If you get a chance, give Courtney Barnett a listen (shown on left). When it comes to investing, are we sitting and thinking? Or are we just sitting?
I am bothered by the performance of my portfolio. Not just this year. Let's be honest, outside of MFI, it has been somewhat short of stellar. I can rationalize that I am a value investor and value is just out of vogue. But deep down I know I have never had the stomach to be a true value investor.
I seem to do best with buying (with some thought/process) and then walking away and not obsessing. It is the obsessing and regular second-guessing/meddling that really hampers my portfolio performance. I have actually done best with the smaller baskets - gold/miners or small banks.
If you have been reading my blog for a while and this sounds familiar... that is because I have had this internal debate before.
My Thoughts
In an ironic way, I don't think this blog helps. It makes my attention span too short as I am writing about what goes on every week. I think I might pare it back to just an update once a month.
Then I look at my MFI tracking and the dividend approach just seems to work so well. Why am I screwing around using other approaches, when I have at my fingertips an approach that works great?
Right now I am about 45% in dividend portfolio and 35% MFI (20% Misc). I think that is backwards.
- Pare back my dividend stocks to a core group of 10. 35% of total investment.
- Change my Misc approach to baskets: shipping, bio-pharma, energy, small banks and other. Each basket has 10 holdings so I can go with higher risk holdings, but not spaz out everytime I hit an air cushion. Then I can only change baskets once a year.
- Expand MFI Formula (with extra funds from dividend paring) to simply be the universe of MFI stocks at 2.4%+ yield. So remove random number generator.
I think there is a good chance I'll make these moves. And then stop hyperventilating so much.
More sitting, and then thinking, to follow.
Posts
6 comments:
Interesting take Marsh.
I'm buying my next block tomorrow. Maybe you can refresh me - what do you do to avoid "stinkers" in your MFI select portfolio?
Focus on income for past 12 months. Is it stable? Is it growing? Is it sustainable? I just look at operating income to filter out noise.
I think posting about MFI once per month is totally reasonable. I only post my MFI results once per quarter, and I only update my stock prices once per month for all my stock portfolios. It helps eliminate the noise; plus, when I'm at work I cannot track my stocks that closely.
- j
At the same time so sad there was no update this weekend
JB, where can I read your posts?
Also, I just cycled a block for everybody to read about!
https://magicformulamoney.com/block-4/
Casey,
I post quarterly at:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/magicformulainvesting
and also, Magic Formula Investing at Motley Fool
Though I think the Yahoo group is inactive. My last post for Q1 was written, but the administrator(s) didn't post it.
regards,
j
Post a Comment