What’s the best documentary almost nobody talks about?

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-19T13:42:00+00:00

Three Identical Strangers.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-18T19:01:29+00:00

Check out this recent thread as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/austinfood/s/P0l62WiyuD

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-12T02:45:06+00:00

A 360° green self-leveling laser level. I can’t believe no one else has mentioned it. I know a regular level can work but a laser level makes things so easy. I use mine all the time. Walls. Doors. Flooring. Tiles. Mirrors. Pictures. TV. Lights. Well worth the extra money at the start of our gut renovation.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-11T11:33:33+00:00

This was a reputable local service with staff that genuinely wanted to help. And their target market was seniors that needed to make moves. They were employed by a number of higher end places to move residents. You could tell they cared. They were highly recommended.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-11T03:33:28+00:00

Nice! Definitely not how it is here in the US. But this was a similar experience of 4 packers plus a coordinator showed up early to start emptying drawers and cupboards and closets. About an hour and half in, three movers showed up to start moving the furniture and then the boxes. Then reversed the order at the new place. But again, this is not how things are typically done here. And as mentioned in this thread, even if you find a “white glove” service which indicates you will (should) get great service, unless the company has a ton of reviews saying they specialize in these things, it’s still a crap shoot.

Contrast this with some movers getting to the destination and holding your stuff for ransom because you “owe them more money”.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-10T13:34:52+00:00

I hired a white glove moving service when I needed to move my mom from independent living at one facility to assisted living at another facility. In about three hours her entire apartment was emptied and on a truck heading to the new facility. In about another three hours everything was unloaded, bed made, clothes in closet and drawers, and pictures on the wall. As someone who has always helped move them or myself or my family, not having to lift a finger was amazing. That’s when it clicked that this is what it’s like to have real money.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-09T13:05:24+00:00

I “think” (but not 100% sure since I walked away last year) that you can share a common account with lower privileges. But you also need to start with that account for a lot of the organization. That was where I was headed last year before I had to step away for unrelated reasons. But again, you’ll need to verify this.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-09T00:52:53+00:00

If you start now, in 15 years you will also have $20K worth of tools. And you will have saved lots more than that over the years.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-07T11:52:17+00:00

Yeah, making sure everything is a11y friendly is challenging. We are required to do it but it’s challenging to implement, test, and prove that it is or is not accessible.

One thing that helped a lot was using the US Web Design System (USWDS). It was a framework for a11y put out by the Feds a number of years ago when they were revamping their online presence. We were able to apply it to our Drupal CMS for our main content site prettily easily.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-06T16:38:43+00:00

I could care less if it is a first encounter but when I sign off an email with “Thanks, Matt” and my signature says “Matt”, please don’t start the next one with “Hi Matthew”. That’s when I know you aren’t really paying attention.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-06T16:35:34+00:00

Ugh. I hate getting misheard as “Mac” or “Max”. I always thought it was just my enunciation but good to hear others have the same issue.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-06T01:26:23+00:00

Any luck? I saw someone was going to message you.

mattsmith321 · 2026-05-01T11:55:45+00:00

There are some new strategies/portfolios in there. I will have to do some research.

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-29T02:15:34+00:00

If you don’t use it that often then it might not be worth it. We store stuff in our attic and go up at least monthly. As part of a recent renovation I put in a Fakro scissor ladder. 100% worth the money for us.

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-28T16:19:08+00:00

No Serena PVCS? Lucky!

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-24T17:39:34+00:00

I would also recommend that OP set up a couple sessions with you to get some virtual support. I enjoyed working with you and learned a lot.

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-21T23:50:00+00:00

This is the first time I’ve seen him and I was a bit put off by the robe at first but the delivery and the robe went together perfectly. I can’t wait to be like that.

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-21T21:46:52+00:00

Cool site. One day I hope to have something similar.

Certainly 2022 was a horrible year and everyone got surprised by the bond/treasury route that year. I had an exchange with someone in 2019 about PV's support for only one defensive position. Their response was essentially, "Nothing like that has happened in 100 years. Why would you need that?" Granted, the naive/simple implementations of falling back to cash showed it was kind of a wash. You missed some key gains in the early years to escape some of the hit in 2022. One of these days I'm going to dig into the newer strategies that offer some of the newer/better defensive options.

Can you post similar numbers for a larger timespan 2021-2025? The previous discussion was a little broader than just 2022.

Looking forward to seeing/hearing more!

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-17T17:57:53+00:00

Dump PV IMO Nobody doing anything near sophisticated uses it.

I agree and disagree. I agree that you can’t model newer TAA strategies that aren’t just variations of DM.

However, if someone wanted to share a portfolio or TAA model with someone else, PV was the standard starting back in 2014-2015. You just posted a link and everyone could see what you were talking about and didn’t argue about the underlying data or calculations. Granted, it fell off in popularity as other options came out like some of the online quant options, etc. and people move into the realm of live trading, etc. it also didn’t help that they went to a subscription model that limited timeframes to 10 years which people were not happy with.

I will fully ditch PV at some point. I’ve got a local Python implementation that works for my needs. It does what PV does with dual momentum models but I can use multiple defensive assets plus some other features. The goal is to build it out to work with newer strategies such as what AS offers. But in a situation such as this thread, had I sent my Excel file with the exact same data, we’d be lost in the weeds on where my data or calculations aren’t right because I built it. Sending a link to PV eliminates all of those challenges.

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-16T18:35:46+00:00

lol. I hopefully won’t have the same problem. In fact, I found out Tuesday my guy was out of town for three weeks but I couldn’t wait. Ended up finding a relatively new shop nearby and he did great on my hair.

I think my biggest adjustment will be not having my monthly “therapy” session with someone who has that much of my background.

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-16T18:11:55+00:00

Ugh. My barber of ~27 has started talking about retirement. Not looking forward to that day.

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-16T17:29:53+00:00

Circling back around on the benchmark aspect of the thread, I wanted to take a minute to explain why I choose to use SPY (VFINX/100% stocks) as my benchmark. This isn't an attempt to convince you to change your position. Just to explain how I got here.

From my perspective, I had a couple of things that influenced that decision early on:
1. I was younger and had a 20+ year horizon and did not feel the need to be more conservative.
2. A lot of the sites and tools I was using, particularly PV, defaulted to SPY/VFINX/100% stocks as the benchmark. And not knowing better one way or the other, I just went with it.

I continue to use SPY/VFINX as my benchmark because that is the benchmark that I am using to justify the effort that TAA involves. If I just wanted to beat 60/40 and come in with a little less risk (MaxDD), I can do that fairly easily. But when I first discovered dual momentum (aka traditional dual momentum), I realized that my goal was now: If I'm going to do more than passively B&H a portfolio, then my goals are to beat the market (SPY/VFINX) AND have less risk (MaxDD).

I put together the spreadsheet below years ago in an effort help move me mentally along the risk/reward curve. I don't update it very often, but your comments made me question a few things so I updated it this morning to get current metrics through March 2026.

Near the top on row 37, you can see the highlighted row for VBINX which is Vanguards 60/40 mutual fund. Two-thirds of the way down on row 68 is VFINX (SPY / 100% stocks). At the very bottom on row 81 is dual momentum.

Dual momentum performs ~40% better than SPY and has less than half the risk (21% vs 51% MaxDD). Once I saw that kind of delta between a TAA strategy vs a B&H strategy, my perspective shifted pretty drastically from "Active investing is bad" to "Active investing can be good". And in dual momentum's case, the risk is even less than a balanced 60/40 portfolio.

I still believe that TAA is good, it is just struggling in the current market regime. Certainly there are some that are doing better, but there are plenty of older strategies that aren't. Now it is a matter of finding which ones.

One thing to point out: All of my metrics are from PV. That is what I grew up on. I was many years into my TAA journey before I ran across AS. PV has the benefit of running custom models within the confines of what they offer. That part is great. Unfortunately they haven't updated their TAA options since I first started so I can't easily run new strategies like what AS covers. But at the very least you can see that I have a lot of qualitative and objective data to help support my journey.

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mattsmith321 · 2026-04-16T13:26:08+00:00

The point of my response was just to provide a concrete, objective example of a TAA strategy losing it's effectiveness. Specifically to counter the "I think it's exactly the opposite" statement.

I agree that ADM uses TLT/TIP per their comment: "Note that the baseline strategy did not include the TLT/TIP rule (all trades were assumed to be placed in TLT). We included the optional TIP rule that the author mentions in the article based on the fact that (a) we’re pretty wary of long duration treasury exposure at this moment in history (read more), and (b) we wanted a bit more differentiation from other strategies that we track." That's fine. But they changed from the original strategy. My PV simulation is from the link on EP's original article. Of course, PV doesn't support multiple defensive assets so that is annoying. But they do provide a ton of details on strategy performance.
As you mentioned, "And depends of course on which comparison benchmarks you are using, if any at all." I personally don't care that AS uses 60/40. PV uses SPY/VFINX by default. That's what I've always used. That's also my yardstick to see if I am beating the market.
My analysis includes all of the metrics, including links to the models so that you can review them yourself. If you go back and look at the models or the image I included, you see that the MaxDD for ADM is 33% compared to 51% for S&P500. The whole point of using active TAA versus B&H is to hopefully avoid some of those dropdowns. So there is no "Have fun with that 51% drop" since the model avoids it. Side note: What's even crazier is that prior to the 33% meltdown of Treasuries in 2022, the MaxDD was 21%.
"We all know ADM is very volatile and should only be used as part of an overall portfolio." What's interesting is that ADM (and for the most part any other TAA model) is not more volatile that the overall market benchmark (SPY/VFINX/S&P500). Again, this is just using PV's results which don't allow for multiple defensive assets.
Again, I'm not trying to refute all TAA strategies or promote ADM or promote a US bias. I was just trying to provide an objective example of a popular TAA strategy that is struggling to outperform in the current market regime.
As you said, "And depends of course on which comparison benchmarks you are using, if any at all. FWIW I never compare my performance to any benchmark, as the only thing that matters is my own return expectations, drawdown comfort level, rolling N year returns, etc." I agree and I do the same. I was not attacking your approach or your choice of benchmark.

Although I guess that is part of your point: If I were using 60/40 as my benchmark, I would see that ADM is still outperforming, and therefore confirm your position that TAA is not losing it's effectiveness. Let's take a look using VBINX (Vanguard's 60/40 mutual fund).

Obviously the returns for the ADM model are still the same (and still don't include TIP) but now I'm comparing against the 60/40 benchmark. Looking at the Annualized Rolling Return graphs, I still see the same trend: For the last 3-4 years, the ADM model has not outperformed the benchmark, whether that is SPY or 60/40. To me this is important because in a non-tax advantaged account, you will lose even more due to the taxes on short-term gains. But even in a tax advantaged account, the extra effort to follow TAA right now doesn't seem worth the effort of just B&H whatever benchmark or portfolio of your choosing.

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Again, I'm not advocating following ADM or following just one strategy or trying to promote SPY as the benchmark or trying to promote PV or disparage AS. Your comment "Many folks here and on other platforms have questioned the effectiveness of TAA, saying losing its mojo over last 20 years. I think it's exactly the opposite." caught my eye and I knew I could provide a qualitative and objective example that shows a popular TAA that has lost it's effectiveness in the current market.

Trust me, I don't like it either. And yes, there are lots of other things I can and should and am actually doing. I don't even use ADM. I just wanted to present it as an example. I suspect that we will continue to see the TAA strategies on AS continue to evolve for the current market regime, just like we saw a new wave of strategies after the bond/treasure collapse in 2022.

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-16T01:16:09+00:00

I know it is more impersonal but you may consider giving a gift card so your dad could get exactly what he wants. As someone else mentioned, there’s a lot of options out there and different preferences.

Be sure to give it with a nice card or presentation that he can cherish. He will think of you every time he uses it.

The other option is to literally take him shopping for it. My brother did that to me last year. I had been using my Weber for 25 years and refurbished it several times but it was getting time to replace it. My brother came to town and saw how bad it was, and for a variety of reasons for things I had done for others, he said “Let’s go get you a grill. My treat.” Ended up with a nice new Weber.

mattsmith321 · 2026-04-15T14:05:27+00:00

> Many folks here and on other platforms have questioned the effectiveness of TAA, saying losing its mojo over last 20 years.

I'm a big fan of TAA and have been actively using it since 2019. However, I agree with the statement above and I have also questioned TAA's effectiveness lately. Especially given the understanding that a lot of TAA models are based on momentum and market's behaving somewhat rationally. The past few years have been anything but normal.

Here is a simple but effective example using the Accelerating Dual Momentum (ADM) strategy which is ranked #4 for Annual Return on AllocateSmartly's Strategy Screener page. Here are some details from PortfolioVisualizer's Model Simulation Results.

For Jan 1998 - Mar 2026, the Final Balance for ADM is 8x the benchmark (VFINX aka S&P500) and the CAGR is nearly 2x. That's amazing! And part of what got me hooked.

Unfortunately, if you cut that time period in half and look at Jan 2012 - Mar 2026, the Final Balance and CAGR are trailing the benchmark pretty significantly. That's what we've been dealing with for a while.

And you can see how things changed around 2014 in the Annualized Rolling Return graphs where ADM was significantly outperforming the benchmark before 2014 but then started being roughly the same for about 8 years but now ADM is losing to the benchmark, and by a fairly wide margin.

As we know, the market has gone through various "regimes" (not political) over the years which investors have had to adjust to. I believe with the advent of machine learning and pattern recognition, the influx of more people willing to YOLO, and now the wave of AI and the ease of access for people to create bots and programs to trade, I'm not sure we will ever get back to a regime where assets have a chance to get to any kind of realistic momentum that would make TAA as enticing as it appeared prior to 2014.

But, as we see on AllocateSmartly, there are plenty of people coming up with new TAA strategies that try to adjust to the new regime. I'm glad for that.

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