New Member introductions

[chang]

acksurf made a good suggestion: "You might consider encouraging people to introduce themselves and where they're at in their investing journey." (He gave a short personal intro in the "Hey" thread.)

If you feel like sharing anything about your life's story, whether it relates to investing or not, do it here!

[racqueteer]

Ok, I get to start, I guess:

I'm now 73, married, two children, four grandkids, two step grandkids, three step great-grandkids. Graduated SUNY Albany with a BS in physics and SUNY New Paltz with an MA in chemistry. Taught in public schools for about 30 years. I was also a teaching tennis professional for 13 years.

Started investing just in time to catch the tech implosion and made every mistake there was. Want to know what NOT to do?

[Chahta]

I am a retired mechanical engineer with a BSME and used to have a PE license in California. Turned 68 in July and last working day was May 15, 2019. I don’t miss work one bit. The people I worked with and the vendors I specified, I do miss them. I live in Tennessee along a lake and 3 golf courses. I have 3 step grandsons. They don’t know it, but they could come into some money one day. I also have spent quite an amount of time using Ancestry.com for the last 5 years.

Started investing in 1978 and owned that original fund until 2015.

[chang]

Chahta OK I'll bite - what fund, and why sell after 37 years?

[Chahta]

PIODX. Sold it to buy AKREX since it was a taxable account. My dad’s cousin was a retired AF colonel that got into selling mutual funds. He got me started investing. PIODX is ahead of AKREX YTD but throws off CG and div income. AKREX does not. It is all growth. Do I B&H or what?

[helmut]

I've been on Morning* since 2000 and I am glad to see alternatives .  Competition makes everyone better.
I'm 73, have 6 grown children with 17 grandkids and one great grandchild.  I live in Houston, TX, one of the most dynamic and diverse cities in the U.S. 

helmut

[chang]

Dec 21, 2020 13:14:13 GMT Chahta said:

Do I B&H or what?

Mister, you could teach Warren Buffett something about B&H!

[sheryldell]

Hi. Thanks for the invite!

[chang]

Dec 23, 2020 4:48:17 GMT sheryldell said:

Hi. Thanks for the invite!

Welcome! I recall some good discussions on M* in which you were involved. Looking forward to more!

[Norbert]

Dec 21, 2020 14:51:11 GMT helmut said:

I've been on Morning* since 2000 and I am glad to see alternatives .  Competition makes everyone better.
I'm 73, have 6 grown children with 17 grandkids and one great grandchild.  I live in Houston, TX, one of the most dynamic and diverse cities in the U.S. 

helmut

I visited my company's Houston offices about 20 times between 1979-1998. It was always a pleasure to be in the city, although Summers could be a bit uncomfortable mid day.

[Karen]

I am retired. My husband took care of all of our financial things but he no longer can. I hope I will learn some things about handing our investments here because my husband can't explain them to me any more. Thank you.

[chang]

Karen Welcome! Feel free to ask questions. This board is only a few days old but we're hoping to bring back the best and brightest minds from the old Morningstar forum. It may take a little while for the word to get out. Hang in there!

[Karen]

Thank you! I feel welcome here already. And I do have a lot of questions about our investments. Once my husband helps me understand what we have and where it all is I hope to be able to ask some questions about our investments.

[fishingrod]

Welcome Karen!!

[Deleted]

I am 52 year old, software engineer, immigrated to US 25 years back with $500 and a bag of clothes. 3 kids will be going to college soon. Possibly private.

I started thinking about saving and investing at age of 40 years. I did not know much about money at all. I have started educating my kids about importance of money, saving and investing so they do not mess up like i did.

[wannabechef]

Greetings everyone, I've been a chronic lurker on both Morningstar and ArmChair Investing and would like to change that starting now. I got away from the M* forum after the recent reformatting. I'm a 38 year old Food Scientist who works on product development working primarily with Seasonings and Spices. Formerly worked in the restaurant industry before transitioning to R&D. My primary investment vehicles are mutual funds and ETFs, I have yet to dip my toes into individual stocks and may never get around to it depending on if I have excess cash around. I have 3 kiddos in the house, 2 biological and one foster so I gotta admit that having excess cash around seems like a bit of a fantasy but, who knows, life smiles on you sometimes. Looking forward to being more active and getting to know the folks on the forum.

[Chahta]

Hi wannabe....I am a wanna-be-a-chef too! You are smart to tap into the smart people here and also on the other boards. I didn't know much about bond funds until about 4 years ago. I am 68 now and retired. BTW I suggest no bonds for a 38 year old. I owned none until I was 65 years old. Hit equities hard until a few years before retiring based on where the market is at the time.

[javajoe]

JavaJoe here... thank you for taking the time to message me through M* Chang.. I finally threw in the towel on M* around June 2019 after 15+ years of daily reading and learning from so many others. I tried to pull up my last post over there to find the list of posters I thanked for teaching me so much as a young investor (DeerIslander, Chang, erryl, uh, norbert, Dick, MasterPlan, Oildog, Anil, Dr Helen, Aalan and so many other characters like Limoman), but alas M* returned an oh-so-ironic "Error while parsing Rich Text Content." I dabbled over on the Fidelity forums but found myself checking it less frequently behind the brokerage login.

I agree with the coffee shop atmosphere that used to be really strong at M*, especially from 2005-2012 or so. Hopefully other quality posters will discover this and attract some younger, insightful posters as well to help carry the torch.

I am a mid 40's accumulator now, in the crunch of life, family, and attempting to grow and pivot my 3 year old company with fairly large W2 labor model through these crazy times. Investment portfolio has been largely back-burnered this year, with fewer actively managed funds than years past and still holding too much cash.

-JavaJoe

[galeno]

63 year old retired Costa Rican. My wife and I have been investing in financial assets as non-USA investors for 35 years. For the last 15 years we follow the Boglehead philosophy.

Our present port: 55% World stocks + 14% US treas + 14% Corp bonds + 14% TIPS + 2% Cash. Our AWR = 4.0%. We expect a 2% real CAGR.

We have faced 4 bear markets. 1987, 2000, 2008, and 2020. We did nothing; rebalanced; and over-rebalanced twice.

I participate on 3 boards. Morningstar, Bogleheads, and Big bang.

[chang]

JJ: Grrrreat to see you here. We certainly go back a long ways. I remember your "open letter to Joe Mansueto", too ... man that was sad to see M* fall apart.

This ProBoards platform isn't perfect but it's not bad, and it seems to be very stable.

Welcome aboard, looking forward to reading your input!

[Deleted]

Greetings,

How are you juggling your board memberships? I've been joining so many in a short time that I have collected almost as many usernames as investments. I suppose I could have used the same one, but tried some creativity.

[wannabechef]

Dec 23, 2020 23:14:11 GMT Chahta said:

Hi wannabe....I am a wanna-be-a-chef too! You are smart to tap into the smart people here and also on the other boards. I didn't know much about bond funds until about 4 years ago. I am 68 now and retired. BTW I suggest no bonds for a 38 year old. I owned none until I was 65 years old. Hit equities hard until a few years before retiring based on where the market is at the time.

Thanks so much for the hello Gary1952! I am definitely taking the advice of no bonds for my age bracket, my only bond holding is primarily short term savings but not in a retirement account. I just kinda shrugged my shoulders earlier this year when the market dipped and kept gradually adding to my positions. So far that's paid off quite well. It's good to know that I'm not alone in avoiding bonds (for now) until I'm much closer to retirement.

I plan to enjoy a lot of cooking over the holidays. Tonight I'm making homemade pizza (festive, I know) but tomorrow is the real fun with brioche in the morning, and rib roast for Christmas dinner. Anybody else cooking anything fun or unique this year?

Maybe an off topic thread is worth starting to get ideas for next year (or even this weekend!)

[rhythmmethod]

Dec 24, 2020 16:29:01 GMT wannabechef said:

Dec 23, 2020 23:14:11 GMT Chahta said:

Hi wannabe....I am a wanna-be-a-chef too! You are smart to tap into the smart people here and also on the other boards. I didn't know much about bond funds until about 4 years ago. I am 68 now and retired. BTW I suggest no bonds for a 38 year old. I owned none until I was 65 years old. Hit equities hard until a few years before retiring based on where the market is at the time.

Thanks so much for the hello Gary1952! I am definitely taking the advice of no bonds for my age bracket, my only bond holding is primarily short term savings but not in a retirement account. I just kinda shrugged my shoulders earlier this year when the market dipped and kept gradually adding to my positions. So far that's paid off quite well. It's good to know that I'm not alone in avoiding bonds (for now) until I'm much closer to retirement.

I plan to enjoy a lot of cooking over the holidays. Tonight I'm making homemade pizza (festive, I know) but tomorrow is the real fun with brioche in the morning, and rib roast for Christmas dinner. Anybody else cooking anything fun or unique this year?

Maybe an off topic thread is worth starting to get ideas for next year (or even this weekend!)

Good idea! We had a BBQ and smoking thread earlier. Good idea to start a general thread for foodies! Welcome!!

[Chahta]

I agree! Cooking a brisket in the oven today. I’m in CA for Christmas without a smoker. Used to make tamales this time of year but not happening now.

[bob1899]

It's good to see the names of so many familiar folks posting on this forum. I'm 76 and retired and spent a lot of hours reading the Morningstar boards although I was an infrequent poster.
I've learned a lot from many of you over the years and have really appreciated your insights.
Happy holidays and best wishes to all for the New Year.
Bob

[richardsok]

I'm ba-a-a-k. Promise to drop by now and then if I have anything to contribute. See how it goes. It would be nice if either this board or Armchair could eventually take over as dominant.
Time will tell. Health & greetings to all the old crew, and Merry Christmas. --richardsok

[chang]

Welcome richardsok !! 👋

[yogibearbull]

yogibearbull/YBB here as elsewhere on the web [too many places to list ]. 

Checking out this website. Looks good so far.

Initially plan to also post Barron's weekend summaries here and drop by occasionally. 

[FD1000]

We immigrated to the US about 30 years ago with the kids and $5000 and settled in a north suburb of Atlanta.  Why Atlanta? good weather, plenty of IT jobs, big city with low cost of living. I worked in IT, mainly as a developer, for over 35 years and retired in 2018.  I'm 63 years old.  The kids + grandkids all live now within 25 minutes drive.

My investing style evolved over the years. Timing and momentum aren't easy and shouldn't be used by most BUT it worked very well for me.

I started investing in 1995 by following "Random Walk..." then I changed and have been flexible since about 2000. In my world flexibility includes many things: the number of funds, timing (how long), what % to trade, the ability to change/add any rule according to goals based on big global analysis but also what works NOW.

1995-2000 more than 90% in US total stock index.

2000: The market wasn't doing well. I started reading Buffett and I found the following 3 rules intriguing: 1) never lose money 2) Don't forget rule # 1 3) Diversification is a protection against ignorance. I added a fourth rule momentum. My system was born. Find the best 5 risk/reward funds (allocation, stock, international, whatever) without regard to diversification. This is a huge key finding great risk/reward funds. Core=60%. Explore=40%. Use momentum + switching funds more on explore (based on 3-6 months performance) and less on core (based on 9-12 months). Be invested at 99+% (never cash) most times and why I switch on the same day.

2000-2010, Core=I invested 20% in each SGENX(changed later to SGIIX), FAIRX, OAKBX) about 8-10 years. Explore=I traded about 2 times a year the other two. I made about 9% annually while the SPY lost money and my portfolio SD was lower too.

2011: preparing for retirement and changing my portfolio gradually to more bonds.  I made another important rule, I don't have to invest the same % in each fund. I can go as high as 50% and how I used PIMIX for years.

2013: Retirement looked closer. I added 2 new rules based on quicker market movements, sell any stock fund if it loses more than 6% from last top and sell any bond fund with more than 3% lose. This means, sell to cash and wait for the next entry to follow within days-weeks. My numbers show, I was in the market over 97% of the time. I was a lot more interested to reach my goals and retire on time. The plan was to retire in 2017 but after looking at Obama healthcare disaster (private insurance premiums were 3 times more than before) I decided to postpone it by another year.

2018: retirement. The goals are stricter (because I made it already so why take unnecessary risk): make at least 4% annually (including inflation of 2.5-3%) because that's all we need, SD < 3, never lose 3% from any last top, be positive annually. "Secret" goal, beat VWIAX. Momentum+timing are used much more with less emphasize on best risk/reward funds since I deal mostly with bond OEFs. I also cut the number of funds to 2-3 because best of breed are limited, and it's easier to trade. The results in the last 3 years were much better than my goals.    

[BearMkt]

Thanks for the invitation to join Chang. I’ll enjoy this forum and probably won’t need to go back to M*. I’m 62 and still working for a large Federal Government agency in the Atlanta area. I spent a number of years in the U.S. Air Force and lived in Germany for 8 years on two different tours there. I’ve been “saving and investing” most of my life and currently use Fidelity as my primary investment company. I’m no great investor but have learned a lot over the years much of it from some of you over the last 12 years or so. Looking forward to retiring in a year or two at the most.