Ask HN: How Do You Invest? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How Do You Invest?

24 pointschuhahaha23 comments

What’s your age and investment strategy? I am far more conservative with money than people at my age (mid-30s). I missed 2020 investment opportunities and as well as crypto ride.

Is there any recourse now? I am not sure if I should invest in BTC, ETH now at this high point or not.

How do you invest and how do you maximize gains over 5,10, 15 year period?

View on HN

Age: 33

My 401(k) is a four-headed portfolio: 50% VTSAX, 25% bonds, 12.5% int'l index, 12.5% REIT

My IRA is mostly four-headed with a few specific longs on airlines that I like, Tesla, Palantir, and Uber.

I also have a trash account for speculative investments; mostly SPACs right now

I also have a Coinbase that is long XRP hoping that it somehow blows up like BTC but probably never will

For regular retirement accounts: The three fund portfolio is very safe against all sorts of market volatility: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Three-fund_portfolio. The four fund portfolio is the three fund portfolio with some participation in REITs (to take advantage of commercial real estate gains). Avoid actively-managed options as they cost more (in management fees) while usually not providing returns above index.

If you want to do more active investing, /r/stocks is actually quite solid for learning the ropes...for now. avoid /r/wallstreetbets; it was junk before and it's even more junk now. finding the signal in that super noisy sub is very very hard

I am not a financial advisor but I will tell you what I would do if I were in my mid-30s, with some money saved up.

Crypto:

Before I tell you my approach to crypto, I will always say the best strategy is to buy and hold. But, I would learn to swing trade crypto over long period of time (2-4 years). Trading daily or even monthly time frames is very dangerous and most people lose money. To start learning I recommend watching Datadash on Youtube. I have made a lot of money in crypto learning from him and try to help other people as well. There is a lot of free money in crypto, don't think it's too late. Here are some things I would also learn:

- Bitcoin Cycles - Altcoin Cycles - Money flow: Fiat -> Bitcoin -> Altcoins - Bitcoins Logarithmic Regression - Bull/Bear Markets Definition - How to use uniswap - Basics: how to send crypto, how to set up a wallet, how to set limit orders.

If you maximize gains, you will also maximize losses if the coin drops the other way.

My strategy for investing is: pay into an index tracker, don’t look at the balance more than twice a year, don’t withdraw funds even in bad years, don’t touch it in general, just let it sit for 30 years.

Compound interest will do the work for you.

35 year old. I make about the top 20% salary in my country, but don't have much disposable income. I think until I hit a salary cap somewhere, it's best to just invest in my own skills - things like books, classes, experiments and side projects. I've had an average of 21% salary increase year on year for the last 9 years, which is much higher than if I had put my non-existent savings on anything. Once it's unlikely I could make at least 10% more from a better job or freelance work, I might look into other forms of investment.

Wow, 21% per year sounds awesome. It doesn't quite compound the same way as an investment account, but seems good short term.

My own experience has been that training is mostly a waste. I've seen maybe 6% raise per year if I was lucky. I'm basically in the mindset of preserving what little I have by not spending it.

I've always been promised 8%-10% per year, but never had a salary review without quitting. Changing jobs is a lot of work and a complete waste, but it's the only way I could get paid my market rate.

I think either kind of investment works. I'd rather live with lattes and sending my kids to private school, at the cost of waking up at 5 AM to read technical books.

If you're lucky enough to get a good job after college, you also won't get that kind of ROI; I still probably get paid less than a FAANG junior.

36 years old, life savings in GME

Still better risk/reward than a casino.

In response to your title questions, based on my recent performance... stupidly.

I buy stocks I intend to keep for long time frames, longer than 10 years.

As far as maximizing gains over 5, 10, 15 years period I think anyone will tell you each of these time frames is significantly different. The general idea seems to be the longer the time frame the more risky/volatile assets you can stomach.

As far as cryptocurrencies go I do not understand their value proposition thus I stay away.

I'm 33. My investment strategy is to not lose money.

I invest what I'm willing to lose in assets that either have cashflow, or that I expect to significantly increase (2-100x) in value over the next 1-3 years. I'm invested in various cryptocurrencies and stocks, and receive cashflow from businesses.

I do not own index funds or any kind of managed funds.

Could you elaborate a bit on how and with which investments you want to make a 100% to 9900% return over 1-3 years, while not losing money? You seem to have some world class strategy at hand.

(FWIW, I would not plan on anything more than 6% p.a. in real terms over the next decade.)

Or did I misunderstand you, in that you put most in conservative investments, and only the fraction that you're willing to lose into wild x100 gambles?

I think it's simple to make great returns if you only pick products that are in high demand by consumers and are crushing their category. And preferably get in as early as possible. I completely avoid investing in anything that is less than stellar. That's one of the reasons I can't stand index funds. So many stocks in a fund are obviously losers or mediocre companies/products.

I'm very patient. I don't go looking for investments. I keep money around to invest, and when an opportunity is clearly a winner I put money into it.

A year ago I think it was obvious Bitcoin, Ethereum, Handshake, Taiwan Semiconductor, Tesla, Apple were all going to be great investments.

To me, diversification means not to put everything into one basket, but not to spread it around into a bunch of mediocre or obviously bad investments.

50k Chainlink and a dream

Age: 32

I invest around 50% of my net into index funds and a few companies I am passionate about in my "fun" bucket. Atm mostly low cost global index funds with some emerging market and tech funds and some gold; no crypto.

Ordered by priority (as in what to do first, not as in how much money to put in each)

1. pay off debt

2. Cash reserve for 12-18 months of living

3. Any state sponsored retirement savings accounts

4. Employer sponsored retirement savings accounts or investments

5. ETF / bond portfolio with dollar cost averaging

6. Fancy ETFs / crypto / stocks whatever you like

Pay off all but the cheapest debt. So don't pay off interest free or mortgages as your investment should outstrip the interest fees

Typical stocks and crypto. Invested a couple hundred thousands in a friend business but it's not working as expected. I am thinking to make apps in marketplace and sell units.

Own long term shares of growth stocks (tech), and leverage a little via long term options for whatever I find interesting/fun.

Currently bag holding after February sell off :(

I'd recommend signing up for a guest account at https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/, where the likes of Michael Burry and other famous professional investors have posted (see Mike's posts here: https://valueinvestorsclub.com/member/michael99/1219). Mike makes it look easy in some of his posts, but there was no doubt a great deal of analysis and thinking involved. The reason I suggest this is to get some sense of what can be involved in selecting individual securities to invest in. If you're still considering a style involving picking a handful of stocks, go and read some CFA level II CBOK material on equity valuation, and consider whether it makes sense for you to try it as an individual investor. This would be very time consuming, but consider the time invested into earning the funds in the first place - if you really think you're skilled enough to choose a concentrated portfolio, you owe it yourself to invest some time into becoming familiar with common methods of analysis, and to think about what edge you have VS the seller of shares when you purchase them.

The point of doing this is mostly to dispel the extremely common Dunning-Kruger effect among amateur investors. Maybe my advice will be unsatisfying for you, but there is no single right answer to how one should invest. Reading a bit about how to think about valuation, risk adjusted returns etc.[0] should help you form some opinion on an investment strategy that you will feel most comfortable with, which will be important for you to keep in mind when facing the vicissitudes of the market.

[0] A great book on how to think about investing, by Howard Marks: https://www.amazon.com/Most-Important-Thing-Illuminated-Thou...

Index funds, 80/20 split (VTI/VXUS/BND). Never ever sell.

Currently I have $3M invested as above, plus $2M of illiquid startup equity that I cannot sell, for obvious reasons.

I do the same, minus the bond funds. 70/30: VTSAX/VTIAX

badly

Reply on news.ycombinator.com