I know a little about investing…just a little though. The market changed my life 18 years ago and it continues to pay me dividends today (no pun intended).
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Time for my annual investing review, and it’s good news this year. If every year was like this, I would eventually buy my own island.

Total net worth up by 22.3 percent.
Total return on liquid investments up by 30.0 percent.

The difference between the two is that my house value decreased notably in 2023, according to Zillow estimates. Interest rates being high was not good for prices. But hey, it’s not like I’m planning to sell any time soon.

In terms of liquid investments, I’m not adjusting for purchases or sales. I’m just looking at totals that include those. I don’t make big moves at all, though. I’m pretty much a buy and hold with tiny adjustments.

The returns of my top ten holdings at the beginning of the year:
GOOG 57.1%
MSFT 57.8%
AMZN 77.0%
AAPL 54.4%
NVDA 246.0%
CVX -10.2%
IHI 3.1%
BX 74.5%
AMD 130.3%
FTANX 9.3%

At the beginning of the year, these ten holdings were 23.5 percent of my investment holdings. My returns were spectacular with 7 of the 10 going up more than 50 percent. Pretty freaking amazing.

I had some other big winners over the year, so my top ten at the end of the year changed a bit as some other stocks grew. I’m a little more concentrated now as my top ten are now 24.9 percent of my holdings. You’ll see a lot of “Magnificent Seven” on this list.

NVDA 246,0%
GOOG 57.1%
MSFT 57.8%
AMZN 77.0%
AAPL 54.4%
AMD 130.3%
BX 74.5%
PSX 34.9%
QCOM 37.1%
NVO 51.6%

In short, my three year-starting holdings that weren’t up 50 percent dropped off my top ten list, replaced by other holdings that had great years. CVX, IHI, and FTANX fell off the top ten, replaced by PSX, QCOM, and NVO. NVDA is a big story, shooting up to become my largest holding, while AMD moved up from #9 to #6.

However, I’ve been buying CDs like crazy, and collectively they now represent 19.2 percent of my holdings, up from about 5.6 percent last year. With an average annual return of 5.2 percent, they’re going to be my anti-anxiety strategy for the next few years. Even if they underperform the market the next few years, they’re above my needed rate of return, and if there’s a down market they’re going to prop it up quite well.

My top ten stocks in terms of returns totaled 11.2 percent of my holdings at the end of the year, and all were up more than 100 percent. At the beginning of the year, they were 6.5 percent. I let the winners ride, and it was awesome. ANF (Abercrombie & Fitch) has had an astounding run. I've owned it for a long time and I read a few years ago when the stock was down that they were making great long-term decisions that would have an impact eventually. They were right.

You’ll see two cruise lines on the list. I rode them all the way down in 2020, so I’m still down on CUK, but believe it or not, I’m back to my 2020 level on RCL.

TSLA has been a wild ride. I’m massively up on it from my purchase price, though I’m down from my peak a couple of years ago. I’m still up roughly 600 percent overall on TSLA.

I have to call out HCI, too – it’s a home insurance company that’s done well for me for years.

Most of these are above my dollar limit for buying more, so I’m just holding. A few still have room for buying more, and I’ve been adding tiny amounts to them.

ANF 273.8%
NVDA 246.0%
META 183.8%
RCL 165.8%
CRWD 147.2%
CUK 137.8%
AMD 130.3%
TSLA 129.9%
HCI 122.4%
PANW 113.0%

My bottom ten stocks in terms of returns totaled 1.8 percent of my holdings at the end of the year. At the beginning of the year, they were 4.4 percent. One thing I was pretty good at this year was not chasing losers.

I’ve given up on SILC and RMCF and am selling them off. FF is on thin ice, but I’m waiting since they had a huge one-time dividend last year that would get them to breakeven. It would be nice if something similiar will happen soon, but I'm losing hope.

I stayed too late at the MRNA & PFE party, so I’m just holding them. ALB is a past big winner that had a drawback due to some international stuff. If I was a gambler I might buy more MPW, but I’m not a gambler. It’s my biggest dollar disaster the past couple of years. It was a great low-risk stock until suddenly it became a high-risk stock.

SILC -57.5%
MPW -57.4%
MRNA -44.4%
PFE -43.8%
ALB -32.6%
FF -29.6%
YUMC -24.8%
IFF -23.4%
GIS -21.7%
RMCF -18.5%
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Great analysis, Rainman! You beat the index which is hard to do in an up year. Great fucking job, you hit some big winners.

My total investment accounts were up 25% for the year, which sits right about at the index.
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Huh. I had no idea Abercrombie boarded a rocket ship.

WTF did they do so right? Go to an all-internet setup or something? I looked on their website, and it sure looks like a bunch of generic overpriced young people stuff. That's fucking incredible.

Well done on that one. That wasn't even in the neighborhood of my radar.
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I was apparently a bit overweighted in Nasdaq stocks.

I was trying to find my summary last year, and was pretty sure I'd done it, but I don't see it. Maybe I was too depressed.

I figured I was mostly just getting back last year's losses, but it looks like last year I was only down 11 percent by year end. That's way better than I thought. So 2023 really put me ahead of the game.
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It's been probably three or four years since I read the article. I don't remember exactly, and I have no expertise in retail to even understand, but it seemed like stuff that a retailer should always do. I think it was stuff like reorganizing their floors, shutting some underperforming stores, and backroom stuff like inventory systems. I just remember the article saying that they were going to take some hits in the short term, but they were going to pay off in the long term. I'd taken a hit on it, but I decided to hold it and got rewarded handsomely this year. In the short term, I guess their sales and profits and forecasts have been great, so the changes have had tangible results.

I don't remember how long ago he left, but it helped that they got rid of a moronic CEO. The guy flat-out said that they sized their clothes so that overweight people couldn't buy them, because they wanted to be the brand that only cool people wore. Now, maybe that's a viable strategy and maybe it isn't, but you sure as heck don't tell the public about it. It caused a big kerfluffle and the brand started going down the tubes. A new CEO came in who is apparently very knowledgeable and well regarded, and she reversed it and made the changes that are now well regarded.

Heh. Wikipedia has the quote that got the old CEO fired.

That's why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don't market to anyone other than that. ... In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.

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If 2024 is better than 2023, I'll be able to buy my own fork and spoon. No more ordering Chinese just to get the chopsticks.
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I hadn't seen this anywhere and thought it was pretty interesting.


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So I have a $200,000 error in my favor right now, or kind of.

I bought a $2,000 CD a while back, which was 2 shares at $1,000 each. My portfolio total is correct, but when I drill into individual investments, my fixed income total is really high even though the overall total adds up. After some investigation, it's showing that I own 200 shares at $1,000 each. I like that interest accrual.

I assume it'll get fixed soon, but it's kind of tempting to sell it all off.
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They randomly dropped $34,000 into my IRA with T Rowe Price back in 2020. I just let it ride hoping they’d let that interest accrue for 35 years until retirement and be set but unfortunately they must have noticed and corrected it after about 4 months or so.

Twas a sad, sad day.
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I hate it when they find those errors.

Did they gift you some shares of something? Dump in some cash? How did the money appear?
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I am pretty ignorant in most things investing so I can’t say for sure.

It was a traditional IRA with T Rowe Price. All I know is that it was a very new account, a rollover of a 401k from a job I didn’t even stay at for a year so there was only a few thousand in it. I’ve read that you can purchase shares with money you have invested in IRAs but I just let them do their thing. I assume someone manages it for you because it rises and falls just like my brokerage account..?

Anyway, I just remember logging in to look one day and there was an additional $34k in the account. It seemed to just be added to the total already there so let’s say I had like $5k in it one day. The next day I logged in it read $39k. It was pretty cool.

But yeah, someone must have noticed the error after a few months and one day I logged back in and it was gone from whence it came. That was a sad day. I enjoyed seeing the daily interest gains on the account with that much more money in it.

Funny enough, you can still see the major spike (and subsequent fall) on the graph on the front page. Every time I log in I’m reminded of what could have been..
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Okay, they took my $200,000 back. I'm disappointed, but I understand.
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Okay, question of the day. Boeing (BA)

Option A. Buy more because the stock has been beaten down by all of the technical problems, and at some point they'll get it all straightened out and make that money back.

Option B. Hold it if you've got it, because it's a blue chip with a big moat. Every portfolio should have some.

Option C. Sell it. They can't seem to get their act together, and it's going to have big downstream effects.


I've been running with Option B for a long time, and it hasn't paid off. About five years ago I was making great money on it, and then it got chopped in half with the various problems. Right now I'm a little in the red on the price, though dividends probably eke it a little above breakeven for me. But at best I'm not keeping up with inflation on it.

I don't have a lot of it, but it's one of those stocks that I feel like everyone should have in their portfolio if they're diversified. Frankly, though, I'm reaching my limit on patience and I'm not overly confident that they're going to work through all of their problems in time to avoid big losses in orders and sales. I'm moving toward Option C at this point.

What do y'all think?
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I would sell it for one reason alone. As I travel a lot on planes, I’ve noticed the new Airbus planes to be quite superior to the Boeing offerings. They seem quieter, roomier, and the feel of the cabin is nicer with higher quality materials being used. 30 years ago I felt the exact opposite. It seems Airbus is really putting out a much better product these days and while I cannot rule out Boeing doing better in the future, I would not suspect the turn around to be fast based upon their recent offerings. YMMV.
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