Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Portfolio Update - Sept 08



Turtle received $ 888 for the month of September.

I sometimes wonder whether people that went through the darkest days in their life will value life, money and margin of safety principle much better than those with smooth sailing in their whole life.

George Soros for example. "I have touched bottom," he told himself, "and I am bound to rise." He was poor, broke and constantly exposed to threats during era of Nazi when he was young.

Benjamin Graham, started fund management in 1926 during irrational exuberance years but 1929 crashed brought him down. I supposed he value margin of safety so much because it was personal, he got wiped out. His wife went back to work as a dance teacher, can you imagine that?

The famous Vanguard founder, John Bogle, experienced humiliated experience as well. He founded the company in 1975 right after Go-Go funds era went bust. Go-Go, keep pushing - up of course. Go-Go funds return spectacularly from 1965 - 1968 with cumulative 40% plus within a short span of time. Those funds were invested in growth stocks like hot technology stocks. Assets went from 43 millions to 2.3 billions - Wow!. The funds then collapsed to 660 million from 1969 to 1974. A group of fund managers came together had soul searching sessions and finally found Index low cost fund was the way to go.

Stay defensive -- no need real expensive experience to learn the lesson of don't lose money big time.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Do you know how to invest in US market?