See also [21] %%G9 strengths as investor #specifically

div-stock picking after years of disappointing mufu-research + FXO trading — this is my vision/traction.

I wrote this blogpost as a retrospective and also to highlight my presumably improving wisdom(?) and competence(?) relative to the lay public. Am growing to a wise investor.

A random list of my vision secrets:

• Dividend is more reliable, higher ROTI. In contrast, dividend is dismal in mufu (mutual funds) + FXO.
• Blue-chip stocks are more dependable than mufu
• mentally segregate my stock portfolio into growth ptf + income ptf etc. Even the growth ptf could be fine without benchmarking against SP500.
• — minor insights:
• Easy to find rich research insights on individual stocks, much better than mufu .. With mufu (or FXO), the info available online is 1% compared to stocks. There’s no dividend history (My vision secret) to look at. The online reading experience can be fun but aimless, often time-consuming, but some other forms of analysis can be enjoyable as I feel accumulating a bit of insight and vision.
• mufu would eventually lose out to SP500 due to expRatio cumulative erosion. Important to long-term buy-n-hold investors
• eqMufu div yield > 3% is inevitably unsustainable. (I have multiple blogposts) Underlying CDY is up to 4% but expense ratio is 1.5%, so it’s hopeless to aim at DYOC of 5%.  Stocks are superior.

A random list of my traction secrets:

• Favor US.. see U.S.beats other markets over3Y+ 
• decent marginal ROTI, due to effort, not completely luck or dumb timing.
• The effort has to be sustainable and compatible with my lifestyle.
• sustainability .. buy-n-forget with firewall, without babysitting
• zero commission + fractional .. permits quick and frequent experiments
• 100+ stocks diversified .. made possible by buy-n-forget habit
• recording annual return is futile and poor ROTI

==== historical review
For decades, I never really perceived equity as a suitable investment for my financial needs. Too unstable, unpredictable. Unacceptable liquidity by my definition (blogpost). A long trough could last 10Y+, so I never had the conviction to invest 10k (“$20k” later on). Even now, on Futu trading app or elsewhere, when I look at the 100 well-known stocks across my familiar countries [US, greater China, SG, Japan, EU, Korea], I see the same absence of long-term trend. Well-known stocks attract hot money, leading to boom-n-bust… that’s one of my theories.

My eqMufu journey since 1997 has been long and wide. It confirmed those “theories”. Instinctively, I always cash out my mufu at some modest level of profit, because I felt that the profit is impermanent. In hindsight I tend to blame the expRatio — forever erosive. 2% over 5Y means 10% erosion.

Then in 2013 it occurred to me (unknown to the lay public) that US large-caps exhibit much better long-term trend than other regional markets.

In 2019, I discovered Robinhood. Thanks to the one-share minimum I was able to pick dozens of stocks, rather than “handful” in a typical portfolio.

Only in 2020 did I create my “system” based on DYOC/firewall/buy-n-forget.

How about non-eq? With FXO and FX, I did a lot of research but did rather few trades, largely due to per-trade commissions. My traction secret? Robinhood lets me act on my research more easily

— gambling?
FX, commodities, futures, options are zero-sum games, more gamble-like than equities. Index investing is actually just as gambling as stock picking, but div-stock picking feels less gamble-like. Blue-chip div-stock picking is esp. thrilling, even though my picks are sometimes unspectacular.

Remember many retirees rely on dividend stocks + bond coupons. Investment-grade bonds are comparable to annuities (least gamble-like)