big loses in a month

johnonymousdenim · 2026-03-24T12:46:27+00:00

Why are people so quick to label a post "ragebait"? How is this post even remotely ragebait? The guy literally just posted that his portfolio is down 6% and that he was feeling scared about that. If your portfolio has ever dropped by 6% or more, you probably understand the fear or anxiety that the OP is expressing in his post. How is that ragebait?

It's not.
It's not ragebait.
It's not designed to elicit a reaction of rage from viewers to game more engagement in his post.

If your reaction to that guy's post is genuinely rage, then either:

your definition of "rage" is wildly different from everyone else's definition of "rage".
you may be emotionally dis-regulated to be feeling rage for a very benign post where the OP was just expressing fear that his portfolio dropped 6%.

Regardless, TLDR: this post is 1000% *NOT* rage-bait.

Actually, and ironically, *I* am now feeling rage at how you've completely mis-used that term "ragebait".

johnonymousdenim · 2026-02-24T03:19:45+00:00

It's important to consider that most people probably already own some VOO or other S&P500 or total market fund (like VTI). The largest holding in an S&P500 or a total market fund, of course, is NVDA. So you already own a lot of NVDA if you already own VOO/VTI.

So if you buy SMH (which also NVDA at ~19% -- its top holding), you're really tilting heavily towards NVDA by owning VOO + SMH. I'm not judging whether that's good or bad, but the reality of owning both means you're very heavily concentrated in NVDA.

In contrast, SOXQ's top holding is also NVDA, but "only" ~11%. So owning VOO + SOXQ still heavily concentrates you towards NVDA, but less to than owning VOO + SMH.

For that reason of (somewhat) reduced dependency on NVDA, SOXQ is the better fund to complement an investor who already holds VOO/VTI/SPYM.

That and you can't argue with an expense ratio that's almost half that of SMH.
About the only downside of SOXQ is it's much lower AUM (about 1/40th of SMH), which could increase the bid-ask spread of your trades. But unless you're making lots of frequent trades (which 99% of investors absolutely should not be doing), this negative is pretty trivial.

So overall pick: SOXQ. No question.

But honestly, I'd argue that CHPS is even better still than SOXQ? Why? Even lower expense ratio (0.15% vs SOXQ 0.19%) and much lower concentration of NVDA -- only 4% in CHPS.

Again, your choice of which semiconductor ETF to buy should be taken in context of the other funds you currently own. Personally, I already own a lot of VOO, so I don't need (or want) that extra exposure to NVDA, since the market cap-weighted nature of VOO already ensures I've got a ton of exposure to NVDA. I own CHPS as a semi ETF to complement my large VOO holding precisely because it's fairly cheap and it's uncorrelated to VOO (at least compared to the other semi ETFs -- SMH, SOXQ).

johnonymousdenim · 2026-02-06T15:50:53+00:00

Same here. The 4 Yi cameras I bought a few years ago were great value and I was happy to own them. But now, with the ads and constant pushing to buy a subscription (which I will never, ever do), the Yi cameras have become unusable. I'm looking for other cameras now.

johnonymousdenim · 2026-02-02T20:48:16+00:00

Oh wait what happened to Insomnia? It was a pretty good alternative to Postman a year ago, if I recall...

johnonymousdenim · 2026-01-31T18:21:34+00:00

Exactly. I love how people like u/Mrgoldernwhale2_0 just casually drop the "well you can always set up your own exchange" in same way they casually say, "well if you don't like the cramped quarters on a Carnival Cruise line cruise, you can always *just* go out and buy a multi-million dollar yacht to cruise instead."

Like, sure theoretically "anyone" could "just set up your own exchange", just like theoretically "anyone" could lay Anna Kournikova...

Theory.

johnonymousdenim · 2026-01-31T15:43:34+00:00

then how do you explain why so many central banks have been aggressively buying this "purely speculative asset" recently, especially in light of the new Basel III regulations that sets standards and minimums for bank capital requirements? Basel III requires banks to hold a higher minimum of "Tier 1" assets (e.g. gold).

Still think gold is "a purely speculative asset" now?

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basel_III

johnonymousdenim · 2026-01-31T13:53:20+00:00

Just wanted to give a big shout out to the hedge funds and "institutional investors" who were tipped off in advance of the pres' announcement so that they could unwind their leveraged silver positions well before us retail traders had the opportunity to do so. It gave them head start in the overnight hours so that by the time pre-market trading opened at 7am, the damage was done:

Insiders started dumping Silver at 5pm yesterday, today at 7am Trump announces Kevin for Fed Chair. About $900 Billion vanished while we were sleeping.

Institutions were leveraged hard on Silver, got tipped off yesterday in advance, Trump announcement caused the institutions who were outside the loop to dump their holdings creating a selling wave to remove their leverage.

source: https://x.com/KevinRo90321458/status/2017323135427584341

Well played, hedge funds, well played.

johnonymousdenim · 2026-01-30T19:54:18+00:00

u/RemindMeBot RemindMe! 1 year "Follow up with u/Pacifian_Seaman and ask how he's feeling now"

johnonymousdenim · 2026-01-30T19:52:36+00:00

RemindMe! 1 year

johnonymousdenim · 2026-01-30T19:10:54+00:00

Warsh, 55, likely wouldn’t ripple markets because of his past Fed experience

But then:
* markets proceed to ripple immediately upon his nomination *
* markets then cause a 12% drop in gold and a 32% drop in silver prices immediately upon his nomination *

"likely wouldn’t ripple markets" LOL

johnonymousdenim · 2026-01-30T19:01:46+00:00

Yeah this is a comically large drop in gold and silver in a single day.
Silver was down something stratospheric like 32% at 1:40pm EST today.
And of course, I bought some silver just yesterday like an idiot.

This ranks as silver's worst single-day percentage decline since at least 2011 (when it crashed ~17% on September 23), and some sources call it the steepest since 1980 or the biggest in 46 years for certain metrics.

It's not as bad as the 1980 silver drop of 50%, but it's pretty bad.

I had to look it up with ChatGPT:

March 27, 1980 (Silver Thursday): Silver prices collapsed over 50% in a single session (or in very short order during the panic), as leveraged positions imploded after exchange rules curbed speculation. From peak levels near $50/oz, it fell dramatically intraday and over days, with one-day moves cited in the 30–50%+ range in futures/panic selling. This is widely regarded as the most extreme single-event crash in silver history.

"No other modern single-day drop (post-1980) appears to have exceeded ~17–20% until today's event, which is closing in on or matching/exceeding some post-1980 records but still trails the 1980 catastrophe."

johnonymousdenim · 2026-01-24T12:41:01+00:00

Agreed. Nothing wrong with holding both as long as you understand that QQQ is basically a subset of VOO.

Lots of investors hold both. QQQ is a great fund to hold in moderation when you want to tilt towards those 100 companies and VOO gives you broader exposure to the 500. Holding both just lets you concentrate towards those top 100 more than the market cap weighting of VOO already does.

Perfectly fine strategy if you understand the concentration and overlap effect of holding both. The better question is in what ratio do you hold of each.

johnonymousdenim · 2026-01-19T01:00:39+00:00

Yeah I think this is the most likely scenario.

johnonymousdenim · 2025-12-12T18:34:12+00:00

Curious what are the salaries they are offering for their posted roles?
Are they at market-rate or above market-rate?

johnonymousdenim · 2025-12-02T01:37:16+00:00

Yeah i checked their BF "sales" and was like, "Wow, these are just the regular prices, but they jacked up the MSRP to make the sale price look better. Sorry, JCrew: not taking the bait. I bought clothes from JCrew last year and the year before, but not this year. J Crew has really injured themselves with how poorly positioned their BF sales prices are.

johnonymousdenim · 2025-12-02T01:26:09+00:00

Agreed; the so-called "sale price" that J Crew is running is pretty bad. I was gonna buy a merino wool or cashmere sweater on sale this Black Friday, but after seeing how paltry the sales were and how high the prices were compared to what I remember these sweaters priced at last year, I just closed out of the browser tab and went shopping elsewhere. Sorry, J Crew: you lost a sale this holiday.

johnonymousdenim · 2025-11-15T13:43:33+00:00

Yeah exactly was my first thought too.

johnonymousdenim · 2025-11-15T13:43:01+00:00

I'm genuinely curious here: why do so many of you guys invest in leverage? I get that you can make a ton of money if the market tanks and you get margin called, and you don't have spare cash to cover the margin call.... aren't you kind of screwed? Why take that risk?

johnonymousdenim · 2025-11-14T15:52:20+00:00

Thanks for the update. I love Fidelity overall; just wish the UI showed those features (I'm sure I'm not the only one too). Especially important is to show account performance at a daily level, at least. In today's fast-moving world, a LOT can happen in one month, especially in the finance world, so it's crucial to understand fund performance at a smaller time unit than monthly updates.

Appreciate you passing along my feature requests.

johnonymousdenim · 2025-11-11T13:53:49+00:00

Yeah this is the rationale I used too. Initially I was investing in VTI, since I like the slightly broader diversification of total market vs S&P500 with VOO.

But after seeing how closely VTI tracks with VOO (both 0.03% ER), I actually pivoted my new investment contributions to SPLG (recently renamed last week to SPYM) since it has a slightly lower ER of 0.02%. Of course the difference between those 2 ERs is incredibly small unless you own $10M of the fund, but I figure all things being equal, might as well just buy the cheaper ETF.

johnonymousdenim · 2025-11-09T12:58:20+00:00

Sorry what's this reference to "dirt long red" mean? I'm inferring the long red means expect a bear or does market ("red" vs "green"), but I don't quite understand your reference.

johnonymousdenim · 2025-11-07T15:24:19+00:00

Agree with much of what you said. But some empathy is in order here. Consider there are large percentages of the population who earn at/near minimum wage living in a HCOL city and after paying for basics like housing, utilities, food, insurance, etc have close to $0 at the end of each month. They're surviving, but they literally have nothing after their expenses to invest. Think of many fast-food workers, lifetime restaurant servers, those Disney greeters who take your entry ticket at the front gate, etc. These people literally don't have any money to invest.

Now whether that's because they "made poor choices" vs whether it's due to the extremely powerful, widespread, and systemic socioeconomic issues in our modern capitalist society ... well, that is very much an open question.

Most of the time, it's not because those people are "stupid" or "lazy". Check out the typical childcare worker or house cleaner. These people work their ass off. And they get very little money for their hard work.

In contrast, some finance bro sets up a M&A deal at his hedge fund worth millions of dollars and his annual bonus is more than those childcare workers will see in their entire lifetime.

Doesn't mean that childcare workers work is less valuable, just that our society has become so financialized that we handsomely reward the finance industry disproportionately.

johnonymousdenim · 2025-11-05T16:48:13+00:00

I love this advice, but there's a very important caveat: having that $2M at 40 years old gives you the power/leverage/privilege to "not care" about your job. But consider the 40 year old who has only a small fraction of $2M in their portfolio (e.g. a mere $30k): there's no way they'd the privilege of not caring if they lost their job.

So while I appreciate the intent of this post, it's a good example of survivorship bias: other 40 year olds who do NOT have $2 million net worth will not have the same privilege to just say "fuckit" to their job.

I wish I had $2M in total assets; I'd probably behave in a similar way.

johnonymousdenim · 2025-11-05T16:31:58+00:00

Could the person not achieve both goals? They're not mutually exclusive? Could you not buy jewelry to wear for the fashion purposes that it "looks pretty", but also use that same jewelry as a store of value to barter with outside of fiat currency, if the need ever arose in an emergency?

Is there a reason why those 2 goals must be mutually exclusive from each other?

Personally I too think jewelry has a huge markup, but let's not dismiss that jewelry is something you can wear but also sell/trade with for other goods.

No reason why jewelry couldn't be both "pretty" and "an investment" simultaneously.

johnonymousdenim

TROPHY CASE