[Boffin]

Originally Posted by CoachKandSportsguy

Currently have investment money with Fidelity, Vanguard, Wells Fargo and Interative Brokers.

Vanguard is a low cost dumpster fire of a firm IT systems old, and paper statements suck. Attract bogglehead cultists, and actively dismisses any criticisms of such from their forums, if not investors. Actively discourages fund swapping and trading. Pros: does develop and use annual tax minimization strategies which results in a higher tax upon withdrawal in taxable accounts. tldr: they swap annual short term gains for long term cap gains for a lower tax rate but a higher pretax gain amount. pick your poison. Last time I had issues, no online forms, but printing and USPS mail only. . not a risk free lost mail proposition. . Also has developed and IRS approved swapping managed mutual funds to a similar ETF for zero tax implications, which is huge. Other financial firms are copying it which is great for the current tax advantage of ETFs over mutual funds.

Advantage long term set it and forget it investors. . main customer target is 401K/IRA corporate accounts.

Wells Fargo most corrupt national financial institution around. most fined institution primarily handling individual investments. Still trying to clean up the lack of controls and internal fraud. Great online data / transactional excel format, including withholding/payment of taxes with all transactions. very easy to reconcile from start to end. Currently I am using a CFA advisor, with someone who can easily recommend different strategies. WF custom built a stock portfolio for my parents 2 accounts which has withstood since the 1990s with excellent stability, growth and dividends. But that was before the corruption stated. Very easy to talk with, however, the downside is that he is very tax ignorant, as he should be. His job is to invest for wealth creation. The CPA is to manage strategies for tax minimization. I am currently bridging the two due my parent's financial situation, can't do one without the other. Am not using their on line brokerage features, so I can't comment. Currently assigned advisor not able to be changed easily if desired, I tried for a more local one and was denied, saying its up to the individual branch negotiations.

Fidelity have been an options trading customer since the early 80s. My first options course was in freshman year of college in 1976-77. Great local firm with offices for easy access. great customer service. Have regular web seminars, and have attended both online and in person seminars. Last one was the ins and outs of collecting social security timing. Currently using their Active Trader pro software, dislike their web site for trading. Financial reports are pretty, however, they suck for being super intuitive. have two different labeling conventions for funds. Missing tax withheld transactions, making it difficult to foot transactions from opening balance to ending balance. Having worked with insiders after leaving, they are profit/incentive driven from their advisors to their fund managers. Consistently had the lowest interest rate / dividend rate of competitors due to high fund management costs, accruals for incentives.

Current customer targets: corporate 401K / 403B plans and very high net worth customers. small individual investors, not so much, but you are coat tailing the high net worth strategies.

Friends are using their internal portfolio management strategies, and all are very happy with it. One friend retired early, prior to 60, using Fidelity's IRA tax strategies to avoid early withdrawal penalties. . . somehow, not sure of the details. . for regular monthly paychecks.

Interactive brokers: target customers are high tech algorithmic traders. cheapest transaction costs anywhere, since all electronic. Can send orders for execution using python, making lots of trades in many accounts much faster and efficient. Have lots of independent strategies to select from. I tried one options strategy, and they executed very well, but I got my account executed at the same time. For only highly sophisticated investors, and mostly used for risky strategies. Sending and executing orders electronically was cool for me anyway, but I don't trust the purchased trading strategies yet, as i use independent purchased portfolio strategies along with personally in development trading strategies being developed with python.

Conclusion: most big firms, V, WF, and Fido charge alot as they target high net worth individuals. Most strategies will be a buy and hold with minimal trading or monthly/quarterly rebalancing. Most do not have any systemic issue protection, so if the SP500 goes down 40%, and your portfolio goes down 30%, it's a huge win! Quarterly rebalancing is the max length of time for conservative portfolios. There are factor investing strategies which can be very good as well, such as investing in high inflationary environment. There are publicly available portfolios to track, such as the JPM Efficient Five https://sp.jpmorgan.com/spweb/content/307403.pdf and there are small / private money managers who will manage your portfolio at a cost. however, cost should NOT be the sole/primary selection driver. Strategy with quarterly rebalancing and after tax/commission returns, sharpe ratio, and largest annual drawdowns should be the primary metrics for evaluation.

good luck, and sorry if the post was long or detailed, but the trade off is personal experience. And yes, all my own very opinionated opinions, use it or ignore it, i don't care.

Options eh? Interesting. Do you happen to use the Black and Scholes Model? Any interest in Elliot Wave Theory? How about Gap Analysis?

[Boffin]

Originally Posted by stevecmo

The S&P 500 has averaged 11.8% return over the last 20 years. Let that sink in. Edward Jones did you no favors.

The S&P 500 has delivered an average annual return of 10.13% since 1957, but when adjusted for inflation, the real return drops to 6.37%. Let that “ sink in”.

[CoachKandSportsguy]

Originally Posted by Boffin

Options eh? Interesting. Do you happen to use the Black and Scholes Model? Any interest in Elliot Wave Theory? How about Gap Analysis?

yes (there are several options pricing model, but I just reference from Fidelity calls for delta , am aware of gamma. for future prices if more than 1 day for selling callsI use BS model outputs for theta)
nope
nope

Herm Cycle analysis (39 Day Market Cycle)
Interest Rate Term Premium and yield spreads
Equity Risk Premium
Select Technical Analysis
AAII, II and NAAIM sentiment
CBOE options data: VIX term structure, SKEW term structure and Realized Volatility
Seasonality by day of year

trying to add US Macro data but its sketchy difficult with changing weights by the BLS, and questionable data collection.


and you?

[CoachKandSportsguy]

From Prometheus Research:

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Insights From Our S&P 500 Program
Conversative Program Positions
PROMETHEUS RESEARCH
MAR 24

We will release our Prometheus S&P 500 program next month. However, markets are moving quickly, and we wanted to share insights from our signals to help investors navigate risk during these challenging times.


The Prometheus S&P 500 Program seeks to outperform the S&P 500 over a full investment cycle. We define a full investment cycle as a period of time where markets have experienced bull and bear markets with a generalized upward drift. Since our last note, the program has performed in line with its design, with our downside protection primarily driving performance.
For the purposes of this post, we will share the programmatic views of the conservative version of this program. This program targets a maximum of 10% expected risk. This version will lag indexes during extremely strong, highly volatile bull markets. However, over the full investment cycle, this program seeks to outperform by maintaining responsible upside exposure while reducing or avoiding drawdowns. We visualize the simulated 3-year returns below:

Today, while equity markets are in a drawdown of approximately 6.5%, the program has taken only about half that drawdown, maintaining a drawdown of 3%. This is consistent with the portfolio objectives. Today, the portfolio is positioned as follows:

Our strategies continue to maintain largely the same exposures as last week. Our 10% risk control continues to limit equity risk, with modest Treasury and cash positions as complements. There are three major takeaways from these positions:
• Beta Timing: Our beta timing program suggests a higher likelihood of positive forward returns than negative ones. The economy is still in expansionary territory, and this sell-off has cheapened equities relative to other assets, earnings expectations, and recent price levels. Despite accounting for near-term trends, our beta timing process indicates a positive near-term outlook for equities.
• Sector Selection: While our Beta Timing engine continues to suggest a positive near-term outlook for equities, we would be reticent to neglect more standard valuation measures. These measures have reduced our overall sector exposure. Within the cross-section of equity sectors, our signals prefer Industrial & Technology stocks as their investment activity continues to climb. While the medium-term outlook for equity expected returns is low, we expect relative value opportunities for sector selection.
• Risk Control: We think this one is crucial. Any long-term investor seeking to outperform equities over the long term can benefit from controlling their risk, especially when equities have large and sudden drawdowns. By reducing overall exposures when the equity market has a spike in volatility, we reduce the volatility drag on our portfolios. With equity volatility spikes, pulling back on total exposure is essential and likely to be additive.
• Bond Overlays: Our systems have deployed a tactical bond overlay. However, with equity market trends now closer to a turning point, our strategies may begin to reduce bond exposures if a durable upside equity trend performs.
We think combining these measures will allow investors to have significant upcapture during a bull market and limited downcapture in a bear market. These observations come from a time-tested approach to markets. We visualize this testing below:

Equity markets have begun to see moderately improved trends. Our systems see the potential for these trends to continue to improve. If trend breadth widens and equity volatility begins to compress, we will likely begin to reduce bond exposures as our strategies increase equity exposures.

[TheOne&Only]

If you like them, that is good. If they are making you money that is good. Not sure what you are paying them to do that, but usually the going rate is 1% or less depending on how much money they are managing for you. Everyone's situation is different and without any details about your situation you may or may not need someone to manage your money. If you are not sure what they are doing, you really need to get involved because after all.....it is your money and you want to make sure it is being invested the way you want it to be invested.

[stevecmo]

Originally Posted by Boffin

The S&P 500 has delivered an average annual return of 10.13% since 1957, but when adjusted for inflation, the real return drops to 6.37%. Let that “ sink in”.

The poster I was responding to said he was happy with the 7% average return from his Edward Jones account over the last 15 years. He made no mention of returns since 1957 and no mention of inflation adjusted.

So I stand by my statement that EJ did him no favors.

[DAVES]

Originally Posted by AMB444

Above ^

I have an accounting degree and can apply myself if I need to. (I'm at that age that I don't want to)

What are the advantages of keeping a "keeper" of investments.

So far I like my "investment person". But willing to listen to you educated folk.

Thank you in advance for not being overly condescending, like this forum tends to lean towards.

TIA

I do wonder why you are asking. You say you are happy. First of all not sure why but it seems the technonerds had a meeting and said DAVES has everything working it is time to make changes-reset passwords new secret codes. I lost my ovalteem decoder ring years ago. I like Fidelity because we have an office at Lake Sumpter Landing, You can find a H U M A N to talk to, If, you call you will AFTER THE AI raises your blood pressure H U M A N
to help you at virtually any time. I also have accounts at T. Rowe and Vanguard. Hours are mon-fri 9-5 whatever time zone they claim they are in.
HUM where is my secret password for T. Rowe and Vanguard? Oh and what have they changed to ANNOY ME?

Aside, Talk of the Villages asked me to reset my password. Must have been at the TECHNONERD annoy DAVES meeting.