

“This is my Merrill Lynch portfolio – 1.83% expenses, underperformed S&P 500” - keywonc
http://hellomoney.co/portfolio/347

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philrea
Problem with the arg how can an "average" investor expect to compete against
the big dedicated investment houses is that in most respects the big guys are
average at best.

Speaking as a former aspiring fund manager turned software developer, most of
the tools at these manager's disposal are simplistic and completely invalid
yet in most cases the manager's don't quite understand them anyways.

Bottom-line: its a boys club of MBAs whose curriculum still says the sharpe
ratio is important and holds their students responsible for at the very most
being able to calculate probabilities from a normal distro using a table of
values.

Solution: invest in a lot of risky small companies, you will lose most of the
time but, those few winners more than make up for the loss. Spread across
enough bets stats says its very unlikely to lose. Contrast that with your
family's 401k split in two a few years back while invested in the "blue-chips"

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nodesocket
I've had pretty good luck in the market. Owned a REIT
([http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reit.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/reit.asp))
during the housing boom, owned APPL during their run up, and recently TSLA.
When I don't have a company I like I've owned QQQ (Power Shares 100), AGG
(iShared Bond), and various ETFs. I'm young so I can take risk, but honestly
you can manage your own investments without the fees.

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iamahnsihyo
Pretty good portfolio, if you think 1.83 expexses fine, you have to bet more
risks.

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junheek
1.83%? That's highway robbery!

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Afforess
Maybe not:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/28ys30/this_is_my...](http://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/28ys30/this_is_my_portfolio_managed_by_merrill_lynch_it/cifsa0p)

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outside1234
There's always a winner but many many more losers for active portfolios in
general.

The research shows that the passive index tracking approach very convincingly
beats actively managed portfolios net of taxes and fees.

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Bsharp
Approve!

I don't understand why Average Joe thinks he can beat investment firms long
term with staff dedicated to tracking each and every tradeable asset. Who do
you think you're trading with?

If you want to gamble on a company or a market shift then fine, but for the
most part that's just what it is - gambling.

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7Figures2Commas
The Average Joe shouldn't be "trading." But the individual trader absolutely
has certain advantages over hedge funds and large institutions. One of the
biggest is that the average individual trader can move the needle without
establishing large positions. This often makes it possible for the individual
trader to take positions in securities that larger players couldn't invest in
even if they wanted to (and no, I'm not talking Pink Sheets issues).

There are of course lots of reasons many individual traders are not
successful. Lack of discipline and poor money management are far bigger
contributors to individual trader failure than lack of dedicated staff and
institutional tools.

