HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

[walenk]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

The good news is 2008 is just about over.
My tax-deferred account is about flat for the year. This is comparatively good, considering. But when I remember being up 100% at one point, I don't give myself good marks.
Today I took my short position (50%) to cash. I still retain BGEIX and GOLDX (a beaten down 25%). I'm looking to unload the inert PSAFX, but not sure where to go. I also own a chunk of RYWBX (since the FX market is just about alone in not chewing my butt).
In my trading accounts I'm carrying over only CEF. This morning's COMEX fix banged my stop in GTU (Crooks, I'm not going back to that thinnly traded vehicle, too jumpy).
And to all a goodnight. Good luck, I think we're going to need it.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

The good news is 2008 is just about over.

My tax-deferred account is about flat for the year. This is comparatively good, considering. But when I remember being up 100% at one point, I don't give myself good marks.

Today I took my short position (50%) to cash. I still retain BGEIX and GOLDX (a beaten down 25%). I'm looking to unload the inert PSAFX, but not sure where to go. I also own a chunk of RYWBX (since the FX market is just about alone in not chewing my butt).

In my trading accounts I'm carrying over only CEF. This morning's COMEX fix banged my stop in GTU (Crooks, I'm not going back to that thinnly traded vehicle, too jumpy).

And to all a goodnight. Good luck, I think we're going to need it.

walenk, I compliment you on your forthrightedness in pointing out the actuality of your year's experience, and I am truly sympathetic with you that you experienced such a drawdown from your highest gains during the year.

I expect we will see a lot reports in the coming weeks about how this, that, and another investment advisor did for 2008, but I'll bet you a silver dime, that few will mention their drawdowns (and not to do so, hides a lot of pain and truth).

A Bull Market in Lies By JOE QUEENAN

We'll feel better if we own up to being a nation of losers. Barron's 12/29/08


RECENTLY, I WAS STANDING AT THE COUNTER IN a gourmet market in Tarrytown, N.Y., ordering a sandwich I could no longer afford, when a neighbor sidled up to me.

"How you doing?" he asked. "I haven't seen you in a while. How are the kids?"

"The kids are OK," I replied. "And I guess I'm doing as well as can be expected, now that Armageddon has arrived, and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse are grazing on my front lawn."

His look expressed puzzlement. Then he caught my drift.
"Oh, you mean the stock market?" he said.

"Yes, I mean the market." What else could I possibly mean?

Now his previously dour face took on a disconcertingly chipper expression.
"I don't know what prompted me to do this, but I got everything out of the market in October of last year," he crowed. "I could see that the whole thing was way overvalued, so I moved everything into bonds and cash. I'm really glad I made that move when I did."

NOT FOR A NANOSECOND DID I believe him.

Warren Buffett didn't get out of the market in October 2007. Neither did Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Schwarzman or anybody else. Moreover, I could tell from the modest purchases my neighbor was making -- a bagel without butter, much less lox -- and from his generally hangdog expression, that the market meltdown had hit him just as hard as everybody else.

Yet, for whatever the reason, he was lying about having dodged a bullet that everyone else had taken right between the eyes. It was as if by pretending to be smarter than everyone else, he somehow erased the pain of not being smarter than everyone else. But lying about not having lost half your life's savings overnight doesn't change the fact that you did lose half your life's savings overnight. So why bother?

I had seen this sort of thing before, of course, back in 2001, when once-preening stockholders in Pets.com and CallmeandIllsendoveramaidandavideo.com and Whatever.com suddenly were harder to find than people who bet on the French in 1939 or the Germans and Japanese in 1945.

The same people who told you how rich they'd become when the Nasdaq was on its way up were only too happy to tell you how clever they had been to head for the exit before the index began its horrifying ride back down.

And now this same appalling crew of smirking, self-congratulatory, lying-through-their-teeth Johnny-Left-Earlies is back.

MY NEIGHBOR'S DUPLICITY IS AN example of a phenomenon that psychiatric specialists refer to as retroactive prescience, or rear-vision Cassandraism. This is a mindset in which a person who has been the victim of a catastrophe seeks to mitigate the trauma by denying that it ever happened. "No, I did not get my teeth knocked out in a fistfight. I chose to have them removed because I look better with dentures." Or, "No, I did not shave my head because I was going bald anyway. I did it because I wanted to look like James Carville."

By petulantly denying that they have fallen into the same trap as the rest of us, the retroactively prescient want to make it look as though they are always the masters of their fate -- never victims of circumstance, innocent bystanders, babes in the woods or lambs being led to the slaughter.

People who have lived through the Great Depression or the Battle of Britain or owning season's tickets to the Detroit Lions often say that what enabled them to survive these cataclysms was the sense that they and other folks were all in this awful thing together. People living through dark times derive solace from trading hair-raising anecdotes; the sense that we are not the only victims or suckers in town makes hardship easier to endure. You think you've got it bad because you're stuck with 600 shares of Citigroup? Guess who bought Bear Stearns at 90?

People who used to sit at the lunch counter and gas-bag about the Yankees and the New York Football Giants now debate whether Barack Obama should have appointed Larry Summers as Treasury secretary, instead of Tim Geithner. This reinforces the sense that we are living through a harrowing national crisis that we will look back upon with a sense of pride and accomplishment for the rest of our lives, provided we survive it.

INDEED, THERE IS SOMETHING ALMOST HEROIC about the sight of an entire nation's populace stepping forward to admit they have been annihilated by the recession. That's why those newspaper articles discussing the market losses of Buffett and Gates and Ellison are so uplifting. Some of us lost a few hundred thousand clams here and there, but those poor clowns lost billions. That's gotta take some of the sting out of it for the rest of us.

Conversely, there is something mean, antisocial and, yes, cowardly about those who insist on watching the whole debacle from the sidelines. People who lie about fleeing the market before the tsunami hit are cravenly refusing to lock arms with their countrymen and participate in this character-building, mettle-testing national ordeal.

They're stuffed shirts on a modern Titanic, escaping in their own lifeboat, where they regale each other with stories about having stopped payment on their checks to the White Star Line all the way back in Southampton because they knew the damn thing was going to sink anyway.

The worst thing about faux financial-fiasco fugitives is their absurd delusion that they are getting away with something. Sorry, Charley: The rest of us can see right through you.

Anyone who actually liquidated a portfolio in October 2007 wouldn't still be tooling around in a Honda Civic or a PT Cruiser. He'd have upgraded to a Lexus, and a big, fat one at that. Anyone who had truly gotten out of the way of that oncoming tractor-trailer called the U.S. economy wouldn't still be getting his Extra Bucks Card scanned at CVS or shopping for generic toilet paper at Sam's Club or racing off to the early-bird special at the multiplex.

As for those rare individuals who did get out of the market in time, they're careful not to gloat. As well they should be. Speaking for myself, if I meet one more guy in the gourmet market who congratulates himself on going 100% to cash last October, I'm going to wait until no one else is around and then start swinging, and I'm going to swing hard.

Then, I'll sneak away.

If anyone asks me about it later, I'll just say: "I wasn't there. I don't know what prompted me to do this, but I was out of the market long before the nastiness erupted."

---

JOE QUEENAN'S new book, Closing Time: A Memoir, is scheduled to be published in April.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

For 2008, I lost 3.50% in my portfolios. As ole Paul Harvey, the radio commentator, used to say on one of his programs, "and now for the rest of the story.

The rest of the story is that I finished the year with a 15.26% drawdown, which for me made it a pisser of a year. Had greed not predominated my thinking, somewhere around when I was up 18+% in September, I should have said, "Jim, be happy with what you have and get the hell out of Dodge." But the past is past, and lament changes nothing, at least not where I live.

What is important now is what lies ahead of us, which I am sure no one fails to recognize. I am not a long-horizon type, so my focus continues to be what happens next, which translates for me to mean: what happens with the current trend?

By my tracking the DJI is up 17.81% from its Nov intraday lows on the 20th or 21st. The SPX up 21.89%, the NDX up 18.92%, and RUT up 34.51%, and the $XVG (Value Line Geometric Index) is up 32.82%. By one definition, a 20% up move, the SPX, RUT, and $VGY are now in "bull markets."

Below (table) is my best effort to track Paul Desmond's so-called Panic Buying and Panic Selling indicator since 11/19/08. When both volume and points are down 90%, he calls that Panic Selling, and vice versa, when volume and points are up 90% for a day, he calls that Panic Buying. I have no idea what is Desmond's intrepretation of these data (assuming mine are close to his reckoning), but one could call the 90% down day on 12/01 followed by two 90% up days since then (and in his original study he also considered two back to back 80% up days as "equal" in significance as a 90% up day) some sort of a bull market buy signal. If I just followed this sole indicator, my orientation would be rather bullish right now.

	SPX	NY UP VOL	DOWN VOL	NAS UP VOL	DOWN VOL
11/19/08	806.58	1.84%	98.16%	0.76%	99.24%
11/20/08	752.44	7.74%	92.26%	1.62%	98.38%
11/21/08	800.03	73.83%	26.17%	93.59%	6.41%
11/24/08	851.81	93.68%	6.32%	97.99%	2.01%
11/25/08	857.39	68.62%	31.38%	72.66%	27.34%
11/26/08	887.68	91.83%	8.17%	94.78%	5.22%
11/28/08	896.24	73.83%	26.17%	71.69%	28.31%
12/01/08	816.21	1.20%	98.80%	0.78%	99.22%
12/02/08	848.81	87.94%	12.06%	95.21%	4.79%
12/03/08	870.74	78.66%	21.34%	83.97%	16.03%
12/04/08	845.22	22.87%	77.13%	10.73%	89.27%
12/05/08	876.07	85.11%	14.89%	93.68%	6.32%
12/08/08	909.70	87.45%	12.55%	93.38%	6.62%
12/09/08	888.67	29.17%	70.83%	15.52%	84.48%
12/10/08	899.24	67.76%	32.24%	87.62%	12.38%
12/11/08	873.59	14.63%	85.37%	7.75%	92.25%
12/12/08	879.73	72.23%	27.77%	80.54%	19.46%
12/15/08	868.57	29.76%	70.24%	15.89%	84.11%
12/16/08	913.18	94.08%	5.92%	98.72%	1.28%
12/17/08	904.42	47.75%	52.25%	53.24%	46.76%
12/18/08	885.28	22.49%	77.51%	17.50%	82.50%
12/19/08	887.88	56.58%	43.42%	65.76%	34.24%
12/22/08	871.63	18.23%	81.77%	10.80%	89.20%
12/23/08	863.16	30.28%	69.72%	23.84%	76.16%
12/24/08	868.15	62.14%	37.86%	65.18%	34.82%
12/26/08	872.80	71.48%	28.52%	82.84%	17.16%
12/29/08	869.42	33.19%	66.81%	29.87%	70.13%
12/30/08	890.64	90.01%	9.99%	95.64%	4.36%
12/31/08	903.25	80.28%	19.72%	93.36%	6.64%

Richard Russell is the only person I know or ever cross who comments on Lowry's Research (Desmond is at Lowry; owns it for all I know). Below is from Prieur du Plessis' blog from yesterday covering events through Dec. 30.

Turning to Lowry Research, its Selling Pressure Index (supply) has been steadily declining, but the Buying Power Index (demand) has not made headway as potential buyers remain unnerved and stick to the sidelines. “Normally, at final bear market bottoms, the Buying Power Index will plow higher as institutional money rushes in to pick up ‘bargains’,” said the 84-year-old Richard Russell (Dow Theory Letters).

http://www.investmentpostcards.com/

So between what I see in up 90% days and what Russell relates to the Buying Power Index, I opt on the side of continued caution in here, versus generating any wild enthusiasm that a good bottom has been put in for the bear market that began last year. All of this relates to the equity markets.

Another indicator I follow is the ISEE total calls number. http://www.iseoptions.com/WebForm/vi...rue&link1=true

I don't know as I write this if that link will show exactly what I am referencing, but one can manipulate the image and just show the daily readings and the 10 day moving average, and the time span. Put in a time span for at least back to a year, and you'll see it is at a high. What would be helpful is an SPX chart superimposed, but no such luck. The high I have on 12/30/08 is 154 using a 10-day EMA, the previous highest reading in my data was 153 on 10/9/2007 which coincided with the SPX and DJI tops, but the NDX and Nasdaq did not top until 10/31/07, while the RUT and $VGY had topped in July 2007.

A third indicator is the McClellan oscillator, a rendition of which is below in the lower panel.



The oscillator--blue line--shows a series of three decreasingly high tops since early in the recent fourth quarter. The data I follow which is the classically calculated McClellan oscillator, vs. the ratio adjusted oscillator above, has reached recent peaks of 234, 282, 203, and 279 on 12/31. These all are overbought readings and have existed since 11/28 when the 234 mentioned occurred. Normally this indicator goes from overbought to oversold--producing negative numbers.

Since an oversold reading of -318 on 11/20 of McOscillator, and the recovery from that to positive readings over the succeeding three days, there have been no negative readings. This indicates to me that a downturn in momemtum is due or even overdue. Nevertheless, such a downturn does not have to happen in here, and even if it comes, it might yet turn out to be just a correction of some significantly powerful upmove off the 11/20/08 lows.

One other thing strikes me about the recent generally positive action of the equity markets and that is these moves up have been on very low volumes, certainly influenced by the holiday season, but nevertheless very low volumes. See for yourselves.



My allocations are not significantly changed from those posted above on 12/20.

Though I suspect a pullback in here, I have nothing allocated to profit from that eventuality, i.e. no short equity positions.

Good luck to all in 2009.

[Debt-freeTICer]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

[quote=Sharky;68810]Welcome to itulip. And Happy Birthday!



I can certainly understand what attracted you to the deal. That kind of investment would have been almost perfect about 10 yrs ago.



Before Ka turns to Poom, we're likely to see:
-- Lots of bankruptcies in the retail sector
-- A big downturn in commercial real estate
-- Further credit tightening

I don't know anything about your tenant's businesses, but if I were you I would definitely investigate that in detail, if you haven't already. How well-positioned are they to survive the market downturn?

CNBC reported yesterday that "Family Dollar was the top winner on The S&P 500 at 36% increase for the year ( I don't own any stock of any kind and only watch CNBC with a sadist's interest. Like watching a train wreck).

If the earnings from this investment are intended to be your only source of income, I would be concerned about the above issues. Are you in a position to be able to get by if your income drops by 50% or more? What if it goes away entirely for 6 to 18 months?

I just purchased these one year ago, so I have taken the last year off, but am getting active again in sales and intend to pay everything off ASAP. I wonder about missing out on paying off with inflated dollars though.

Nice on the surface. The flip side is that the real estate market is terrible at the moment, and is likely to get much worse before it gets better. The tax savings won't help you if the property drops in value by 50% or more over the next 4 to 6 years.

Family Dollar is putting 200 new stores online this year and Fresenius (the dialysis Co.) is growing as well. I may be missing something, but if a million dollar property today is earning $75,000 income (7.5 CAP rate), and the underlying RE value drops in half, but continues to earn $75,000 by lease contract for another eight years, does that make it a 15.0 Cap rate? We were fortunate to be able to purchase these as whole properties at the maximum CAP rate. There are many people sitting with $50K -100K in Treasuries just taken out of the Market who would probably jump at the chance to have a regular passive income of 5.0 -6.0% right now. Am I naive? I could probably sell my holdings out in TIC form at these rates, but I have talked it over with my Agent and it would be unethical, as he is presently selling TICs at 6.5-7.0% CAP rates to small investors.

The key to investing in the Ka phase is to retain as much purchasing power as you can. It's less about profit and more about safety. And safety means diversification. After Poom hits, taking on a lot of debt can allow low-risk leveraged investments, with the debt being paid back with inflated dollars.

Personally, I sold my commercial RE holdings a few years ago. I own my home free and clear. I cashed out my 401(k) and paid the tax penalty. My liquid holdings are divided between gold, a little silver, and cash (including foreign currencies). I've been out of the markets entirely since July.

You might want to consider selling at least some of your current investment and diversifying a little (if it was me, I would sell it all and take the tax hit, but I'm probably a bit more paranoid than most). If you decide to hang onto the property, you might look into ways to hedge your investment somewhat. Maybe by shorting RE ETFs, for example, or shorting companies similar to the ones your tenants are in, etc (there are many options in that area).

[quote]

[The Outback Oracle]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

My True Confession. I was doing really well with my Junior Golds. I was up maybe 600% in 18 months. Despite a few whacks across the knuckles from Fred, I ignored him, and i kept my Juniors and added a bit. My main reason for doing so was the amount of tax i'd pay if i sold them. Now I'm thinking i can probably reduce my tax considerably by selling!!!
I did make one or two smarter moves and took some considerable profits, but the smart moves were few and far between.
For information purposes my investment in the stockmarket is less than 5% of my worth. (Maybe a lot less than that depending on the day ) So really it was a bit of a game in some ways. Now i'm wishing i had all that money I'd made.

[phirang]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

It strikes me that if you have to own retail based commercial real estate your tenant makeup is pretty good. Family Dollar and Dollar General are in a retail segment that should perform well during poor economic times (now).

http://www.lohud.com/article/2008812230362

That said, there are no guarantees of continued success...

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB...lenews_barrons

Your fourth tenant, a dialysis center, is in a potential growth industry given the aging boomer population.

You didn't say what percentage of your total holdings these properties represent. Assuming they represent the lion's share of your net worth, I would agree with Largo and Sharky; you may want to pursue a course of diversification and liquidity. You state you have the opportunity to sell some of your interest in the properties. While I am envious of your 100K in passive income, personally I'd sleep better at night having a healthy percentage of my holdings in cash and gold.

Best of luck and welcome.

I'm not sold on healthcare being a "booming" industry because people age: most of these people are broke and can't pay for anything, and public sentiment might become a bit more callous as bellies go empty...

[LargoWinch]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

The rest of the story is that I finished the year with a 15.26% [COLOR=black]drawdown

Jim, what do you mean by "drawdown"?

How does it differ from yoy return?

[Debt-freeTICer]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

[quote]

1st: Happy Birthday!

2nd: Thanks for your post and welcome to iTulip.

3rd: I find your post very valuable and perfectly fitted for this thread. So don't be afraid to test your strategies, better be warned on the internet in a forum than losing your precious life savings.

Besides, the only members to be really afraid of are The metalman and Lukester and maybe Jim Nickerson on a bad day (he remains a AAA gentlemen though), but I prefer someone punching me on the head here than doing stupid things with my hard-earned money.

I would be particularly honored if these three would chime in.

Having said all that, iTulip does not provide investment advice (Ed. I hope you approve of my disclaimer), but its members on a voluntary basis will if they feel like it.

Myself, being in Canada and with limited knowledge of the IRS tax code cannot help much.

However I would venture and say this:

a) Given the size of your capital, I think you should "invest" in an iTulip membership! (Ed. do I get brownie points for this?).

I am a yearly paid subscriber. How is a membership different?

This paper from EJ regarding 2009 could prove very useful:
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=6504

b) One of the main issue I see with your investment is that it is not liquid.

Presently, I could sell all or part of my holdings within 3-6 weeks through the Agent I purchased from. I would pay Capital Gains taxes of 15-20%.

c) What if we have a severe recession lasting multiple years? How many tenants can you lose to break even?

We have no debt to service, so I suppose one lease would pay the property taxes and insurance on the others. I would be back selling full time.

d) Lastly, the last bubble occurred in RE and I doubt it will re-inflate to previous level. Inflation will of course support nominal prices somewhat of a deflated bubble, but I think inflation will show up somewhere else. My humble guess is that Gold and Crude Oil are likely to benefit the most. Hence, your nominal returns maybe ok, but your real returns may turn out to be negative.

e) I don't know about the costs of ownership, but if the increase in rent are capped a 2%, your are likely to suffer during POOM.

f) Last but no least: EJ/Ed. do recommend a mix of gold and cash (nothing else at this point).

I don't have any physical gold presently. I do own mining claims which were explored through a Joint Venture we had with Goldfields in 1990-92. We have a couple of drill holes with gold showings for 800 feet. Waiting for gold to Poom, to explore with more drilling. I also hold an interest in an old silver mine with 10 million ounces of proven silver reserves.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Jim, what do you mean by "drawdown"?

How does it differ from yoy return?

Say I started the year with 1,000,000 bonars and got up to 1,180,000 on the day my portfolio was at its highest. At that point, I was up 18% on the year, not figured on any compounded basis.

Then on any day after that highest valuation, as long as my portfolio was worth less, the difference of the present value from the highest is the dollar drawndown, or you could figure it in percentage. Say from 1,180,000 to the end of the year, the portfolio's value ended at 1,062,000, that is a loss from the highest valuation of 118,000bonars or 10% So the drawdown at year end would be 10%.

I think the point to be taken from considering drawdown is a lot can be obscured in talking to others, reporting results in investment funds (I've never seen a mention of drawndown in discussion of mutual funds) if there is no accounting for drawdown.

If I told you, as I in fact wrote above, I lost 3.5% for 2008 and you compared that to the SPX, you might say ole Jim didn't do so badly, but if the truth be known, I really lost 15.26% from what I had had on one day. So ole Jim in fact took a significant hit.

The only reason I fool with tracking this stuff is to know reasonably well how I actually did over periods. I am down a 1.6?% compounded since my highest ever portfolio value since 2000, I don't track a simple single percentage for that drawdown. If you only looked at your numbers from a monthly statement, one could have a vastly different impression of how one did by failing to appreciate what was the actual highest value attained on a given day. If you value your portfolio weekly, you have more accurate assessment considering computation of drawndown, and if you do it daily on closing prices you get an even more accurate picture.

Do you understand, Winch? If not, I'll try again.

[LargoWinch]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Do you understand, Winch? If not, I'll try again.

Jim, that was perfect thank you. Got it 100%.


On my side, my drawdown would be roughly 18% as I was heavily invested (1/4 of my portfolio) in Platinum in the Spring. Ouch. Aille. Doh!

My spreadsheet will be much better for 2009 for tracking returns and I will make sure to keep track of drawdown as well.

Thanks again for the clarification.

[Jay]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

I'm not sold on healthcare being a "booming" industry because people age: most of these people are broke and can't pay for anything, and public sentiment might become a bit more callous as bellies go empty...

While this may be true, renting to a dialysis center is somewhat protected as dialysis patients are guaranteed to be covered by medicare and I don't see this benefit going away easily. No dialysis means eventual death, a condition that tends to lose voters.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

I thought about getting out of 10% more of my long positions today, that would be most everything I have in equities except HSGFX, but I didn't.

I noted somewhere RickBishop wrote he closed out his long positions last Friday. I am still not sure, but that might have been a very good move, for Rick's sake I hope it is.

Today, I did liquidate my FXF (Swiss Franc ETF for a meager profit) and DBA (meager profit) and added a token of SRS (5K+).

Still basically 70% cash and 30% in market.

[metalman]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

I thought about getting out of 10% more of my long positions today, that would be most everything I have in equities except HSGFX, but I didn't.

I noted somewhere RickBishop wrote he closed out his long positions last Friday. I am still not sure, but that might have been a very good move, for Rick's sake I hope it is.

Today, I did liquidate my FXF (Swiss Franc ETF for a meager profit) and DBA (meager profit) and added a token of SRS (5K+).

Still basically 70% cash and 30% in market.

there's cash and cash... you mean money market, cds, tbills, usa short term instruments only? i know i give you shit but i hope you see my motive... i'd hate to see you take a purchasing power/currency whack on our principle on top of the returns whack you took in 2008.

[Jim Nickerson]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

there's cash and cash... you mean money market, cds, tbills, usa short term instruments only? i know i give you shit but i hope you see my motive... i'd hate to see you take a purchasing power/currency whack on our principle on top of the returns whack you took in 2008.

metalman, the reason you give me shit and others shit, I believe, is because you are full of it. I am in US $treasury money market and one that isn't. What sweat off your cojones is it if I take a whack or not?

A 3.5% loss in 2008 was not a whack. I don't think you know WTF you're talking about when you use the word "whack." I took a 900K paper loss and real loss from 2000 highs, that at least in my neighborhood was a whack, but having survived it I am not sure that it was not worth the lesson.

You are quick to criticize for someone who is basically a tight-lipped s*p*o*o*k who by the way has made the single dumbest statement I ever read on iTulip: I never sell anything at a loss. If that is true, then you have not been much of an investor or either not much of a record keeper in tracking highest attained values of assets.

Whenever you get around to tracking your own drawdowns and reporting them, then you come back and give me whatever ration of shit that fits your need, but until then as far as what I post about my wins, losses, or draws I think you should STFU.

[dtimwinn]

Re: HOW ONE iTuliper IS INVESTED?

Do tax-free muni funds make any sense? It seems to me that with our good friends in DC just waiting to raise taxes, that good quality muni funds may be an acceptable alternative to no yield cash. Comments? Thanks.

Tim