A few weeks ago I asked Fidelity to send my brokerage history dating back to when I opened the account in 1998. Last week I got a big package in the mail and so thought it’d be a great time to go through my investing track record!
When I got into the market
When I was in 5th grade, I really wanted to open a brokerage account. It was the beginning of the dot com bubble, and everyone seemed to be talking about the stock market. It seemed like a good way to make money.
I’d heard stories of how my Dad took his paper route money when he was a kid and started trading stocks. But, he was a bit reticent to let my brother (a year younger) and I open accounts given the market was so hot, and that we had a good chance of starting out investing at the peak of a cycle.
Luckily, my Mom thought it was a good idea and eventually took us to Fidelity one afternoon to open accounts.
By this time, I was 12 and in 6th grade. But, not too young to start saving (in fact we’d opened savings accounts when I was in first grade – the idea that for every $100 I scrapped together I could get $5/yr for free was too good to pass up – this was when interest rates weren’t 0%).
My Performance
The first year was rough. I bought one stock, MXE, a Mexican Holding company (like Berkshire Hathaway, but cheaper, and maybe the Mexican market was being overlooked, was the vague investment thesis). It went down 17% that year (I eventually made a modest profit off it). Most of my ideas in the early days were from reading Worth magazine to see which stocks they were pumping at the time, and then pick the one I liked the most.
The next three years were pretty amazing though. I traded in and out of a few tech stocks. I was in cash for the blow up in 2000. And, I was finally was able to afford a share of BRK.B (Berkshire Hathaway’s “b class”). These all lead me to beating the market by 125% over 1999-2001. Finally, I had that freshman year nest egg I always dreamed of :).
I won’t bore you with every trade (there were many over the decades, but not that many each year). In summary, here’s a chart of my annual returns over the last ~20 years:
Over the next decade or so, I made some good calls and bad ones. Overall, I tend to beat the market in down turns, and lag it when things are going great.
Here’s a chart of my annual returns relative to the S&P 500:
I’m proud to say that my public equities have outperformed the S&P 500 by about 3% per year on average. Of course, a lot of this is luck. I had some rational behind every trade I made, but does a freshman in high school really know what they are doing?
It’s interesting to note that my annual returns are starting to converge closely with the S&P 500 over time:
Scorecard
The S&P has returned a 6.5% IRR since 1998 – 2017 (when my data ends for now), vs my 9.5% average annual return.
Overall for every dollar put into the S&P in 1998, you’d expect to have $3.29. For every $1 I invested, I have $5.59, which is about 41% more.
Data notes
I’m understating my returns a bit here. My transaction costs were around $20/trade when I started, which was a meaningful amount of money relative to my overall portfolio. So, my returns are probably a bit higher each year, especially in those early years (>1% of my portfolio went to fees in 1999 alone).
I got the S&P return data here for reference.
I almost calculated a sharpe ratio, but realistically I’d need to do a lot more data analysis on my portfolio and I don’t have all the info I need. However, I’d like to think my standard deviation relative to the S&P is lower given I’ve always had a decent amount of money in cash.
What I learned
- Starting to invest/save early has a few major advantages including compounding, as well as working towards your 10,000 hours to “master” money management.
- You can start with a very small amount of money, my first savings account had <$100, and as long as you have >$1,000, you can start investing in the market.
- It’s important to take a long term view on your savings/investing. I’ve never withdrawn money from my Fidelity account. This is money I don’t need, and won’t need unless something very terrible happens.
- Don’t freak out during downturns, and don’t think you’re a genius when you make a lot of money. A lot of this is luck, which hopefully evens out over time.
- You have to pay up for really great companies – I sold Amazon 5 years ago because it was very “expensive” on a P/E basis. This is really hard for someone like me who’s naturally frugal.
- Analyzing your investing style and decisions can give you some insights into your personality/strengths/weaknesses – I’m less aggressive than I should be, cheaper than I should be, and tend to focus on ‘contrarian’ opportunities more than average.
- Almost no one can consistently beat the market – this is why the majority of my money is now in low cost ETFs, with a few exceptions. Of course, if you are extremely shrewd and level headed and can dedicate >10 hrs/day to it, there is a lot of alpha out there.
- You can’t regret bad decisions and missed opportunities, just learn from them.
- Allowing your child to start investing with a small amount of money is a good idea, as long as they are very interested in it, and prudent. They’ll lose money at some point, which is a good thing. And, over time, they’ll learn a lot while saving along the way.
More to come
I’ve had the opportunity to do some investing in private tech companies, and so would like to update my overall annual investing IRR with these returns in a future post. Overall I’d estimate I’ve gotten around a 7x return on these investments over the past 8 years. It should be very interesting data to add!
Hello, i think that i saw you visited my site so i came to “return the favor”.I
am trying to find things to enhance my site!I suppose its
ok to use a few of your ideas!!
This is my first time pay a visit at here and i am really
pleassant to read everthing at alone place.
cheell 7b17bfd26b https://wakelet.com/wake/PwPSU6GpgstqHS8WW5Hkh
Keep on writing, great job!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I truly appreciate your efforts and I will be waiting for your further post thanks once again.
Your method of telling the whole thing in this piece of writing is genuinely fastidious,
all can simply know it, Thanks a lot.
I’m not sure where you’re getting your information, but great topic.
I needs to spend some time learning more or understanding more.
Thanks for great info I was looking for this info for my mission.
Do you have any video of that? I’d like to find out some
additional information.
Helpful info. Fortunate me I found your website
by chance, and I am shocked why this coincidence didn’t happened
in advance! I bookmarked it.
I’m not sure why but this weblog is loading incredibly slow for
me. Is anyone else having this issue or is it a problem on my end?
I’ll check back later and see if the problem still exists.
Hi there colleagues, fastidious article and nice arguments commented at this place,
I am really enjoying by these.
Simply desire to say your article is as surprising.
The clarity in your post is simply cool and i could assume
you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to
grab your RSS feed to keep up to date with forthcoming post.
Thanks a million and please carry on the gratifying work.
I go to see every day a few web sites and websites to read posts, however this weblog offers quality
based articles.
Hello to every body, it’s my first pay a quick visit of this blog; this website consists of amazing and
genuinely excellent stuff in favor of readers.
Thanks very nice blog!
Touche. Sound arguments. Keep up the amazing work.
Thanks for finally writing about > My Public Equities Returns Over 20 Years (ages 12-32) – Phil Strazzulla's Blog < Liked it!
ivorfia 7b17bfd26b https://www.cloudschool.org/activities/ahFzfmNsb3Vkc2Nob29sLWFwcHI5CxIEVXNlchiAgMCg0ZmPCwwLEgZDb3Vyc2UYgIDAwJmU5AsMCxIIQWN0aXZpdHkYgIDA4L-YywgMogEQNTcyODg4NTg4Mjc0ODkyOA
This website was… how do you say it? Relevant!!
Finally I’ve found something that helped me. Thanks a lot!
Wow, this piece of writing is good, my sister is analyzing these kinds of things, thus I am going to inform her.
What’s up to every body, it’s my first visit of this web site; this webpage
carries remarkable and in fact fine material in favor of readers.
Wow that was strange. I just wrote an really long comment but after
I clicked submit my comment didn’t appear. Grrrr…
well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyways, just wanted to say excellent blog!
I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you design this website yourself or did you hire someone
to do it for you? Plz respond as I’m looking to construct my own blog and would
like to find out where u got this from. thank you
Good day! I know this is kinda off topic nevertheless I’d figured I’d ask.
Would you be interested in exchanging links or
maybe guest authoring a blog post or vice-versa?
My site goes over a lot of the same topics as yours and I think
we could greatly benefit from each other. If you’re
interested feel free to shoot me an e-mail. I look forward to hearing
from you! Superb blog by the way!
Incredible! This blog looks just like my old one! It’s
on a totally different topic but it has pretty much the same page layout and
design. Superb choice of colors!
I’m gone to tell my little brother, that he should also go to see this webpage on regular basis to
get updated from latest gossip.
Hi there I am so delighted I found your webpage, I really found you by mistake,
while I was browsing on Aol for something else, Anyways I am here now and
would just like to say thanks a lot for a marvelous post and a all round
exciting blog (I also love the theme/design),
I don’t have time to browse it all at the moment but I have saved it and also included your RSS feeds, so
when I have time I will be back to read a great deal more, Please do keep up the excellent work.
Hi, just wanted to mention, I loved this article. It was practical.
Keep on posting!
I have been surfing online more than 3 hours today, yet I never found any
interesting article like yours. It’s pretty worth enough
for me. In my view, if all web owners and bloggers made good content
as you did, the web will be a lot more useful than ever before.
okalchan 7b17bfd26b https://coub.com/stories/3290816-microsoft-fsx-sp2-crack-14-exclusive
I loved as much as you will receive carried out right here.
The sketch is tasteful, your authored material stylish.
nonetheless, you command get got an shakiness over that you wish
be delivering the following. unwell unquestionably come
further formerly again as exactly the same nearly
a lot often inside case you shield this hike.
Hello there! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with SEO?
I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m
not seeing very good gains. If you know of any please
share. Appreciate it!
Hurrah, that’s what I was seeking for, what a
material! present here at this blog, thanks admin of this web
page.
Wow, fantastic blog layout! How long have you been blogging for?
you made blogging look easy. The overall look of your web site is
fantastic, let alone the content!
Hi my family member! I wish to say that this article
is awesome, great written and include almost all important infos.
I’d like to look extra posts like this .
Hi it’s me, I am also visiting this web page on a regular basis, this web page
is really good and the visitors are truly sharing good thoughts.
Way cool! Some very valid points! I appreciate you writing this article and the rest of the site is also really
good.
Neat blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere?
A design like yours with a few simple adjustements would really make my blog jump
out. Please let me know where you got your theme. Cheers
Normally I do not read post on blogs, however I would like to say
that this write-up very pressured me to try and do so! Your writing style has been amazed me.
Thanks, quite nice article.
Hi to every one, for the reason that I am in fact eager of
reading this weblog’s post to be updated on a regular
basis. It contains nice data.
An impressive share! I’ve just forwarded this onto a co-worker who
has been conducting a little research on this. And he actually
bought me dinner because I stumbled upon it for him…
lol. So let me reword this…. Thanks for the meal!!
But yeah, thanks for spending some time to discuss this topic
here on your web page.
If you are going for most excellent contents like me, simply visit this
site everyday for the reason that it gives quality contents, thanks
I know this if off topic but I’m looking into starting my own weblog and was wondering what all is required
to get setup? I’m assuming having a blog like yours would cost a pretty penny?
I’m not very internet smart so I’m not 100% certain. Any recommendations or advice would
be greatly appreciated. Appreciate it
Does your site have a contact page? I’m having a tough time locating it but,
I’d like to send you an e-mail. I’ve got some suggestions for your blog you might be
interested in hearing. Either way, great website and I look forward
to seeing it grow over time.
Awesome blog! Is your theme custom made or did you download it
from somewhere? A theme like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make my blog
jump out. Please let me know where you got your theme.
Thanks
Howdy! This post couldn’t be written any better! Reading
through this post reminds me of my previous room mate! He always kept chatting about this.
I will forward this article to him. Pretty sure he will have a good read.
Many thanks for sharing!
dupcayl 7b17bfd26b https://seesaawiki.jp/taodexcoapa/d/Abacre%20Restaurant%20Point%20Of%20Sale%202%20Serial
I got this web site from my buddy who shared with me concerning this web
site and now this time I am visiting this site and reading very informative articles at this place.
Howdy! I understand this is sort of off-topic but I needed to ask.
Does building a well-established blog such as yours take a
lot of work? I am completely new to running a blog however I do write in my diary on a daily basis.
I’d like to start a blog so I can easily share my own experience and feelings online.
Please let me know if you have any ideas or tips for brand new
aspiring bloggers. Thankyou!
What a information of un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable experience regarding unpredicted feelings.