VTI

WeeklySignalLog01

practically.... VTI otherwise, SNDK, MU, LITE, WDC, STX

detsl

VTI

Adventurous_Paint349

Move 500k into S&P 500 or VTI and gamble with the rest

GameOfThrownaws

You're a child so I'll go a little easy here. Keeping a bit of one stock instead of dumping it all and buying all of another stock is not "diversifying". You didn't learn anything useful, because this is not some replicable situation that you'll be equipped to understand, discern, and handle better next time. This was all completely random. What you actually learned is what it feels like to gamble and win. And that is *not* a good thing to learn. That's a feeling that has ruined a lot of peoples' lives before you. People smarter than you, people dumber than you. It's an extremely powerful, primal part of the human brain. You're not going to listen to me because you're 16 and I'm some random asshole on the internet, but I'm going to say it anyway: stop doing this immediately. Take your $1100, put it in VTI, and don't think about it again. If you want to generate free money from investing, then go get a job, and dump a few hundred more dollars into VTI every couple of weeks while you still live at home and have no rent or bills. It won't be fast, it won't be sexy, you won't be the wolf of wallstreet and get to bang Margot Robbie. But one day you'll be 32 years old and you'll be absolutely insanely ahead of all your peers because you learned how to invest correctly when you were 16. Now go ahead and ignore all that and go buy more AI stocks because you definitely know better.

Vlisa

Like losing money to inflation? Like why not just throw everything into VTI or even like a traditional 60/40 port at that point?

Spirited-Manner9674

VTI.

Holiday_Tradition639

Nice take profits when it’s worth screenshotting, I’ve went semi safe into VTI and VXUS for good world spread

Dismal-Squash-2222

Your decision also depends on how much money we are talking about. If it's only a few thousand or even a hundred thousand, that's not very much and it might be worth the risk to let it ride. What is your income? That's another factor as well. if your profits are in the millions or high hundreds, then yeah, take the profits, because that money invested in the VTI will compound very quickly and be life changing. So you can transfer the profits, or at least part of them, somewhere safe.

therealjerseytom

> Missing a hot sector? If you have VOO or VTI you have all the sectors, dude. This looks like just buying a bunch of stuff without any sort of specific goal or plan.

HaileyMay

Your diversification is lower than it looks because VTI, VFIAX, the C Fund, and a large cap index fund are all heavily overlapping. That said, at 35 with a pension, a solid cash reserve, and over $190k in broad index funds, I'd be more focused on increasing contributions than adding complexity. The portfolio itself doesn't strike me as risky so much as very concentrated in US large caps.

Double_Suggestion385

VTI is bordline boomer retirement holdings. If you are under 45 you should have most of your holdings in QQQ.

FinallyArt

You're not showing any money market funds, If that means you have little cash I would take some profits tomorrow and go 25% t-bill / money market. With five more years those index funds should be fine though I'd shift a lot into VTI or something equally conservative when closer to retirement.

Bartholomew_Butkus

VTI ad VYM may be your answer.

Enough-Fondant-4232

Thank you! (And thank you for putting up with a bit of bragging on my part.) "VTI is the ticker symbol for the **Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF"** Good advice. I have my money at Schwab. I will see if they have something simular.

pao_zinho

You’re heavily exposed to some high risk stocks at your age. I would go SP500 or maybe even something with more equal weighting like VTI. Congrats on the big gains 

Survivor301

Watched VTI sit in my roth and return nothing for months. Sold all of it 2 weeks ago and bought NBIS, DRAM, ASTS, and a few others, already up over 10k in a few weeks.

TechIsTheFuture26

That's not true at all. Don't be a dumbass, invest in good tech, and VTI fucking blows. I wasted YEARS in that bullshit.

Wisesize

VTI is for my Roth. I have another portfolio that strictly options/gambling. You can do both!

JohnathanTaylor

Chase the money and you'll likely never retire. VTI rules, don't let the comparison to be the thief of joy

pain474

Every fucking day I watch these stocks in disbelief, how they are all up like 300% this year or more and I just sit there with my stupid VTI portfolio when I could've retired 10 years earlier

wampum

I’ll be a forced buyer when it’s included in the broad based ETFs, but the overall impact should be negligible since I’m mostly sleepy VTI Fortunately, SpaceX is projected to carry only 0.07%–0.11% weight in the CRSP Total Market index (VTI) due to float-adjustment. The index weight is limited by the low public float, not the headline market cap

OpenGuard1993

It’s why I diversified to VTI and DFUS. DFUS is a good hold for the forced buying reason.

Luxferro

As long as you're a long time investor don't be scared about down periods. Those are the best times to buy at lower prices. You being down scared you from investing when you should have looked at it as a better time to invest more. Over time the whole market index goes up. Zoom out on VTI and you'll see.

Cloud2987

I’m the opposite, I went from individual stocks to mainly ETFs. I currently have VTI, QQQM (ETFs) AMZN, META, GOOG (MEGA CAP), and TSLA and RKLB (Speculative). I didn’t do that well chasing individual stocks, so I still closer to sure things.

insbordnat

1. you're assuming a fully amortizing loan, which typically with some track record/relationship (especially at 60% LTV) you're IO. If fully amortizing is the play, there's no reason you wouldn't lever to 80%. You'd also be doing 2-3 refis at that time (assuming fully amortizing) resetting LTV to 80% each time. 2. no real estate loans are 20 year amort, they're all 30 or 15. Thus your monthly amort is wrong even if you assume fully amortizing. That alone is a massive difference. under your metrics with 30 year amort that's $2177 net profit annually (Y1), which is a 7.6% current yield vs. the 1% from VTI. Talking current yield, not annualized returns - see below for the "annualized" returns. Thus, when all is said and done (in year 20) for a 130k investment using all of your assumptions (no refi in these): * 718k VTI, 8.8% IRR, MOIC 5.5x * 960k 60% LTV, 10.1% IRR, MOIC 6.7x * 1.7mm 80% LTV, 13.4% IRR, MOIC 12.3x The massive difference is coming from the higher current yield and future reinvestment. 1-2% reinvestment on current income on broad index funds doesn't nearly match the future benefit.

8370U

70% into VTI and 30% into VXUS.. Set auto deposits and auto investments at that ratio.

bbawdhellyeah

My DCA into VTI SCHG and VXUS at $500/week lol

JRshoe1997

Defense like ABT and NOC. Market is way too hot right now. Still doing weekly buys of VTI though.

DarkVoid42

VXUS+VTI. go find another hobby.

Downtown_Extension_6

Hey, sounds like you're in a great spot — $14k in profit on a diversified portfolio is solid. The "cash on the sidelines" anxiety is real and very common. I built **ProspectAI** (https://prospect-ai.moisesprat.dev) specifically for situations like yours. It's a multi-agent AI pipeline that does in \~2 minutes what would take hours manually:   1. **Scans Reddit + financial forums** to find the stocks retail investors are actually talking about (not just what Wall Street pushes)   2. **Runs 13+ technical indicators** (RSI, MACD, Bollinger Bands, ATR, etc.) to assess momentum and entry timing   3. **Grades fundamentals** — P/E, margins, FCF, revenue growth — so you're not buying hype   4. **Generates a composite score** (0–100) weighing sentiment, momentum, and fundamentals   5. **Produces a portfolio allocation** with specific entry zones, stop-losses, and take-profit targets   For your situation — $25k in cash, already holding VTI/QQQ/VXUS as your core — ProspectAI would identify *which sectors or individual stocks* are showing strong momentum right now with favorable risk/reward setups, and give you concrete entry prices rather than "just do it" or "wait." It's sector-specific: Technology, Semiconductors, Healthcare, Finance, Energy, Consumer, Industrials, Real Estate, Utilities. You tell it the sector, it does the research, and an adversarial critic agent challenges the recommendations before you see them.     The pipeline runs end-to-end in under 2 minutes and gives you actionable positions with entry/stop/target — not just vibes.

fakieTreFlip

VTI and chill. Don't bother trying to stock pick or time the market, that's all just gambling, not investing

mathaiser

I had MU from 80 to 92 down to 68 with the “memory” chip longterm play in mind. After a few years of holding, I gave up when it finally went to 83-84 above my entry. If only I was patient. I just went full pull on VTI and said slow and steady is fine with me. But I’m having severe FOMO and missed opportunity right now. I think the rotation into commodities is next. Shit is about to get even more expensive for the common man. Steel, wood, oil, etc. but I don’t know anything.

Pretend-Ad-9504

In my area, right now, you could not buy a turnkey property (assuming 60% LTV) and be able to charge enough for rent to not be operating at an annual loss, especially if you’re in a higher tax bracket already and not doing RE full time, which is presumably the case for most people investing in real estate. You’re not going to get into it if you don’t already have a stable income. EXAMPLE (from my area): • Property price: $325,000 • 60% LTV = $195,000 financed, $130,000 DP • 6.5% / 20 years = $1,454/month (~$17,448/yr) —————— In my area market, you could reasonably expect to collect $2400/month — max — more than likely it’d be $2200, but let’s assume a best case for this example. And let’s actually take all reasonable expenses into account. Annual rent collected: $28,800 Vacancy (5%): -$1,440 Property management (9%): -$2,592 Property tax (est. 1.2%): -$3,900 Insurance: -$1,500 Maintenance reserve (remember roof?): -$2,400 Effective net income: $16,968 Mortgage payment: -$17,448 Net cash flow: -$480/yr ————————— Now, let’s say you can depreciate $260,000. Maybe there’s a big tax advantage?? Net annual rental income: $16,968 Mortgage interest (yr 1 est.): -$12,480 Depreciation: -$9,455 Taxable rental income/loss: -$4,967 (paper loss) ————————- Because most passive RE investors are in a higher income bracket, it’s considered passive income —- so passive losses can’t offset ordinary income. So, losses like this won’t materialize really until the property sells. —————————- Now, this same $130,000 invested in something like VTI or VOO would generate $9000/annual on average. And it’s 100% liquid, well diversified, not tied to one local economy, and involves zero local assholes. You can also invest more into a fund without worrying about who will be available to fix its toilets. VTI also isn’t at risk of a squirrel eating a hole in the siding so rain water pours in over 12 months and ruins two-stories of sheathing. —————————- For me personally, someone in a higher income bracket, RE seems like such a massive headache. In the end, with all the “advantages”, even if RE is barely ahead of VTI, what a pain to get to almost the same result. I would much rather spend time on other endeavors, than fighting with materials and people.

youskippedLegDay

Am I okay or should I diversify?? I started investing in 2019 and I didn’t really know what I was doing (still don’t lol). I’m a 35 year old, living in North Carolina. Here’s what I currently have, any advice is greatly appreciated!! Vanguard money market (HYSA)- $51,427 Vanguard Brokerage - VTI $90,882 vanguard Roth IRA - VFIAX $74,882 Employer 401k - NC Large Cap index fund - $18,488 Roth TSP - C fund $7647 Here’s more info about me if that helps. I’m married and we have a 3yr old. I’m a state employee, making just under $69k, 13 years of time in service. I no longer contribute to the employer 401k because there is no match, I am required to contribute to the pension plan though. I’m no longer in the military, so I do not contribute to the TSP either. Wife works part time and has $55k in her Roth IRA and $32k in her old employer’s 401k. I can safely begin contributing around $1500 per month towards investments, I’m just not sure what I should begin to invest in.

anteatertrashbin

VTI. end of story for me…. sorry so boring…

derprondo

Anyone that held past late 2024 goofed bigly. I sold all mine at $98k, put it all in VTI, and VTI is up 26% since then. If I had held the BTC I’d be down 25%.

insbordnat

Sure, mortgage rates are 6.5% now, but they weren't over the past 20 years (was actually 4.8%). To be conservative I used 6% factoring in rental use etc. Even going back to 2000 it was 5.2%. That massive gain in VTI wasn't from high interest rates...if you think VTI would have returned what it did with interest rates at a steady 6-6.5%, without QE, without rates being at historic lows, earnings are coming down and terminal values are picking up 150-300bps = values are shifting and we're not seeing 11% TSR, more like 8-9% or lower. On yields...let's math it out - unlevered, you're buying at a 6 cap, so definitionally you're starting at 6%, which grows over time as rent increases, offset by capex/LCs/etc. you have about a 2% average spread vs. debt over the term, and debt/equity \~1.5x assuming a 60% LTV (60/40). 6%+(2%\*(1.5)) = 9% levered yield...

anarchy_pizza

Yep i recently gave in and started following what I thought was horrendous advice and I’m green on all of it. Selling and into VTI with the profits until the next regarded tips come out.

InjuryEmbarrassed532

Anything you need for the house in the next 5 years should be mostly in treasuries, money market or CD accounts. Put everything else into VTI, don’t listen to the stock picking nut jobs here.

insbordnat

Factoring in all of that plus the benefit of real estate being a leverage play, you're ahead in RE. You missed another thing: you're getting 9-11% levered yields annually vs. the \~1-2% you're getting on VTI. That's after lease commission every 2 years, your capex, and other improvements/repairs. Reinvest that into VTI if you want to be conservative, or you roll that into your next property. Income growth alone (just throwing into VTI) and you have $1mm, plus another $1mm on the house appreciation assuming you're investing $250k at 60% LTV ($625k house, 6% cap, 4.3% growth, 6% debt cost). You're getting decent benefits from depreciation writeoffs every year that you're only getting hit with recapture in Y20. You're sitting then on a 7-8x MOIC vs. the \~6x for VTI (both tax effected). Take leverage up to 70% and you're at a \~9x multiple. Never mind you then 1031 that and defer taxes even more, or indefinitely. Index funds are great for people that like you said are "doing literally nothing". But you also have zero chance of outperforming every other person, you're really just keeping up with inflation plus making a small risk premium. You're also way overblowing the other perils, those are pretty minor risks that I have exposure for outside of tenant credit. I've been in real estate a long time, and yeah, if you're not having it managed and you're taking on PM yourself, sure, you may get the odd call from time to time. I'm also not renting to shitty tenants.

ski-dad

Legitimately curious what people think the evil plan is - Musk sells and just puts his proceeds in what? VTI and chill?

Valuable-Analyst-464

I was basically 95% equities my whole investing career. I read up on bonds and made the mistake of diversifying with them at too young an age. I am not sure what’s in your brokerage and what’s in the HYSA…maybe locking too much away. Before reallocating in the taxable account, maybe reset your retirement accounts. I would say VT or 75/25 (VOO or VTI)/VXUS.

gnetc

Just put it in a diversified ETF like VTI or VT, Dimensional has good funds as well that are great. If you don’t plan on touching the money for the next 20 years a correction isn’t really going to matter.

Pretend-Ad-9504

If you invested $250,000 in a rental and held it for 20 years, the rental would appreciate ~2%-5% annually, if the tenants didn’t destroy the home and if the neighborhood didn’t go to shit. You would most certainly be liable for at least 1 roof ($20,000), 1 HVAC overhaul ($8000), and 1 set of new kitchen appliances ($5000). Odds are, the interior will need to be painted twice, and the floors/carpeting redone at least twice, depending on the floors. This is outside of the unknowns (potential water damage, foundation issues, etc). You will most likely need to find new tenants at least 10 times. You will most likely find yourself in court at least once. After 20 years, you may be able to sell the house for between $500,000 - $750,000. If you invested $250,000 in VTI and held it for 20 years, you would have between $1,100,000 - $1,600,000. And you did literally nothing along the way.

Vlisa

AI DCA’s into VTI/VOO. Beats 95% of its users previous gains.

DoinIt4DaShorteez

I don't know about cost effectiveness, if you are comparing VTI to a mutual fund that had the same portoflio, it would come down to fees. The ability to be able to buy or sell during market hours, and be able to immediately use the sales proceeds to buy something else gives the ETF the advantage IMO. If you are investing in VTI on a regular basis, market vs limit is really not going to be of any consequence. You're going to get filled at the Ask which is normally going to be a penny or two. Who cares, what are you going to do, babysit a limit order at the Bid to save a penny?

Vlisa

Watch it just DCA into VOO/VTI.

Illustrious-Option-9

Doesn't have to be VOO. Can be VTI.

derprondo

I was just looking at my kids’ college fund account that’s all VTI and funded by selling all my BTC in late 2024, it’s up 26% and if I had held the BTC I’d be down 25% instead.

KeySwing3

So how should we be investing then? Is there something better than just holding and dcaing into VTI?

Mzungufarmer

My favorite part about real estate has been the leverage. When I was an E5 in the air force I was able to put 0 down on a 4 plex and then a total of 90k down on two duplexes and a triplex. That was back in 2015, sold the 2 duplexes and triplex a couple years back 2.5x what I paid for. The quadplex i put 0 down on was worth 350k at the time and is now valued over 1 million. And thats not mentioning all the rent I brought in throughout the years. If I just invested 90k in VTI, it would be worth what 400k now?

dynamic-burrito

Why do I leave my money in VTI

InvisibleEar

I'm 50/50 VTI/VXUS equivalents 😈

LegitosaurusRex

I literally had $16k in student loans (-16k Net Worth) 10 years ago after college… now I have $2.6 million mostly just sitting in VTI and VXUS. I buy a contract here and there for fun. Income has mostly been around $200k-$375k. Pay my own rent cause I'm not a poor. Drive a 2016 Honda civic coupe and like it. Boom. $2.6 million.

Mouse0022

and its unlikely an index like VOO and VTI won't bounce back up. By the time you get the signal to get back in the market, you already missed the bounce. Just put the money in, DCA, and wait it out. Another way to look at it, if you see a big drop and you're seeing losses in VOO/VTI, then that just means it's a time to buy more. Buy and hold. Do not sell.

Mouse0022

Buy SMH or SOXX. and just hold. If you buy any individual stocks, can't really go wrong with GOOGL, NVDA, and AAPL. Besides that, VTI and VXUS and chill. Know your risk tolerance. Don't go big into anything speculative. Look at it like lottery tickets, put in as much as you can handle if it went to $0. Don't put in more than you can handle losing. One thing to remember on a red day is that you only lose if you sell. Sometimes you just have to hold onto the ride and ride it out. Don't be a perpetual bear.

Alwaysfavoriteasian

I started with "VTI or die" and my brother stock picks. He kept telling me pltr will go parabolic and I thought, yea ok bud. It made me change my mind. Hold what I have in index and stock pick only things I research and companies that have proven their fundamentals over and over. Last year it worked so well! This year I just feel so dumb and I'm way behind even the s and p. It's killer.

fec2245

Most indexes are free-float market cap weighted, SpaceX is going to have a very small free float following the IPO so something like VTI will have about 0.15% of it's portfolio dedicated to SpaceX. If SpaceX value drops by half it will be nothing compared to normal day to day changes in the index. This isn't a siginificant concern, I don't know why Reddit is so worried about it.

mhoepfin

Honestly take at least half and put it in broad market etf like VTI. You will be absolutely crushed for life if you fumble the bag. Ponder an abundance mindset and mean reversion and think about how you could tuck this away and wait for the next great opportunity rather than chasing this blowoff top. Great job and good luck.

pandadogunited

No, I didn’t. Even a fast tracked approval won’t be instant. QQQ will allow companies that have been trading for 15 days. Three weeks plenty of time for insiders to dump. VTI is a bit more problematic at 5 trading days, but even then it won’t be exactly five days because indexes only rebalance at certain times of the year. If the SpaceX IPO perfectly times QQQs rebalancing window, it will give VTI 15 trading days. If SpaceX perfectly times VTIs rebalancing period it won’t have been trading for 15 days and will get skipped until next quarter.

Reditsuxazz69420

I had 80k 3 years ago and now I have 270k. you've been getting smoked just sitting in VTI by anyone remotely invested in AI space or energy

Edmeyers01

I literally had $80k in student loans (-80k Net Worth) 10 years ago after college… now I have $500k mostly just sitting on VTI. I buy a contract here and there for fun. Income has mostly been around $70k-$90k. Shack up with the ladies for cheap rent my fellas. Drive an old Honda accord for as long as you can stand it. Boom. $250k

Outrageous_Tip_2133

A lot of people invest passively and never sell. If you buy ETFs of index funds like VOO/VTI/QQQ and never sell, that is the best way for retail investors to play the game in the long run. As an active trader or stock picker, you will always be at a disadvantage against bigger players who have advanced algorithms and often have major insider info before you will.

JohnDLG

I do, I'm in the zero percent tax bracket for dividends so it doesn't hurt me. For my retirement stuff I buy VTI in Roth and VXUS in taxable.

GatorBo69

To already have learned this lesson at such a young age is amazing to have. I don’t know what you lost your money on, but I would assume it was meme stocks or speculative trading.. Put your future income into more stable ETFs like boring ass VOO and VTI if you have to… And realize that you now have $100k of tax harvesting money that you can use for the rest of your life to offset your gains. $1500 a year if you’re single, $3000 if married. You’ll be fine, bud!

TempeGrumble

OMG another fancy term for trying to market-time. Warning: I'm a Boglehead, so I'm going to be one of the folks advising you and your spouse to focus on low-cost, broad market index funds for equities and avoid trying to guess where and when "the market" is going anywhere. In this perspective, your advisor was wrong, and going with something broad-based within your asset allocation is correct. E.g., with Vanguard ETFs, VT (or VTI and VXUS) for equities, and something like BND for bonds.

Deltrus7

Great, you learned, right? So now just start plugging away in shit like VOO and VTI.

Northern_Blitz

This is not the correct way to look at this IMO. OP just pissed away \~ 7 doublings of $100k between now and 62 if they just invested in the SP500 or VTI. That's almost $13MM @ 62 if all they did was stick that $100k in the SP500 and wait until 62. Hopefully this is a lesson to other people who are young who have this much invested. The time for high risk investing should have been over for the OP (if they were telling the truth re: investments). Don't let greed + trying to get rich quick ruin you. Thankfully, it looks like the OP only went down to $0.

Sagelllini

[I wrote this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/1pdlssz/the_latest_morningstar_report_shows_how_to_invest/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on how to invest and [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bogleheads/comments/1svxbkk/honoring_jonathon_clements_the_stocks_and_cash/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on funding a retirement. The idea that "sector rotation" works is disproven by the Morningstar numbers because active strategies consistently lag passive investing. As to the corporate bonds, the coupon rates are pretty much irrelevant because the price is marked to Market so the higher price coupons are priced higher and the lower coupons lower. Regardless, you should sell them all. Look again at the Morningstar numbers. Do you want corporate bonds with returns in the mid-5s or stocks that historically do 10%? Personally, for the inherited IRA I would sell everything that is in there, buy VTI and VXUS in some ratio (mine is 80/20) and figure out the most tax efficient method to withdraw over the next 6 years (and a FA won't know the most tax efficient way). Then, you systematically sell, pay the tax you owe, and buy VTI and VXUS in whatever ratio you choose in a taxable brokerage account with the proceeds after paying the tax.That will most likely get you the best returns over the upcoming years. Fire your manager, sell the crap in tax deferred accounts, buy VTI and VXUS (or VT) and if nothing else you'll save yourself fees and aggravation.

Various_Couple_764

if you look at active verses passive funds it can be hard to tell if the active management makes a difference. Often the fund hold different assets . but if two find hold the same class of assets then often all you have to do is look at the total return for example PBDC has an expenses of 0.75% and BIZD has expense of .4% and both invest in class of companies called BDCs (business Development Companies) BIZD is a passive index fund. PBDC tries to pick the best BDCs. If you look at total return PBDC does have a higher total return. So sometime there is a clear advantage. Note due to SEC rule that these funds have to follow they have to report a fictitious total return of 13%. Neither of these funds have payed that much in expense. you hav got read the prospectus to see th actual number. If however you look at VOO and VTI yesterday the total retune is different but so is its investments.

ATPsynthase12

I’m serious, you don’t need a financial advisor and investing can be very simple if you do a little reading first. The entire philosophy behind Bogleheads is that investing can be as simple as you make it. John Bogle the founder of Vanguard designed the index fund as a low maintenance, low cost option for retail investors to get into the market and make money without having to go “stock picking” or do extensive research on each company. For example, you’ll pay 0.11% per year from your returns on a VTI/VXUS/BND 3 fund portfolio vs. 1-3% of your total portfolio value in an actively managed brokerage. It’s a no brainer.

ATPsynthase12

You don’t need a financial advisor at all. They are just middle men who harvest 1-3% of your portfolio per year and often either lose you money (via outright losses or sub par performance) or go full big brain moves to beat the S&P 500 and again end up losing your money. Or, they intentionally do stupid things to make more money off of you such as putting money on a corporate bond fund. Pull your money out and transfer it to a fidelity brokerage SPAXX account. Once the cash has settled invest it in the following; 50% VTI (vanguard total stock market index), 30% VXUS (vanguard total non US stock market), and 20% in BND. If you are not retiring soon or want more growth, do 70% VTI, 30% VXUS. Although, at your age, there is a strong argument to include bonds or TIPS to ensure you have less volatility and cash on hand if needed. That’s it. Contribute monthly, reinvest the dividends and let the compound interest grow. DO NOT TOUCH IT until you hit the amount you can draw 4% per year without depleting your accounts. Once you hit that point you can retire and are fully financially independent. Check out the wiki on r/bogleheads if you want more info.

Ok-Teach3479

You have a gambling problem 😉 lol SPY / VTI or a target date fund where you buy and hold sounds like your only option.

Jigawattts

Start over, stop gambling, and invest in funds like VTI, VXUS, and QQQM. Unlike you I had to learn this lesson at the ripe age of 38. At least you have 13 more years of compounding.

WeeklySignalLog01

VTI or VOO and chilll

BakerMikeRomeo

I ain't no doctor, but: 1. Good on you for starting early. I didn't start saving intentionally or investing until my 30s, and I would be happier if I'd had it in mind a decade and change earlier. 2. I don't think there's anything explicitly wrong with your allocation or your plan, I'd just say that you've got it chopped fine when you needn't: if you just throw it all at VTI and VXUS (or equivalent funds), pay next to nothing in fees, and forget about it

FinanceLearn

Great start. Most adults don’t do this at 30, you’re doing it at 18. Only thing, QQQ-VTI overlap a lot on tech. If Nasdaq crashes, both drop together. Otherwise solid. Keep the habit, the amount will grow.

Ziegelmarkt

1: Awsome for you. I'm working on financial literacy with my 10 year old daughter and this summer we'll start doing something very similar, albiet at a much lower monthly contribution. 2: Nothing wrong at all with your picks but ***Consider*** swapping QQQ with VGT and VTI with VOO. I'm not going to get in to why they're my personal preferences, so read up on them yourself and see if you think it's a good fit. Only thing I disagree with is SCHD at your age. Dividends are great, sure, but save that for late stage investing when you're focused on wealth preservation and starting to do monthly/quarterly withdraws. Instead, maybe drop that 16% down to 10% and put it in something more aggressive like DRAM or EUV (ETFs) or a single stock in a booming sector.

spddemonvr4

That's funny. Jokes aside, i feel anyone with less than 100k should almost never go cash(unless it's needed). Their ability to time the market is more likely delayed and will miss more upside if they just sit and hold. And if you need to get out of a risky trade, move it to something like SPY, VOO or VTI, don't sit cash.

blofly

VTI

AskPatient1281

DO you want to be aggressive? QQQ Do you want to be balanced? VTI

Fastest_light

VOO, or VTI, QQQ, QQQM, no individual stock, no cryptos.

xjcln

I thought you were going with only single stocks and not fund tickers... if you're including funds is this even an experiment? A lot of people's entire retirement plans are VT or VTI. Personally I'd just go VT for maximal diversification.

aceman97

VTI

ServerTechie

Switch to FNDX instead of total US market (VTI), S&P500 (VOO), or Nasdaq (QQQ). FNDX uses RAFI fundamentals index to select stocks based on company health and cash flow, not market cap or hype. If you use a target funds though in 401K or otherwise, you’re kinda stuck.

w3bCraw1er

Exit VOO, VTI

w3bCraw1er

Thanks. That means I need to exit VOO and VTI.

us1549

Serious question, how do I avoid buying this piece of shit if I own SPY or VTI? I'm assuming it's pretty much impossible but cur

A_Guy_Trading

this is incorrect. VTI is over 99% the same as VOO. The difference is the .07% exposure spread across almost 3000+ companies for VTI. The other 99%+ are exactly the same as VOO

A_Guy_Trading

Theyre identical since VTI inception but ok

kinetic_honda

I fear the sentiment around this stock is going to drive young investors away from index investing and will unfortunately lead to so many people missing out on compounding growth over so many years. Scary how many people on reddit are talking about trying to divest away from VTI/VOO because of this. To each their own I suppose

Over-Computer-6464

You can sell one ETF and immediately buy a very similar one that tracks a different index without creating a wash sale, so adding in another step of puts on the second would make it even less likely to trigger a wash sale. The IRS has chosen not to provide explicit guidance in this area, but robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront have been very public about doing this, complete with white papers listing the near equivalent ETFs they use. For example, the three total US stock market ETFs VTI, ITOT, and SCHB. They all track total US stock market indexes, but from different index providers. That is not a tax court case law or explicit IRS guidance, but IMO it is a safe real life precedent to follow.

Far-Doctor3527

TLDR: VT and chill Hello, responding here because I am also unhappy that my passive funds will buy SpaceX. I have decided to not take any action regarding the SpaceX IPO, and accepting that my funds will buy it even though this IPO seems like an obvious grift. I am not trying to convince you to take action or not take action, just explaining my reasoning because this IPO has made me worry about my portfolio and maybe this will be helpful to you in your own decision. First let's understand what types of funds could be affected by the IPO: \- Total world market funds (VT and the like). These track the total world's equities market, which is roughly $154 trillion in market cap. \- Total US market funds (FSKAX, FZEROX, VTI, VTSAX, and the like). These track the total US equities market, which is roughly $77 trillion in market cap. \- S&P 500 funds (FXAIX, VOO, and the like). These track the largest 500 companies in the US by market cap, which total to about $62 trillion. Note that this is about 80% of the total market. \- S&P 100 funds / Mega cap funds (FGRTX, QQQ, and the like). These track roughly the top 100 companies in the US, totaling roughly $55 trillion. Note that this is roughly 70% of the total market, and roughly 89% of the S&P 500 \- Large cap funds (FNILX, FSPGX, and the like). These are functionally equivalent to the S&P 500 so I will not add anything here, they may be slightly larger or smaller percent of the total market than the S&P 500 depending on holdings. \- Mid cap, small cap, and international funds: unaffected The first thing you want to think about is: what are you invested in? You don't have to go super granular but most passive investors have their investments in some version of the above funds. Are you more of a total market person, or more S&P 100? It doesn't matter which one you are, but take a look at your portfolio and understand what you are invested in. Now let's assume SpaceX does IPO at $2 trillion and let's look at how the SpaceX IPO affects the broad categories: \- Total World Market Funds: 2 / 154 = 1.2% of the total world market \- Total US Market Funds: 2 / 77 = 2.6% of the total US market \- S&P 500 and other large caps: 2 / 62 = 3.2% of the S&P 500 \- S&P 100 and other mega caps: 2 / 55 = 3.6% of the S&P 100 Now let's assume that the worst case happens: SpaceX IPOs at 2 trillion, and then the price goes literally to 0. If you are mostly in total market funds, your portfolio would go down by 2.6%. If you are mostly in large cap funds, your portfolio would go down by 3.2%. If you are mostly in mega caps, your portfolio would go down by 3.6%. But let's be realistic, even with this IPO likely being an Elon grift, do we really think this is going to 0? I don't. Maybe it loses 50% of its price, maybe 80%, I don't know. But it's a real company with real revenue (though small revenue compared to its huge valuation), so it's not going to 0. I'm not going to redo all the calcs but just for example, assuming it goes down by 50% and you are mostly in S&P 500 funds, your portfolio would go down by 1.6%. But here is the biggest consideration: 100% of SpaceX is not going to be publicly tradable. We don't know exactly what the percent it is going to be but likely only like 5%. This means that the indexes will only track 5% of SpaceX's market cap. So assuming SpaceX IPOs at 2 trillion and goes down by 50% and you are mostly in S&P 500 funds, your portfolio would go down by (2 \* .05)/62 = .16%. To be clear, this is like a fifth of a percent, which is inconsequential, the market moves more than this on a daily basis. Another point: I don't know what is going to happen in the future: I don't know if SpaceX's price will actually shoot up for whatever reason, so as an uninformed person, I think actively shorting SpaceX is not a good idea. Remember the famous quote "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent". I am a regular person and don't have any privileged information about what is going on with SpaceX so I think shorting it would be equally risky to shorting any other company that doesn't have a high-profile controversial figurehead as Elon Musk, which is something I wouldn't do (and likely something other passive investors wouldn't do either). At the end of the day, passive investors get to benefit from all of the companies in the market without having to do the work of researching and understanding each business, and making bets about which one will go up or down. We have benefitted from all the other great businesses that have continued to skyrocket without having to use a second of time to evaluate them. If you want to take action against the SpaceX IPO that is totally ok, but you could be introducing complexity to your portfolio, and spending your valuable time thinking about how to hedge against something that will impact your portfolio less than regular daily market fluctuations. Again, not trying to convince you one way or another, and to reiterate, I am not happy that I will be buying into this IPO passively because I do think it is a grift, but by looking at the actual numbers I have decided that this is not consequential. So to summarize all of this information, even though I am more of a Fidelity stan than Vanguard, "VT and chill".

username10983

From what I understand, S&P total market (tracked by ITOT or XTOT in Canada) and CRSP total market (tracked by VTI or VUN in Canada) indexes use free float cap weighting. If a company goes public with a low float like 5%, even if the total company has a huge market cap, the effective cap in the index funds will be much lower. Now this doesn't fully avoid the company, but it does lessen the weight significantly over using the full market cap. You can look up the index methodologies on the index providers homepages.

shortvol_trader

The logic is sound and this is actually one of the cleanest applications of CSPs — you genuinely want the shares, you have a defined cost basis target, and SGOV covers you while you wait. The math works. The one thing you're partially missing: your 16.5% annualized assumes continuous assignment avoidance and redeployment at similar premium levels. In practice VTI's IV compresses during bull runs — the same $355 strike might only pay $1.50 in 3 months if volatility drops, which changes your annualized yield significantly. The other consideration is the California tax treatment on options premium. Short-term gains on collected premium are taxed as ordinary income in CA, not at the LTCG rate. Your 35% reserve for taxes on the underlying may need to be higher on the premium portion depending on your bracket. The scenario where this hurts most is a slow grind up in VTI — you keep collecting 1% monthly while VTI appreciates 2-3% monthly, and you never get assigned but also never participate in the gains. The opportunity cost compounds quietly. Otherwise this is a well-reasoned strategy for your specific situation. The fact that assignment is genuinely acceptable to you is the key variable that makes it work.

A_Guy_Trading

How to avoid the bullshit that is SpaceX: Buy these 3 as your long port: 60% VTI 25% SCHG 15% SCHD Set it and forget it forever. For the short port, just full port shorting it and then add all the profit to your long port.

A_Guy_Trading

you can just hold VTI. VTI will only hold .11% at most, and even a total collapse of spacex would drag VTI down .03% AT WORST. It's insignificant.

D3AtHpAcIt0

That’s a funny allocation, good contender for the annual VTI award of miniature holdings. I got a similar one, one singular share of BAC that I bought when I first made my brokerage account. The 30 cent dividends are nice at least

EvictionSpecialist

I dunno man..if I was 60, I’d still be in VTI and VOO.

rackemronnie7

Appreciate the link. The real challenge is funds like VTI adjusting for free float, but with SpaceX's tiny 3-5% public float, the index exposure stays manageable regardless.