
Show HN: StockNerd – A community for index fund investors - snerdapp
https://www.stocknerd.com
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baccredited
Warren Buffet tells his heirs to go 90% SP500 and 10% Bonds. So just buy VOO
and BND, rebalance yearly and you are done.

OR do a 3 fund portfolio like: [https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-
fund_portfolio](https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio)

OR buy a target retirement fund from Vanguard:
[https://investor.vanguard.com/search/?query=Vanguard%20targe...](https://investor.vanguard.com/search/?query=Vanguard%20target%20retirement)

OR fill out a risk profile on Wealthfront/Betterment and invest there.

Bottom line is pick an approach and don't ever touch a damn thing.

I believe this advice can fit on a single web page and doesn't need an app, a
community or otherwise.

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gingerlime
Any tips for investors in Europe? (Germany or UK in my personal case).

I understand that these strategies are not country-specific, but not sure if
Vanguard is accessible to non-US citizens, and there might be tax implications
in different countries. That's why I'm asking.

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YesProcrast
The idea of indexing doesn't require a specific index. It is more general than
that. The idea that average returns are pretty good, and average returns with
low cost-of-management are even better.

In order to get average returns, the key is simply to own a tiny fraction of
the entire market, whatever "market" means to you. The focus has long been on
the S&P simply because it has historically done a pretty good job of
representing the US equities market, it is market-cap weighted (unlike the
Dow), and the earliest index funds tracked the S&P.

It's my expectation, stated without proof, that it should be easy to find a
comparable index in Europe, if you want to match the average European return.

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VHRanger
The key idea behind index investing is paying low fees.

Non index funds perform the same as index funds (and research indicates you
can differentiate the ones that outperform a priori with any method). But
those funds have higher fees.

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austenallred
I'm a little confused about what to do with a community for index fund
investors.

"So, you letting your investments sit there, not touching them?"

"Yup, you?"

"Same"

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notfried
Well, if you are on a trajectory of a 30-year career job at one company with
little to no changes in your income but adjustments and raises, then you
probably don't need such a community. But judging based on Boggleheads forums,
there's a need. Yearly re-balancing, changing your goals, windfalls, unplanned
expenses, adjusting for tax efficiency, switching jobs, re-doing your
portfolio because you did it horribly when you started, helping others who
have a messy portfolio, and of course, the many questions every n00b has when
they start.

Of course, Boggleheads would do just fine for any of these, but more options
never hurt.

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jonathanjaeger
If this is about index funds specifically, that is definitely not clear. If
anything I think this is NOT about index funds, but individual stocks. Index
funds are basically set it and forget it, so why would I want to continuously
use this app? Just buy some $SCHB, $SPY, $VTI, or whatever combo of index
funds you want and that's it. Daytraders, swing traders, and people buying
individual stocks would want to use an app on the regular.

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objclxt
> Index funds are basically set it and forget it, so why would I want to
> continuously use this app? Just buy some $SCHB, $SPY, $VTI, or whatever
> combo of index funds you want and that's it.

Because of re-balancing. Say you invest in three index funds at a 70/20/10
split. One of those funds performs much better than the others over time,
leaving you with a distorted ratio. So you re-balance to get back to your
original 70/20/10\. Typically you'd re-balance one or two times a year.

Ideally you want to avoid selling to rebalance, so if you're investing
regularly (once a month, for example) you want to know exactly which funds to
put your money in to each time to maintain your percentage split.

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jonathanjaeger
Fair enough, that being said, I'm not sure I need an app/community for that
(i.e. a Stocktwits clone for index funds).

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Uroboric
Something that's never made sense to me about stocks:

Unless you're extremely wealthy, any money you are able to save (outside of
retirement money) is probably money you are going to want to use for something
to improve your life in the semi-near future. Buying a house or car (or just a
better one) for example.

With that assumption in place, under what circumstances does investing in
index funds make any sense whatsoever? The entire market crashes on occasion
due to herd mentality, and yet even given that level of risk index funds still
take many years to appreciate in value significantly. It seems like an
absolutely terrible place to put money that isn't specifically intended for
retirement or something like a 529 plan.

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hamstercat
It's pretty popular in the Financial Independence crowd, where the goal is to
get enough money to be able to live on interest alone. It's not for the
extremely wealthy, rather the somewhat high-income middle class. You can even
make it work with less income if you can manage to cut your expense.

Most people adjusts (ie: increases) their spending when they get additional
income, but it doesn't have to be that way. In the end it's a lot about trade-
off, like for exemple do you prefer stuff like going out to restaurant, owning
a car, etc.

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pc86
The FI crowd is 90% expense management and 10% investment. It seems like most
folks there have a goal to stop working but are willing to do that and live
like a pauper the rest of their lives. If that works for them, great, but I'd
much rather work at a job I love, make very good money, and enjoy my life,
rather than "retire" at 35 and live on $24k/yr in interest for the rest of my
life.

I'd love to see a Financial Independence plan around growing [a] business(es)
and retiring early but not crazy early (40-55) and living on a substantial
middle/upper-middle income for several decades.

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ryandrake
I've read some of those web sites and they're insufferable. Buy a house in
cash so you have no payments, shop only at Goodwill, collect rain water for
drinking, and never, _ever_ get sick, and you, too can retire at 40!!

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kcorbitt
Sure, there are people in the FI crowd trying get by on $15k a year. Not my
cup of tea, but if they're happy that way I say more power to them. But the
community is a spectrum -- there's also a fairly large contingent (composed
mainly of doctors, engineers and other high-income workers) whose savings at
early-retirement time seem to cluster around ~$3M, allowing for retirement
spending of $90-100k. That buys a solid lifestyle by almost anyone's
standards. Obviously, that's predicated on having a high-earning career and
taking saving seriously, but it's totally doable in 10-20 years.

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ryandrake
Do-able? Maybe. High-earning is an understatement though. If you want to reach
$3M in 20 years, you'd need to save about $100K per year, assuming, say, an
annually compounding 4% interest rate across your savings and investments. A
lot of people who might consider themselves high-earners don't even make that
much in a year, let alone are able to save it.

Even assuming you're a gambler and put all your savings into stocks and get
that mythical "steady 7%" return, you need to set aside $75K every year to
reach $3M in 20 years.

I'm not claiming to be the world's best saver, but I think I live frugally
enough, and after 20 years into a fairly good tech career, my savings is an
order of magnitude+ less than that.

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kcorbitt
I don't think a 7% interest rate is unreasonable. One of the advantages of
planning on early retirement means that you can take on a lot more risk with
your investments, eg. putting everything into stocks (which isn't really
"gambling" \-- over long periods they've only ever gone up). If the markets
are totally hammered the year you want to retire, no problem -- just keep
working a few more years until they recover. And saving $75k a year is also
quite reasonable if you have a high income, like a doctor or well-compensated
engineer. I’m only a couple years into my career and am supporting my wife and
kid, but we’re on track to save a bit more than that this year.

Of course, the lifestyle choices we make aren’t for everyone, and that’s fine.
But they’re also not totally crazy. We can save that much still live about as
well as the median American, and a lot better than the median human.

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dharness
There's basically no chance I'm going to download an iOS app for this, and I'm
not super sure why it isn't just a web page..

But the landing is nice! (except I really wish this was an svg
[https://www.stocknerd.com/assets/img/logo.png](https://www.stocknerd.com/assets/img/logo.png))

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snerdapp
We made the app after having friends and family members get ripped off by
financial advisors. The purpose of the app is to teach others about low fee
index fund investing. Thanks!

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tachion
Don't get me wrong, but this is one of the worst product landing pages I've
seen. Except for the short marketing line, there's NOTHING about the product
there (why it exists, where does it work, how does it work, is it free, and so
on), and it makes me NOT clicking that AppStore link for sure.

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snerdapp
Sorry. We will work on improving it.

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che_shirecat
so... stocktwits? I don't see the value here. what would I possibly gain from
following the portfolios of random shmucks who are more likely than not losing
money?

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mi100hael
Yeah or bogleheads. There's no shortage of information on this topic, you just
have to be willing to read it instead of overpaying some financial advisor.

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swalsh
I like the idea.... why should I trust you for financial advice? How are you
licensed? How do I know you're not using my data for trading, How do I know
you're not feeding me false data you've already traded on?

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snhelper
Good question. We don't give financial advice. The app allows you to make a
simple index fund portfolio with stock data, then monitor other user
portfolios if you want. You can discuss indexing with other index fund
investors in the "discuss" area.

Our other account got rate limited and says "you are submitting too fast" so
we made this one.

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mholmes680
Is this social motif?

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homarp
it's an app, not a community.

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snerdapp
True. We have a discussion area inside the app.

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tachion
And how are we supposed to know that, if the page doesn't say almost anything?

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bluesign
This looks more like a fantasy stock league, especially with leaderboard.

Also it is good to point out leaderboard means nothing, it is totally
pointless.

This is like playing poker with infinite fantasy stack.

If you are good investor you will never be on this leaderboard :)

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colinbartlett
I'm sad to see there's no signup via email. I don't have Facebook or Twitter
and, although I do have a Google account, I prefer not to use it to
authenticate services.

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mergesort
This looks great! Looks very polished and like something I'd really be
interested in, but I'd love to be able to see what it's about before signing
in. Will you be adding a way to do that, or at least login with email?

Thanks!

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hoopism
The example images are absolutely hilarious as a parody of exactly what
discuss would occur in an app like this:

TomLevelhead: "Index funds are sensible and smart."

MarySmartpants: "I too enjoy the consistency and moderate growth inherit in a
diversified index"

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astannard
I will check it out. I have been reading Tony Robbins - 'Master The Game'
which talks about index funds as a better alternative to high fee managed
funds. This sounds like it could be a good source of info for picking them

~~~
snhelper
Thanks! We're trying to get feedback and advice. If you run into any issues
please let us know.

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DrSayre
Anybody having issues trying to login using Twitter? It says "Creating
Profile" and does nothing.

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mvexel
Fails when trying to create a profile. Nothing happens. Either after 1/2
second or a few seconds.

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snhelp2
Please try now, I think we fixed it.

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r3pl4y
iOS only... Not useful to me

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snhelper
Working on Android. We wanted to see if anyone liked it before doing a second
OS. I like Android also.

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sghiassy
Check out React Native. Could've shipped on both platforms at the same time.
Best of luck

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homarp
or do a website...

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sfblah
I worry the popularity of index funds portends something bad.

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it_learnses
you would think that something with "nerd" in their name would have a web app
or at least an android app...

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yolo66
Nicely executed, I'll use it!

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sergiotapia
you should show some screenshots before asking for a download

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unixhero
No Android

Bah.

I want to try it! :)

