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Unicorns, The Easter Bunny, And Safe Passive Returns

October 17, 2022 by Mr. 1500 Days 7 Comments

I was perusing the Choose FI group on Facebook last week and someone posted something that went like this:

I pulled all my investments out of VTSAX in 2020 and have been sitting on cash ever since. I don’t want to get back into VTSAX. I’m looking for something that is passive, has a good return, and is safe.

Many of the comments were unkind.

You clearly don’t know what you’re doing.

Good luck with that!

I felt bad for the person who posed the question for a couple of reasons:

  • They don’t understand investing. Successful investing can be difficult to accept because it’s actually simple. Humans are wired that to think that great results take great effort. Investing is one task that rewards minimal effort.
  • They don’t have the temperament to be a successful long-term investor. If this person doesn’t learn, they’ll sit on cash forever. Not only will they miss out on gains in the decades to come, but they’ll also lose buying power to inflation. They’ll have to work until social security kicks in.

But back to their original question. The investment they were looking for is similar to unicorns and the easter bunny. It doesn’t exist*.

If it was that easy, everyone would pile into it. And then, the returns would decrease accordingly. Example:

  1. The Magic Unicorn Company (MUC) releases an investment guaranteeing a return of 8%.
  2. Since bank accounts only pay 2%, everyone throws as much money as they can at MUC. Hell, if this existed, I’d give MUC every cent I had.
  3. Then, the following would happen:
    • MUC has to make money too. MUC is investing in something that earns more than 8%. It is passing some of the profits to investors and keeping the rest. However, if everyone in the world gave MUC money, it would run out of addressable market, so the party would quickly end as it would have to turn new investors away.
    • Since everyone wants to give MUC money, its management soon realizes that it doesn’t need to pay 8%. MUC would decrease returns and take a bigger piece of the pie for itself. Simple supply and demand. If demand is extraordinary, you raise prices. Or in this case, lower the rate you offer investors.

If someone offers you great, guaranteed returns, it’s probably a scam. See Bernie Madoff.

You Must Take Risk (Or Put In The Work)

If you read a book like The Simple Path to Wealth, you learn that Mr. Market moves up and to the right over time. The reason for this is economic expansion caused by population growth and productivity gains. Of those two, the latter is more important.

However, the path is not linear.

There will be bumps in the road due to wars, speculation, pandemics, excessive exuberance, uncertainty, and a million other causes. It’s important to remember:

  • You have no clue what will cause the next recession. Did anyone predict COVID or Ukraine?
  • You have no clue when the next recession will happen.
  • As long as humans keep getting better at stuff (productivity gains), economic expansion will continue and VTSAX will get bigger.

And you must have the following:

  • Time: Investing is a long-term game. Stock market gains are anything but linear due to those unfriendly black swans. But over the long term, it’s up and to the right. Think in decades. The stock market is no place to keep cash that you’ll need in the short-term.
  • An optimistic viewpoint: You must believe that most humans are good and working to do things better with more efficiency. I strongly believe that the best is yet to come.

Put In Work

And if you still don’t like the stock market and don’t mind putting in work, perhaps real estate is a better choice. House hack, flip houses, set up Airbnbs, or be an old-school landlord. However, if you go this route, you better put in the time to understand what you’re getting into.

Opportunity

Regarding the current state of Mr. Market, I’ll let some smarter humans have the final words.

A lot of people with high IQs are terrible investors because they’ve got terrible temperaments. And that is why we say that having a certain kind of temperament is more important than brains. You need to keep raw irrational emotion under control. You need patience and discipline and an ability to take losses and adversity without going crazy. You need an ability to not be driven crazy by extreme success.

Mimicking the herd invites regression to the mean (merely average performance).

-Charlie Munger

Widespread fear is your friend as an investor because it serves up bargain purchases.

Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.

-Warren Buffett

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Filed Under: Investing Tagged With: black swans, charlie munger, warren buffett

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. charlie @ doginvestor.comx says

    October 17, 2022 at 11:28 am

    This is great, agree long term index investing is wonderful for decade long investment.

    US has been fortunate that capitalism is still valued and vtsax has been doing well. My own country has had their index back down to levels last seen in 2003 in usd terms, so almost 19 years of flat returns and lots of volatility.
    Home bias is a real thing, its lucky for US investors that their home bias has worked out. I don’t want to accidentally have the same happen with my portfolio of totally flat growth, so rather than vTSAX am going with VT to include other developed markets (so VTI+VXUS), and then increasing china with something like VWO so I get closer to global market caps.

    Anyway I don’t think anything wrong with VTSAX since US is so large, but home bias has quite an impact if your economy goes into long term decline like my own.

    Rhinos are just fat unicorns…

    Reply
  2. Mind speaks Fi says

    October 17, 2022 at 4:07 pm

    Another great post with reasoning.

    If you want to get paid, don’t seat on the bench, get on the playing list. We cannot be swimmers if we go to pool everyday but just sit at the chair and sip cocktail.

    Reply
  3. Michael Crosby says

    October 17, 2022 at 4:08 pm

    I guess I’m one that doesn’t understand investing either. I, too, pulled all my money out of VTSAX.

    I may be wrong, but it was clear to see the path leading to the housing crisis in 2007. My wife and I didn’t sell our home then, and I wanted to.

    This time around we sold our home at its peak to Open Door. They still haven’t sold the house and it’s now on the market for less than what they gave us.

    I understand being invested for the long haul, but why stay invested when all the signs are pointing for a downhill turn? I’m down 9% due to inflation, but it beats 9% + market losses.

    Reply
    • Mr. 1500 Days says

      October 17, 2022 at 4:26 pm

      Sometimes, you can see bad events coming, but it’s hard to know when or exactly what the result will be. For example, I think that there is a decent chance that China will invade Taiwan in the next 5 years. I’m pretty clueless as to when that will be though, so trying to act on it is difficult. Another example is COVID. Despite a quick drop, the markets had recovered within months. And housing absolutely blew up.

      And to get the timing right, you have to be right twice.

      Congratulations on your success.

      Reply
    • charlie @ doginvestor.com says

      October 18, 2022 at 6:30 am

      Possibly. But how do you “know” when to get back in.
      I had friends that waited since 2015, then Covid, now still in cash… Timing the markets is hard…

      Reply
    • Joe says

      October 20, 2022 at 10:20 am

      I have had a large percentage of cash (30%) of cash waiting to be invested since 2007. It’s shrunk to < 20% because the portion invested went up so much. I did finally put a little bit to work during March 2020 but the market rebounded so fast I didn’t have the chance to buy more. The problem is you not only can’t predict black and white swans, when fundamental analysis tells you the market is way overvalued, the Fed can still endlessly pump money into the system and manipulate it. All you can do is invest so you can keep up with everyone else?

      Reply
  4. Jim says

    October 21, 2022 at 2:41 pm

    Fantastic post! Now is the time for that guy to be putting money back into VTSAX. I remember when covid hit and the market sank, a couple guys I know pulled everything out on the way down. They said ‘this is my retirement money’, I said are you retiring in the next year? No, Next 5? No, Next 10? No. I asked, “Do you think the market will be higher in 10+ plus years”? Yes. You just answered your own question of whether or not you should have pulled your money out! Up and to the right we go!

    Reply

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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 (primary home excluded)
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
1/1/23 (10 Yrs Later): $3,112,821

2023: Investments only
1/1: $3,112,821

Overall
2023 investment gains: $0
Investment gains since 1/1/2013: $2,526,778
Net worth***: $3,342,821

* 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!

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