Show HN: Making passive investing safer and better for everyone
altsat.net
It all began with my poor investment choices like diversified portfolio of mutual funds, pretty much investing equally in the 5 mutual funds available through my employer and the life and science fund did great for a bit before the dot com crash :-)
Not long after, I changed jobs and had to sell the funds, because in kind transfer was not possible with the new employer and lost most of the money.
It was scarring experience, so I stayed in money market funds and missed the market upside.
Few years latter, another job, another pension plan and this time I was determined not to make the same mistakes.
Everyone is saying Passive Investing is the best for the average investor, but they never tell you what index fund to buy and more importantly when exactly.
Just holding an index fund for the long term can be actually a mistake and if you’re in the wrong index at the wrong time, it can take you 5, 10, or even 15 years just to break even…
In last 20 years or so, we had 2 major black swan events resulting in two 50% drawdowns and this is very important to avoid, because the market might remain under water for very long period of time.
It gets even worse at the bottom of a recession, people lose jobs and needs the funds to survive and if down already 50% and take half of the rest to live off until the next job, there is no coming back: if you are down 75%, you will need 300% gain to break even, 80% loss will need 400% gain, etc…
You can check the Research tab on the website [1], but basically the model delivers the same returns compared with Buy and Hold, but cutting the drawdown by half: worst draw down 23.83% vs 56.48% for the buy and hold model, which means you need less than 33% gain to break even vs more than 122% gain needed to break even with the Buy and Hold Model
Not long ago while speaking with friends and co-workers about the way I invest, it actually donned on me that this can be an actual company, as I have the backend already up and running for years, I just put together this simple website and I am applying to YC and hopping to create a company that can truly change the way people are investing for the long run.
How it works is the systems sends an email advising every Friday after the market close advising to be either in Cash or invested in any low cost S&P tracking 500 ETF / mutual fund / employer provided fund.
I know long term and passive investing is boring and in this model the average portfolio change happens once a year, so from the Startup School, I got the idea on how to get people more engaged – with the “Make Money with Us” feature, basically you get 50% referral commission every month on every user you bring along. This way you can spread the word to all your friends and show them how it invest better and also offset the subscription costs: you get 2 users to sign and the subscription is free and if 10 users, you can generate $1200 per year real passive income to help you start investing if you do not have the spare cash to do so…
Please take a look and let me know what do you think, what do you like, don’t like, and please share any feedback, ideas, recommendations, etc , it will be greatly appreciated, so we can make the product batter and more useful for everyone. I have applied to YC and plan to reapply if not selected, but what other accelerators should I apply to? PearX, Afore Capital, etc, what else? I am also looking for a growth/marketing/sales co-founder, so any idea where I can find one?
Please note, this is the short version, because of the characters limit, the original is here [2]
Special Thanks to dang for his time, great advice and all help with this!
Thank you, LJ