• Skip to main content
  • Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Start Here
  • Our YouTube Channel
  • Mile High FI Podcast
  • About Me
  • I ♥ Longmont
    • Cowork In Longmont
    • Live In Longmont
  • Stuff We Like
    • Tesla In Ten Years
  • Best Credit Card Offers
  • Contact
    • Media
    • Guest Post

1500 Days to Freedom

Think different and escape the rat race.

1500 Days to Freedom
  • My Investments! (REAL TIME!)
  • Bucket List
    • Anti Bucket List
  • All Posts
  • Best Posts
  • Guest Post Policy
  • 10 Questions
  • Tesla In Ten Years

Stock Picking Experiment With Dividend Growth Investor: Year 4 Update!

January 17, 2022 by Mr. 1500 Days 2 Comments

In December of 2017, Dividend Growth Investor (DGI) asked me if I’d like to duplicate the famous Warren Buffett bet. For those unfamiliar, in 2008 Buffett famously challenged the hedge fund industry:

Can you beat the S&P 500 over a 10 year period?

Buffett won as the hedge fund got clobbered by the S&P 500.

But, I like fun experiments, so I agreed.

Performance

I picked four stocks and committed to not touching the investments for the duration of the bet. I haven’t (and won’t) traded or rebalanced in any way. Here were my picks:

  • Amazon: Wait, they sell more than books? And what’s this AWS thing?
  • Alibaba: China rising.
  • Berkshire Hathaway: Consistently undervalued.
  • Alphabet: A behemoth that’s just getting started. Waymo is gonna win.

In year 1, I beat the S&P, but not by much:

In year 2, my lead narrowed:

Year 3 was very good. My total return was 73.42% while the S&P’s was 39.28%:

Motif, the company that held my stocks and made the pretty images went under, so I moved to Google Sheets.

Year 4: And now we’re at the present day when my lead over the S&P 500 narrowed. My total return is 95.69% while the S&P’s is 77.93%:

What Happened in 2021?

Google (Alphabet) had a really great year. Alibaba (and Jack Ma) had a very, very bad one. Amazon was meh, but it’s still beating the S&P overall. Berkshire Hathaway had a good year but is still trailing the S&P over the duration of the experiment.

While I’m still beating the S&P 500, I worry about the remaining 6 years:

  • Regulation? Break up? American politicians don’t agree on much, but one thing they both equally seem to hate is Big Tech. Perhaps my two winners (Amazon and Google) will get smacked down by Washington DC? Dare I say they may deserve it too.
  • Inflation: Growth stocks don’t do well in times of inflation. When rates rise, money flows out of growth stocks to safer havens.

But if I’ve learned anything, it’s that trying to predict anything beyond what you’ll have for breakfast is a futile exercise.

As for the competition, DGI hasn’t posted his numbers yet, but I’m 99.9% sure that I’m still ahead. I’m more curious to see if his dividend strategy has caught up to the S&P 500. In his last update, he was lagging:

…mine is up by 37.98%, vs 48.24% for S&P 500.

-DGI

However, I think that 2022 could be the year the DGI shines as I believe his portfolio is more inflation-friendly.

Happy New Year DGI and I hope your 2022 is the best yet!

Investing in an inflationary environment

More 1500 Days!!!

You can also find me (and the dinosaurs) at:

Mile High FI podcast:

  • Listen on Apple, Google, YouTube, and Spotify

Also here:

  • Facebook: Facebook group and page
  • YouTube: My channel is mostly devoted to home improvement, but I have some other material coming up soon too.
  • Instagram: Pretty pictures of dinosaurs, sunsets, and nail guns!
  • Twitter: Spontaneous, often insane, ramblings
  • Coworking space: On the surface, MMM HQ is a coworking space. Look a little deeper and you’ll see that we’re really building community. The members of MMM HQ are some of the finest people I know.

Join the 10s who have signed up already!

Subscribing will improve your life in incredible ways*.

*Only if your life is pretty bad to begin with.

Thank you!! Please check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Powered by ConvertKit

Filed Under: Early Retirement Tagged With: DGI, dividend growth investor, dividends

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. freddy smidlap says

    January 17, 2022 at 10:42 am

    i think amazon is due to outperform as the stock has been a laggard for about 18 months now. the business is still doing great but hasn’t reflected in the share price. i think you bought BRK-B at the right time after a period where they lagged for a number of years. i got rid of my alibaba stock and thankfully made money but i couldn’t take the chinese government meddling with the company.

    i gotta say i agree that growth may take a pause. my portfolio has been bloodied the past 6 months but that’s the price of admission to swim in the growth stock pool. good luck.
    freddy smidlap recently posted…We Bought Unity $U and Walker & Dunlop $WD – Malevolent Missy Stock Series #29My Profile

    Reply
    • Mr. 1500 Days says

      January 17, 2022 at 10:58 am

      Amazon is a curious case. I think it will be fine long-term, but it has a lot of power and I can see the government stepping in.

      Alibaba: You need a strong stomach to hold Chinese stocks!

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

CommentLuv badgeShow more posts

Primary Sidebar

Follow Us!

Follow Us on FacebookFollow Us on TwitterFollow Us on RSSFollow Us on Instagram

Freedom!

My goal was to build a portfolio of $1,000,000 by February of 2017; 1500 days from the birth of this blog (January 1, 2013). And hey look, I’ve since retired!

Investments only
1/1/13 (The Start): $586,043
1/1/14 (1 Yr Later): $869,635
1/1/15 (2 Yrs Later): $987,351
1/1/16 (3 Yrs Later): $1,057,961
1/1/17 (4 Yrs Later): $1,257,128
1/1/18 (5 Yrs Later): $1,527,701
1/1/19 (6 Yrs Later): $1,549,440
1/1/20 (7 Yrs Later): $2,035,040*
1/1/21 (8 Yrs Later): $3,379,746**
1/1/22 (9 Yrs Later): $4,762,642

2022: Investments only
1/1: $4,762,642
2/1: $4,404,447
3/1: $4,214,068
4/1: $4,499,622
5/1: $4,007,476

Overall
2022 investment gains: -$755,166
Investment gains since 1/1/2013: $3,421,433
Net worth***: $4,237,476

* The big jump between 2019 and 2020 was partly because we bought another home, but kept the previous (much more expensive) one as a rental. We have since sold it.

** Tesla.

*** Includes our primary home equity in addition to our investment portfolio.

Finally, we still have about $290,000 in mortgage debt (which I love!). No regrets about the debts!

Featured in

Smiley face

Disclaimer

Investing is risky business. The information contained on this site is for informational purposes only. As with all matters financial, proceed with caution. Do your research and seek professional advice.

Get my annoying emails!

Join 1500 Days! (now 27% less annoying)

Subscribe to get great good pretty ok content by email.

Thanks so much! Check your email to confirm your subscription.

There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again.

Powered by ConvertKit

All Posts

Read all the posts ever published to 1500 Days of Freedom.

© 2022 1500 Days to Freedom · Privacy Policy · Contact