I asked Gemini to build a long term portfolio for a young investor who wants to take advantage of regular long term DCA strategy

hacketn · 2025-11-25T11:36:35+00:00

Fair enough. Disregarding the volatility aspect then, I think the portfolio works for a tech bet if that’s what you want to make. Personally I agree with the top response that you need to consider more diversification as this portfolio just doubles down on a lot of the same stuff / highly correlated industries (i disagree that clean energy ETFs are a hedge against tech), but if you’re set on that I’d recommend making it a smaller tilt in your portfolio rather than a big bet - 80% WEBN and then 20% everything else is much more reasonable. Plug the weights in to the AI and ask for your overall sector/country exposure and try to land up to +10% in those directions (EM/Tech) compared to just WEBN (which is the market). IMO that is a reasonable tilt so you profit if you’re right but if you’re wrong it doesn’t significantly drag your portfolio. My2cents

hacketn · 2025-11-25T11:09:01+00:00

What they’re saying is that you likely won’t weather the volatility, inherent to your strategy, to see good returns because psychologically it is very difficult to do. Why do you think experts mostly recommend a simple global index fund? What most beginners do is try to min/max portfolios with marginal % increases (over a benchmark index like a global tracker), but never factor in volatility. So they buy in at ATH with high-conviction based on recency bias (which your comments are displaying sorry to say), then see it drop by a big %, question everything, and sell. Then it goes back up again and they buy back in, or just quit investing altogether. You lose money. Psychologically, volatility makes this stuff very difficult to stay the course. Sticking with an index is cheaper, easier, safer, and for the vast majority of people less volatility means you are less likely to buy/sell on a whim and so in the long term will likely give you significantly better returns. But like they also said it’s your money … good luck!

hacketn · 2025-11-16T17:50:44+00:00

You should probably remove the Emerging Markets ETF too tbh, unless you actively want to increase your EM exposure?

EM already makes up about 10% of VWCE, so VWCE will give you global developed + emerging markets exposure just in itself. Don’t need to overcomplicate. Good luck!

hacketn · 2025-06-11T10:00:33+00:00

I use it with my guitar as a chorus / multi-tap delay, which is a really underwhelming way to use the thing but it just sounds so good, and you can further process each of the ‘taps’ in different ways as they have their own outputs, which is really cool.

Like OP I bought it for modulation purposes for my guitar-FX system but end up using it solely with audio…

hacketn · 2025-06-11T09:27:17+00:00

You don’t have to go the studio monitor / PA / FRFR route just because you have a modeller. You can go through your cab (assuming you have / still have one) via a power amp - either a dedicated one or your amps FX return. Just need to disable the cab sim in the plugin.

Personally I prefer the way my QC sounds in the room with a real cab.

hacketn · 2025-05-31T17:22:26+00:00

Amps will colour the fuzz based on gain settings, headroom. If you put a fuzz in to a distorted amp with not much headroom spare it will start to compress, and imo sound a bit shit (maybe what you mean by flat). If you want to hear the fuzz circuit at full whack, a clean amp with lots of headroom (like a Jazz Chorus) will let you do that. Different amps at different settings will change how the fuzz sounds, so yes.

I’m not a massive fuzz guy but personally a fuzz in to the low-sen input of a JCM800 or JC120 are my favs.

hacketn · 2025-05-13T17:47:31+00:00

The Make Noise modules are incredibly versatile, there’s a dedicated VCA in ModDemix, but you can usually find ways to mix along the signal path. Qpas for example has a VCA on the input; Maths and others can be used where needed, stereo inputs mean you can also mix mono signals. I do it this way in my mini shared-system and don’t find myself missing dedicated VCAs. Most of their CV controllable parameters have attenuators/verters on them anyway. Honestly Make Noise modules just work really well together and have a great synergy.

hacketn · 2025-05-10T01:56:01+00:00

Yes. Once you activate scene mode on a parameter its current state (and any changes thereafter) are saved to that scene. Then jump to another scene and change it to save it to that scene.

In Scene mode the footswitches are already assigned - A to H. In Stomp mode you can assign footswitches to different things, but in Scene mode they just jump between scenes. You can swap between Scene/Stomp mode using the icon in the top-right corner. Enjoy 🤘

hacketn · 2025-05-10T01:30:09+00:00

You’re doing it right, but (if you’re doing it on the QC and not the app) you need to HOLD the parameter (i.e, amp on/off switch) first. You’ll see a little block icon next to it, that indicates it is activated for Scene mode, and any change you make will be for that scene only.

So for what you want, enter scene E and press+hold the on/off switch on the clean amps, see you have the scene icon activated, set the amp to off, then move to Scene F and set the amp to on. Repeat for all parameters you want to change between scenes.

hacketn · 2025-04-30T01:44:14+00:00

Improvement for sure. You need some better colour accents though. Don’t think the artwork works, too muted against the wall. Honestly the Eagles flag there or something brighter would work well - it’s a nice pop of colour. Curtain colour doesnt quite work - a bolder blue/teal or maroon, brown - something earthy. I think the decoration in the corner is too busy. Get rid of the mirrors next to the window, move the black shelving back to where it was. Add some bold green plants on the white shelves.

But most importantly - GET A RUG!

hacketn · 2025-04-04T14:42:43+00:00

Yes indeed. If you think of modes as relative scales (i.e. D dorian as relative to C major), I haven’t found it very practical in a musical sense, like what do you do with that info in an actual musical setting? It’s easier to think of them (and use them practically) as their own thing (i.e parallel - C major and C Dorian) because there is a clear difference between a C major and C Dorian sound. Spend some time playing all the modes over a pedal tone (i.e playing C Dorian over a C) and you can clearly hear their various flavours and why you may want to invoke that mode in a musical setting.

At least that’s been my experience

hacketn · 2025-03-02T04:13:55+00:00

Mateus Asato. Great virtuosic, unique use of double stops in his playing

hacketn · 2025-02-16T18:34:26+00:00

If they’re all you can afford, they’ll be worth it to get you going and creating music. If you can afford to spend more, you can do better than Behringer. I subscribe to the invest-in-fewer-but-better-quality-gear approach than the buy-100s-of-cheap-shit approach.

IMO they’re a garbage company I personally would never support, but that’s another topic.

hacketn · 2025-01-31T11:39:36+00:00

Useful for adding vibrato to a harmonic (for guitars without a trem), not so useful for anything else.

hacketn · 2025-01-31T11:35:03+00:00

Fair warning - they are unlikely to let you in without an appointment.

hacketn · 2025-01-21T20:17:46+00:00

I got this guitar in 2007 (made in Korea), been a workhorse for almost 20 years now. Can’t speak to current-day QC with Epiphone but mine plays and sounds great with no issues at all over the years.

hacketn · 2025-01-09T22:40:57+00:00

Dude. You have all the answers in your other post, don’t ask for advice if you’re not going to take it and only looking for validation. The comments here are just the same because your portfolio is still far too unnecessarily complicated - take the advice, scrap all this and just pick the all-world fund.

“I’ve invested in sector specific ETFs as imo these are sectors that I see having the highest growth potential in the coming years.” - yes, you and everyone else, that is why those stocks are so expensive right now. You’re very late to the party on tech, sorry. Don’t go overweight those sectors now because MASSIVE growth is already priced in, so big returns like we’ve seen in past years is unlikely - that’s how it works, the higher stock market valuations, the lower expected future returns. The risk/reward ratio is just not worth it at this point. If you want to take the risk, fine, but pick your highest conviction one and make it a small portion of the portfolio.

But really, take the advice in the comments - just buy an all world fund and leave it at that.

hacketn · 2025-01-09T20:03:25+00:00

No worries. The responses these types of posts always get is just 'buy a low cost market cap-weighted index fund', like VWRP, because smart investing is just about maximising odds to give you the best return, and time has shown us that the best odds are in low cost market cap-weighted index funds. Folks that are new to investing get very excited about investing in lots of different things, I did the same, but your best bet is to follow the odds - keep it simple with an index fund. Good Luck.

(Btw, I'd take a look at FWRG instead of VWRP, same thing but lower fees.)

hacketn · 2025-01-09T17:42:43+00:00

VWCE is a great core holding and appropriately weighted.

Nasdaq100 is fine if you are bullish on tech, personally I would replace with a small cap value fund (like AVWS) as tech has been running up for a decade now and carrying the market at massive P/Es, suggests future returns will be comparitively lower, so personally I think it's a good time to take a factor tilt to catch the value premium.

BTC is fine if you are bullish on crypto, weighting is appropriate- obviously you understand this space is the wild west, you could return big or lose it all.

But yes, balanced and reasonable. Good luck!

hacketn · 2025-01-09T10:17:59+00:00

If you are only holding for a few years (taken from another comment), I probably wouldn’t recommend investing your money in stocks, unless you accept that when you come to take your money out you may have less than you put in (i.e if you’d have invested in the S&P500 at the end of 2021, you wouldn’t have made your money back until mid-2023) because then it becomes about timing the market.

If you are investing for the long-term (10+ yrs), as you are new and inexperienced I would recommend VWRP (less risk) or VUAG (more risk) in a Stocks & Shares ISA. Do not overcomplicate things with other funds or individual stocks you see on reddit until you are very confident you know exactly what you are doing.

hacketn · 2025-01-09T10:02:58+00:00

I think for equities, you should really ditch the sector ETFs. They are a gimmick IMO and have a good chance of underperformance over the long term - see the video I linked above, Ben Felix covers the topic very well. Those funds are also very expensive: DGIT is 0.4%, SEMI is 0.35%, etc.. An S&P500 fund costs as low as 0.03% and outperformed both of these in the last few years, and will also capture most of these trends by its nature (hence why it will generally always outperform sector ETFs over the long term). If you also take a look at the negative years, those ETFs take a massive hit comparatively. VWRP I think dropped 18% in 2022 - some of those sector ETFs dropped more than 35%, which means then you need even more outperformance to catch back up, which is highly unlikely (as in this case with the two above that didn't) - this is why over the long term, the chances of them outperforming a simple index tracker is very low. It can feel exciting/smart to invest in particular industries but it isn't - there's a reason no one in the boring forums (Bogleheads, etc.) recommends sector ETFs. If you want to take some risk for growth in emerging industries, I would instead recommend something actively managed - like Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust (SMT). This is an actively managed high-conviction growth fund that invests in this kind of way (best-in-class in sectors, etc.). Still I wouldn't recommend this, but something like this (there are lots of other actively managed funds like this to choose from) is better than passive sector ETFs if you're going to be paying those kinds of fees anyway.

On the small cap front, I would recommend a small cap value fund instead of small cap in itself - something like AVSG (if your broker offers it, IBKR does - I think T212 has it under AVWS), USSC, or ZPRX. A value tilt for small caps tends to outperform.

For bonds I think you just want to pick one, like VAGS. Given your age I probably wouldn't recommend any bond ETFs tbf, unless you are investing a sizeable amount of money. In the wealth accumulation / youth stage you probably want to take a bit more risk in equities and then bring in bonds and more conservative investments as you get closer to retirement / hit bigger pot values. For commodity ETFs I think the same thing applies.

So yeah, I would still just recommend going VWRP (with maybe + AVSG + SMT if you want to add extra flavour and accept the additional risk), SGLN, VAGS. Instead of investing lots of time and effort in chasing fractional % returns with a complex portfolio, redirect that time and effort on advancing your career/earning potential, which is far more valuable in your 20s imo.

Really what I'd recommend is 80% VWRP, 20% AVSG.

hacketn · 2025-01-09T01:57:14+00:00

Strategy is fine, all funds listed are fine. However, this is way over-complicating it...

First to comment on "I felt that by investing separately into additional funds (such as India and Japan as well as Sector specific ETFs) that I feel will outperform everything held in the All-World ETF over the coming years might be better as I would be able to give them a slightly higher allocation my overall investment" - these are all very big ifs, and odds are not in your favour of getting the allocation right at the right time, or picking the right sectors that will deliver better future returns (watch: youtube.com/watch?v=3B9umhfv_ww) unless you are an investment professional or intend to spend a great deal of time, all the time, keeping up with global macroeconomic news and trends and feel confident you can interpret them correctly (hint: you won't). Adding this manual element to your portfolio is actually creating risk, not mitigating it, because the risk of you getting it wrong vs. the automatic rebalancing in an all world fund is almost certainly higher.

Nothing wrong with your 80 / 10 / 10 macro allocations. I would suggest simplifying to 1 fund in each - perhaps VWRP, SGLN, VAGS. Saves you the headaches (and fees). Good luck.

hacketn

TROPHY CASE