
A Simple Investment Strategy That Worked in 2019: Buy Almost Anything - KFC_Manager
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/business/2019-markets.html
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nahname
Sure didn't help that 2018 ended with everything being down 15-20%, this year
was more of a rebound than a continuous healthy market.

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airstrike
Thank you! This is such an obvious point and yet it's hardly ever mentioned.

It may seem intuitive, but it's actually entirely arbitrary to pick 12/31/2018
through 12/31/2019 as the time period for a returns analysis.

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avn2109
>> "...it's actually entirely arbitrary..."

This is one good objection to the article.

Another objection is that they have spun "central bank inflates financial
asset bubble which is correlated across all asset classes" as a good thing.

And it seems to have never crossed the credulous author's mind that asset
classes with correlated gains also have correlated losses.

Even by the NYT's extremely-naive standards of thinking critically about
financial markets, this is a weak effort.

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rb808
I've seen a few people online giving up jobs, retiring early because they make
enough money trading or investing now. Deja vu all over again.

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JKCalhoun
Yeah, I remember.

What's the strategy that will work in 2020 Sell everything perhaps....

Or are we setting the stage for the Roaring Twenties? Or did we just exit that
decade?

Maybe the (20)20's will be seen as the Great(er) Depression. Perhaps we're a
decade out of phase with the last century.

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rb808
I remember in 98 a lot of investment managers said we're in a bubble and went
conservative. They missed out of a lot of upside and many got fired. Nobody
knows whats going to happen this year, probably depends mostly on the
election.

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Scoundreller
Over time, there have been a lot more up days than bad days, but the bad days
are really bad.

I remember somewhere that tabulated how much you’d have if you only sat in on
the top 100 UP days _and_ top 100 DOWN days, you’d have massive losses. But
overall, things go up.

So sitting out the market in hopes of missing a down day only works if you
know what the down days are, otherwise you’re missing out on the gradual
average UP days.

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Shaanie
Usually known as "time in the market beats timing the market."

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Scoundreller
I like that. It bothers me when people say “I have $5k, and I’ll invest $1k of
it every month for 5 months to average my ins”.

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petilon
This is a misleading story. Yes, the stock market rose significantly in 2019.
But it had also dipped severely at the end of 2018. When you account for that
dip, stock performance has been average.

Example: On Dec 21 2018 SPY (S&P 500 ETF) was trading for $240.70. Today it is
trading for $323.07, which is a huge 34% jump. But on Sep 21 2018 it was
trading for $291.99. Compared to that high, the increase is a mediocre 10.6%

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AznHisoka
10.6 is mediocre? I would take those returns every single year.

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petilon
Then invest in the stock market. Even accounting for the dotcom crash and the
2008 crash the stock market has gone up around 10% every year when you average
it out.

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AznHisoka
It has averaged close to 5% from January 2000 to now...

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icedchai
The 2000's were a bad decade for investing. You had the dot com crash,
followed by 9/11, and then the financial crisis. I "saved" a ton during that
time, but the returns were mediocre. The 80's, 90's and most of the 2010's
were much, much better for market performance, closer to the average of 10%.

See [https://www.macrotrends.net/2526/sp-500-historical-annual-
re...](https://www.macrotrends.net/2526/sp-500-historical-annual-returns)

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AznHisoka
That’s true. unfortunately you can’t cherry pick with foresight what decades
you want to skip when investing.

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H8crilA
All the while corporate earnings didn't go up. Go figure.

At this point, with so much stimulus, I'm wondering if the next crisis will be
a deflationary one, like everyone is expecting (i.e. a stock market crash,
people fired, credit frozen) or the inflationary type (long drag of
stagflation).

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outside1234
Whatever it is, because of the titantic trillion dollar deficit and already
low interest rates, we will have no way of dealing with it from a
macroeconomic sense.

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beamatronic
There’s a lot of policy changes that could be done to press the Accelerator
pedal on the economy. Let in 10 million new immigrants. Eminent domain a hyper
loop from New York to LA. Rollback building restrictions in the bay area.

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Scoundreller
Don’t forget giving money to poor people.

Just think of the wage growth and increased recreation if anyone could say
“screw it” to bad employers and still have a roof over their head.

Give people a year off for parental leave, then young people get a 1yr
placement in increasingly senior positions.

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frockington1
Don't we already heavily subsidize poverty via welfare programs? I don't see
how throwing even more money at a problem would have a different outcome.

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semi-extrinsic
If "we" == "USA", then no you don't "heavily subsidise poverty". As for
empirical evidence that "throwing more money" at it gives an improved outcome,
you can look at basically any country in Western or Northern Europe.

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frockington1
I did some quick research by googling poverty rate in {country} USA: 12.3%
Spain: 12.1% France: 14.1% Norway: 0.2% Germany: 15.7%

Besides Norway, they all seem relatively consistent. I initially thought this
might be due to their oil reserves but it seems oil rich US states are still
in the 11-12% range

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semi-extrinsic
Poverty rates are almost by definition useless metrics to compare by here,
because they are computed from the gross income distribution.

Poverty aid programmes are almost all focused on reducing the cost of living
for poor people, which has literally zero effect on poverty rates.

Subsidized housing/childcare/healthcare, food stamps, progressive taxation,
you name it, they all leave gross income unaffected yet give a large increase
in quality of life and discretionary income.

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hkmurakami
Except... There were significant performance disparities and risk profiles for
each of these asset classes that nominally "went up"

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alltakendamned
where could I read/learn more about these ?

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maerF0x0
To consider the flip side of a coin. This is the continued devaluation of
monetary instruments.

You can look at as the s&p500 rose by 29%. Or you can look at it as "The USD"
buys 23% fewer shares than last year. (ideally this would be adjusted for
profit growth and inflation too)

IMO this is totally expected given negative interest rates and QE.

