5 ms·

Without being totally dismissive of every person who has contributed to the platforms you mention...99.99% of the stuff on YouTube is terrible, and most of the

Without being totally dismissive of every person who has contributed to the platforms you mention...99.99% of the stuff on YouTube is terrible, and most of the stuff written about GME was total nonsense. It is difficult to convey this because, in the end, you have no idea either so you don't know whether there is useful stuff on YouTube or if I am just talking nonsense too...but it is so bad, and it gives the misleading impression that picking stocks is very easy. It isn't, people do CFAs (allegedly, a hard exam), MBAs, and work in fund management every day for decades...and will never come close to being profitable (indeed, what is amazing is how many people have no knowledge but end up doing okay...it is remarkable...the post is a perfect example, no content, no apparent understanding of investing...somehow the guy is a billionaire from investing, like Chamath...amazing). It is gambling (the distinction between gambling and investing is information), what most VCs are doing in the space is financial terrorism (stuff like WealthFront is an unbelievable scam, it is 1980s-style financial advice), and most people should take your approach (although it is still very easy to go wrong with 3 ETFs...most people will get there though).

ec109685 6y ago
Why is Wealthfront so bad? Their fees don’t make them cheap, is that it?
- hogFeast 6y ago
  Correct. What they are selling you is an asset allocation, this turns on it's head all the innovation since the early 90s...and the performance you likely get will be indistinguishable from what most people could achieve on their own. One of the big advantages that savers have today are open platforms (there was a time when fund managers ran their own platforms), low dealing costs, low spreads, and ETFs. All that investors need to do is just work out the asset allocation themselves and they will save huge amounts. And I would guess 95% of people reading this are able to do it. Just to be clear, we are looking for a least bad situation. Asset allocation is very complex, there is no way most investors can get an amazing result themselves but what most investors don't know is that WealthFront have zero chance too. So the aim is to equal what they do without their mad fees (I have no idea how they charge so much, marketing? I don't know, I know small advisers that were profitable charging lower fees...it makes no sense).
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - skybrian 6y ago
    They make claims of better tax efficiency via tax-loss harvesting [1]. I don't know or care enough to evaluate it, but maybe it's better for some people, even if the allocation is no better than an ETF? Even if it worked, I wouldn't bother to do it manually. This doesn't matter for a retirement account, though. [1] https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/209348486-What-is-Tax-Loss-Harvesting- https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/209348486-...
    - hogFeast 6y ago
      That is going to depend on what the rules are, and what rates you pay. But is tax-loss harvesting beyond the wit of everyone but WealthFront? No. If you aren't bothered to do it manually then it can't be a big benefit for you...it is always amazes me that companies manage to base their products around utterly pointless/marginal features that no-one uses, like why do you care? It is like people choosing an advisor because of their charts...yep, they got the charts from a third-party charting provider for $10/month, and you are going to pay tens of thousands (or more) over a lifetime. Smh.
      - skybrian 6y ago
        I don't personally care. I'm just saying that it's not crazy to want to do this sort of thing without figuring it out yourself. Maybe it pays for itself in some cases?
      - Thorrez 6y ago
        >If you aren't bothered to do it manually then it can't be a big benefit for you... Wealthfront has economies of scale to write a program to perform tax loss harvesting automatically. Just because it's not worthwhile for me to do it manually myself doesn't make it not worthwhile for a program to do it automatically. Wealthfront does daily tax loss harvesting on individual stocks. That would be a tremendous amount of work for me to do manually. That said, I don't know whether Wealthfront's benefit outweighs their 0.25% fee. I guess what we really need is a well-regarded open source program that hooks into brokerage's API and does this advanced tax loss harvesting.
voces 6y ago
In a sense, you both are correct. The stuff on YouTube is terrible, but it is also used by many (some made a lot of money and so are very vocal about it). A 1000 YouTube videos promoting a terrible coin. The price is going up. Even the one who went to YouTube to consume the drivel and act on it made some money. 5 videos were top-notch production quality, measuring itself against the top paid analysis. A crazy thing went on early with ETH bot trading. Of course, if you are going to download a bot from Github which works on a few trends and technical indicators, you should not expect to make a lot of money. But many did -- It is easy to predict whether a rocket is going up. The features the bot used are still indicative (at other timeframes), because so many were running them, influencing the price in future timeframes. > misleading impression that picking stocks is very easy At least picking a stock yourself is easier than predicting what stock someone else will pick. > MBAs, and work in fund management every day for decades...and will never come close to being profitable That seems like a cosy lifestyle not worth bragging about, good job security. Rooting for the night janitor at a small hotel though, who put a 1000$ on doge coin when first reading about the rememe potential. But I agree with the gambling and financial terrorism for kicks. More as a warning against financial irresponsibility, less as in "stay of my turf!".

ec109685 6y ago

Why is Wealthfront so bad? Their fees don’t make them cheap, is that it?

hogFeast 6y ago
Correct. What they are selling you is an asset allocation, this turns on it's head all the innovation since the early 90s...and the performance you likely get will be indistinguishable from what most people could achieve on their own. One of the big advantages that savers have today are open platforms (there was a time when fund managers ran their own platforms), low dealing costs, low spreads, and ETFs. All that investors need to do is just work out the asset allocation themselves and they will save huge amounts. And I would guess 95% of people reading this are able to do it. Just to be clear, we are looking for a least bad situation. Asset allocation is very complex, there is no way most investors can get an amazing result themselves but what most investors don't know is that WealthFront have zero chance too. So the aim is to equal what they do without their mad fees (I have no idea how they charge so much, marketing? I don't know, I know small advisers that were profitable charging lower fees...it makes no sense).
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- skybrian 6y ago
  They make claims of better tax efficiency via tax-loss harvesting [1]. I don't know or care enough to evaluate it, but maybe it's better for some people, even if the allocation is no better than an ETF? Even if it worked, I wouldn't bother to do it manually. This doesn't matter for a retirement account, though. [1] https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/209348486-What-is-Tax-Loss-Harvesting- https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/209348486-...
  - hogFeast 6y ago
    That is going to depend on what the rules are, and what rates you pay. But is tax-loss harvesting beyond the wit of everyone but WealthFront? No. If you aren't bothered to do it manually then it can't be a big benefit for you...it is always amazes me that companies manage to base their products around utterly pointless/marginal features that no-one uses, like why do you care? It is like people choosing an advisor because of their charts...yep, they got the charts from a third-party charting provider for $10/month, and you are going to pay tens of thousands (or more) over a lifetime. Smh.
    - skybrian 6y ago
      I don't personally care. I'm just saying that it's not crazy to want to do this sort of thing without figuring it out yourself. Maybe it pays for itself in some cases?
    - Thorrez 6y ago
      >If you aren't bothered to do it manually then it can't be a big benefit for you... Wealthfront has economies of scale to write a program to perform tax loss harvesting automatically. Just because it's not worthwhile for me to do it manually myself doesn't make it not worthwhile for a program to do it automatically. Wealthfront does daily tax loss harvesting on individual stocks. That would be a tremendous amount of work for me to do manually. That said, I don't know whether Wealthfront's benefit outweighs their 0.25% fee. I guess what we really need is a well-regarded open source program that hooks into brokerage's API and does this advanced tax loss harvesting.

voces 6y ago

In a sense, you both are correct. The stuff on YouTube is terrible, but it is also used by many (some made a lot of money and so are very vocal about it). A 1000 YouTube videos promoting a terrible coin. The price is going up. Even the one who went to YouTube to consume the drivel and act on it made some money. 5 videos were top-notch production quality, measuring itself against the top paid analysis. A crazy thing went on early with ETH bot trading. Of course, if you are going to download a bot from Github which works on a few trends and technical indicators, you should not expect to make a lot of money. But many did -- It is easy to predict whether a rocket is going up. The features the bot used are still indicative (at other timeframes), because so many were running them, influencing the price in future timeframes. > misleading impression that picking stocks is very easy At least picking a stock yourself is easier than predicting what stock someone else will pick. > MBAs, and work in fund management every day for decades...and will never come close to being profitable That seems like a cosy lifestyle not worth bragging about, good job security. Rooting for the night janitor at a small hotel though, who put a 1000$ on doge coin when first reading about the rememe potential. But I agree with the gambling and financial terrorism for kicks. More as a warning against financial irresponsibility, less as in "stay of my turf!".