Tomas Vykruta Data Daily

The problem with the Total Stock Market funds such as VTSMX (and with many other similar funds) is they are dollar weighted, not % weighted to large/small/growth/value. From vanguard's site: " Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund is designed to provide investors with exposure to the entire U.S. equity market, including small-, mid-, and large-cap growth and value stocks.  " It's true there are small value stocks in there, but by % of portfolio, those represent only a small fraction. For this reason I buy equal % large growth index and small value index, and do another % assignment to the emerging markets side. It's surprisingly tricky to figure out what % of the US stock market, by dollars, is Small Value. This may be representative way to determine what % is small value: Vanguard small value   VISVX  net assets: 1.95 billion Vanguard large growth VIGRSX: 86.4 billion vanguard large value VIVAX: 74.2 billion That means if you b...

Fun behavioral finance exercise. I give you choice of 2 investment opportunities. You give me $10,000 and I give you.. 1. $600 back every year, but 1 in 2 chance I lose half of your $10k in the 3-5 years. Tough luck. 2. $350 every year without risk, and you can take your $10k back any time. Which do you choose? (we'll come back to this) The stock market is at an all time high, but so is FOMO. If you're a rationally sane person, and your view is something like: "the market COULD go up a lot more.. but it's already very high, so we might be coming up on a recession, and definitely slowing growth." You're savvy, far above average, and take a holistic view. You don't watch the stock tickers daily and over-react to headlines. You wait for something significant, like a geo political event. Meanwhile you're stuffing S&P and AMZN. You have some bonds (80/20?), but you're concentrated into the market a lo...