. Thus far, admittedly, I haven't spoken to PoorParent about my worries. They haven't brought it up, and I won't either.

Portfolio Performance

My individual stock portfolio returned 19.91% in the first half. This was mostly led by Greenbrick Partners and Apple Inc. Greenbrick is now a 1 bagger. It's had astounding performance. But so has Apple! Frankly, if there's any greatest mistake I've made while investing, it's selling even one share of Apple, and unfortunately, I've sold many more than one.

The laggard was Abbvie, which is facing increasing competition from Humira biosimilars. I may add more to the position if its price nears my purchase price.

The Wiseguy Portfolio as I've implemented it is hard to measure. Because it's across three different accounts and uses Vanguard "Admiral" funds in addition to ETFs, it means that getting close to the target weights is currently very tricky. Additionally, the iteration of the portfolio I call Wiseguy 2.0, which includes REITs, didn't take place until a few months ago.

An idealized version of the portfolio returned 12.07% in the first half of 2023. That underperformed the S&P 500, which returned 16.81%.

Second Half Financial Goals

As of yesterday, I have maxed out our 2023 IRA contributions. I put the final $2,000 into the US REITs portion because I refuse to hold a REITs ETF in my taxable accounts. Currently, I'm overweight REITs and US large-cap growth and through the rest of the year, I'll be adding to gold and the small cap value buckets in my taxable account.

We're also rebuilding our emergency fund. If we aim for 6 months of spending, then we need around €16,000, which we're not close to. I'm not planning on pulling a Ramsey and devoting every euro to that goal, however, and I will simply be adding monthly sums to it in addition to other saving. That kind of single-minded focus doesn't make sense when I have plenty of assets, and the risk to my livelihood is so low in comparison to the American "at will" employment reality.

That said, having extra cash would be reassuring.

We've also begun a small down payment fund. We're not devoting large sums to it yet, but it's frustrating not having anything saved for a better living situation.

My wife suggested a dog fund. We both want a dog someday, but we're concerned about the cost, so we've begun saving for it.

Wrap Up

I don't see any disasters on the horizon. The stock markets could always take a dive, which would be both a bummer and an opportunity. No matter what, we'll keep saving as best we can without running afoul of our dual tax situation. Until next time, stay healthy and keep saving. It adds up over time!

2023 First Quarter Update

When I decided to move to a quarterly posting schedule for these updates, I did so out of fear that I was getting repetitive. How many times could I write, "Net worth was up/down a bit... Mostly it was thanks to stocks one way or the other"?

Pretty dull.

The first quarter of 2023 was not dull, however. The consequences of one conversation rippled outward and touched all areas of our financial lives.

The Texts That Launched 1,000 Ships

One Sunday in January, I got a series of texts from my sibling (hereafter Sib) regarding my poor parent (hereafter PoorParent). It was a horrible conversation full of disagreements.

I've thought about writing more details about this, but it's much too personal. Long story short, the worries I laid out in My Baby Boomer Parent is Poor are threatening us much earlier than I had anticipated. The reality for me and Sib is that supporting PoorParent right now is only possible by severely limiting our lives in other ways. It would also make it more difficult to help PoorParent in the future when more dire situations arise.

Sib agrees with me now, but getting there was an unpleasant path.

Enter Dave Ramsey

I went to YouTube and looked up advice for people in my situation. There's hardly any, which is shocking, and the only person out there really talking about the duties or lack thereof of children when it comes to supporting their elderly poor parents is Dave Ramsey. So Dave Ramsey re-entered my life for the first time since I read his book Total Money Makeover back in 2009.

Although I'm not a pure Ramsey-ite, Dave's thinking has deeply influenced mine. Many of my money concepts can be directly linked to The Total Money Makeover. I've been budgeting for that long because, well, he told me too. I've become a true budget believer, and so has my wife. Even our "Blow" category is directly taken from his budget outline. Suffice it to say, I was primed to listen to what he had to say.

One thing that became clear was that I'm allowed to say no. To use his metaphor, I'm allowed to put on my own financial oxygen mask before I help other people, and that includes my parents.

Additionally, I now suspect that Sib and I had been enabling PoorParent. We can only take so much responsibility because we were much younger, but I can look to specific choices that PoorParent made that were emotionally and/or logistically supported by us. Had we gone along with fewer of these choices, we might currently have a better situation on our hands.

Tchüss, Debt

I was taking too much risk. That giant loan I took out in August 2021 was dumb. Sure, the interest rate was rock bottom, but so what? The monthly payments were annoying, and they limited our actual choices.

In February, I mostly paid it off after selling off a bunch of my individual stock positions. There's a pre-payment penalty for nearly all German debt, so I left slightly more than three scheduled payments to avoid that trap. You'll see a big change in the assets and liabilities of our net worth chart.

My thinking about the loan was wrong from the beginning.

FOMO

Reflecting, I got the loan after visiting America and feeling FOMO. I had this sense that I should do something, which is not a great emotional place from which to make decisions.

Most of the time, as I'm learning, the adult choice is just to keep on doing smart stable things. As Dave Ramsey describes it, his baby steps 4 and onward are pretty boring. Saving for retirement takes time, dedication, and patience. It's exciting in terms of the power of compound interest, but otherwise, it's a boring process. I've listened now to many calls into his show where someone has had a windfall and wants to do something to maximize their return on that money. For most people, the correct answer is to simply pay off any debt and their mortgage, and invest in mutual funds. This advice is often unsatisfactory for the caller, however.

Since I've become much less tolerant of holding individual stocks, the cognitive dissonance of being in debt while holding individual stocks became unbearable for me. I have no idea if I'm any good at picking stocks. For someone like me, borrowing money while owning individual stocks is especially dumb. I've learned in the past that my thinking goes crazy when I leveraged a position, and sure enough, I felt perpetually crazy.

The risk I had taken was:

• Job loss risk and risk that I couldn't make the future payments
• Increased risk of emotional volatility leading to poor decisions
• Currency rate risk (borrowed in euros to buy in dollars)
• Opportunity cost since that income was tied to monthly payments

It also bothered me philosophically that I was in debt. I liked being out of debt, and it was a point of pride that I'd paid off my student loans early. Along the way, yes, I had some installment plans, but there was never any interest attached. But now, I was in debt and paying interest. Yuck.

But even those installment plans need to be a thing of the past. Making choices for future me to pay for stuff is a mean thing to do to myself. It also assumes that the future looks like the present, which is not guaranteed.

Re-enter the IRA

During my Dave Ramsey rabbit hole, I listened to the Chris Hogan book "Everyday Millionaires" and read Ramsey's "Baby Steps Millionaires". One of the statistics was that most millionaires did it by steadily adding to their 401k plans. I hadn't added to my IRA since 2012, which was my loss because the money I'd put in between 2008 and 2012 - a total of $1,750 - had quintupled.

Therefore, after a decade of avoidance and fear, I've decided to continue adding to my IRA. For expats, this is tricky but doable. I'll have to use the Foreign Tax Credit rather than the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion to prevent tax payments to the US. This is more work, but having tax-sheltered investments is too important.

Wiseguy 2.0

I'll continue adding to the Wiseguy Portfolio allocation across my various accounts. Using Portfolio Performance, this is relatively easy to do with the Asset Allocation feature.

I've made an adjustment to weightings, however, which I'm thinking of as Wiseguy 2.0. There's now a 10% weighting to REITs, now that there's a tax-sheltered place for me to put them. REITs in a taxable account are dumb dumb dumb, which is why I left them out before. Within the REIT basket is a 25% allocation to ex-US REITs, so 2.5% of the total portfolio. That may seem paltry, but the fees on the Vanguard ex-US REIT fund are high. I'd like exposure, but until the fees come down more, I can't justify a heavy weighting.

To make space for the 10%, I've reduced the bond allocation to 10% from 20%. I'm taking more risk, which means that any future drawdowns will likely be more stomach-churning. However, I'm hoping this will also lead to long-term greater returns. I can't access my IRA money for another 30 years after all.

So Wiseguy 2.0 is this:

• 25% US Small Cap Value
• 25% US Large Cap Growth
• 25% ex-US Small Cap Value
• 10% Long-term bonds (both Treasury and Corporates)
• 10% REITs (75% US/25% ex-US)
• 5% Gold

Net Worth

Image: A stacked bar chart of our net worth over time. Click to enlarge.

As of March 31, 2023, our net worth rose since December by 8.22% in USD and 6.83% in EUR to $135,357 and €124,753 respectively. Liquid net worth is $99,747.

This new chart is meant to simplify viewing. The previous style was pretty difficult to read, and this new iteration makes it clearer. It also, perhaps a bit pretentiously, uses typical business accounting terms for some items, such as "Cash and cash equivalents". "Accounts receivable" at this point means strictly dividends for which the ex-dividend date has passed.

Stock Performance

Stocks have more or less been in an uptrend. Of the Wiseguy components, US large-cap growth, gold, and bonds have all done very well. Small-cap value has performed poorly, likely as a result of banking industry volatility. The purchase of the REIT funds accidentally corresponded with a bounce for that asset class, which wasn't intentional but worked out in my favor.

Spending

In addition to the big macro money moves, we've also re-committed to following our budget. We reined in our grocery spending, cut down on subscriptions, and otherwise made choices that resulted in lower spending overall. I'm also turning reward points (classified as "intangible assets") into groceries or money as much as I can.

We did buy a plane ticket for my wife to visit her family in the States. That was necessary. However, we've declined to go on a big vacation this summer in the US. This was a secondary set of conversations with my family that were difficult, but I'm at peace about it.

Simultaneously, the elimination of the debt also eliminated the lifetime interest cost, which I had added to the liabilities side of our balance sheet. That was about €2,000.

Second Quarter Forecast

Considering how much activity there was in the past three months, it's hard to consider what might happen in the next three. Here's some of what we know:

Our heating bill has gone up a lot. We'll have to eat a big upfront cost in April, and our monthly warm rent will rise. That's a bummer, but it's the situation Germany finds itself in.

My wife and I will likely plan some modest trip for the two of us. We'll probably pay for it before the end of June.

I'm going to aggressively add to my IRA until I hit the max for 2023. $6500 is a doable number, and I hope to never miss hitting the max ever again. I doubt I'll get there by the end of June though.

The last debt payment will be gone at the end of May. Good riddance.

Until next time, stay healthy and avoid FOMO.

December 2022: Update and Full Year Summary

December was a great month. We had family visit us from the US over Christmas for the very first time. We traveled some. We ate some great meals and had a lot of laughs.

However, December was also the first time that our net worth was down in every metric that I track. There are four comparisons at the top of my spreadsheet: USD month over month, EUR month over month, USD year over year, and EUR year over year. For the first time, all of these metrics were negative.

Just like the stock market isn't the economy, your net worth isn't your life. But since this is a money blog, let's focus on the money part of things.

Net Worth Changes

Image: chart of our net worth in USD over time

In December, our net worth fell to $125,071/€116,780, which represents the following changes:

Metric	Percentage
Y/Y USD	-14.23%
Y/Y EUR	-8.79
M/M USD	-2.53%
M/M EUR	-5.71%

Maybe I can assuage my disappointment by creating a new metric: quarter over quarter. How's that look?

Metric	Percentage
Q/Q USD	6.83%
Q/Q EUR	-2.25%

So now one metric shows improvement. I'll take the win where I can I guess.

Our liquid net worth stood at $95,876/€89,521.

So what's up?

Inflation Devours All

The obvious big story is this:

• Due to the war, supply chain, stimulus programs, and energy shocks, inflation rose drastically.
• The Federal Reserve and other major central banks raised their benchmark interest rates to counteract this.
• Since the present value of equities is all future cash flows discounted to the present, both the discount rate and the - assumed - poorer quality of those cash flows put downward pressure on the value of stocks.
• Rising interest rates caused bond prices to fall.

We were not spared from this, and I took some serious hits on the large number of growth companies I had in my portfolio. They weren't the worst growth companies to have owned, but they were hit very hard anyway.

I took some steps to protect myself. In my IRAs, I sold in February due to trend following rules being triggered, which protected us there. I decided to reduce my exposure to individual companies and create the Wiseguy Portfolio, which is a kind of "all seasons" portfolio.

Image: Chart of portfolios in 2022: Green is my IRA, teal is my ETF account containing the Wiseguy Portfolio (started in May), red is S&P 500 benchmark, black is all portfolios together, yellow is individual stocks.

Finally, the effect of rising interest rates has caused a reduction in the estimated value of my pension. Since the pension is discounted at the rate of the 10 year treasury, rising rates reduce the future value. In a sense, this value is both real and imaginary; I'll never be able to pull out all this cash one way or the other, but I do have a guaranteed income stream in addition to government social security. It has value.

Spending

I've created a Sankey diagram that documents the flow of our money. For practical reasons, the numbers are slightly different in some cases compared to our actual budget, but overall this represents money received and spent/allocated well.

Image: A Sankey diagram showing the flow of money from income sources to spending categories.

Excluding tax, social security, and health insurance costs, our largest expenses fall into these categories:

• Rent (warm) (€10956.81)
• Groceries (€5984.66)
• My BLOW money (€4605.97)
• Travel costs (€3532.05)
• Her BLOW money (€3532.05)

A reminder: BLOW is anything we buy that is personal and doesn't require discussing with the other partner.

You can see the mark of inflation on our two largest household expenses. Our rent was raised in August, which was a bummer that upset my equilibrium for a while. Our grocery bill for the year rose from €5,158.22 in 2021 to €5984.66, which is a ~16% jump. Some of that could be carelessness on our part, but some is definitely climbing prices.

Our travel costs included a trip to the US for her, a trip to the US for me, a few weeks of fun in Europe in the summer, and a late year trip with the family who visited us over the holidays. As much as I'd like this number to be lower, there's a reality that an expat who has good relationships with his family will also likely have recurring large travel expenses to contend with.

Image: Chart of the EURUSD price in 2022

Unfortunately, my US trip coincided with a weak period for the euro against the dollar. This made the trip much more painful than it otherwise might have been.

Mindset Changes

There were three major changes in how I view our financial goals in 2022.

Cash

At several points, I felt hemmed in and without options. The most acute phase of this happened when we had our rent raised, but it was a recurring theme in the second half of the year. Yes, we had stock assets, but should we ever actually experience and emergency, our stock wealth would have to be sold off to actually give us flexibility. This increasingly felt intolerable to me, since I was sort of mentally double spending that money: it was both meant as a long term savings but also potentially a bail out, emergency, house, career change fund. It was untenable.

So we are now allocating much more towards cash. Savings accounts both in the US and Germany actually pay something now (though it's still crazy low in Germany). This allows us to pursue opportunities the way a big stock allocation can't.

The Implausibility of FIRE

It is unlikely that we will be able to retire early in any significant way. Perhaps that will change, but it won't change in the next few years, and in acknowledging that reality, I have to ask some questions.

For example, are there other career paths that might be more rewarding? If we have to work anyway, then why not do something that is genuinely enjoyable during that time? Perhaps staying put is the best option, but I should create the space where that's a choice rather than mandatory.

So much of the online financial world is fixated on this idea, that to acknowledge it may never be reality for us feels like a failure. However, my desire is to keep working. It always was, and the FIRE idea was mostly a way to give myself permission to pursue avenues that I find more fulfilling.

Stock Picking

Until this year, I'd exclusively been a stock picker. The US extraterritorial taxation regime has made the purchase of mutual funds tricky, and I'd believed I'd be able to handle individual stocks as the container for all our long term wealth.

It's safe to say that I was wrong.

I've grown as an investor, but I still make silly mistakes that should probably make it clear that stock picking ought not be my primary savings strategy. Yes, I've become less trigger happy, but I'm still too damned trigger happy. Just in the past few months, I sold several securities too early and missed out on rebounds. And my analysis is often rudimentary at best.

I've also discovered that focusing on stocks is not the best use of my time from a "quality of life" point of view. It's stressful and distracting. I have better questions to focus on and better uses of my time than worrying about whether such and such company faces an existential threat or is just going through a rough patch.

My returns thus far - while not catastrophic - align with returns I could more easily achieve by buying ETFs, and so that's what I'm mostly doing now. I just hope that the US/Germany thing doesn't bite me in the ass; if Germany adopts a PFIC type punitive taxation regime again for foreign mutual funds, I'm SOL. But best to save those worries for the future.

2023

The four big questions hanging over me now and likely throughout the year are as follows:

• Do I change jobs and potentially enter a riskier line of work in the hopes of greater life satisfaction and potential long term economic benefits? Or do I remain as I am now: basking in the weird safety of my current position, but potentially plagued by long term doubts around what might have been?
• How do I allocate limited savings for a potential risky life change?
• Do we participate in an expensive vacation that my family has planned out? We participated this year in Europe, but in summer 2023, it's further away and likely much more expensive. This is part of a larger question around family expectations and travel. I should probably write about this, but in general, I feel a lot of pressure to travel to see family, even though the prices are often higher for me, and my income is lower than the other people participating in the trip.
• Does the ticking time bomb of my poor Baby Boomer parent finally explode. There have been indications just in the past month that it might.

One change to the blog is that I will switch to quarterly updates rather than monthly. I find that I repeat myself too often month to month in these updates, and the movements within a month are often noisy.

With that, I leave you for now and wish you a happy and healthy 2023 full of great moments that let you forget about any financial stress you may have.

November 2022 Update: Electricity, Net Worth, Portfolio

We got a refund on our electricity. Hallelujah.

In 2016, I got it into my head to track our electricity in a spreadsheet. Weirdly, we're required to do our own meter readings and report them to the power company, and since the meter was right there in the apartment, I figured I'd track it. Every Sunday and first of the month, I dutifully snap a photo of the meter. Each photo's numbers gets plugged into a weekly or monthly spreadsheet, which tells me the change week over week or month over month. Add in some spreadsheet functions, and I can see how we're doing in a given year and how our usage has changed over time.

Image: Chart of average weekly electricity usage over time. Does not include heat, which is a separate bill.

Until recently, our average had steadily been moving upwards. This felt inexorable until we made some drastic changes. The main one has been reducing the shower's heat. As I've written before, this means lukewarm rather than luxurious. I also only run the shower when rinsing; while lathering up, the water is off. Both of us are in and our pretty quickly.

Long story short, we managed to save enough electricity to warrant a small refund from the power company. This was a nice boost to November and a pleasant surprise in a sea of horror stories about electricity prices.

All in all, I recommend this practice of proactive electricity usage tracking. Obviously, if I had a smart meter, this might be easier, but this current process forces me to stare at results and ponder why one week was higher or lower, which has prompted changes.

Net Worth

Image: Chart of our net worth in USD since 2013

Our net worth rose 5.33% in USD and .52% in EUR to $128,316 and €123,857 respectively. Liquid net worth stands at $99,626 and €96,164.

Euro Strength

The main driver of the discrepancy between USD and EUR returns was the strengthening euro. Last month, the euro could buy $0.98871, while now it can buy $1.036. That blunts the upward movement of gains in a USD portfolio.

It's fine by me though. One small benefit is that credit card purchases made on US credit cards are cheaper to pay off since the value of the debt has shrunk over time thanks to the currency movement. Yes, I track this.

Portfolio Performance

Image: November portfolio performance as a percentage. Green line = Wiseguy portfolio, yellow = individual US-listed stocks, red = S&P 500, blue = IRA

My portfolios, with the exception of my IRA, outperformed in November. The Wiseguy Portfolio did especially well, rising just under 8%. This was led by the strong performance of the Avantis International Small Cap Value ETF at 12.82%(!), the Vanguard Long Term Bond ETF at 8.55% and the abrdn Physical Gold Shares ETF at 8.45%.

Image: Breakdown of returns within the Wiseguy Portfolio in October and November vs. Vanguard's S&P 500 fund.

Portfolio Changes

Image: My IRAs in blue vs. the S&P 500 in red in 2022

After the last day of November, the trend following rules were hit, and I bought Vanguard's Total World Admiral Shares in my IRA. It is entirely possible that I'll get whip lashed out of that position if the market resumes a downward trajectory. Them's the breaks with trend following.

Near the end of November, I sold Exxon Mobile for a small profit. The proceeds were sent to the Wiseguy Portfolio at the start of December. I'm not good at holding oil extraction companies and should probably avoid them. Berkshire and the small cap ETFs have significant exposure to energy commodities as is.

Other Factors and December Outlook

We received the yearly family subsidy for my wife's piano lessons. That will be stored in our high yield savings account.

December is shaping up to be a mixed bag, savings wise. Christmas is generally expensive, but I also receive my holiday bonus. However, some of my wife's customers were laggards paying their invoices in November, which meant fewer euros being carried over to December. Some of our expenses were also unexpectedly high in November.

We expect visitors from the US for Christmas, which is worth some spending and fun. It's such a pleasure to have anyone visit us over here, and we may do some small scale Europe travel. We will certainly get some kind of Christmas tree.

We also plan to make a donation to our local food bank, whose services we personally witness since they're in our neighborhood. More than food, they provide other nourishment for those who are having bad luck in their lives.

Until next time, count your blessings and help others where you can.

October 2022: Portfolio Performance, Net Worth

Throughout October, I spent much of my free time inputting all of my trades into the application Portfolio Performance.

I wanted to answer the question: am I any good at this? What have I gained by trading individual stocks? I'm not interested in bullshitting myself or anyone who reads this, and so despite the tedious nature of inputting hundreds of transactions and the RSI issues of sitting at a computer that long, I just took the time and did it.

The answer was mixed.

There were many times that I groaned at an ill timed buy or sell. But there were also times when my instincts served me well and saved me from a painful drawdown. It's not a stellar record by any means, but it's not horrible either for someone who barely knows what he's doing.

To summarize: I stumbled along and avoided doing anything disastrous. However, all my efforts added up to underperforming the S&P significantly.

One major takeaway is how fees add up. In my Interactive Brokers account, I've paid over $1,000 just in fees since 2017. Their fees are low, so it's hard to see just how they add up over time. That doesn't include interest costs from using margin either.

It's also clear that maintaining a steady asset allocation somewhere in there is important. The decision to implement the Wiseguy Portfolio was a good one. I'm a mediocre stock picker, and I shouldn't keep all my money in individual names.

The project isn't totally finished; I still want to enter my high yield savings account, since that has been my preferred holding place for cash the past few years. I also need to include the loan I took out, but that's trickier. My goal is an honest accounting, but that's easier said than done.

Here's an image for you though:

Image: Portfolio performance in 2022

Notice how the blue line drops a bit then flat lines with small ticks upwards? That's my IRA gone to cash in February 2022 when the trend following rule was hit and receiving monthly interest payments. This tweet from Cliff Asness sums it up:

Net Worth

As of October 31, our net worth rose in October 4.06% in USD and 3.14% in EUR to $121,828 and €123,220 respectively. Liquid net worth sits at $93,016 and €94,078.

Image: Net worth chart in USD

The stock market did well, and my various portfolios also performed well:

Image: October's portfolio performance chart

You can see that they underperformed the S&P 500 (red line), though my individual stock holdings (yellow line) traded places throughout the month. The Wiseguy Portfolio (green line) fared less well.

The euro strengthened, which lowered the value of USD assets relative to euros and raised the burden of our euro debt relative to dollars. However, my general belief is that I win either way: a strengthening euro is a raise for my income, while a strengthening dollar makes me richer in Europe. It's not a terrible position.

Image: net worth chart in euros

Portfolio Changes

After selling Store Capital at the end of September, I used the money to add to Enbridge, Alphabet, Lowe's and Ally Financial while starting new positions in Pepsico, Exxon Mobile, and Cloudflare.

Purchases

I bought an iPad Air. I love the thing. They've improved so much since my last iPad, and I used Amazon's incremental payments scheme to spread the cost over five months (reflected in the additional euro liabilities burden).

November Outlook

There have been some big portfolio changes in November, sadly. Namely, I sold Ally and spread that around to other companies. That was a long holding, and I hope to re-enter one day, but I would like to lower my tax burden before the end of the year, and selling at a loss can do that.

Otherwise, it's a normal month. Until next time, take care of yourselves and those you love.

The Wiseguy Portfolio

Since I've decided to allocate the majority of my future savings into ETFs, I needed to craft an asset allocation that will:

• Grow enough to meet my future needs.
• Have gentler drawdowns than the overall U.S. stock market.
• Avoid lost decades.
• Avoid bubbles that take down the entire portfolio.
• Allow me to remain sane as the markets bounce around and as different asset classes do better than others.
• Beating the S&P 500 is not the goal, though it wouldn't be unwelcome either.

I've settled on an arrangement I'm calling the Wiseguy Portfolio.

There are two versions. The first is a more aggressive allocation with 75% stocks and 25% protective assets:

• 25% Small Cap Value
• 25% Ex-US Small Cap Value
• 25% U.S. Large Cap Growth
• 20% Long Term U.S. Bonds
• 5% Gold

The less aggressive version is a 60% stocks to 40% protective mix:

• 20% Small Cap Value
• 20% Ex-US Small Cap Value
• 20% U.S. Large Cap Growth
• 30% Long Term U.S. Bonds
• 10% Gold

The Wiseguy name is a crack at myself for trying to out think my emotions. I'm both trying to have strong exposure to factors that the evidence suggests will work over time (small, value, international), while also second guessing that because of my inevitable sense of FOMO around missing out on things like American growth stocks and the occasional big gold move.

U.S. Small Cap Value

Image: the absolute dominance of small cap value since 1972.

There are several reason to include a small cap value tilt in a portfolio:

• Both value and size are factors that tend to lead towards outperformance over time.
• By its very nature, it's unlikely to enter a bubble. If some companies grow more quickly than their fundamentals, by definition, they will leave the small cap factor, the value factor, or both.
• Even when it's not outperforming, its performance is likely to be good enough for my goals.

The downsides are:

• Drawdowns can be nasty. For example, the March 2020 drawdown for the overall U.S. market was 20%, but for small cap value it was 35%.
• There's no guarantee that small cap value outperforms ever again.

However, the bet is asymmetrical: if small cap value doesn't outperform, the likely worst that happens is that it performs well enough for my needs, likely in line with the market over time. The inverse is not automatically true.

ETFs: AVUV, DFSV, VBR

Ex-US Small Cap Value

Everything written above about U.S. SCV applies to ex-U.S. SCV as well, with the added wrinkle that it's not U.S. companies. Depending on your point of view, that's a good thing or a bad thing. Let's take a look at some factors to consider:

• First, like the United States, small caps outside the U.S. tend to outperform the total ex-US combined stock markets.
• Ex-US value tends to outperform the broader ex-US market as well.

Image: a comparison of $10,000 invested in ex-US stocks (blue), ex-US small cap (red), and ex-US value (yellow)

• The world stock market without the U.S. stock market has been under performing for years now.
• In the past it has outperformed.
• It is unlikely that the United States stock market will outperform in perpetuity.

Image found here from Reddit user /u/misnamed

• Some exposure to ex-US stocks, therefore, is a logical bet to make, and within that broader category, small cap value is probably the best place to focus.

Even with this 25% allocation, the Wiseguy Portfolio is heavily U.S. weighted. But if the rest of the world ever does outperform the United States, this portfolio will capture some of that performance.

I'll also add: the dividends from companies outside of the U.S. are often very good. They come in fits and bursts, and it's rough for your taxes, but you can get large cash flows in some years.

Image: shows the dividends from a portfolio with a $500 monthly dollar cost average into Dimensional's international small cap value fund in blue vs the Vanguard S&P 500 fund in red.

ETFs: AVDV, DISVX, VSS (no value aspect)

U.S. Large Cap Growth

Similar to the Weird Portfolio, I was considering sticking with small cap value for my stock allocation. If small-cap value works as it has in the past, it can carry a portfolio, even when adding in heavy allocations to safe assets like bonds.

However, that just didn't feel right to me. Since one of my goals with this portfolio is to avoid feeling FOMO - which I hope will help me hold on in difficult times - having zero exposure to the most high profile stocks feels intellectually possible but practically impossible. In periods where the market does well and beats everything else, I want to at least feel like I'm part of it. Otherwise, I might just give up and buy the S&P 500.

The risk with growth is bubble risk. Investors extrapolate good news to infinity, and no price becomes too high. These bubbles can take years to work out (see Japan and the dot-com bubble). Many argue that we're currently in a bubble, and the poster child for this fear is the growth stocks, many of which have plunged in value over the past year after having exploded higher in price and valuation over the prior year.

That said, there's value to these bubbles if you can rebalance out of them. As the bubble forms, it provides an area of relative outperformance within a portfolio, which can then be rebalanced. When the weaker parts of the portfolio eventually outperform, they are in a good position to take over as the previous winning assets starts to decline.

With both growth and value, there's a timing risk inherent in buying one strategy at any given time. Growth sometimes does better, and sometimes value does better. If you get it wrong, you're going to be looking at major underperformance that may be difficult to recover from. Therefore, mixing the two with a strong tilt towards value strikes me as a compromise. I don't know if we're entering a period of value or growth outperforming, so I'm hedging my bets here.

An obvious question is why not just buy the S&P 500 for this asset? I originally looked at this, but after tinkering, it became clear that it wasn't different enough when compared to a pure growth fund. The S&P 500 is loaded with growth stocks to be sure, and it definitely goes along for the ride on bubble misadventures. But it also has value stocks as well as stocks that aren't really one or the other. Since I'm trying to capture a rebalancing premium, I wanted the factors to be as different as possible. Using large cap growth as opposed to overall U.S. large cap (which is what the S&P500 is basically) was a purer way to capture this difference.

ETFs: VUG, QQQ

Long Term Bonds

Image: a comparison of a 100% stocks portfolio to a 60/40 and 40/60 portfolio. Notice how bonds smooth the ride, and stocks alone have trouble outperforming forever.

I view long-term bonds as serving three goals:

• One, they usually reduce the severity of drawdowns.
• Two, they provide interest income.
• Three, they provide an asset to rebalance into in times of strong stock growth and as a source of funds to rebalance out of during stock drawdowns.

Bonds are not the primary return vehicle in the portfolio, but because they often zig when other parts of the portfolio are zagging, they serve a useful purpose.

The arguments against holding bonds are compelling if not entirely convincing:

• Interest rates are at all time lows. Therefore, the return from bonds will be paltry.
• In 2022, bonds have dropped alongside stocks. Where is the drawdown protection in that?

Both those things are true, but I allay my fears with a few reminders. Yes, interest rates are low, but we have no idea what the future will bring. They might continue to go lower over the long term. Should they rise substantially, the limited 15% position should be protective. Since I'm a net saver over time, future purchases at higher yields are advantageous.

Second, bonds have dropped alongside stocks, but a total bond portfolio (such as ETF:BND) has dropped less. Long term bonds, admittedly, have underperformed the S&P 500 this year, but this is also an outlier drawdown year for bonds. I'm not making this portfolio for 2022 alone. It's supposed to do well enough over various regimes without impacting growth too much. There will come a day when bonds counteract stock drops as they have in the past.

Why long-term bonds (a mixture of corporate and treasuries) rather than just long-term treasuries? In my backtests, a mixture does well. Sometimes a mixture beats treasuries alone and sometimes not. Part of this is my increasing distrust of the U.S. federal government. Despite that, long-term treasuries alone will likely serve just as well.

And why long-term bonds rather than total bonds? Right now, I view my time horizon as long-term. Long term bonds tend to outperform total bonds over the long-term with greater volatility. Big surprise. It may be that as I get older, allocating a larger portion to short-term bonds or a total bond market will make more sense. But today is not that day.

ETFs: BLV, TLT, VGLT

Gold

Image: compares a 100% gold position (blue line) to 100% U.S. stocks (red line) and a 50/50 mix of the two since 1972 (yellow line). Notice the lower drawdowns and more steady rise of the mixed portfolio.

The 5% allocation to gold is a "What if?" allocation. When looking at a performance chart of gold compared to stocks, gold tends to have idiosyncratic performance that makes it an ideal rebalancing vehicle. It can outperform during periods of great financial distress and in inflationary periods. To have no gold at all risks missing out on this performance when the rest of the portfolio may be experiencing extended drawdowns. Since the Wiseguy Portfolio has "keep me sane" as a prerogative, I would hate to leave it out entirely.

That said, I won't ever hold an outsized proportion of my net worth in gold. It is an unproductive asset that requires basic supply and demand dynamics to work in the holder's favor. It will send me no dividends, and gold has no management that is trying to improve it. It is an element that has certain inherent qualities that we humans believe have value. That's why I'm limiting it to 5% in the riskier portfolio and 10% in the more risk-averse portfolio. I personally can't bring myself to approach the heavy allocations to gold that the Permanent Portfolio and the Weird Portfolio have.

ETFs: SGOL, GLD

Performance Characteristics

(Image: a backtest since 1995 using the most approximate funds that I can. In this scenario, the riskier version (red line) has returned 9.99% annually while the risk-averse version (blue line) has returned 9.56% annually. The risk-averse version's max drawdown however was limited to -33.65% while the riskier was down 41.17% in 2008-9. Both had lower drawdowns than the S&P 500's 50.97% and higher than a 60/40 portfolio's -15.06%. The safe withdrawal rate of this backtest is 9.7% and the perpetual withdrawal rate is 6.97%.)

It's hard to get a precise long-term view of how the portfolio will do. Each element will behave differently depending on the environment. In the 90's, the bonds and growth stocks would have done very well, while the international ex-U.S. stocks would have muted growth. In the 2000's, small-cap value, ex-US, and gold would have crushed growth. The 70's were like the latter, and the 80's were a mix, since ex-U.S. stocks were strong then.

Since 2009, the Wiseguy Portfolio has underperformed the S&P 500. So has practically everything else except for some individual stocks or pure growth strategies. That's just the kind of environment it's been, and after you stare at these charts long enough, it becomes clear that environments change. Some day, U.S. stocks and growth stocks won't be the dominant force they've been since the Great Recession, and I believe the Wiseguy Portfolio will do well in those environments while not doing horribly in strong growth environments.

With that, I hope the Wiseguy Portfolio and this article have at least whetted your appetite to consider your options more broadly. Wish me luck, and I wish you luck on your progress.