2025 / 2026 Investment Thread

[Das MotorRad]

Your goals may be different than others. Do you want to double your balance in a few years or keep the nest egg you’ve worked to accumulate? 75% or more of the sp500 gains in the last couple of years have been from tech companies investing in ai and data centers. There may be some pullback from that over the next few years.

 

[augustiron]

Spy
Voo
Same as always

 

[Reli]

SPY is a ripoff, it's 0.09%. VOO is the exact same thing but only charges 0.03%. The only advantage of SPY is that it's higher volume, which can be good for options traders.

I never buy either of those anyway, I buy VTI which covers the S&P500 and nearly everything below it (~3,000 stocks). And the fee is the same as VOO's.

For foreign stocks I buy VXUS which covers all size categories, not just large caps. Last year I was roughly 50/50 VTI/VXUS, and did better than I would have with just VTI. And I expect that trend to continue this year. The US is overvalued IMO.

 

[Reli]

Your goals may be different than others. Do you want to double your balance in a few years or keep the nest egg you’ve worked to accumulate? 75% or more of the sp500 gains in the last couple of years have been from tech companies investing in ai and data centers. There may be some pullback from that over the next few years.

Simple way to reduce your tech exposure is to put only 50-60% of your money in the total market, and the other 40-50% in something like RSP, which is an equal-weight S&P500 where each company gets the same weight, instead of the big tech names dominating. The fee is a bit high though, at 0.2%

Or instead of RSP you could buy a dividend aristocrat fund. Those funds are skewed away from tech and more towards banks, healthcare, utilities, and consumer staples.

 

[GAJ]

Alright, what are the BARF nerds investing in these days? I don't understand puts, calls, yada yada etc. etc., and have a little cash in various brokerage accounts I would like to invest.

Guns.

SHLD.

 

[augustiron]

I got shld and euad on the same day a while back...

 

[GAJ]

Weird, SHLD is up 75.7 percent over the past year while EUAD (which I also own) is up 58.7 percent.

The other third of my Roths is in Euro Stock Index Funds with Schwabb and they have not done as well as that but soundly beating the S&P.

 

[augustiron]

You got it well before i did apparently

 

[GAJ]

You got it well before i did apparently

Even YTD SHLD has outperformed EUAD, 14.1 vs 10.8.

 

[Caddywumpus]

Yes but if you bought one on an up day and the other on a down day it could skew the results.

 

[Caddywumpus]

I am really really not a fan of covered calls, except with very strict application (buy out of the money, .1 delta or less.) They are like an extra small dividend payment. All of those ETFs that buy at-the-money covered calls on the SPY are not a good deal. You lose so much upside and the premium isn't even that great, nor will it protect you substantially in a major downward trend.

If security is what you are after, you need to do an equity collar. That's where the covered call premium is used to buy a put. You don't get any extra return but you do get downside protection at the cost of more limited upside.

Thats just like your opinion man.

I sold some 100 ASTS calls for March 20th, I collected $7 in premium. ASTS needs to blow past 107 for me to "lose" on the trade, and even then I can roll for more premium. In the meantime these shares are free becasue I have been selling covered calls and the cost basis of the shares was originally less than $20. These are all free shares at this point. I also sold a couple of 100 puts just for the off chance that it does blow up I collected a ton of premium. I can roll those down as the covered calls expire.