Slow and steady often wins the race.

On May 5, 2013 I wrote an article called, “Should I Invest In China? A Top Down And Bottoms Up Perspective.” My simple thesis was that with the Yen depreciating to 100+ due to Abenomics coupled with strong world markets, China must inevitably catch up in a risk-on environment. I then identified the Chinese internet space as the most laggard sector where investors should consider putting money to work. Chinese internet stocks have been going straight down for two years. Stock picks included BIDU, SINA, and RENN.

So what happened with the stock picks since then? And more importantly, did I put my money where my mouth is or was I just pontificating like some useless Wall St. research analyst does with Neutral/Hold/Wait And See ratings? I hope you know by now that I don’t like wasting time writing about things I don’t know or care to act upon. Of course I invested in my thesis. I just didn’t invest enough.

Almost like magic, every single name ramped higher by 15-25% within three weeks after publication while the broader markets climbed 2%. It was almost as if someone got a hold of my article and forwarded it around, causing a buying frenzy. If there’s a chance this is true, is there any wonder why hedge funds keep their holdings as close to their chests as possible?

Since publishing my post on China, my IRA grew by roughly $40,000. Sounds OK right? Not really since I started off with $400,000 at the end of April. I will usually take a 10% gain for the full year any day. However, a 10% gain is a 5-15% underperformance of my stock picks, equating to roughly $20,000 to $60,000 in money left on the table.

So what the hell happened to cause such a leakage in performance you ask? Ill-timed accumulation and exiting of positions as well as FEAR. Remember, I am the King of bad trades. The below chart shows the value of my IRA portfolio today. The pending activity is pending cash as a result of $209,913 worth of stock sales as I’m continuously worried about a market correction. I already sold $168,006 worth of stock several days earlier. At the same time, I’m not willing to place massive short bets either because the market is being artificially propped up by the Fed.

IRA portfolio 5/22/13

MY IRA PORTFOLIO BEFORE THE BAD TRADES Read more…

Sell too soon. Buy too early. Sound familiar? Welcome to the club. I am the King of making suboptimal trades due to fear and greed. Whenever I’m about to make a trade, I begin to have delusions thinking I’m smarter than the market. After all, I need to have conviction if I’m going to put tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to work.

When my bid gets lifted or my offer gets hit, I’ve already made a mistake. Why? Because there are two sides to every trade and in that brief transactional moment the other side is usually always getting the better deal. For example, let’s say you want to sell a stock with a limit at $10 a share. As soon as you sell, the stock will probably move higher with momentum. You start cursing yourself for not holding out a little while longer.

If you’re looking at buying a stock that’s been beaten up, chances are high that if your buy order gets filled the stock will continue to move lower due to an imbalance in sell orders. You then kick yourself for not being a little bit more patient to buyat a more favorable price. You can enter an order way below the existing share price, but nobody will be willing to sell.

If you focus on getting the best price possible when you’re building a position, it’s very easy to get frustrated with the volatility of the markets. If the stock performs well after purchase over the long run, your purchase of the day doesn’t really matter. However, I’m focused on the short run and the long run. A lot of money is made or lost on the initial entry price.

Despite the stock market enabling me to buy my first property by 26, I’m going to highlight why I actually dislike investing in the stock market even if I’m making money. A lot of you folks will respond by saying “that’s why I just buy and hold” which is fine. But those of you who want to go beyond plain index investing and are hooked to fortune hunting like me, this post is for you.

STOCK MARKET INVESTORS / TRADERS BEWARE Read more…

After two years, my beloved tenant is leaving me for another man. My tenant is a single woman in her 50s who sold her house on the east coast to start a new life in San Francisco. She’s always wondered what the west coast fuss was all about so she decided to see for herself. After a year of work, she met someone and is now moving in with him.

I’m so sad to see my tenant go as she’s been wonderful. Yet, I’m so happy she’s found new love! I don’t know what it is about my rental property but every single tenant ends up marrying or finding someone special. Good feng shui perhaps!

As I wrote in my real estate vs. stocks post, real estate takes more effort to manage. I’ve got to now host multiple open houses and carefully vette my future tenants like the CIA to ensure the least amount of headache down the road. Thank goodness everything is so easy to do on Craigslist nowadays. I’ve got all the application forms and after almost 10 years of being a landlord, I know exactly what to look for.

If you are an aspiring landlord or a new renter in a hot market, this post should help provide some prospective to getting what you want.

CRITERIA AND DOCUMENTS NEEDED WHEN APPLYING TO RENT Read more…

It should come as NO surprise to long time Financial Samurai readers that the IRS admitted to targeting conservative groups since Obama became President. The government already discriminates against those who make over a certain amount by charging higher taxes even though they already pay for the majority of all taxes. Meanwhile, the deductions and credits you get for things such as education and children get eliminated if you make over an absurdly low amount. Conducting body cavity searches to shake more tax dollars out of Republicans is business as usual.

Make no mistake that if a Republican was President, liberal groups would also be targeted by the IRS. Everybody naturally discriminates against everybody. Sometimes the discrimination is overt and evil, other times the discrimination is covertly done out of convenience until discovered as is the case with the IRS.

The bottom line is that people have a strong proclivity to take care of their own, no matter what. In this article I’d like to discuss ways in which people can significantly reduce their chances of getting audited by the most powerful organization in America.

THREE EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES TO AVOID AN IRS AUDIT Read more…

When I first began investing in college with the money I earned from odd jobs in high school, I had no idea what I was doing. Online investing was a new concept back in 1997 and I couldn’t believe I could randomly press some buttons to buy and sell stocks. I was hooked and would purposefully arrange my college classes around market hours to get in some feverish trades.

What took exhaustive summers of working minimum wage jobs to save what little money I had quickly got wiped out making ill-advised trades. One time I bought a software company named Macromedia which I thought was a bank. Another time I bought a graphics chip maker named TDFX at the absolute top. The good thing about only having $3,000 to my name is that the most I could lose is $3,000.

It’s been 17 years since I first made my first trade online, and I’ve developed a much more thorough and systematic approach to investing. During this time, I’ve literally made and lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in the process. When you lose money, you start cursing the world and your stupidity. Just look at all the folks who bought into the Facebook IPO hype at $38, Apple at $700+, and any Chinese internet stock a couple years ago. Oops!

If only I had some type of platform where I could trade with virtual currency as realistically as possible for a couple more years. Maybe, just maybe I wouldn’t have made as many investment errors as I did since college. Maybe I would have been smart and shorted the home builders in 2007. Maybe I would have hedged out my company stock during the crisis to make sure I don’t receive a double whammy of a lower bonus and a lower share price. Who knows for sure. What I do know is that if you plan on investing your own money,do as much due diligence as possible. You won’t know your true risk tolerance until your positions start going the wrong way.

For those of you who are inexperienced investors, I’m pleased to introduce a startup called Olim Dives. Olim Dives means “future wealth and prosperity” in Old Latin and was started by Ben Hubbard and Roshan Vani. Olim Dives is a social investing site which allows users to trade a virtual $100,000 as close to real life as possible. You can also share ideas, compete for prizes, and learn from fellow users in the process as it’s a social investing site. Where was this stock market game when I was growing up?!

A CONVERSATION WITH OLIM DIVES’ FOUNDER, BEN HUBBARD Read more…

Money, sex, power, love, faith and family. What more do you need to live a happy life? I’ve read a number of very uninspiring “Best Jobs” articles by career think tanks and I’ve decided to write my own. I really don’t know what some of these publications are thinking. It’s as if the best jobs on their list are all their top advertisement clients or something.

Actuary, audiologist, and dental hygienist are considered three of the best jobs according to a company called Career Path. Who? No wonder why the majority of people hate their jobs if these are considered the best of the best. Even suicide rates for those in their 40s and 50s are up a startling 28% in the past decade according to the government, probably thanks to miserable jobs.

Life is too short to do bullshit jobs for bullshit money. Your’re not going to look back on your life and think how awesome you were for selling millions of gadgets. You won’t care that you litigated the hell out of your competitors. Nor will it matter whether you made your clients big bucks. The truly best jobs in the world are those you would gladly do for free because you are producing something meaningful to society.

THE BEST JOBS IN THE WORLD Read more…

According to a new study by the Urban Institute, the wealth gap among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics has continued to increase. Before the recession, White families, on average, were about four times wealthier than non-White families, according to Federal Reserve data. By 2010, White families were about six times as wealthy. The most recent data shows the average White family has about $632,000 in wealth, versus $98,000 for Black families and $110,000 for Hispanic families. But what about Asian families?

Last I checked, there are 4.3 billion Asians in the world, making up 62% of the world’s population. What’s surprising is that only around 5% of the American population is Asian. If there’s only 16 million people to sell to out of a country population of 310 million, no wonder why nobody really cares about Asians. Money talks!

When you grow up attending international schools, living in the Spanish house in college and working in Manhattan and San Francisco, it’s very hard to accept a world where there isn’t much diversity. 33% of San Francisco’s population is Asian for example. This post will attempt to understand why Asians consistently get ignored by researchers, politicians, and the media. I’ll also offer solutions as to how Asian Americans can gain more coverage.

WHY DON’T MORE PEOPLE CARE ABOUT ASIANS? Read more…

The two week vacation to Hawaii was perfect except for one thing. My financial advisor from Citibank failed to call me the day a particular deal was closing as previously discussed. This investment offered between a 15% to 20% guaranteed return on the Dow Jones over four years if the Dow closes above the initial strike price plus any upside beyond the guarantee and a 10% downside buffer. I wanted to know whether the guaranteed return was 15%, 16%, 17%, 18%, 19%, or 20% to determine how much to invest. I already made up my mind that I would lob anywhere between $20,000 – $30,000 into this note.

Instead of getting a call on the day of closing, I get an e-mail two days after the close saying he got his calendars totally mixed up. Sigh. At least give a believable excuse! You know like, “I went binge drinking the night before and called in sick on Monday.”

Tim’s lack of follow up is costing me around $1,000 in paper gains in just a couple of weeks as the Dow has moved from 14,300 to over 15,000 at the moment. As an early retiree, I’m investing all the disposable income I’ve got because I’m looking for capital appreciation and income to help replace my lack of W2 income. Leaving cash in a money market account yielding 0.1% is a financial crime I refuse to commit.

Lesson learned. For those of you who are interested in an upcoming IPO and plan on going away for vacation, put in your IOI (indication of interest) before you leave and stagger your order size depending on the final price. My financial advisor might still forget to input the order, but at least there will be an e-mail trail indicating my IOI, and the firm can fill the order in arrears.

THE MAIN REASONS TO HAVE A FINANCIAL ADVISOR  Read more…

If you have tremendous money strength, you will never have to draw down on your retirement principal. Your goal, if you choose to accept, is to create an estate that will provide for your loved ones long after you are gone. This is what endowments do. Why not consider doing the same if you are a magnanimous and financially savvy individual? You’re reading Financial Samurai after all!

I always scratch my head when I hear advisors talk about the “4% withdrawal rule” or any withdrawal rate that’s greater than a risk free rate of return for that matter. Times have changed folks. Interest rates are close to zero, the stock market isn’t a slam dunk, and we are living much longer now.

There are so many variables that it is impossible to calculate a bullet proof withdrawal rate rule unless that rate is 0%. Sure, there’s a 99% chance you will die before 110 and a 99.9% chance you’ll die before 150, but who really knows? We might be one with machines by the year 2030 and live forever!

Instead of thinking about how much you can withdraw to bleed your retirement funds down to $0 by the time you die, I highly encourage everyone to think about leaving a financial legacy for your loved ones that is so great you’ll never run out of money. Even if we fail to come up with a perpetual giving machine to leave for others, the end result will be much better than if we only focused on ourselves. Related: Is Not Wanting To Be Rich Selfish?

BREAKING DOWN THE IDEAL WITHDRAWAL RATE Read more…

View from Koko Head, Oahu

After rolling over my 401(k) into an IRA, I’d like to focus on potentially the single most beneficial reason why everyone should convert their 401(k) into an IRA after they leave their jobs: Rule 72(t).

Rule 72(t) allows for penalty-free withdrawals of your IRA account before the age of 59.5 provided that the IRA holder take at least five “substantially equal periodic payments” (SEPPs). The amount depends on the IRA owner’s life expectancy calculated with various IRS-approved methods.

Three IRS approved methods to calculate SEPP:

1) Required minimum distribution method: This method takes your current balance and divides it by your single life expectancy or joint life expectancy. Your payment is then recalculated each year with your account balance as of December 31st of the preceding year and your current life expectancy. With this method, your payments will change depending on your account value.

2) Fixed amortization method: This method amortizes your account balance over your single life expectancy, the uniform life expectancy table, or joint life expectancy with your oldest named beneficiary. Such a method is more stable.

3) Fixed annuitization method: This method uses an annuity factor to calculate your SEPP. It’s hard enough calculating life expectancy and portfolio performance, let alone forecast interest rates for annuities so let’s skip this method.

The most common withdrawal calculation method is #1. I’d like to use my example for how using Rule 72(t) can help an early retiree extract more income and lead a more comfortable financial life.

TAXES BAD, MORE INCOME GOOD Read more…

The Nikkei 225 (Japan’s major index) is up over 60% since the election of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on September 26, 2012. Abe has vowed to re-inflate the lagging Japanese economy with a target inflation of 2% through aggressive quantitative easing, setting negative real interest rates, and aggressive fiscal stimulus. So far, investors are in full belief of “Abenomics.”

One of the key results of effective quantitative easing is a depreciation of the Yen. The Yen has depreciated by around 25% vs. the USD and other major currencies. A weaker Yen is exactly what Japanese ministers need to reinvigorate Japan’s enormous export economy.

It’s apparent at least here in the US that Japanese electronics have waned with the rise of South Korean products from Samsung, KIA, and Hyundai. You wouldn’t be caught dead in a Hyundai 15 years ago. Now everything seems alright. Heck, the most popular YouTube sensation is PSY, a Korean pop singer.

Japanese electronics have always been considered of superior quality with premium pricing to boot. Now the difference in quality seems negligible at best, so prices must come down to stay competitive. A depreciating Yen is doing exactly that, while allowing manufacturers to save face by not cutting prices.

But let’s forget about the South Koreans for a while since they aren’t the Asian superpower the United States are worried about. Let’s try and get into the minds of the Chinese.

WHAT WILL CHINA DO? Read more…

For two decades I’ve been managing my own money. It all started when I saved up $3,000 from random minimum wage jobs to open up an online trading account under my father’s guidance. This was in the early 90′s when Charles Schwab first came out. One time I bought a company which I thought sold software, but was actually a bank! Clearly, I had no idea what I was doing. Thankfully, when you start off with only $3,000, the most you can lose is $3,000.

When it takes you several summers at $4 an hour to squirrel away $3,000 only to see half of it vanish in a matter of months due to poor investment decisions, you kind of curse the world. But, you also learn from your mistakes so you can minimize the experience of feeling that dull knife slicing through your financial security. Losing money early on taught me the importance of managing money.

Although the financial crisis of 2008-2009 certainly gave my net worth a massive uppercut to the chin, I didn’t panic. I just started this site and have more than doubled my net worth since then as everything has more than recovered as well. I credit net worth diversification to surviving the crisis and not jumping off a bridge when the S&P 500 hit 666. I also credit my childhood stupidity.

In this article, I want to provide the best advice on how to manage your own money. We will talk about fundamental principles as well as mental states you should accept if you want to continue growing your wealth over the long term.

THE RIGHT MONEY MENTALITY Read more…

One of the most popular posts on Financial Samurai with over 250 comments is The Average Net Worth For The Above Average Person. The “above average person” is loosely defined as someone who graduated from college (35% of the American population), works hard, plays well with others, takes full advantage of their pre-tax retirement plans, saves additional disposable income, stays on top of their finances, expects nothing from their parents or the government and is not delusional. If you were a “C student” and expect to live an “A lifestyle,” you are definitely not the above average person!

Take a moment to study the above average person’s net worth chart again. Somewhere between the ages of 45-50, the above average person’s net worth reaches over one million dollars. We can all agree that thanks to inflation, easy monetary policy, a roaring bull market and a recovery in real estate, becoming a millionaire by the time we retire is fast becoming the rule, rather than the exception.

It’s important to note the figures in my chart are for individuals and not for couples. For those of you who combined your household net worth to see where you stand, so sorry. That’s cheating. At the same time, not everybody can find someone they love hence why I initially created a per person chart. It would be presumptuous to assume we can all live in marital bliss. Not everybody is even allowed to get married thanks to the government telling us who we can and cannot be with. For simplicity’s sake, I will refer to “married couples” as anybody who is in a long term relationship.

This article will come up with reasonable “above average couple net worth” charts based on what I think, what the government thinks, what you think, and the realities of life. One can also define “above average” as one standard deviation beyond the midpoint of the normal distribution curve (top 16%). Not every couple can be above average. But every couple can certainly try.

THE AVERAGE NET WORTH OF THE ABOVE AVERAGE COUPLE Read more…

With the average savings rate below 5%, a median 401(k) of only $100,000, and an average 401(k) balance at retirement age 60 of around $230,000, most Americans are financially screwed. Just do the math yourself. Add the average Social Security payment per person of $18,000 a year to a 4% withdrawal rate on $230,000 and you get $27,200 a year to live happily until you die at 85.

Let’s think about this some more. You spend almost 40 years of your life working just to live off minimum wage in retirement. Hopefully you were able to live it up during your working years, otherwise, how else can we explain a national sub 5% savings rate? Blowing lots of money for fun is fine if you expect to live like a pauper when you’re old. The better way to do things is to smooth out your spending across your expected life expectancy to reduce stress and live a much steadier lifestyle.

We’ve talked in detail about the proper asset allocation of stocks and bonds by age. Just know that stocks should be a minority portion of your net worth by the time you are middle age. If you so happen to have 100% of your investment allocation in stocks before retirement and 2009 happens, well then you are poop out of luck. Calculate how much you lost, equate your loss to how many years it took you to save the value of the loss, and expect to work that many more years of your life. Now that’s depressing.

We also found out that the median net worth for 2010 plunged to $77,300 from a high of $126,400 in 2007. Surely the median net worth has recovered since 2010, but such data from the government only rolls around every three years. The main nugget of information is that from 2007 to 2010, the median home equity dropped from $110,000 to $75,000. In other words, the median American’s net worth almost ENTIRELY consists of home equity! What another bad idea.

Finally, despite a 120%+ rebound in stocks since the bottom of the crisis and savings interest rates of only 0.1% due to a dovish Fed, a lot of people missed out on the recovery as evidenced by a tremendous amount of cash still sitting on the sidelines due to fear. Billionaire hedge fund manager David Einhorn is suing Apple for hoarding their $134 billion in cash due to a “grandma depression mentality.” Anybody who has lived through the 1997 Russian Ruble crisis, the 2000 internet bubble, and 2006 housing correction probably has a good portion of their net worth in CDs, bonds, and money markets because they’ve been burned so many times before.

The question we must all ask ourselves is, “What is the right net worth allocation to allow for the most comfortable financial growth?” There is no easy answer to this question as everybody is of different age, intelligence, work ethic, and risk tolerance. I will attempt to address this question based based on what has worked for me, and what I believe will work for anybody who is serious about building enduring financial wealth for the long run. I’ve spent over 10 hours writing this post in hopes that every Financial Samurai reader can build a rock steady net worth portfolio to make money in good times and lose less in bad times.

THE MENTAL FRAMEWORK FOR NET WORTH ALLOCATION Read more…

To start, there is no “correct” asset allocation by age. Your asset allocation between stocks and bonds depends on your risk tolerance. Are you risk averse, moderate, or risk loving? I’m personally risk loving or risk averse, and nothing in between. When I see “Neutral” ratings by research analysts, I want to slap them upside the head for having no conviction. Then the optimist in me thinks what a great world to have occupations that pay well for providing no opinion!

Your asset allocation also depends on the importance of your specific market portfolio. For example, most would probably treat their 401K or IRA as a vital part of their retirement strategy because it is or will become their largest portfolio. Meanwhile, you can have another portfolio in an after-tax brokerage account like E*Trade that is much smaller where you punt stocks. If you blow up your E*Trade account, you’ll survive. If you demolish your 401K, you might need to delay retirement for years.

I ran my current 401K through Personal Capital to see what they thought about my aggressive asset allocation. To no surprise, the below chart is what they came back with. I essentially have too much concentration risk in stocks and am underinvested in bonds based on the “conventional” asset allocation model for someone my age. To run the same analysis on Personal Capital, simply click the “Investment Checkup” link under the “Investing” tab.

I am going to provide you with five recommended asset allocation models to fit everyone’s investment risk profile: Conventional, New Life, Survival, Nothing To Lose, and Financial Samurai. We will talk through each model to see whether it fits your present financial situation. Your asset allocation will switch over time of course.

Before we look into each asset allocation model, we must first look at the historical returns for stocks and bonds. The goal of the charts is to give you basis for how to think about returns from both asset classes. Stocks have outperformed bonds in the long run as you will see. However, stocks are also much more volatile. Armed with historical knowledge, we can then make logical assumptions about the future.

HISTORICAL RETURNS FOR STOCKS Read more…

Do you know how much in mutual fund fees you are paying a year? I didn’t, so I ran my 401K portfolio through Personal Capital’s 401k fee analyzer and I’m absolutely shocked by the results! I always figured that from a percentage point of view, my mutual fund fees were small. But, when you take a small percentage multiplied by a big enough number, the absolute dollar amount starts adding up!

As you can see in the picture above, I’m paying $1,748.34 a year in fees across four mutual funds! In 20 years, I will have paid roughly $84,000 in fees based on only this amount. In the second chart, you’ll see how much I will pay in fees if my funds actually grow.

I’ve got another fund worth about $22,000 as part of my 401K which does not show a fee, because it is a hedge fund whose fees are baked into the performance. Typical hedge fund fees are 2% of assets under management and 20% of upside. This is called 2 and 20, which is egregiously high, but it’s the only way I can get short exposure to hedge my bets.

I’ve been wanting to do a 401K/mutual fund fee analysis for the longest time, but was too lazy to do the analysis until I realized I didn’t have to do the calculations myself. As the new year arrives, I want my portfolio to be as optimized as possible.

ANALYZING YOUR 401K FOR EXCESSIVE FEES Read more…