Happy Monday! I’m (Jim) back!
This first article opened my eyes to the folly of picking individual stocks. Most of my portfolio is in boring index funds (and boring is exactly how I like my investments) but I do have a small portfolio where I picked dividend stocks (I haven’t done that since I set it up, many many years ago).
It’s done well enough but I was surprised to learn the discoveries of our first article.
Average is not the same as median… [Klement on Investing] – “Antti Petajisto analysed the return distribution of all US stocks in the CRSP database going back to 1926. Below is the distribution of returns for different investment horizons. Note that the distribution gets more and more skewed to the left as investment horizons increase and that the left-hand side of the distribution is not zero, but a total loss of investment (-100% return).” In layman’s terms, “If you randomly pick stocks in any given sector, your most likely outcome is that you will have lost money after 10 years.” Wow.
I haven’t been following the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of FTX, but it turns out the verdict has been rendered:
Sam Bankman-Fried Guilty on All 7 Counts in FTX Fraud Trial [CoinDesk] – “Sam Bankman-Fried defrauded his customers and lenders, a New York jury found after a five-week trial for the FTX founder and former chief executive. A tentative sentencing date was set for March 28, 2024. Bankman-Fried could spend decades in prison (and theoretically up to 115 years).”
OK this video about the son of the founder of Oriental Trading Company is insane.
The Man Who Lost $204 Million On A Trip To Vegas – it’s technically more than one trip but does that really matter???