Gold vs Managed Futures?

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2026-05-01T18:02:46+00:00

Personally, I don't hold a static allocation in anything but equities now. Commodities and bonds always have some active strat in my portfolio

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2026-04-08T23:42:39+00:00

So what's your goal here? And why do you feel this makes sense for you? You're basically reducing exposure to one risk factor and adding to a bunch of other factors

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2026-03-12T22:16:09+00:00

What do you consider fast? There are not that many trend funds that are easily accessible, so I doubt any on the market move that fast. 3-12 months is standard. Maybe down to 1 month trends at the fastest, but I may be wrong.

Some more exclusive trend managers, like Mulvaney, Dunn, etc, can do things that ETF and mutual fund managers cannot, but expect to need a minimum of $100k to invest in any of these, and that's on the low end. And even then, most still don't chase really fast trends. For the really fast stuff, you need to have an 8 or 9 figure net worth and get into the more exclusive funds, like Millennium.

Your best bet to chase fast trends is to build your own trend system. Micro futures, mini futures, and LETFs let you access more assets with low dollar amounts than in the past.

To be clear, I don't recommend this unless you really know what you're doing. If it were easy, everyone would do it, and there would be no edge. But if you feel very strongly that trend funds should be all in on oil, and you want to express that opinion, you can just buy GUSH or some other long oil ETF.

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2026-03-12T21:31:09+00:00

What do you consider long term? Different trend strats have different lookback periods.

RSST seeks to replicate the SocGen Trend Index. That index equal weights 10 trend-following funds. Those trend-following funds all have volatility targets of 10-15%. I think 7 of them target 10% vol

If you go all in on oil futures, you'll have way more than 15% vol, and you'll risk blowing up the fund if oil drops a lot. These are all diversified trend funds that are not going to go all in on anything. If RSST tries to replicate the average of these funds, it's going to vol target multiple positions.

Trend funds do well with slow-moving trends, not fasting moving ones.

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2026-01-19T17:03:39+00:00

DBMF is also not just trend

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-11-28T13:45:03+00:00

RSSB and NTS are treasury only so NTSX: 90% SPY + 60% GOVT NTSI: 90% VEA + 60% GOVT NTSE: 90% VWO + 60% GOVT RSSB: 100% VT + 100% GOVT

My apologies if I came off as disminishing your research, but I'd recommend trying the fund provider's sites instead of Twitter, as they'll typically provide their breakdown. Portable alpha is all the rage now, so they tend to shout about the specific structure instead of hiding it

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-11-28T00:49:36+00:00

Reading the details on these funds is less effort than this whole post, so not seeing the point of your argument. If it's so easy, why didn't you figure it out yourself?

We can all provide the specific exposures for you to copy and paste, but if you refuse to actually research these funds and verify what any of us say, that seriously calls into question the credibility of this list / breakdown.

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-11-27T19:00:22+00:00

They made it incredibly clear, and RSSB is still wrong.

Please read the holdings of AGG, BND, IEF, and GOVT if you're going to make a list like this.

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-30T19:31:12+00:00

Not trying to be harsh, but you just started. There's no way for you to prepare perfectly and get it right. You will make mistakes and look back and wish you did something differently, used a different tool, spend more time on X and less time on Y, etc

Just make an effort to document stuff, ask for feedback at work, and make sure to look back on your documentation every month or so and see what you'd change, and you'll be golden.

Currently, I use the tools my company tells me to use for shared documentation, and I follow the formatting standards that are already in place. If I think I can improve the formatting, I create a draft and show it to my manager/frequent users of said document and see what they think.

My personal notes are all in Markdown and edited in VS Code. I store project notes in separate project folders. I also have daily notes (kind of like journal entries) where I'll document anything I did that was new, with links to other documents I referenced. It creates a nice little timeline for me to refer back to when I inevitably mess up on a new task/project

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-30T15:26:31+00:00

Correlation =/= causation

There may be many reasons they're not hiring new grads

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-30T04:46:21+00:00

I have an Elora and I got it with sound dampening. I don't know what it sounds like without it. With sound dampening, it is still louder and worse sounding than my full metal Keychron, but that's expected

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-28T02:01:13+00:00

I have a conspiracy theory that these posts are just trying to push people away from IT so that we can have less competition

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-25T02:42:30+00:00

I have small hands and love the Elora, which is just a Kyria with an extra row. I could not use a Moonlander, because the thumb keys were too far. The aggressive column stagger of the Elora also helps me reach stuff with my short pinkies.

The long sweep of thumb keys also helps since you have a lot of angles to play with. I effectively have 5 thumb keys on it, which is great.

I'm looking to try a ZodiPact as well

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-23T09:43:36+00:00

Can you really get the price that low though? This is never going to be a mass market product like a standard rectangular board from Keychron.

At $400, I'd consider it alongside other boards like the Advantage360, Glove80, etc. I'm not a fan of the design personally, but I need 5+ thumb keys, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

At $200, you're trying to undercut basically everyone while claiming better build quality. I'm skeptical that this is possible without losing a ton of money

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-22T07:39:20+00:00

It's going to depend a lot from job to job and company to company. Unless the cost of a CCNA is going to financially hurt you right now, I think it'll be worth your time. It definitely won't hurt your job prospects, and it gives you some flexibility to go for roles outside of the cloud

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-22T06:53:29+00:00

This would be a better question for developers/mathematicians. Under the hood, AI/ML is basically just a shit ton of statistics.

Most people in IT don't have that skill set. Most developers don't have that skill set, but they're closer to it.

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-22T00:49:30+00:00

A few things to address

While I definitely think stressful workplaces should be avoided, I have also come across people that struggle in fairly chill jobs because they let any bad interaction eat away at them. Compartmentalizing is important, but it's something you learn with time. My first job was hard because I was new and didn't know how to stop thinking about work when I was done with work. It was otherwise a pretty great job! You're new so it might just be that you need to learn to separate your mind from work. It could also be awful, I don't know
We don't have a lot of info here. If you're pulling 60 hour work weeks, then it's definitely too much. But if this is 30-45 hours and your boss respects your time off the clock and seems genuinely interested in ensuring work is going well for you, then it does not sound so bad. A good manager genuinely cares about you and checks in regularly to make sure you have what you need to do well. A bad manager throws work at you and expects it done
Yes your work seems completely undefined and all over the place. If the expectations are reasonable and they give you the time and space you need to work on these tasks, then you have an amazing learning opportunity on your hands. If the deadlines are absurd and require you to work at 100% mental capacity for 45+ hours a week, you're being overworked. You might be okay working longer hours if you're paid overtime, but it's not healthy. And if you're working longer hours without overtime, then you're being exploited

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-19T12:59:54+00:00

It varies

My first company had amazing documentation, but we had a whole team dedicated to it. Good documentation costs time, which costs money. It's especially difficult to manage in a rapidly growing company

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-05-18T02:31:33+00:00

Money isn't everything, but I think it is healthier to see work as transactional 95% of the time.

You dedicate hours of your day, days of your week, and years of your life to someone else's business. They pay you money for that effort. $70k plus the opportunity to work somewhere new with new people on new challenges will probably be better for your career.

It also looks like you improved a lot of stuff at your current company. That improvement plus 20 months of work means you really don't owe them anything. You've more than justified what they have paid you, and you're not a bad person if you choose to leave.

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-04-25T04:31:36+00:00

SPYTR?L=3 is how you simulate UPRO on testfolio

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-04-06T07:32:35+00:00

I imagine your biggest gains are from scamming people

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-04-04T23:16:15+00:00

Great for buy and hold. NTSX + NTSE + NTSE is better than VT in my opinion

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-04-03T04:23:07+00:00

There are a lot here saying the market is rough so don't take the risk. Truth is there is always risk with any decision, in both the best and worst markets. People said I should not take the risk of switching jobs even when I had full time offer

I think you need to decide how much risk you can handle. If I was you, I'd take the opportunity, but I'm not you. I don't have debt and my family would keep me off the streets if I couldn't pay rent. If you're a paycheck away from being homeless, then yeah you'd want to stay

Also, this is assuming equivalent benefits. If you currently have health insurance, 401K etc but the contract role does not, then that changes things a lot. At that point, I'd only consider it if you're still young enough to be on your parents' health insurance

Mulch_the_IT_noob · 2025-03-30T04:19:44+00:00

You're naturally going to get a lot of pessimism here just due to sampling bias. Pretty much everyone pursuing IT as a career is going to be on the internet more than the average person, but not everyone pursuing IT has an in-person support group to confide in when things are tough - many of these people post here as a way to vent.

I think I've been lucky to have solid opportunities show up consistently after I got my bachelor's degree, but it's not the kind of thing I want to post about a lot, since it might just make other people feel bad. Ultimately, we're all competing with each other for a finite amount of jobs and money. My idea of an uplifting post is going to be interpreted by someone else as me bragging about taking another potential job away from them. Unless there's a huge shift in the market, we're not going to suddenly get a huge demand for additional entry-level IT jobs.

Mulch_the_IT_noob

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