YTD 2026 Networth tracking thread

[elvintay07]

I think Warren Buffett also missed the AI train. Big time.

https://www.investopedia.com/berksh...will-warren-buffett-come-to-regret-it-8600072

Berkshire Hathaway Doesn't Hold Nvidia Stock—Will Warren Buffett Come to Regret it?​

​

Subject matter expert. I doubt his company anyone knows about AI. They may think it is a scam like crypto. Haha!

 

[hwmook]

I'm contributing from trading perspective. Currently only 14% still invested while waiting for next opportunity. Account is six figures size (since the start). This is my liquid investible net worth, excluding emergency cash savings and CPF.

A lot of ups and downs but I finally got back to ATH again after 3 years.
Averaged annualized return since the start is 23% per year (low due to the big drop during 2022 crash and having to recover from it).

IBKR's TWR stats:

Regrets: I missed most of the uranium boat and the AI boat in 2023, due to being overly focused chasing a few rabbits that got me nowhere. For 2024, I caught the gold and silver boat.

I would like to comment about losing all the profits in 2022. It truly sucks. BABA was a major contributor.
Being forced to recover after that equally sucks. You can see the drawdowns were very tightly controlled after 2022 bottom.

Your results is not bad, show you mine for comparison.

 

[sohguanh]

I wonder if anyone do a analysis of your CPF OA investment versus CPF 2.5% over a long period of time say 20 years. Note since CPF investment you are limited in your choices (for me is started late 90s) versus using pure hard cash investment. All I can say is I beat that by some margin.

The phrase staying invested does work but it is a really long time horizon if using cash I doubt I can do it without selling out and wait for better entry along the way.

Edit: My benchmark mark to beat is simply more than 2.5% will do no need benchmark with s&p 500 etc so ambitious

 

[stanlawj]

Your results is not bad, show you mine for comparison.

AMD and collecting options premium? Did you rotate out of AMD to something else?

 

[aurvandil]

Comparison is the thief of joy. ~ Theodore Roosevelt ​

 

[hwmook]

AMD and collecting options premium? Did you rotate out of AMD to something else?

I have a few other counters, I don't really rotate out but my short term holdings does increase and decrease depend on the price. Using options also help me to sell and buy at price which I think is reasonable. So I hold these stocks for long term and trade them as well.

I don't play with commodities since a number of years back. Even though I made money from that, I realised that it's harder to predict the trend and I can do the same thing with stocks anyway.

 

[hwmook]

Comparison is the thief of joy. ~ Theodore Roosevelt ​

Learn something new today, never heard of this before. There is always someone better than you so no point trying to outdo others, just learn to be better everyday.

 

[limster]

Learn something new today, never heard of this before. There is always someone better than you so no point trying to outdo others, just learn to be better everyday.

100% agree with this, I feel that most people including myself did go through the 'comparison stage' when I was younger.

I think once you hit your 40s, you have already created your own identity and life journey, less need to compare to others.

Not comparing doesn't mean not learning from others - which is why I am happy to learn from other investors who share what they are doing. Otherwise I don't learn anything so I ignore those sort of posts/blogs.

 

[d5dude]

The two issues are somewhat related.

Depending on what you are trading, the lack of scalability could of course be due to the instrument or the market you are in.. However very often the scalability has less to do with the market and more to do with the trader.
All traders eventually reach a saturation point beyond which they don't want to grow any bigger.

Eh but who wouldnt want to make more money doing the same thing? RenTech is still around, it wouldnt matter if they are managing 600b instead of 60b if they are able to generate the same kind of returns, its not like Jim Simmons retired 30 years ago, the truth is RenTech's strategy simply isnt infinitely scaleable.

At this point, you have achieved most of your life goals. Even though you are consistent, it is still a roll of the dice and you could lose big in the next trade. You therefore cap the size of your account and put money away for other things.

Roll of the dice implies that luck plays a huge role in generating Alpha/outsized returns, which is exactly my point. Nobody knows if it was just luck until a trader/investor blows up.

Buffet did that too and he reinvented himself to become a corporate financier. His moment of greatest glory was not finding a 100-200 bagger but in having money to lend during GFC 1.0. In playing Shylock, he scored many once in a life time deals that are impossible for anyone to replicate. For the recent covid crisis, he was thinking he would score again. Unfortunately the FED beat him to it with QE Unlimited.

Actually Buffett made most of his money after the age of 65 (99%), and he did that with concentrated bets on some very good companies, not thru financing. Berkshire's profit on Apple alone already amounts to ~130b.

A good example of what happens when you don't cap yourself is Bill Hwang of Archegos. Not sure what he was thinking. He was already in the billion dollar club. Yet he felt the need to continue to hit the market as if he were just starting out.

Bill Hwang's luck ran out, it was simply a matter of time since he was leveraged 5X. Live and die by the sword I suppose, he probably got to the billion dollar club with massively leveraged trades anyway.

 

[stanlawj]

Those who want to know exactly what transpired as margin calls piled in up to $13B.
Whenever you need to make large withdrawals from a bank, the bank will start questioning you. Banks will lend you an umbrella on a sunny day, and take the umbrella back on a rainy day.

https://www.livemint.com/news/arche...-in-error-during-collapse-11716486992677.html

As Archegos positions cratered in March 2021, it began trying to pull excess cash from trading accounts across Wall Street. It set its eyes on about $470 million at Goldman.

But instead of withdrawing the money, an Archegos staffer accidentally wired that amount to Goldman, and the bank didn’t immediately give it back. That left Hwang’s family office down nearly $1 billion as it was scrambling to prop up its positions and deal with the massive margin calls that would obliterate it out days later.

The previously undisclosed episode emerged during Hwang’s trial on fraud and market manipulation charges stemming from his firm’s collapse, which ultimately cost his counterparties $10 billion.

Former Archegos risk management chief Scott Becker, one of the prosecution’s star witnesses, described the mistaken wire on the stand under cross-examination by Hwang’s lawyer, Barry Berke.

“It was a very chaotic day," Berke said while questioning Becker.

Becker testified that the Goldman wire was sent by Archegos operations team member Barima Osei on March 24, 2021.

“Archegos had approximately a billion dollars less in its operating account at Bank of America because of this error," Becker testified.

At the time Archegos was drawing excess funds from any counterparties it could. Jefferies Financial Group managing director Jennifer Miranda testified last week that the scramble prompted her to call Becker.
“What’s the emergency? Why?" Miranda said she wondered at the time. She said she let Archegos withdraw $240 million after Becker reassured her Archegos had ample cash.

Becker has been testifying that he was directed to lie to banks to increase trading capacity and then to buy time on the inevitable margin calls. He said on the stand that Archegos was expecting $13 billion in margin calls on March 25, 2021. It’s unclear if Goldman was included in that estimate.

Goldman was one of the banks able to offload its Archegos holdings relatively quickly, allowing it to emerge unscathed from the debacle. Archegos’ largest counterparty was Credit Suisse Group AG, and its $5.5 billion in losses trading with Hwang contributed to its collapse last year.

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Pay back margin debt while the times are still good (sell into strength).

 

[aurvandil]

Roll of the dice implies that luck plays a huge role in generating Alpha/outsized returns, which is exactly my point. Nobody knows if it was just luck until a trader/investor blows up.

if you are just starting out and you made 50% in your first year, there is no way you know if it is skill or luck.

if you have done it for 15 to 20 years and you averaged 50% through the entire period, you get the sense that it is probably not just luck. That somehow you have developed a trading edge that gives a positive expectations game. This trading edge is not unlike the card counting edge in blackjack that allows you to beat the house over the long run (no longer possible because of counter measures like CSM).

The problem is that because it is from empirical observation, you can never 100% reject the hypothesis that the outcome is just an incredible lucky streak. Like casino gambling , trading is a memory less game. To deal with this, you cap your account to an amount you are comfortable with. You obsessively build reserves and draw money out to enjoy the small pleasures in life. This is even as you continue to wrack up those impressive looking returns.

 

[aurvandil]

Those who want to know exactly what transpired as margin calls piled in up to $13B.

The key questions is why he needed to do it until that size. A 9 figure amount like $100 mil or $200 mil is an insane amount of money that no one can reasonably spend in their life. It is just ego to want to be the biggest when you choose to go all in like this.

 

[highsulphur]

The key questions is why he needed to do it until that size. A 9 figure amount like $100 mil or $200 mil is an insane amount of money that no one can reasonably spend in their life. It is just ego to want to be the biggest when you choose to go all in like this.

Maybe he was spending 10m a year. Who knows what do rich people spend their money on?

Even for more "normal" folks here for say spend 200 to 300k a year, how much is realistically enough at 50 years old?

 

[aurvandil]

Maybe he was spending 10m a year. Who knows what do rich people spend their money on?

Even for more "normal" folks here for say spend 200 to 300k a year, how much is realistically enough at 50 years old?

A key motto I believe in is to live well but not sumptuously.
If you are living a life of luxurious decadence, it is hard to focus on your trades.

 

[limster]

A key motto I believe in is to live well but not sumptuously.
If you are living a life of luxurious decadence, it is hard to focus on your trades.

luxury and sumptuous living are all relative.
someone with a $10m yacht may think he's slumming it compared to those with $100m yachts and helipad
someone with a baby 6 set Embraer will think its a low class transport vs someone with Boeing 737.

 

[d5dude]

if you are just starting out and you made 50% in your first year, there is no way you know if it is skill or luck.

if you have done it for 15 to 20 years and you averaged 50% through the entire period, you get the sense that it is probably not just luck. That somehow you have developed a trading edge that gives a positive expectations game. This trading edge is not unlike the card counting edge in blackjack that allows you to beat the house over the long run (no longer possible because of counter measures like CSM).

The problem is that because it is from empirical observation, you can never 100% reject the hypothesis that the outcome is just an incredible lucky streak. Like casino gambling , trading is a memory less game. To deal with this, you cap your account to an amount you are comfortable with. You obsessively build reserves and draw money out to enjoy the small pleasures in life. This is even as you continue to wrack up those impressive looking returns.

Yea there is no way to know if its just luck even if the "good luck" was over a long period of time like 20 years. Nobody really knows and there is no way to know but my gut feeling is that luck probably plays a more important role in generating outsized returns than most people think...

 

[d5dude]

The key questions is why he needed to do it until that size. A 9 figure amount like $100 mil or $200 mil is an insane amount of money that no one can reasonably spend in their life. It is just ego to want to be the biggest when you choose to go all in like this.

Bill Hwang was a religious fanatic who thought God was always going to bless him with good fortune (he was one of the largest Christian philanthropist in the US). This delusion and a ton of luck was what enabled him to get his billions in the first place.

 

[aurvandil]

Yea there is no way to know if its just luck even if the "good luck" was over a long period of time like 20 years. Nobody really knows and there is no way to know but my gut feeling is that luck probably plays a more important role in generating outsized returns than most people think...

Over the 20 year period, many people will observe a considerable improvement in skill. This is especially if they specialize and trade just 1 product over the 20 years. This skill increase is born from the numerous times you lost money and learnt from your mistakes. The luck component decreases over time and you can empirically measure this by observing a consistent reduction in your draw down year on year.

 

[d5dude]

Maybe he was spending 10m a year. Who knows what do rich people spend their money on?

Even for more "normal" folks here for say spend 200 to 300k a year, how much is realistically enough at 50 years old?

He lived in a 3m dollar house, which is basically nothing for someone worth 15b (before the implosion). I think he lived a simple life so its unlikely that materialistic hedonism was the motivation behind his relentless pursuit of wealth.

 

[aurvandil]

luxury and sumptuous living are all relative.
someone with a $10m yacht may think he's slumming it compared to those with $100m yachts and helipad
someone with a baby 6 set Embraer will think its a low class transport vs someone with Boeing 737.

If you want to be good at it, you have to spend 8 to 10 hours a day watching screen.
This is even if you are swing trading so that you can understand the order flow and narrative of what is happening.

You don't need a mansion or penthouse to do this.
All you need is a comfortable place to think and work.

You cannot be watching screen if you are always on a private jet or on a yacht,
You also cannot focus if you are continuously having wild parties of wine, women and song.