Why I'm still in the market: S&P 500, Nasdaq Notch Highest Closings on Record

S&P 500, Nasdaq Notch Highest Closings on Record

Draw

• I made a critical mistake and lost my Queen early in a Knight fork
• At this juncture in the game, Black is up by:
• 1 Pawn (8 to 7)
• And the Black Queen to my White Knight (6 points)
• 7 Points total!
• There's no way White can win
• But I have a very good defense. Eg 
• The Black Bishop is locked in
• All of the White Pawns are on Black spaces (impervious to attack)
• My White Bishop is really mis-positioned but is protected by my Knight
• For the last two dozen moves, I have moved my King: G1 to G2 ... G2 to G1
• It's a draw
• If I were Black:
• I would have maneuvered the Black Bishop to a position to attack and exchange with the White Bishop
• And then tried to open up the H column

Lost Rook to foolish mistake - come from behind

• Kathee out grocery shopping - played a nice game of chess
• As the title indicates, I lost a Rook midway through the game but managed to struggle back
• At the time I lost the Rook, Black had 2 Rooks, White 1 Rook + 2 Knights. 
• Two Knights and King played defense while remaining Rook picked away and protected Pawn to Queen advance.
• I didn't need two Queens to win, but sometimes I'm merciless

Will never be Won

• I play about 4-5 games of chess a day. 
• My win rate is about 20%
• One has to be completely error free against a computer because a computer will never make a mistake
• (one of the joys of playing against the average human, it that they will make a mistake and one can "blow it open")
• The above is an error free game. Tit for Tat
• If I had a Knight ...
• Last game of the day!

On Mutual Fund Expenses

• One might think that 1.19% is reasonable (and perhaps it is). But consider this ...
• If one has $ 100,000 invested in this ... it's $ 1,190 every year!
• GGBZX is a classic "fund of funds"
• And what are the components of GGBZX?

• And each of these ... GIEYX, GGEYX, GVEYX, GEMYX, GSCYX have expenses!

• For a true expense ratio of 2.02%
• Contrast the expenses of SPY

• A 5 year chart!

• Warren Buffet's advice is salient!

The Oracle of Omaha made a very public bet with Protégé Partners on December 19, 2007, that over the following 10 years, an unmanaged S&P 500 index fund would outperform a collection of five high-profile fund-of-funds. Buffett won the bet... and it wasn’t even close. The S&P 500 returned a cumulative 125.8% (or 8.5% per year). The hedge funds delivered cumulative returns ranging from just 2.8% to 87.7% (0.3% to 6.5% per year). And remember, this time period includes the 2008 meltdown.

Blitz