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Sydney
@sydward
Beating the market for 7 months straight *in an unofficial recession* by ONLY buying ETFs: No individual stocks. No trading. No reading hours of research trying to understand confusing terminology and hovering over the market. No blindly choosing risky hype stocks because everyone else is doing it… only to watch it tank 24 hours later. No gimmicks. Just dollar cost averaging (DCA) index funds. #SOFIexperimentETF —————— Welcome back to another portfolio update! If you're new, I have been investing in just index funds on SOFI as an experiment to see how it does against individual stocks. So far it has outperformed my public account and the overall market every month this year. —————— The idea is this: I love investing in $VOO . It's fund that tracks the top 500 US companies and is used as a benchmark for the US stock market; along with $VTI which tracks the whole US stock market. Even the best investors fail to beat the S&P 500 year after year. If you are brand new to investing and want to make only one investment, I would hands down recommend investing in $VOO and calling it a day. Personally, I buy it every Friday on Public. But, there's one small problem I have with $VOO and $VTI . Diversification. —————— The S&P500 is heavily weighted to large cap tech stocks, and during a recession or economic downturn, it's not the best performing ETF out there. Between 2000-2009, which consisted of the dot.com bubble and the 2008 recession... the S&P500 returned an average of -0.95% per year for a total of -9%. But not everything in the stock market did poorly. Studies have shown that portfolios with a balance between small cap, mid cap, and large cap funds have outperformed over decades than ones that just had large blend indexes. Mix that with some sector ETFs like healthcare and utilities that outperform in a recession and you can guess where I’m going with this. —————— So when 2022 started with record inflation and fears of rising interest rates, and recession fears... I wanted to be invested in funds that either 1) do well under inflation or 2) do well during a recession. I am exposed enough to individual stocks as it is... and investing in individual stocks during a recession without doing research can be risky. You just never know what company will go under. It became an experiment to see if I could do better than the index with diversified ETFs and sector ETFs. If you want to see all my holdings or my previous month to month performance check the hashtag #SOFIexperimentETF —————— This is where we left off May 31st: $VOO : -12% (DCA + dividends) $VTI : -11.26% (DCA + dividends) ✨ my SOFI etf: -6.91% YTD as of August 3rd: S&P 500 $VOO (DCA + dividends): -9.97% $VOO performance YTD (without DCA): -12.85% US Total Stock Market $VTI (DCA + dividends): -10.76% $VTI performance YTD (without DCA): -14.9% ✨ my SOFI ETF: -7.96% Top 3 performing of 2022 (DCA + dividends): $VDE : +16.02% $VPU : +4.85% $VHT : -3.18% Had I just invested in $VOO alone, I wouldn't have gotten the boost from energy, utilities, and healthcare. This is why I love diversification! And mind blowing enough, had I bought $VOO at the beginning of the year and never added to it.. I would be down -12.85% instead of my current performance of -7.96%. I mention this almost every time i post these updates, but this isn't supposed to be a sexy strategy. This doesn't double your position in 48 hours. But, it also doesn't drop as heavy when the market is down. And it doesn't take an investing genius to accomplish. The beauty of this strategy is that you can use sector rotation and market conditions to benefit you while still picking long term ETFS that would benefit your portfolio for decades if you wanted to. It's becoming so fruitful to see my research at the beginning of the year pay off. I haven't had as much time to monitor the markets as I did in 2021, and so this has been a really great investing strategy for me to compare to my dividend portfolio and my riskier portfolio on public. —————— All of my portfolio holdings: https://public.com/p/8WWLWclHXPsbL0cOwIqEZhmxTpiU8yF8 my last portfolio update: https://public.com/p/BtQtVqGkf3NxsL7iRir25w2evzGrQmbp
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Stocks, ETFs, Options, Bonds.
Self-directed brokerage accounts and brokerage services for US-listed, registered securities, options, and Bonds, except for treasury securities offered through Jiko Securities, Inc., are offered to self-directed customers by Open to the Public Investing, Inc. (“Public Investing”), a registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA & SIPC. Additional information about your broker can be found by clicking here. Public Investing is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Public Holdings, Inc. (“Public Holdings”). This is not an offer, solicitation of an offer, or advice to buy or sell securities or open a brokerage account in any jurisdiction where Public Investing is not registered. Securities products offered by Public Investing are not FDIC insured. Apex Clearing Corporation, our clearing firm, has additional insurance coverage in excess of the regular SIPC limits. Additional information can be found here.

Options.
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Options Order Flow Rebates.
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Bonds.
“Bonds” shall refer to corporate debt securities and U.S. government securities offered on the Public platform through a self-directed brokerage account held at Public Investing and custodied at Apex Clearing. For purposes of this section, Bonds exclude treasury securities held in treasury accounts with Jiko Securities, Inc. as explained under the “ Treasury Accounts” section.

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A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. The Bond Account’s yield is the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across all ten bonds in the Bond Account, before fees. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule.

Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. You should evaluate each bond before investing in a Bond Account. The bonds in your Bond Account will not be rebalanced and allocations will not be updated, except for Corporate Actions.

Fractional Bonds also carry additional risks including that they are only available on Public and cannot be transferred to other brokerages. Read more about the risks associated with fixed income and fractional bonds. See Bond Account Disclosures to learn more.

High-Yield Cash Account.
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Treasury Accounts.
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Investments in T-bills: Not FDIC Insured; No Bank Guarantee; May Lose Value.

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Alpha.
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