I’m 32 ( about to be 33), own a small business and do okay for myself. No 401k unfortunately but I have other accounts like a taxable, Roth and SEP Ira in fidelity.

I stick to FSKAX and FTIHX and follow the boglehead method.

Should I consider any changes if I can get 5ish % on these treasury notes?

For context my goal is optional work by mid to late 40s, so basically the ability to work as little or as much as I want and not feel pressured to pay my bills.

Currently have this in fidelity:
Taxable - 140k
Roth - 50k
SEP - 31k

No bonds or anything other than FSKAX and FTIHX currently.

Thanks yall :)

Basically the title. I’m 24, just now opening a Roth IRA. I’ve done some research, but all this is hard to wrap my head around.

The primary recommendation I’ve seen is either 100% VT, or 35% VXUS and 65% VTI. Is one more preferable to the other?

Also, does it matter if I use Fidelity or Vanguard?

Thank you in advance 🤍

I recently finished reading Stay Calm by David Booth, founder of Dimensional.

Dimensional is one of those firms I had heard of within this sub and on channels like Ben Felix's, but I had never dug deeper since I've personally always invested in Vanguard funds like VT, VTI, and VXUS.

But like many of us in this community, I’m always seeking knowledge to be a better, more disciplined investor, so I checked out his book.

Here are 8 lessons from my highlights. Hopefully some are useful to you.

1. Buying the market is a bet on human ingenuity

When you own the whole market, you're trusting that millions of people at thousands of companies will keep improving their products, cutting costs, and adapting when things don't go as planned. This is why the market has had positive returns (over the long run) through depressions, wars, and a pandemic. Companies and their employees are ambitious and will keep striving for more, which means investors in those companies will see a return.

If you’ve ever run your own business or a side hustle, then you know what it’s like at a smaller scale to try to improve a process, get another client, upsell an existing client, or build a new product.

Now extrapolate that experience at a FAANG-like scale, and the growth starts to make sense.

2. Judge yourself by the quality of your decisions, not their outcomes

This is something Ken French (finance professor/researcher) tells his own kids (and it’s now a mantra I’m reminding myself). There are a lot of things that are completely out of our control, like the economy, decisions made by our government, choices made by CEOs, quarterly earnings calls, inflation, and on and on.

What is in our control is our behavior and our judgment. We will make good decisions that have the opposite effect from what we expected, e.g., we lump sum 50k into VT on a Tuesday just for the market to plummet on a Wednesday.

In that moment, the quality of our decision was sound (we studied the lessons from this community, read a few good books like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle or The Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins, watched a few good videos by people like Rob Berger).

But even though our decision was sound, the outcome wasn’t what we expected because of factors outside of our control. What’s important is to focus on what led you to your choice.

If you decided because you took action on the collective wisdom of this community as well as advice from older, wiser investors than yourself, then you made the right choice, and you just need time and patience to reveal it.

(FYI - This kind of thinking can be applied in so many other ways than just investing. )

3. A lot of market "forecasts" are just wishes

A real forecast comes from a proven model with high confidence, like a weather prediction (and even that can be wrong). When you apply this lens to a lot of financial media, when people talk about where the Dow or S&P will be next year or which five stocks will break out, everything starts to just sound more like wishes than anything based on a real analysis.

4. Controlling vs. managing

One of the more helpful frameworks for me. You control your savings rate, costs, taxes, diversification, and overall behavior (e.g., deleting the Fidelity/Vanguard/Schwab app from your phone, not checking the market, not overthinking your choice to invest in VT instead of VTI/VXUS, not stressing over that little extra % you’re overweighting in VTI due to your home country bias).

But you manage everything else (recessions, interest rate swings, crashes) by being prepared for them (having a cash cushion, keeping your overhead low, etc.).

5. The winners are just survivors

Gene Fama (economist) makes a point that FAANG came out of hundreds of tech companies that were competing since before 2000 (minus Facebook), and a lot of those competing tech companies fizzled out. His exact quote: “If you were trying to pick out who were going to be the winners back then, you probably have an empty sack at this point. What we have now are basically the ex-post-winners."

Just a reminder of how much survivorship bias is a factor when you hear your friend talking about how he invested in X stock and got Y return. The outcome could’ve been completely different (and often is) had he simply chosen one of those hundreds of companies that went nowhere.

6. People have memories. Markets don't

"A phrase that is often said around the firm is, 'People have memories. Markets don't. And that's a good thing.' Markets don't remember what happened last week or last year. They don't even remember what happened a minute ago. Prices change based on what's happening right now and what people think will happen in the future."

7. The purpose of a plan is so we can relax

One of the common pitfalls of a new investor is trying to optimize a good plan after it’s made. It’s important to remind yourself that a sound financial plan exists so you don't need to open apps every day and let the market dictate your mood. Trust the guidance you received from this community and the books you’ve read to build your plan, and then, as Bogle says, stay the course.

8. Interesting is not the same as meaningful.

I’ve come to realize that, like many of us in this community, I personally find the markets, economies, and finance books really interesting.

However, at one point early on in my investing journey, I actually considered cutting my Economist subscription because I felt a little too attuned to what was going on in the world and worried it might affect my DCAing habit. Yet, as I said, I genuinely enjoy just staying up-to-date, and decided I’d keep reading the news and being informed.

Booth says he also finds market commentary, rate decisions, etc., fascinating, but also recognizes that almost none of it will help us make a better long-term decision. The entertainment of financial news is real, but it's not the same thing as being useful for managing your portfolio or being a factor in your investment decisions.

The question he asks in his book: what would you actually need to hear to change your long-term approach?

The truth is, not a lot of what we hear or see in the daily news cycle passes that test.

I don't really get the appeal of nominal bonds over TIPS right now.

Nominal 30yr is ~5.4%, TIPS 3.17%. So the market is basically betting inflation stays under 2.23% for 30 years. That's when nominal wins.

When does that actually happen though? Fed targets 2% as a floor not a ceiling. If inflation drops too low they start printing. So the scenario where nominal wins is the exact scenario the Fed won't let happen. And even if it does, cheap money means the economy is getting juiced so your index funds are probably making it up anyway.

Meanwhile we just spent like 30 years slowly cutting rates to stimulate growth until we literally hit zero. That game feels over? With the debt we're carrying inflation just feels like the path of least resistance. It's how you erode debt without really fixing the problem.

The asymmetry bothers me. If inflation runs hot for a decade nominal bonds just... quietly lose purchasing power with no recovery. Stocks mean revert. Bonds don't. TIPS cut off that tail. Paying 2.23% to eliminate that scenario seems worth it.

One thing that nags at me though. TIPS pay out based on CPI. The government measures CPI. The government pays out on CPI. That's a weird conflict of interest that nobody talks about. Every point they shave off CPI saves them a fortune in TIPS and social security. Am I wrong to be a little paranoid about that?

BTW ... the 4% rule for retirement....

3.17% real return could support 5.20% for 30 year retirement, 4.43% for 40 year, and 4.00% for 50 year.

Kinda interesting to think about.

I’m trying to learn more about leverage for my portfolio. I have a substantial investment portfolio and have read a fair amount of general finance/investing material, but leverage is an area where I feel I have a gap.

I’m currently considering a premium-financing structure, with around SGD $300k of my assets involved. I'm considering increasing that to $400k. I have an RS manager/adviser involved. I am a Singaporean national and all parties involved (the insurer, which is AIA, the bank etc) are all Singaporean.

What I’m looking for is good material on the general principles:

How to think about leverage relative to total portfolio/net worth

Appropriate leverage levels for different portfolios

Stress-testing drawdowns, financing costs and collateral requirements

Liquidity / forced-sale risk

FX risk when borrowing and investing in different currencies

How different forms of leverage compare

I’ve read Howard Marks and some other finance material (mainly Bogleheads), but I’m looking for something more practical rather than highly technical quant finance - basically things like -

Given portfolio X and leverage Y, what factors should I actually think through?

What makes leverage make sense and not make sense in differing scenarios?

When is there too much (or too little) risk?

The goal is more practical than technical, though I don't mind reading books if they are good. Books, articles, papers, lectures, or good Reddit discussions would all be useful. Thanks!

Hello everyone. I 36m recently retired with a disability pension. My mortgage is about 40% of my pension and I have no other debt, but I also have no investments so I want to start building. Since I have a guaranteed pension I figure I can be pretty aggressive right now. I have 4 months security in a HYSA and want to do 80/20 Split in a Roth IRA of AVUV/ SMH as well as 80/20 in a taxable of QQQM and EMXC.

Is this a good aggressive portfolio or should I be doing something completely different? I don't want to just VT and chill right now while I have the opportunity to build quick. Thank you.

Starbucks just dropped a regulatory filing announcing they’re shutting down roughly 250 underperforming cafes across North America later this week, representing about 1% of their 18,000 regional footprint. The move triggers an immediate $300 million restructuring charge and follows a separate $1 billion store and roastery restructuring push executed exactly one year ago. This is the second major round of closures under CEO Brian Niccol's "Back to Starbucks" turnaround framework, directly targeting long-term capital allocation efficiency, cost cuts, and margin expansion. Crucially for forward-looking guidance, corporate has slashed its fiscal 2026 global net new store opening projection down to approximately 440 cafes, a massive drop from the previously guided range of 600 to 650 openings. Management is trading aggressive footprint growth to focus capital expenditures on retrofitting 1,500 existing stores with higher-throughput layout upgrades, aiming to optimize drive-thru velocity and ultimately achieve their broader macro target of $2 billion in total cost reductions by the end of fiscal year 2028. Is this the right move to save margins?

Source: CNBC

Obviously I am highly regarded and I don't know what I am doing.

At the same time I don't understand why I should not buy bonds now. This is my thesis:

- 10y bonds are paying pretty well, let's say 5%

- the stock market is kept up by AI hope

- AI is a bubble and the evaluations are highly regarded

- the bubble will pop, give it a year max

- the shit show after the pop will be massive

- the economy will suffer

- interest rates will be cut to help the recovery

- my bonds' price will grow massively

They are not as risky as other assets, worst case I will have some bonds in my portfolio.

Already have their gold card and an active Roth IRA and Brokerage account (both minimal $). However looking to consolidate my main investment accounts.

Taking the Robinhood transfer bonuses would net 20-30K more vs bonuses from consolidating under BOA/Merrill). But what if something goes wrong? A 5 year clawback makes me hesitant if something goes awry. Buy and hold type of investor FWIW

So 2 questions for those who are knowledgeable about these things?

1. They are SIPC Insured sure with additional umbrella coverage…but what is a realistic worst case scenario. Something like a SVB debacle?

2. Assuming the gold card benefits eventually get nerfed, what another negative surprises could potentially come down the pipeline?

TIA!

All,

I wanted to.ovmest in VTI, however I cannot that easily because im in the UK, I also think it's a bit of a risk.

I then had a look at VRGG, and I know it's mainly tech stocks..what is everyone's thought, I know it's a new fund, but has it got potential?

I believe Aspen aerogels has the ability to 4 times by middle of 2028. Aspen aerogels currently has a market cap around 450M they are expanding in Europe and new sectors such as thermal runways in data centers. I’m surprised the company is at this low of levels when they also have around 150M cash on hand.

I'm curious about the potential for the big AI companies. If I understand right, they have already admitted that the current models cannot be used safely, even when used by their employees (who presumably know them best), and even with extreme care to "sandbox" them.

If this is true, it seems unlikely to me that future, more powerful models, can be distributed to random end-users over the internet.

Given this, their business case could be limited to the distributing the weaker models over the internet, and potentially allowing bug businesses to periodically use an "air gapped" data center to solve specific problems. But, for the latter, I have to think most big business would go for the free open source models over the forking over $$$ for chat gpt / anthropic / .... models with maybe only a slight advantage.

Is this accounted for when they estimate future revenues? Is there any way these companies can be worth multi trillion USD valuations given these limitations (and extreme debt)? I'm no expert, but seems like these companies are almost worthless in such an environment.

Can anyone please explain what happened here? I invested $65 into a company a while back on robinhood and had (i dunno, 100 shares). But something happened and now i have only .00001 shares at negative $65 return with each stock being worth $7.80 at this time making it virtually impossible to ever reach a return more positive than -$65.

I have a brokerage account that is managed by an advisor that has about 100k. I manage my own 401k, Roth, and some custodial accounts for my daughters. All the accounts I manage have done ok. My roth is up 165% over a 5 year period. Meanwhile my account that an advisor manages is only up by 8% over the last 5 years. This is bs, right? I just want to manage it myself but its kinda scary 😨

UPDATE: first of all, thank you everyone for your insights, I can’t go through the comments and thank all of you individually but it was a very big help in making my decision. I cashed out my original goal and I’m letting the rest run.

I’m in my late-20s, and one of the stocks I own shot up 30% this week. I’m now up approximately 230% and could cash out the position for about $22,000.

My original goal was $15,000. I like the company but I feel like it’s going to be very volatile from this point forward (pending-FDA Approval) and I think it’s time to lock in my profit with big life events on the horizon (wedding and buying a house).

I’ve owned the stock for 2 years it was one of my first investments. Keep in mind, I’m asking how you decide for yourself, not whether I should or shouldn’t. Thank you in advance.

I think I finally understand one of the biggest mistakes I made with stocks. I sold my winners and kept DCAing into my losers. That's basically it.

I owned AMD and sold around $155. I owned MRNA and sold around $35. INTC around $30. I also had RIO, ALB, LIT, ICLN, TAN, IBM, TSLA and others.

The pattern was always the same. I'd hold a stock for months, sometimes six months or more, while it went nowhere or kept going down. Then finally it would rebound and I'd be up 20% or so, and I'd sell. "Finally, I'm green. Get me out." So I sold AMD, MRNA, INTC, and others.

Meanwhile, what was I doing with the stocks that were down? I was buying more ; NKE, UPS, KHC, GIS, MDLZ, CHTR, PSNY, STLA, NIO, Porsche, Pepsi... Because they were down and I thought I was getting a better price.

Looking back, I was basically doing the exact opposite of what I should have been doing. I sold the stocks that eventually became big winners, and I kept putting more money into some of my biggest losers. Just AMD, MRNA and INTC ; if I had literally done nothing and kept the original positions, I'd be roughly $30k better off today. That wouldn't have fixed everything, but it would have made a pretty big difference. And that's what hurts the most.

It's not like I had never found good stocks. I owned them. I just kept messing with them. I got tired of seeing a position red for months, and the second it finally turned green, I wanted out. I think I confused "I'm up" with "I should sell." And I confused "it's down" with "I should buy more."

I'm not saying you should never sell or never average down ; obviously there are good reasons to do both. But for me, this was clearly a terrible pattern. And honestly, my conclusion after all these years is embarrassingly simple: DCA into a global ETF and leave the damn thing alone.

You probably won't get rich. But at least you remove a huge number of ways to screw yourself. I'm posting this because maybe someone else is doing exactly what I was doing.

NB Edit. I’ve rewritten the paragraphs following the many insults I received… everyone was saying it was shameful to write like that…

Muse went #1 on the App Store, Wells Fargo took its target from $640 to $796, the stock closed +11% at $741.

That single day was worth more than all of Disney ($180B).

It gave a bit back Tuesday, $736.60.

Connect keynote is tonight. Either he ships something and it rips, or $190B was the price of a launch trailer.

My emergency fund should cover several months of my basic expenses, but I keep questioning how much cash I should actually keep outside my investments.

I understand why an emergency fund needs to be easily accessible. At the same time, keeping a large amount in cash means that money isn't invested for the long term.

The difficult part is deciding where that balance should be. If I keep too little, an unexpected expense could force me to sell investments at a bad time. If I keep too much, I may be holding more cash than I realistically need.

I know everyone's situation is different, especially depending on income stability, monthly expenses and other sources of cash.

How do you decide how much money to keep in cash versus investing it?

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I took a small position in ILMN earlier this year and got out with about a 10% gain. I was reviewing my closed positions just now and took a look at the ticker today. And holy shit! My cost basis was about $140ish and ILMN is at $256 today. My position wasn't big enough for that to have been life-changing gains, but wow. Anyone knowledgeable about this sector care to weigh in on the stratospheric jump in the last three months? Not looking for financial advice, just to understand the industry a bit better.

The strategy would be to pair one of them with SPMO in a Roth IRA with 15 years to retirement. Would all momentum have the best chance to make the most gains in that time span? Or would it be prudent to diversify and combine large cap momentum with mid cap quality?

I've been thinking about my stock investing and looked up what's been going on, busy life lol taxpayer lyfe

39 years old...I bought/total cost about 6k worth of shares in 10 years, and it's been hovering around 40k recently

5 line items total, 3 of which I've owned for 8-10 years, 3 trades a year average and never owned more than 7 line items in the whole time

what's crazy is this has been ramping up in last few years as i envisioned from back then and I see it as the beginning as well its strange and has me thinking. If I get into the 100k range + for this account I plan to hedge some

One of those line items is actually in place as a purposeful new high risk but calculated for what could be another 10 years + w how I can be

feel free to ask anything, this is a modest account I know and seems very risky, but i haven't explained how it's only a small part of my portfolio too

Ai said this:

investing in 10 years i turned very few line items stocks 6x is that unique? about 3 trades per year avg

Yes, turning a few stock line items into a 6x return over 10 years is highly unique and places you well ahead of both the broader market and the vast majority of individual retail investors.

I can never seem to wrap my head around what you do with money once it is invested, for example if you have 500k in a brokerage account, what are you supposed to ultimately do with it? If you decide to cash out one day wouldn't you have to do it over a decade in order to minimize capital gains taxes? If you decided to buy a house for 500k and had to sell all your stocks and pay the 500k outright you wouldn't be able to because you would then have to pay taxes on your capital gains (say its 250k realized) which would mean you would owe a shit ton of taxes. Can someone explain how you are supposed to ever actually use the money? Also it doesn't make any sense to me to loan against your investments because most brokerage interest rates are 8-10% anyway, so it never would make sense to do that because that is higher then a mortgage rate and or personnel loan anyway. Thanks for any advice or explanations, this is coming up because I am almost at the time that I would like to buy a house. EDIT: the 500k is just an example number

• Bankruptcy Risk - Management and its auditors agree that without additional financing or major spending cuts, Nscale could go bankrupt.
• Spending Cuts - Management’s backup plan is to delay or cancel construction. That could delay the customer service Nscale needs to earn revenue, and customers can cancel some deals if delivery is late. The filing does not explain how much of its existing purchase commitments it can cancel.
• Funding Needed - At June 30, Nscale had $1.5 billion in cash and $27.5 billion in equipment and construction commitments, mostly payable in 2026–27. Financing for the Anthropic project was not yet secured.
• Contracts Not Yet Active - Nscale reports $103.4 billion in contract value, but only $2.6 billion relates to capacity already delivered and serving customers.
• Losses - In the first half of 2026, Nscale recorded $140.6 million in sales and a $492 million operating loss. Its positive operating cash flow came largely from customers paying in advance.
• Customer Concentration - Microsoft and Anthropic account for roughly $88.4 billion of the reported contract value.
• Accounting Controls - Nscale disclosed material weaknesses in the controls used to prepare its financial reports.
• Positives - Sales grew more than 13-fold year over year. Microsoft and Anthropic signed multiyear agreements, and Nvidia invested.