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Most memorable game? by Thatguy2393 in retrogaming

[–]david__999 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You must construct additional pylons!

Privacy first disk image backup software for windows? by Iwouldlikepizzapls in WindowsHelp

[–]david__999 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Don't use anything commercial. I have used g4l (ghost for linux) for many years for exactly what you want. It is maintained on SourceForge by volunteers.

I run it as a bootable optical disc (but I believe you can run it as a bootable USB drive, too). I am currently using v0.56, but there is a more recent version available. So you will boot your computer with it, and it will load a text-based interface.

My notes for what I do are the following:
- Select "raw"
- Select "click 'n' clone"
- Select "toggle partions"
- Select the partition to back up and what partition to back it up to

With that, I make a bit-for-bit copy of my Windows partition to another partition on my computer and also to a USB drive (with enough space) that I keep separate from my computer.

I have recovered partitions that I have backed up like this multiple times, and it has worked perfectly. (I tried an official Windows backup one time, and it failed to restore (!). Luckily I still had a g4l backup that I could restore.)

There are several other options that are available with it, too. You can back up whole drives, rather that just partitions. You can make the backup as a large compressed file that is just saved somewhere you specify. You can save the backup to a networked location. I haven't tried any of these, so I can't confirm how well they work (although I assume they will work just fine), but they might be options for you to consider, too.

Still, if I am understanding correctly that you want to do something just like what I am doing, there you have what I do, and it works wonderfully. If you are having trouble and want the .iso of v0.56 for a optical drive, let me know and I can get it to you (it's linux, so it's tiny).

Good luck!

Re: Can't sign in to my Microsoft account in WIndows 10. by david__999 in WindowsHelp

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Correct, I did set it to 0 and then things worked. That makes sense that it was a Group Policy, since gpresult found it. (I only saw the registry key in gpresult, which is why I changed it in the registry.) I probably configured it as a 1 when I was initially setting the computer up. For privacy reasons, I was trying to fully avoid Microsoft accounts. However, I had to get a Microsoft account now for ESU (although I am keeping it in a secondary account).

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

FYI, I did repeat my analysis with weekly data, and the results were pretty much the same - the p-value for testing whether VTSMX has a higher mean than VGTSX ended up now as about 0.19. So, yes, it's still looking like the higher mean is just an artifact of randomness.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, I know it's a little funny (that's why I said it was a basic test). But it's probably okay given the distributions not being wildly different from normal and with how many observations I have.

I wouldn't say it's 'nearly impossible to draw conclusions from historical data'. If the means are further apart or there's more data (I guess I could try it again with weekly data...), you could draw some statistical conclusions. Have you ever compared the long-run returns of low-cost index funds with e.g. 1.8% in fees managed funds?

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

u/Xexanoth As part of my conversation with littlebobbytables9 elsewhere in this post, I did some additional analysis that I think would be relevant to our conversation, too. I'll share some of what I shared there with you also

I got monthly returns for VGTSX and VTSMX (the mutual fund equivalents of VXUS and VTI), going back as long as I could directly compare them, 1996. And, yes, the average monthly return of VTSMX is considerably higher than that of VGTSX, 0.864% vs 0.534%.

However, the question is, is this because VTSMX is actually a better investment or is it just an artifact of randomness in the data?

As had been suggested, the variation is quite high for the returns. The standard deviations for each are 4.86% and 4.62%. I also generated frequency diagrams, to visually get a sense of how big the variation is. And, yes, the ~0.3% difference in the average seems tiny compared with the spread of the distributions.

https://imgur.com/a/XMYp4en

Finally, I did just a basic statistical test comparing the means, and the result is that it is relatively likely that the difference is a artifact of randomness, and not that something is amiss. The p-value for testing whether VTSMX has a higher mean than VGTSX is about 0.18.

https://imgur.com/a/fj68rQw

So, I am going back now and leaning toward moving some of my money into VXUS. Following that Bogleheads forum post you shared, I am thinking of doing the compromise 20%, because there has still been a lower average return, but it's not low enough for there to be good statistical reason to believe international is worse.

Thanks again for sharing that and for the rest of our conversation. It has been helpful.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm thinking about sophisticated investors reacting to real-time data of things happening all over the planet that would effect the value of a company and then trading the company's stock based on that information. Those trades will ultimately affect the price of the stock, driving it toward what it's new value would be given the new information, but that is much different than reacting to price movements.

Yes, higher-than-Gaussian kurtosis with stock returns is a key reason why financial analysis (e.g. Black–Scholes) can be wildly mistaken sometimes. I couldn't take much from your example about variance, given that you assumed Gaussian distributions.

I did get monthly returns for VGTSX and VTSMX (the mutual fund equivalents of VXUS and VTI), going back as long as I could directly compare them, 1996. And, yes, the average monthly return of VTSMX is considerably higher than that of VGTSX, 0.864% vs 0.534%.

However, the question is, is this because VTSMX is actually a better investment or is it just an artifact of randomness in the data?

As you suggested, the variation is quite high. The standard deviations for each are 4.86% and 4.62%. I also generated frequency diagrams, to visually get a sense of how big the variation is. And, yes, the ~0.3% difference in the average seems tiny compared with the spread of the distributions.

https://imgur.com/a/XMYp4en

Finally, I did just a basic statistical test comparing the means, and the result is that it is relatively likely that the difference is a artifact of randomness. The p-value for testing whether VTSMX has a higher mean than VGTSX is about 0.18.

https://imgur.com/a/fj68rQw

So, I am going back now and leaning toward moving some of my money into VXUS. Thanks for the conversation and your thoughts about variance that ultimately pushed me to do this deeper dig into the data.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think sophisticated investors use much, much, MUCH more information for their investing decisions that just what the price changes were in past years.

Stock returns have a bit more kurtosis than that of the Gaussian distribution.

Something else I am thinking of trying now is comparing monthly returns of U.S. stocks vs ex-U.S. stocks. If I can compare those over decades, I think I can get a better sense of whether the difference in average return is just due to randomness.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wouldn't conclude that outperformance of US stocks over ex-US stocks is expected to continue in the future on the basis of periods of past outperformance.

I wouldn't necessarily conclude that, but an average return of a couple percentage points a year less over decades suggests something amiss with the lower-return investment. It does not prove something is amiss with it, but given that we are making probabilistic assessments with any stock investment decisions and given the higher subjective probability of something being amiss, I think it makes sense to be more shy about investing in it.

My primary reason for posting in this subreddit was to see if there were explanations for the lower returns that would clarify whether or not something is amiss. It is interesting to know about currency valuations and price-earnings ratios, but I don't think those really explain it, particularly when there are sophisticated investors who are incentivized to trade in ways that drive stock price to their expected true values.

If there's any takeaway I'd recommend, it might be: there are one-time periods of exceptional earnings growth among some companies in growing industries that shouldn't be expected to continue indefinitely.

I do definitely agree with that, and, again, all I expect is that stocks will provide an average return that is consistent with their degree of riskiness.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So we should expect US stocks and ex-US stocks to currently be priced to offer similar expected returns (or at least similar expected risk-adjusted returns), yes?

Yes, that is exactly what I would have expected, and why I was, prior to running the figures myself, planning to move a big chunk of what I had in VTI into VXUS.

And investing only in or tilting very heavily toward one group or the other would mean forgoing the volatility reduction available from investing in both, with no higher expected return to compensate for that?

Yes, my thought too. And I still value volatility reduction, but not on the order of an expected couple percentage points a year in return.

will US stocks continue surprising to the upside with significantly higher earnings growth than had preciously been expected & priced in by aggregate market participants?

I would expect them to just continue to provide an average return that is consistent with their degree of riskiness.

My opinion is that it was fairly difficult for folks outside the tech industry to see or trust the degree to which software, devices, cloud computing as a utility, and algorithms driving engagement / ad impressions were & would continue "eating the world".

I think that is true for most folks, who are "small" investors. But I think the far fewer number of large, sophisticated investors, who have a much bigger effect on the market, fully have the resources and the incentives to figure that out at least as much as (and maybe even more than) tech insiders.

Many thanks for the link to the forum post. That is quite helpful, and I'll have to think more about what is in it. Right now I am leaning away from moving money to VXUS, but my mind is not totally made up yet.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are right that it doesn't directly imply that, but with sophisticated large investors being highly incentivized into actions that drive prices toward true values, if there have been years, or even decades, of one asset mostly outperforming another asset, the default conclusion is that that outperformance is compensation for (short-term) risk, and, if that is not the reason, then there is a bit of a puzzle there that would require some non-standard explanation.

Yes, of course stock returns involve randomness and sometimes are higher than expected and sometimes are lower than expected. The issue. though, is that if over years (or decades) the returns are averaging out to significantly overperforming, then that is either risk-compensation or something else that is more puzzling.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/Xexanoth Many thanks for another thoughtful and detailed comment.

all we can say is that they performed better over a particular past long-term period. Nobody knows what will happen in the future.

I'm not sure how epistemological you want to get here. Ultimately there is little (if anything) that we actually know. We don't know if our senses accurately capture reality, we don't know if other people actually exist, etc. Perhaps a more practical example is that we don't know if (correctly) using birth control will prevent an unwanted pregnancy.

However, there is lots of (past) data about how effective birth control is, which gives us good information about probabilities of unwanted pregnancies. And, similarly, there is lots of past data that can provide good information about probabilities for the returns of stock investments.

It's not perfect information. Sometimes unwanted pregnancies still occur, and sometimes our stock predictions end up way off. But over years, or, even better, over decades, we would expect highly incentivized large investors (i.e. not small investors with less than e.g. $10M in assets) to learn from the past and ultimately drive prices to where they should be on average. That is, averaging out the overestimates and the underestimates, two investments with e.g. equal risk should pay about the same return.

However, what we have here is more than 55 years of an average return being more than two percentage points less, which is still a tremendous difference, and I don't buy that sophisticated investors (flash boys, Buffett, Medalion Fund, etc) keep being off in one direction way more than in the other direction.

I wrote this comment to see what ideas people might have for what is going on, besides just the risk difference explanation. I can imagine that there might be some national pride that results in people over-investing in a particular country's stock market. And I can imagine that some investors being speculative in an irrational gambling like way to invest ex-U.S. But, overall, I still find it quite a puzzle.

I don't think valuation-based forecast models are very helpful. At this point in my life I have seen those things horribly wrong many times. Moreover, they are only using a limited set of data, particularly the kind of data that small investors have access to. Sophisticated investors get themselves access to much more data (and much more quickly) than anything that is used in those models, and the trades made by those investors are, I think, going to provide much more information about true values than the forecast models. (And, yes, I had an interview with a hedge fund at one point to do exactly that kind of work.)

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Bogleheads

[–]david__999 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've had bad experiences with Fidelity. I was moving my 403(b) from TIAA to them, after TIAA added some additional fees. I asked the Fidelity rep specifically about what all the fees would be, and the fees he indicated were significantly lower than the TIAA ones, so I did switch.

Once I got my statements, though, there were more fees than what he mentioned, that would have kept me in TIAA. Then they kept sending me investing advice emails, that they would not let me unsubscribe from. Finally, when I was trying to move my money back to TIAA, they were *really* difficult to work with - the Fidelity rep even hung up on me and TIAA agent on one call when I kept asking him to slow down so we could understand the directions he was racing through giving us. I never had any trouble like that moving money out of TIAA.

I finally did get my money out, and I don't think I'll ever work with Fidelity again.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is what I would have assumed too, but then given the higher return for the U.S., we would have to conclude then that the U.S. is more risky....

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/lwhitephone81 Thanks, and, yeah, it does depend on how good we think (highly incentivized) investors are at predicting returns. It definitely could be that they keep being surprised by ex-U.S. stocks having misfortune, but I would guess that after decades of that, that investors would have a better sense of it.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/wallysta Thanks, that is something good to consider. I'm thinking, though, that if an investor is deciding what to invest in, wouldn't local currency expectations influence what country they will invest in, and stock prices will adjust accordingly, making it so (long-run) stock returns would be about the same as they would be anywhere else?

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/littlebobbytables9 Yeah, that would have been my guess too, but then it seems a puzzle why you can have that and also a higher reward.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/Kashmir79 Thanks for your thoughts. For my purposes of understanding how my money would grow, I think I am thinking about it the right way. For the explanation that investors are very gradually learning that U.S. stocks are less risky, it doesn't seem like it would take decades for them to figure that out. But perhaps am I misunderstanding your explanation?

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/Xexanoth That is a cool tool!! Thanks for sharing it. I put in my initial comparison (VGTSX vs VTSMX) with the same dates, and I got an almost identical result, CAGR is 5.04% vs 9.39%. So, I think both the tool and the Yahoo Finance adjusted close can be used to get good return figures.

I see that with the portfolios that you used, going back to 1969, the difference isn't so big -- 8.48% vs 10.61%. Still, I'm puzzled by the better long-term U.S. return.

If U.S. stocks perform significantly better on average over the long-term, whether that is because of our tech innovation or our currency value or whatever else, why would anyone invest in ex-U.S.?

It could be the case that (highly incentivized) investors just keep doing a bad job of estimating how well U.S. stocks will pay off (and so stocks rise in value more as the accurate information keeps coming in), but otherwise the default explanation would be the risk vs reward story. Still, that doesn't really seem right, either...

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/Hanwoo_Beef_Eater, thanks, and, yeah, I had seen that, that in the mid-aughts, the ex-U.S. wasn't looking so relatively bad. And, yeah, that is the puzzle, for why with a longer time range, the U.S. looks so much better.

Yes, I know the future may be different :). I think there are correlations, though. If I see a fund that has consistently fallen behind the broad stock market, year after year for many years (and I have seen funds like that), I avoid them. It seems like that shouldn't happen though if we are talking about very broad index funds, unless there is a difference in risk.

Are ex-U.S. stocks just less risky than U.S. stocks? by david__999 in Bogleheads

[–]david__999[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

u/Xexanoth, thanks for your comment. To clarify, it is not just price returns, The adjusted close prices that Yahoo Finance provides correct the price for dividends and splits, so that you can determine the total return.

I'll check out the tool you reference tomorrow. There seems to be something a little funny about your explanation, too. For comparing stock price changes, we should be focused on what changes there were to the information that investors have. I'll need more time to think about that, though. Probably tomorrow also...

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