Should the forum have a separate area for active investing?

[MustacheAndaHalf]

"Investor Alley" has a mix of posts ranging from staying the course in passive investing, discussions of specific stocks, and various topics in between.  What is your view on moving discussion of crypto, individual stocks and other active investing into a separate place on the forum?

[MinorMiner]

There are typically only 3 or 4 threads active on a given day. It's easy enough to pick through these. Further sorting would reduce views of both the active and passive areas. Leave it how it is.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

There are typically only 3 or 4 threads active on a given day. It's easy enough to pick through these. Further sorting would reduce views of both the active and passive areas. Leave it how it is.

And yet Mustacian Marketplace has zero posts in March, and only 1 post in April - and that's a separate area of the forum.  Since the active threads are more popular than many other areas of the forum, even on activity alone they deserve a separate area.

I know of active investors who post less because this is a passive investment dominated area of the forum.  Anything they post will be met as a challenge to passive investing, which turns the discussion into "active trails the market!" instead of a discussion with any nuance.

[uniwelder]

There are typically only 3 or 4 threads active on a given day. It's easy enough to pick through these. Further sorting would reduce views of both the active and passive areas. Leave it how it is.

And yet Mustacian Marketplace has zero posts in March, and only 1 post in April - and that's a separate area of the forum.  Since the active threads are more popular than many other areas of the forum, even on activity alone they deserve a separate area.

I know of active investors who post less because this is a passive investment dominated area of the forum.  Anything they post will be met as a challenge to passive investing, which turns the discussion into "active trails the market!" instead of a discussion with any nuance.

Mustachian Marketplace gets its own space because there's no overlap between it and anything else.  It truly is a completely separate topic.

Worrying about critique of active investing and wanting to shield it from scrutiny doesn't seem like a good reason to put it in a different region of the forum.

[EvenSteven]

There are typically only 3 or 4 threads active on a given day. It's easy enough to pick through these. Further sorting would reduce views of both the active and passive areas. Leave it how it is.

And yet Mustacian Marketplace has zero posts in March, and only 1 post in April - and that's a separate area of the forum.

But is that really something you think the forum should aspire to?

Since the active threads are more popular than many other areas of the forum, even on activity alone they deserve a separate area.

I know of active investors who post less because this is a passive investment dominated area of the forum.  Anything they post will be met as a challenge to passive investing, which turns the discussion into "active trails the market!" instead of a discussion with any nuance.

I really don't see the same things you see. I see this area of the forum as dominated by those who like to talk about active investing. It would be interesting to gather some data from recent posts in this sub forum to see what the breakdown of posts that are (1) hostile to active investing (2) supportive of active investing (3) neither supportive or hostile.

[Stimpy]

Personally, I would say no, though I admit I am mostly passive but do play a little bit.

I do see value in both type of investing, and really, I think, despite the vast majority of people being passive here, that everyone gets something out of the discussions.   By moving that to a "new" area, it would probably have less traffic over all, and less eyes on it, so less learned by everyone.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

There are typically only 3 or 4 threads active on a given day. It's easy enough to pick through these. Further sorting would reduce views of both the active and passive areas. Leave it how it is.

And yet Mustacian Marketplace has zero posts in March, and only 1 post in April - and that's a separate area of the forum.  Since the active threads are more popular than many other areas of the forum, even on activity alone they deserve a separate area.

I know of active investors who post less because this is a passive investment dominated area of the forum.  Anything they post will be met as a challenge to passive investing, which turns the discussion into "active trails the market!" instead of a discussion with any nuance.

Mustachian Marketplace gets its own space because there's no overlap between it and anything else.  It truly is a completely separate topic.

And then there's "Gardening DIY" and all 3 international areas.  This is not isolated to just the Marketplace, but rather the active posts here would rank above many other areas of the forums.

Worrying about critique of active investing and wanting to shield it from scrutiny doesn't seem like a good reason to put it in a different region of the forum.

I don't need your scrutiny, as I could stick 100% cash for the next 5 years and still be ahead of every passive investor here.  And yet if I post about active investing, I can expect a number of posters to chime in telling me to invest passively... yes, I invested 100% passively for decades, I know the drill.  But that becomes the entire discussion, and the active topic goes nowhere.

We could have a warning topic that is stickied, containing all the criticism of active investing.  But to have it appear in every thread about active investing stiffles discussion even among people who understand and accept the risks of active investing.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

There are typically only 3 or 4 threads active on a given day. It's easy enough to pick through these. Further sorting would reduce views of both the active and passive areas. Leave it how it is.

And yet Mustacian Marketplace has zero posts in March, and only 1 post in April - and that's a separate area of the forum.

But is that really something you think the forum should aspire to?

I accept the reality that 5+ other areas have less activity than the posts about active investing.  By that measure, active investment deserves its own area.

Since the active threads are more popular than many other areas of the forum, even on activity alone they deserve a separate area.

I know of active investors who post less because this is a passive investment dominated area of the forum.  Anything they post will be met as a challenge to passive investing, which turns the discussion into "active trails the market!" instead of a discussion with any nuance.

I really don't see the same things you see. I see this area of the forum as dominated by those who like to talk about active investing. It would be interesting to gather some data from recent posts in this sub forum to see what the breakdown of posts that are (1) hostile to active investing (2) supportive of active investing (3) neither supportive or hostile.

It would be interesting, but not necessarily the full story.  Better would be a thread by thread analysis: was the topic passive investing, active investing or something else?  Did the topic turn into a debate about passive vs active?  But yes, the data could be interesting.

I think there's also a significant difference between talking about Tesla or RocketLab, and talking about an active investment strategy like going 50% cash.  The former are clearly focused on the attributes of specific companies, while a topic about market timing would get a dramatically different response, in my view.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

For those who think there's very little hostility, ask yourself what happens when someone is hostile to active investing?  Do you post to stop them or disagree with them?  What I see is the assumption that passive investing is the norm and is correct - an assumption in "Investor Alley", which is why I'm recommending a separate area where it is assumed people want to invest actively.
For example, skipping stock-specific ones:


The "low % of crypto" thread is controversial, with most people calling crypto a scam.  The minority approaching crypto as something other than a scam are not ignorant of the risks, or about to change their mind because crypto was called a scam repeatedly.  It's a thread about active investment (low % of crypto) that has been taken over by people calling crypto a scam.

Skipping over the individual stock threads, there's a thread about the 2Y/10Y yield curve inversion.  Since one of the question is people's stock allocation, you see a lot of people saying they will not change their allocation at all.

There's a thread about asset allocation, where 86% agreed with either "100% VTI" or "set it and forget it".  One person was attacked for trying to beat the market.

[YttriumNitrate]

Since it tends to run contrary to the MMM philosophy, my vote is for off-topic. Perhaps an sub-forum in the off-topic area would be best.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2021/03/26/beware-of-the-bubble/
https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2019/09/12/michael-burry-index-funds/

[erjkism]

"I could stick 100% cash for the next 5 years and still be ahead of every passive investor here"

what? lol.

There are typically only 3 or 4 threads active on a given day. It's easy enough to pick through these. Further sorting would reduce views of both the active and passive areas. Leave it how it is.

And yet Mustacian Marketplace has zero posts in March, and only 1 post in April - and that's a separate area of the forum.  Since the active threads are more popular than many other areas of the forum, even on activity alone they deserve a separate area.

I know of active investors who post less because this is a passive investment dominated area of the forum.  Anything they post will be met as a challenge to passive investing, which turns the discussion into "active trails the market!" instead of a discussion with any nuance.

Mustachian Marketplace gets its own space because there's no overlap between it and anything else.  It truly is a completely separate topic.

And then there's "Gardening DIY" and all 3 international areas.  This is not isolated to just the Marketplace, but rather the active posts here would rank above many other areas of the forums.

Worrying about critique of active investing and wanting to shield it from scrutiny doesn't seem like a good reason to put it in a different region of the forum.

I don't need your scrutiny, as I could stick 100% cash for the next 5 years and still be ahead of every passive investor here.  And yet if I post about active investing, I can expect a number of posters to chime in telling me to invest passively... yes, I invested 100% passively for decades, I know the drill.  But that becomes the entire discussion, and the active topic goes nowhere.

We could have a warning topic that is stickied, containing all the criticism of active investing.  But to have it appear in every thread about active investing stiffles discussion even among people who understand and accept the risks of active investing.

[ChpBstrd]

Worrying about critique of active investing and wanting to shield it from scrutiny doesn't seem like a good reason to put it in a different region of the forum.

Stock picking and market timing are bad ideas for 100% of MMM investors. 95% will underperform their risk profiles and the other 5% will experience temporary luck that leads them into gambling their whole portfolio someday in the future.

That said, I think one of the productive functions of Investor Alley is to deliver facepunches to people who have stumbled across an article promoting Stock X on the internet and decided they want to go all-in, or they read a doom article on Yahoo and decided "The Top Is In!", etc.

I sometimes post market timing / stock picking ideas because I want people to pick apart my bad ideas. Similarly, when I pick apart other people's ideas, I learn something from that research process too. That's how we can learn. My feelings aren't hurt because I always maintain the belief that I could be dead ass wrong. It's confidence that kills, not words. This forum full of millionaires continually redirects me toward the productive path and away from the false shortcuts.

The "low % of crypto" thread is controversial, with most people calling crypto a scam.  The minority approaching crypto as something other than a scam are not ignorant of the risks, or about to change their mind because crypto was called a scam repeatedly.  It's a thread about active investment (low % of crypto) that has been taken over by people calling crypto a scam.

I think it's important for any "alternative" investment to be able to beat the argument that it's a scam of some sort. Some of the evidence that has surfaced in the crypto discussions have blown my mind, both pro and con. But the bottom line is that people in the U.S. alone are losing tens of billions of dollars per year to various investment con jobs. Other investors are running off of cliffs with social media lemming herds. Real people are getting financially destroyed. These desperate people could have been FIRE'd in a few years had there been some place where others could talk them down. If there was ever a need for a way to collectively vet investment ideas, it is now. Law enforcement has been ineffective, social media feeds are easily hijacked by promoters, and most people do not have anyone they can talk to about such things. Facepunches on investor alley have real value, and I savor them. Punch out my internet teeth all day long.

The folder about landlording discusses that form of active investing alongside the mechanics. It has lots of "should I buy/sell this property" discussions that are educational and have a good back-and-forth about things like cash flows, appreciation, the 1% rule, the sticky'ed spreadsheet, etc. The active debates are very educational. These threads coexist just fine with threads about repairs, tenant relations, taxes, etc. and the thread does not become overwhelming.

If some forum folders like Marketplace are under-utilized, I don't think that's an optimization problem that needs to bother anyone.

[ChickenStash]

I voted to leave it as-is.

There's so much overlap in the discussions, particularly on the tech details and portfolio theory that I enjoy reading, that I think things would get lost to a particular area too easily.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

"I could stick 100% cash for the next 5 years and still be ahead of every passive investor here"

what? lol.

You stripped out the entire point of that sentence: "I don't need your scrutiny".  This "scrutiny", in my experience, involves telling me to follow passive investing or risk underperforming the market.  So I skipped ahead, and probably should have cited "An experiment" so that I don't have to reply to someone taking part of one sentence out of context and ignoring the entire point.

Benchmark (VTI)   89.00%      vs      Experiment   228.00%

https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/an-experiment/msg2926627/#msg2926627

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Worrying about critique of active investing and wanting to shield it from scrutiny doesn't seem like a good reason to put it in a different region of the forum.

Stock picking and market timing are bad ideas for 100% of MMM investors. 95% will underperform their risk profiles and the other 5% will experience temporary luck that leads them into gambling their whole portfolio someday in the future.

There's 0% room for other views?  And yet during "An experiment" I beat the market by a wide margin, so for me it's a good thing I invest in what you call "bad ideas for 100% of MMM investors".

The "low % of crypto" thread is controversial, with most people calling crypto a scam.  The minority approaching crypto as something other than a scam are not ignorant of the risks, or about to change their mind because crypto was called a scam repeatedly.  It's a thread about active investment (low % of crypto) that has been taken over by people calling crypto a scam.

I think it's important for any "alternative" investment to be able to beat the argument that it's a scam of some sort. Some of the evidence that has surfaced in the crypto discussions have blown my mind, both pro and con. But the bottom line is that people in the U.S. alone are losing tens of billions of dollars per year to various investment con jobs. Other investors are running off of cliffs with social media lemming herds. Real people are getting financially destroyed. These desperate people could have been FIRE'd in a few years had there been some place where others could talk them down. If there was ever a need for a way to collectively vet investment ideas, it is now. Law enforcement has been ineffective, social media feeds are easily hijacked by promoters, and most people do not have anyone they can talk to about such things. Facepunches on investor alley have real value, and I savor them. Punch out my internet teeth all day long.

You helped the discussion there more than most, by taking the concerns over crypto hacking into a separate thread.  And yet most of that thread is just refuting claims that crypto is a scam.  I don't dare to post about the actual topic!  Any mention of allocating a "low % of crypto" in the "low % of crypto" thread will shouted down by claims of it being a scam.  I wonder how the SEC missed the scam when it approved Bitcoin futures ETFs, or the CBOE when it setup futures markets for Bitcoin... but that just incites a discussion of Bitcoin as a scam or not.  The discussion can't get past that, and that's a problem for me - but not for you, or for most people in Investor Alley.

It would be interesting to see if the activity level in "Investor Alley" has gone down over time.  I see a couple active investors who only stop in once every few months, depriving me of the chance to ask them questions.  Personally, I stopped posting my active investment ideas in Investor Alley months ago.  They're in favor of a separte area for active investors - but they visit too rarely to voice that opinion, and I can't blame them.  For me, the idea is to lower the "signal to noise" ratio, by taking people who don't follow active investing out of the discussion.  And again, with some sticky warning threads if that's appropriate - but not tangents about passive investing when the topic is a specific active investment strategy.

[JohnnyZ]

There's not an overwhelming activity, so there's no reason to spread it to a subforum.
 Maybe the crypto discussions could be better managed so they don't just go back and forth between "it's a scam!" and "but I made so much money", but if you're afraid to miss on hot tips on crypto or the next GME this is probably not the place to look for them.
Honestly, this feels a bit like coming into a vegan restaurant and demanding that a booth be dedicated to eating steak.

[ChpBstrd]

Worrying about critique of active investing and wanting to shield it from scrutiny doesn't seem like a good reason to put it in a different region of the forum.

Stock picking and market timing are bad ideas for 100% of MMM investors. 95% will underperform their risk profiles and the other 5% will experience temporary luck that leads them into gambling their whole portfolio someday in the future.

There's 0% room for other views?  And yet during "An experiment" I beat the market by a wide margin, so for me it's a good thing I invest in what you call "bad ideas for 100% of MMM investors".

I would like to caution you in a friendly way against looking at a successful episode of timing/picking in the past and deciding it is conclusive proof that you can repeat the process. Managers of actively managed funds routinely have good years or good two-year stretches, but... we all know their statistics about beating the market long-term or with any predictability. What would it mean if you were the incarnate exception to a trend that has been observed for decades, across tens of thousands of professionals with access to staff and Bloomberg terminals and asset classes unreachable by regular folks? How unusual would it be?

The "low % of crypto" thread is controversial, with most people calling crypto a scam.  The minority approaching crypto as something other than a scam are not ignorant of the risks, or about to change their mind because crypto was called a scam repeatedly.  It's a thread about active investment (low % of crypto) that has been taken over by people calling crypto a scam.

I think it's important for any "alternative" investment to be able to beat the argument that it's a scam of some sort. Some of the evidence that has surfaced in the crypto discussions have blown my mind, both pro and con. But the bottom line is that people in the U.S. alone are losing tens of billions of dollars per year to various investment con jobs. Other investors are running off of cliffs with social media lemming herds. Real people are getting financially destroyed. These desperate people could have been FIRE'd in a few years had there been some place where others could talk them down. If there was ever a need for a way to collectively vet investment ideas, it is now. Law enforcement has been ineffective, social media feeds are easily hijacked by promoters, and most people do not have anyone they can talk to about such things. Facepunches on investor alley have real value, and I savor them. Punch out my internet teeth all day long.

You helped the discussion there more than most, by taking the concerns over crypto hacking into a separate thread.  And yet most of that thread is just refuting claims that crypto is a scam.  I don't dare to post about the actual topic!  Any mention of allocating a "low % of crypto" in the "low % of crypto" thread will shouted down by claims of it being a scam.  I wonder how the SEC missed the scam when it approved Bitcoin futures ETFs, or the CBOE when it setup futures markets for Bitcoin... but that just incites a discussion of Bitcoin as a scam or not.  The discussion can't get past that, and that's a problem for me - but not for you, or for most people in Investor Alley.

It would be interesting to see if the activity level in "Investor Alley" has gone down over time.  I see a couple active investors who only stop in once every few months, depriving me of the chance to ask them questions.  Personally, I stopped posting my active investment ideas in Investor Alley months ago.  They're in favor of a separte area for active investors - but they visit too rarely to voice that opinion, and I can't blame them.  For me, the idea is to lower the "signal to noise" ratio, by taking people who don't follow active investing out of the discussion.  And again, with some sticky warning threads if that's appropriate - but not tangents about passive investing when the topic is a specific active investment strategy.

The scam question naturally hangs over everything else. If crypto is potentially a scam or madness-of-crowds bubble, then the only reasonable AA is 0%. For anyone who thinks crypto is potentially not-legit, that is their honest answer to "what do you think about a small allocation to crypto?".

It may be repetitive to have to read through the same arguments being rephrased, such as "creates no value" or "line goes up", but I don't think we can just wave away the skeptics and say we're only interested in answers greater than zero from people who believe crypto has a place in every portfolio. 

Similarly, we can't just wave away the promoters, because you never know they just might be onto something we have not seen yet.

The responses to crypto threads are typically different when posts are about a small allocation to a specific stock, such as the recent thread by the person who was overweight Apple, or the periodic threads from people who obtained warrants through their work. If I'm a naive reader, that tells me something.

Likewise, if someone is asking whether it's legit when they clicked an email link and got awarded three Bitcoins, I would hope this community would chime in and let the person know they just gave away their personal info to a scammer who probably infected their computer with a virus, and need to take action immediately. I would also hope they wouldn't be dismissed as pessimists, naysayers, and FUD'ers.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Maybe the crypto discussions could be better managed so they don't just go back and forth between "it's a scam!" and "but I made so much money", but if you're afraid to miss on hot tips on crypto or the next GME this is probably not the place to look for them.

While I mentioned "it's a scam" earlier here, the rest of your post has nothing to do with the contents of the crypto thread.  Who is talking about "I made so much money" in that thread?  And then you put words in my mouth claiming I am "afraid to miss on[sic] hot tips on crypto or the next GME", which is also false.

Unfortunately this is also common - someone who does not become familiar with a topic is fine posting their views on it.  The thread becomes a discussion of the people who know the least, and adds noise to any conversation.  Your post is actually an example of the noise I usually avoid by avoiding to post new topics.

There's not an overwhelming activity, so there's no reason to spread it to a subforum.

I count the following threads related to active investment:
(1) Tesla (2) low % of crypto (3) crypto hacked (4) Rocket Lab (5) Top is in (6) yield curve (7) Lending to shorts (8) bought a lemon (9) Russian equities (10) AT&T (11) Margin? (12) Shorting Russian stock (13) 1.25% margin (14) Fed too dovish (15) strategy and margin (16) end of low inflation (17) rate hike

And there's 42 threads that are not sticky or moved: 17 / 42 = 40% of the first page of "Investor Alley", which has 183k posts overall.  If that's typical, it means 73k posts about active investing, or more than 2/3rds of the areas on MMM.  If 40% of threads are about a different topic, maybe that topic deserves a place of it's own.

Honestly, this feels a bit like coming into a vegan restaurant and demanding that a booth be dedicated to eating steak.

Vegan restaurants do not serve steak, while this forum is 40% active threads.  Your attitude towards active investment may be typical, but it ignores a significant number of people who actually want to discuss this stuff.  There's no MMM rule against discussing active investing, and it does seem popular - neither of which is true of people asking for steak in a vegan restaurant.

[Juan Ponce de León]

I voted to leave it as is.  There is so little traffic in the "Investor Alley" forum anyway that I doubt the benefit of splitting that traffic even further.

[NorCal]

I haven't really looked closely, but I honestly don't remember the last passive investing thread that generated interesting discussion.  Aren't all of the meaningful threads about active investing anyways?

Passive investing seems to have moved into a pseudo-cult phase where it can't be questioned or really even discussed.  Which is too bad, as I'm a fan of passive investing.  I just think the execution of it isn't done optimally or thoughtfully. 

[JohnnyZ]

Maybe the crypto discussions could be better managed so they don't just go back and forth between "it's a scam!" and "but I made so much money", but if you're afraid to miss on hot tips on crypto or the next GME this is probably not the place to look for them.

While I mentioned "it's a scam" earlier here, the rest of your post has nothing to do with the contents of the crypto thread.  Who is talking about "I made so much money" in that thread?  And then you put words in my mouth claiming I am "afraid to miss on[sic] hot tips on crypto or the next GME", which is also false.

I can see that you still have that problem, where you think we're claiming that everything we put in quotes has been said verbatim by someone else. This is not the case. Here I was condensing the two extreme positions we can find in that thread.
Here are some actual verbatim quotes:
"Making massive investment returns is 'pointless'?"
"The scam is that the only value crypto has is if other people WANT it."

And no, I did not put words in your mouth or claimed anything regarding the hot tips. I'm wondering and making a guess, hence "if".

Unfortunately this is also common - someone who does not become familiar with a topic is fine posting their views on it.  The thread becomes a discussion of the people who know the least, and adds noise to any conversation.  Your post is actually an example of the noise I usually avoid by avoiding to post new topics.

I'm not sure I'm following; you asked a question and I gave my opinion in a short, 4-line message which you were free to ignore. It feels like you just label everything you don't agree with "noise" (if you want an example of the noise I usually avoid -please note the "if", I am not claiming that you do want an example-that'd be when someone nitpicks every word they don't agree with and harp on everyone saying they claimed this and that, until they give up the discussion).

There's not an overwhelming activity, so there's no reason to spread it to a subforum.

I count the following threads related to active investment:
(1) Tesla (2) low % of crypto (3) crypto hacked (4) Rocket Lab (5) Top is in (6) yield curve (7) Lending to shorts (8) bought a lemon (9) Russian equities (10) AT&T (11) Margin? (12) Shorting Russian stock (13) 1.25% margin (14) Fed too dovish (15) strategy and margin (16) end of low inflation (17) rate hike

And there's 42 threads that are not sticky or moved: 17 / 42 = 40% of the first page of "Investor Alley", which has 183k posts overall.  If that's typical, it means 73k posts about active investing, or more than 2/3rds of the areas on MMM.  If 40% of threads are about a different topic, maybe that topic deserves a place of it's own.

Are you claiming here that the "top is in" thread (and its 9k+ posts or ~5% of the first page) is a serious active investment discussion?
Regardless, what I meant is that there is low enough activity that the last thread on the first page was last posted into almost a month ago, so if you come even just every other week you can't miss a discussion because it's been relegated to page 2. By your reasoning if there were 4 threads in a forum, 2 each on 2 different subjects, a subforum would need to be created because, well, 50% of discussions is a lot.

Honestly, this feels a bit like coming into a vegan restaurant and demanding that a booth be dedicated to eating steak.

Vegan restaurants do not serve steak, while this forum is 40% active threads.  Your attitude towards active investment may be typical, but it ignores a significant number of people who actually want to discuss this stuff.  There's no MMM rule against discussing active investing, and it does seem popular - neither of which is true of people asking for steak in a vegan restaurant.

You do not know my attitude towards active investing, and I never said it should not be discussed here so please do not infer I did; it's like you're claiming people want to filter out the active investing discussions when you're the one who wants to filter out the passive investing discussions/people. My position is:
1) there is not enough activity that topics quickly drop out of the first page (which is typically why you'd create other subforums, when you run a forum).
2) this is MMM forum. Crypto runs counter to everything "mustachianism" is supposed to be about, so crypto enthusiasts should not be shocked when crypto is not met with unanimous approval. The expected % of serious daytraders or crypto users is lower here than on most financial/stocks/crypto forums, that's why I said "this is probably not the place to look for them" - it's not that I mind those discussions (I've not once complained about them), but if you really want to have technical discussions about a topic it just makes more sense to go to where people knowledgeable on that topic and of the same mind are likely to already be.
 Hopefully the metaphor is clearer now.

[Heckler]

Haven't we showed the Top is in yet? 

I'm 100% passive indices, including spending power losing bonds, but still lurk r/walllstreetbets for fun.  Same thing here, I'm happy to learn about other methodologies.  It's all learning.

(No).

[MustacheAndaHalf]

I voted to leave it as is.  There is so little traffic in the "Investor Alley" forum anyway that I doubt the benefit of splitting that traffic even further.

I was curious if the traffic is falling - it is.  To replicate what I found, people can click on page 2 of Investor Alley, and go back 2x each time.  On each page, compare the date of the first and last post.

(2, 4) Recent screens: 1.5 months of threads
(8) mid 2021: 1 month of threads
(16, 32, 64) 2018-2020: 2-3 weeks of threads

Using this measurement, forum activity has dropped by half in the past couple years.

I haven't really looked closely, but I honestly don't remember the last passive investing thread that generated interesting discussion.  Aren't all of the meaningful threads about active investing anyways?

Passive investing seems to have moved into a pseudo-cult phase where it can't be questioned or really even discussed.  Which is too bad, as I'm a fan of passive investing.  I just think the execution of it isn't done optimally or thoughtfully.

Passive investing has changed from a movement championed by John Bogle at Vanguard, to something well known to most investors.  In the Vanguard founder's lifetime, passive investing went from 0% to 50%.  Now that passive investing is widespread, there's less need to explain it.

Currently most people are voting that they do not want to change the status quo.  That status quo is that active investors need to face passive investment cliches, even if they've been forum members for years.  And you'll also notice those type of comments ("don't time the market", "underperformance") can be made without the poster expecting any flak - the forum assumes it to be true, so there's no need to back it up with data.  Most people don't.

I think the reduction in activity is partly because of the way active investment topics are assumed to need hand holding and passive investment cliches.  That's why I suggested having a separate area where people can discuss active investing.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Maybe the crypto discussions ..., but if you're afraid to miss on hot tips on crypto or the next GME this is probably not the place to look for them.

And no, I did not put words in your mouth or claimed anything regarding the hot tips. I'm wondering and making a guess, hence "if".

What did I say to merit your mention of "hot tips on crypto or the next GME"?  I didn't bring that up - you did.  You had no grounds for guessing that I do this, but you said it anyways.  That's the problem I have, and not some nitpick over the use of the word "if".

I'm not sure I'm following; you asked a question and I gave my opinion in a short, 4-line message which you were free to ignore.

I am free to ignore a post where you are making assumptions about me personally? 

[MustacheAndaHalf]

To reply to the 3 people who mentioned the "Top is in" thread, that is a thread where passive investors mock someone who was market timing.  It was stated by an active investor to predict a crash, and instead the bull market continued for years.  While it has become a running joke, that joke started with passive investors mocking an active investor.

Back in March 2020 that thread had a more serious tone, where I wondered about the market's optimism and someone relied that "limit down" isn't optimisim.  I don't know if that level of discussion is possible now, but that was 3 years after the original crash prediction.
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/top-is-in/6450/

So "Top is in" is a bit mixed, with recent posts being meme-like jokes, earlier 2020 posts discussing the upcoming Covid-19 crash, and even earlier a market timer predicting a crash.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

In all the other replies I missed this...

It may be repetitive to have to read through the same arguments being rephrased, such as "creates no value" or "line goes up", but I don't think we can just wave away the skeptics and say we're only interested in answers greater than zero from people who believe crypto has a place in every portfolio.

It's not just repeititive - it's the entire conversation.  I hope that changes, but over many months I have seen "scam" become the entire conversation, and not some kind of distraction.

Likewise, if someone is asking whether it's legit when they clicked an email link and got awarded three Bitcoins, I would hope this community would chime in and let the person know they just gave away their personal info to a scammer ...

Or someone could congratulate the person who "got awarded three Bitcoins", since that's worth $120,000 currently...

I would like to caution you in a friendly way against looking at a successful episode of timing/picking in the past and deciding it is conclusive proof that you can repeat the process. Managers of actively managed funds routinely have good years or good two-year stretches, but... we all know their statistics about beating the market long-term or with any predictability. What would it mean if you were the incarnate exception to a trend that has been observed for decades, across tens of thousands of professionals with access to staff and Bloomberg terminals and asset classes unreachable by regular folks? How unusual would it be?

It sounds like you expect "two-year stretches" to be a limit past which active managers can't beat the market.  From 2018-2020, 1/3rd of active funds beat the market according to SPIVA data.  From the way you describe "decades", I assume you also didn't know 1 in 7 active funds beat the market for 20 years?
https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-us-year-end-2020.pdf#page=9

I suspect very few people knew those statistics - I never see the actual numbers cited by people who recommend passive investing.  And yet where did the belief in passive investing arise?  From books using historical data to prove their points.  I wish the argument were data driven, instead of relying on assumptions about the odds of success or failure.

And for the record, yes I understood what was happening in March 2020 better than data on a Bloomberg terminal, and certainly beat tens of thousands of professional investors.  My experiment (Mar 2020 - Nov 2021) gained +228%, which I'm certain beat 95% of professional investors, and probably 99.9%.

"Benchmark (VTI)   89.00%      vs      Experiment   228.00%"
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/an-experiment/msg2926627/#msg2926627

[Juan Ponce de León]

"Benchmark (VTI)   89.00%      vs      Experiment   228.00%"
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/an-experiment/msg2926627/#msg2926627

And since the topic of crypto keeps coming up we should also add that from March 2020 to Nov 2021 Bitcoin was up a whopping 18x.  What even is that in percentage terms? :D

[uniwelder]

I would like to caution you in a friendly way against looking at a successful episode of timing/picking in the past and deciding it is conclusive proof that you can repeat the process. Managers of actively managed funds routinely have good years or good two-year stretches, but... we all know their statistics about beating the market long-term or with any predictability. What would it mean if you were the incarnate exception to a trend that has been observed for decades, across tens of thousands of professionals with access to staff and Bloomberg terminals and asset classes unreachable by regular folks? How unusual would it be?

It sounds like you expect "two-year stretches" to be a limit past which active managers can't beat the market.  From 2018-2020, 1/3rd of active funds beat the market according to SPIVA data.  From the way you describe "decades", I assume you also didn't know 1 in 7 active funds beat the market for 20 years?
https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-us-year-end-2020.pdf#page=9

I suspect very few people knew those statistics - I never see the actual numbers cited by people who recommend passive investing.  And yet where did the belief in passive investing arise?  From books using historical data to prove their points.  I wish the argument were data driven, instead of relying on assumptions about the odds of success or failure.

I don't think confirmation of the unlikely statistics of being able to beat the market are helping your argument.  One might be lead to think that if you can beat the market for 2 years, there's a less than 50% chance it could extend to 20.  That's not very optimistic.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

"Benchmark (VTI)   89.00%      vs      Experiment   228.00%"
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/an-experiment/msg2926627/#msg2926627

And since the topic of crypto keeps coming up we should also add that from March 2020 to Nov 2021 Bitcoin was up a whopping 18x.  What even is that in percentage terms? :D

At Vanguard, only GBTC was available from Mar 26 2020 ($7.36 close) to - Nov 5 2021 ($48.57 close), so I would have to use that, which was up +550%.  I've seen GBTC have lower returns than Bitcoin before, so that could have been the case here.

[vand]

imo, absolutely not.

The investing forum is already badly struggling for decent content that can generate good discussion without breaking it  down into sub forums. 

What is passive investing? Is it a global 60/40? Is it VTSAX? Is it anything that isn't picking indivudual stocks... but you can do as much market timing as you want?

If you are proposing to split the forum down, why choose active/passive as the demarcation? Will bonds get their own subforum too? Commodities, REITs and other alternatives?

Passive investing can't exist without active investing. So to assume that an "investing" forum should be dominated by discussions on indexing is not only boring, it puts the cart before the horse.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

I would like to caution you in a friendly way against looking at a successful episode of timing/picking in the past and deciding it is conclusive proof that you can repeat the process. Managers of actively managed funds routinely have good years or good two-year stretches, but... we all know their statistics about beating the market long-term or with any predictability. What would it mean if you were the incarnate exception to a trend that has been observed for decades, across tens of thousands of professionals with access to staff and Bloomberg terminals and asset classes unreachable by regular folks? How unusual would it be?

It sounds like you expect "two-year stretches" to be a limit past which active managers can't beat the market.  From 2018-2020, 1/3rd of active funds beat the market according to SPIVA data.  From the way you describe "decades", I assume you also didn't know 1 in 7 active funds beat the market for 20 years?
https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-us-year-end-2020.pdf#page=9

I suspect very few people knew those statistics - I never see the actual numbers cited by people who recommend passive investing.  And yet where did the belief in passive investing arise?  From books using historical data to prove their points.  I wish the argument were data driven, instead of relying on assumptions about the odds of success or failure.

I don't think confirmation of the unlikely statistics of being able to beat the market are helping your argument.  One might be lead to think that if you can beat the market for 2 years, there's a less than 50% chance it could extend to 20.  That's not very optimistic.

Your words don't match the numbers you use.  You mention "unlikely" and "not very optimistic" when referring to a "less than 50% chance".  And I notice you excluded the rest of my post, where I mentioned beating the market +228% to +89% in my experiment.  I think +228% with a "less than 50% chance" might be worth giving up +89%, don't you?  Here's the part you excluded:

And for the record, yes I understood what was happening in March 2020 better than data on a Bloomberg terminal, and certainly beat tens of thousands of professional investors.  My experiment (Mar 2020 - Nov 2021) gained +228%, which I'm certain beat 95% of professional investors, and probably 99.9%.

"Benchmark (VTI)   89.00%      vs      Experiment   228.00%"
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/an-experiment/msg2926627/#msg2926627

[MustacheAndaHalf]

imo, absolutely not.

The investing forum is already badly struggling for decent content that can generate good discussion without breaking it  down into sub forums. 

What is passive investing? Is it a global 60/40? Is it VTSAX? Is it anything that isn't picking indivudual stocks... but you can do as much market timing as you want?

If you are proposing to split the forum down, why choose active/passive as the demarcation? Will bonds get their own subforum too? Commodities, REITs and other alternatives?

Passive investing can't exist without active investing. So to assume that an "investing" forum should be dominated by discussions on indexing is not only boring, it puts the cart before the horse.

Investor Alley is struggling for content partly because experienced active investors don't want to start new topics here.  These are people who know what they're doing, but will get critized numerous times for not investing passively - it's not worth it.

Passive investing is a 100% bullish approach where all your investment money goes into buying low cost index funds.

I did not suggest "to split the forum down", as you claim.  I have only suggested that an area be reserved for active investors where passive investors can't lecture them.  The rest of your slippery slope arguments were never even suggested before your post.

Why does a passive investment forum require active investing discussions?  Passive investing is supposed to be boring.  What prevents someone from buying 100% VTSAX without knowing about active investing?

[uniwelder]

It sounds like you expect "two-year stretches" to be a limit past which active managers can't beat the market.  From 2018-2020, 1/3rd of active funds beat the market according to SPIVA data.  From the way you describe "decades", I assume you also didn't know 1 in 7 active funds beat the market for 20 years?
https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-us-year-end-2020.pdf#page=9

I suspect very few people knew those statistics - I never see the actual numbers cited by people who recommend passive investing.  And yet where did the belief in passive investing arise?  From books using historical data to prove their points.  I wish the argument were data driven, instead of relying on assumptions about the odds of success or failure.

I don't think confirmation of the unlikely statistics of being able to beat the market are helping your argument.  One might be lead to think that if you can beat the market for 2 years, there's a less than 50% chance it could extend to 20.  That's not very optimistic.

Your words don't match the numbers you use.  You mention "unlikely" and "not very optimistic" when referring to a "less than 50% chance". 

I think the words match pretty well.  We must have a different interpretation of the english language.

2 in 3 chance of underperforming = unlikely to beat the market

6 in 7 chance of underperforming over 20 years = not very optimistic

And I notice you excluded the rest of my post, where I mentioned beating the market +228% to +89% in my experiment.  I think +228% with a "less than 50% chance" might be worth giving up +89%, don't you?  Here's the part you excluded:

And for the record, yes I understood what was happening in March 2020 better than data on a Bloomberg terminal, and certainly beat tens of thousands of professional investors.  My experiment (Mar 2020 - Nov 2021) gained +228%, which I'm certain beat 95% of professional investors, and probably 99.9%.

"Benchmark (VTI)   89.00%      vs      Experiment   228.00%"
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/an-experiment/msg2926627/#msg2926627

I excluded your particular case because its not representative of the statistics you provided.  Hopefully your success continues, but don't take a single data point and extrapolate that out, when you've just provided evidence that for most professionals, they will fail.

edited to add--- I have nothing against active investing and like to follow along the discussions pertaining to it so I can learn.  However, I do like to keep information clear, hence my criticism when you flaunt your success, particularly when you know most people will not attain the same result.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

It sounds like you expect "two-year stretches" to be a limit past which active managers can't beat the market.  From 2018-2020, 1/3rd of active funds beat the market according to SPIVA data.  From the way you describe "decades", I assume you also didn't know 1 in 7 active funds beat the market for 20 years?
https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/documents/spiva/spiva-us-year-end-2020.pdf#page=9

I suspect very few people knew those statistics - I never see the actual numbers cited by people who recommend passive investing.  And yet where did the belief in passive investing arise?  From books using historical data to prove their points.  I wish the argument were data driven, instead of relying on assumptions about the odds of success or failure.

I don't think confirmation of the unlikely statistics of being able to beat the market are helping your argument.  One might be lead to think that if you can beat the market for 2 years, there's a less than 50% chance it could extend to 20.  That's not very optimistic.

Your words don't match the numbers you use.  You mention "unlikely" and "not very optimistic" when referring to a "less than 50% chance". 

I think the words match pretty well.  We must have a different interpretation of the english language.

2 in 3 chance of underperforming = unlikely to beat the market

6 in 7 chance of underperforming over 20 years = not very optimistic

I see you're trying to move the goalposts by avoiding my direct quote of what you said, so I'll narrow this down to 4 sentences where you are clearly linking "not very optimistic" to "less than 50% chance", which was also the part of my earlier comment you ignored:

One might be lead to think that if you can beat the market for 2 years, there's a less than 50% chance it could extend to 20.  That's not very optimistic.

Your words don't match the numbers you use.  You mention "unlikely" and "not very optimistic" when referring to a "less than 50% chance". 

And I notice you excluded the rest of my post, where I mentioned beating the market +228% to +89% in my experiment.  I think +228% with a "less than 50% chance" might be worth giving up +89%, don't you?  Here's the part you excluded:

And for the record, yes I understood what was happening in March 2020 better than data on a Bloomberg terminal, and certainly beat tens of thousands of professional investors.  My experiment (Mar 2020 - Nov 2021) gained +228%, which I'm certain beat 95% of professional investors, and probably 99.9%.

"Benchmark (VTI)   89.00%      vs      Experiment   228.00%"
https://forum.mrmoneymustache.com/investor-alley/an-experiment/msg2926627/#msg2926627

I excluded your particular case because its not representative of the statistics you provided.  Hopefully your success continues, but don't take a single data point and extrapolate that out, when you've just provided evidence that for most professionals, they will fail.

edited to add--- I have nothing against active investing and like to follow along the discussions pertaining to it so I can learn.  However, I do like to keep information clear, hence my criticism when you flaunt your success, particularly when you know most people will not attain the same result.

ChpBstd said "95% will underperform", referrring to active investors.  A later post claimed active investing was very rare past 2 years, so I quoted the 1 in 3 active investors beating the index over 3 years.  I was refuting both the original claim (95% underperform) and the words used to describe the chance of underperforming.

Because of that belief, ChpBstd suggested I return to passive investing.  And so for that, I quoted my performance beating the market +139% from 2020-2021.  This both refutes that active investing is bad for "100% of MMM posters", but also that I am at risk of underperformance overall.

By providing myself as a greater than 0% example, and showing data that more than 5% of active investors outperform, I hoped to convince ChpBstd using data.  Instead I have your posts repeating my data back to me, and claiming I'm trying to do something other than respond to ChpBstd's posts.  Maybe I should not have pushed you on the phrase "less than 50%", but I hoped you might contribute something new rather than just repeat my data again.

[Telecaster]

Just looking at the first page of topics, nearly every one of them is related to active investing.   

[uniwelder]

MustacheAndaHalf, I tried quoting, but it turned into a mess, so here are my thoughts in a cruder format. 

"Your words don't match the numbers you use.  You mention "unlikely" and "not very optimistic" when referring to a "less than 50% chance"."

I'm getting confused as to where you're going with this.  If someone had less than a 50% chance of success in an endeavor, my natural inclination would be pessimistic about their attempt.  If chance of success were greater than 50%, I'd be optimistic.

Regarding the responses between you and ChpBstd, none of what you were referring to--- the 0% and 95%, were in the response where you cite the 1 of 3 and 1 of 7 statistics.  I'd have had to refer back the post 6 days ago to see that, if it was mentioned then.  If it was relevant, you probably should have included it along with the other quotations of ChpBstd you inserted.  I was simply responding to what I read in the posting, which is what you seemed to think was relevant at the time you wrote it.  Don't blame me for not being able to read your mind.

I'm not going to respond further about this.  Unless my writing style is too difficult to interpret, I'm left to believe you're just trying to nitpick little wording details and missing information in an attempt to win an argument.

[shureShote]

I voted no, just leave it.

I think it is important to have all this traffic in one subforum. If not, I fear some unsuspecting newer person might get information that leads them to wrong decisions. Over on BH, in the large market soaring and free-fall threads, there are people who have worked to make sure grossly inaccurate statements are quoted and called out to help prevent newcomers from being misled. I think that’s important. You can see it right in this thread, some people are wrong based on all available history and theory, but yet there are statements that indicate they think “it’s different for my plan” And I think someone could be fooled/led to thinking “I can do that also” and then in twenty years they realize they it was not as it was purported…

[waltworks]

Investing via passive indexing is basically boring, so most of the discussions here are already about active investing, for better or worse.

If you want a safe space, this probably isn't the place for it. There are numerous forums on the web devoted to active investing that might suit you better.

-W

[lifeanon269]

imo, absolutely not.

The investing forum is already badly struggling for decent content that can generate good discussion without breaking it  down into sub forums. 

What is passive investing? Is it a global 60/40? Is it VTSAX? Is it anything that isn't picking indivudual stocks... but you can do as much market timing as you want?

If you are proposing to split the forum down, why choose active/passive as the demarcation? Will bonds get their own subforum too? Commodities, REITs and other alternatives?

Passive investing can't exist without active investing. So to assume that an "investing" forum should be dominated by discussions on indexing is not only boring, it puts the cart before the horse.

This was going to be similar to my comment on the matter.

I feel like people here skew the definition of what passive investing is to fit the mold of what their personal definition or style of passive investing is. While passive investing into index funds is one form of passive investing that is widely touted on these forums, it is not the only method of passive investing. Passive investing has less to do with what you're investing in and more to do with the time horizon and investment strategy you're taking than it does with what is actually in your portfolio.

Passively investing has more to do with buying and holding for the long term to minimize the risks of trying to time the market, minimize your trading fees, maximize your tax efficiency, and just overall spend less time focusing on your investments to allow you to focus more on saving.

You can passively invest in a company by buying and holding their stock for 30 years. There have been posts about buying and holding a small percentage of bitcoin and I don't think that falls outside of the realm of passive investing. However, there are evangelists on this forum that think passive investing is only for index funds and so that has sort of become what is expected. That's fine to have as a culture here, but I merely call that into question as a means of thus trying to break down the forum into a separate sub-forum based on an idea that isn't as narrowly defined as many here would like to think.

Is passive investing here on these forums only for index investing? If I'm looking to passively invest into something that isn't typically regarded here as a worthwhile long term investment, does that get moved to the active investment sub-forum even though I'm not looking to actively invest or trade on it? For example, if I post about passively investing into solar companies, does that get relegated to the active investing sub-forum simply because it isn't your typical broad market index fund even though I am still technically passively investing in them for the long term? Index funds are still managed by someone to track a particular market or index and you pay that fees based on that overhead. So if I pay someone to passively invest into solar for me, does that somehow move me from the "active" to "passive" investor in these forums' eyes even though my actual investments haven't changed at all?

I suppose if this were a much more active forum with a much wider and diverse set of opinions I would be all for splitting it into multiple sub-forums to accommodate the many subsets of thought. I don't see the need for it at the moment though since even after a thread has died off for several days it still resides on the first page for quite some time.

Finally, as Waltworks alluded, if everyone here is to simply accept the definition that passive investing is only for index investing, then that pretty much kills any discussion on the matter from the get-go. If that's the accepted definition on these forums of passive investing I suppose there is very little to discuss on the matter on these forums and thus, any discussion on investing thereafter is almost assuredly going to be about "active investing." As long as everyone is civil about with their discourse then I think there is plenty of educating and debate to be had with a wide diverse set of ideas and investment strategies in this forum regardless of what one's definition of "active" or "passive" investing is without the need for extra moderation of the subject matter.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

"No" seems to be the best response to the OP's question.

What the OP may be wanting, although perhaps not thought about in that way, is for primarily those who are optimists about active investing to join conversations about active investing. But, that doesn't lead to a balanced discussion; the skeptics about active investing have good data on their side and have a good reason to show up for discussions about active investing in a setting in which a key goal is to help people avoid making big blunders when they invest to reach their FIRE goals.

The comments about how the line between active and passive investing is blurry is also on point, and another reason to not split this forum into sub-forums.

[NorCal]

"No" seems to be the best response to the OP's question.

What the OP may be wanting, although perhaps not thought about in that way, is for primarily those who are optimists about active investing to join conversations about active investing. But, that doesn't lead to a balanced discussion; the skeptics about active investing have good data on their side and have a good reason to show up for discussions about active investing in a setting in which a key goal is to help people avoid making big blunders when they invest to reach their FIRE goals.

The comments about how the line between active and passive investing is blurry is also on point, and another reason to not split this forum into sub-forums.

Very true.  The one thing that always bothers me about the investing forum is that some of the “passive investment only” crowd just tends to be assholes about it. It’s probably not intended, but it does come across that way. I’ve found it to be a major turn-off for participating in the investment forum conversations.  Particularly as many of the passive-investment crowd are only coming with a surface deep understanding of finance theory and the efficient market hypothesis.

While the quantity of posts doesn’t warrant a sub-forum, maybe active investment threads could just have a disclaimer at the bottom saying something along the lines of “I’m not looking for opinions on why I should just index instead. Please refrain from commenting if this is all you want to say”.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

uniwelder - I trim conversations so they aren't pages long, and some people reply without quoting prior conversation.  I agree we probably won't achieve anything constructive by continuing, but as food for thought I'll say a stock recovering strongly (3x) or weakly (1x) may have less than 50% chance of beating the market - but the expected return makes up for it.

shureShote - I would call Bogleheads (BH) militant passive investors, and I haven't been back there since they drove Larry Swedroe away.  The problem I describe here is even worse there - some might attack with data, but most didn't bother.  In my opinion, an active investor should benchmark (like against the S&P 500) and go back to passive investing long before they lose every year for 20 years.

waltworks - If you visit reddit's r/stocks, I think you'll return here with a newfound appreciation for passive investing.  Maybe that's an argument against a "safe space" for active investing.

lifeanon269 - I should probably distinguish the passive party line from what I believe.  Like you, I think the line can be blurred when a stock picker has a long holding period.  Maybe buying 2 stocks and holding 2 months is active... but what about 100 stocks and 10 years?  What about every one of the S&P 500 stocks?  But I haven't opened that debate because I'm reluctant to open new threads.  As an aside, I would expect over 85% of people to reject anything about Bitcoin being passive.

Most passive investors use index funds, which is why I took the shortcut.  A better definition might need to focus on market timing over short time periods.  Market timing over a day or week, certainly.  Over 2-3 years, perhaps.  And market timing over 20 years... that's retirement, isn't it?

EnjoyTheJourney - I probably focus too much on experienced active investors, and don't consider what happens when more naive active investors participate.  But my chief complaint is that even experienced active investors who use benchmarks can expect lectures about passive investing.

NorCal - Wow, exactly what you said.  I might take that approach.

EDIT: I skipped Telecaster so I could take a look myself.  I see many threads about bonds, which I consider passive investing.  There's discussion of neutral topics like brokers and 401(k).  I'd say there are a lot of active investment topics, but wouldn't agree the forum is all active investments.

[waltworks]

You know, M1.5, I like you, I really do, but you gotta lose the chip on your shoulder. Yes, you're going to have to deal with some indexers calling active investing a bad idea. That's really not the end of the world.

-W

[ChpBstrd]

I think there's no shortage of active investing threads/discussions on reddit, YT, various blogs, Seeking Alpha, yada yada. Stock picking, market timing, options speculation, crypto speculation, technical analysis - you name it. It's all there. The debunking is always harder to find than the entertaining stuff content creators make money on.

BUT... as people are starting to learn about Web 2.0, most information in these spaces exists to drive traffic to ads. There is a huge economy of "influencers" earning revenue from ads and endorsements by providing horrible or semi-fraudulent investing advice or economic information on the internet. If you're a 24 year old English major living in your childhood bedroom, then you too can rebrand as an investment advisor or economist with 20 years executive experience who creates content out of the goodness of your heart to help other people with their day trading. But essentially all these people work as influencers.

I've given up all social media except for the MMM forum for a few key reasons:

1) The MMM forum itself has no ads, no endorsement deals, no affiliates, no pump-and-dumps, etc. It exists in the old Web 1.0 world, free from the distortions of the algorithmic attention economy (in which truths cannot be communicated if those truths are boring). I've learned that consuming trash information from social media has negative impacts on my decision-making, contentment, and finances.

2) Instead of professional "influencers" vying for ad spending by talking about investing, this forum *seems* to be populated by "doers", including actual millionaires and FIRE people. These sources are simply more credible than social media influencers, even if they are not as entertaining.

3) There are lots of perspectives here with intelligent backing. It is anything but an echo chamber. I'll occasionally check out the echo chambers on Reddit, SA, and various blogs and it gives me goosebumps watching people repeating a dogma to each other over and over again, and then throwing down large sums of money on such bets in a public display of fealty to the cause and faith that reality will someday match the theory. It's. A. Website. People. And then they blame someone else or come up with a conspiracy theory when the price of gold, GME, dogecoin, or whatever decreases, contrary to expectations. No thanks.

The MMM forum as it exists offers something extraordinarily rare: A place where the people actually doing this FIRE thing (as opposed by entertaining others with thoughts of doing it) can compare notes, learn optimization skills from each other, ask questions, and opportunistically explore new ideas. Yes, the person who walks in here with a bullshit get-rich-quick scheme usually gets a facepunch, but ideas that have merit will survive the gauntlet. In other words, the lack of a safe space or a criticism-free zone raises the quality of everything. Even people who walk in here promoting their own ad-plastered blogs get facepunches, and that's great!

It wouldn't be the end of the world if we had a "speculation zone" for the single-digit percent of one's portfolio that is allowable for speculative gambles or trading strategies, as long as the expectations for behavior didn't change once you went into that folder. It would be messy to communicate that; people already don't read the stickies. Might be just as straightforward, and more reliable, to clarify in each post that one's active investing is with their speculative AA.

I also worry you'd eventually have people YOLOing their whole portfolio in that space, or advocating market prediction voodoo like technical analysis, and it would begin to look like the rest of the shitternet. Then again maybe a facepunching shooting gallery like that would be fun in its own way, while helping people avoid scams and investment fads.

[Telecaster]

EDIT: I skipped Telecaster so I could take a look myself.  I see many threads about bonds, which I consider passive investing.  There's discussion of neutral topics like brokers and 401(k).  I'd say there are a lot of active investment topics, but wouldn't agree the forum is all active investments.

Bonds funds aren't active investments.   Owning individual bonds definitely is.  In the main bonds thread there currently a discussion about bond allocation based on Fed moves/bond market etc.  That is definitely active investing. 

 Just glancing quickly, at least eight of the first 15 topics on this board are directly related to active investing. 

[BeanCounter]

Unfortunately this is also common - someone who does not become familiar with a topic is fine posting their views on it.  The thread becomes a discussion of the people who know the least, and adds noise to any conversation.  Your post is actually an example of the noise I usually avoid by avoiding to post new topics.

WTF @MustacheAndaHalf. This thread you started is similar to the crypto thread- you ASK A QUESTION, people pst their opinions to those questions and then you have a tantrum and argue with anyone whose opinion is different. And then you resort to suggesting that those with different opinions just don’t know what they are talking about.

If you don’t want differing opinions, don’t start the thread with a question. Ask people to post their active trading wins, or their crypto wins and see if you can start a conversation in that direction.

And FYI- I like others on the form do know what we’re talking about, from both personal and professional experience. I retired at 44 with $4M and I did it without crypto, hot stock trades, or the lotto, just using the principles espoused here.

And as far as the crypto discussion- I voiced my opinion that it’s a scam and it doesn’t belong in anyones portfolio. You disagree. Arguing that those with that view just don’t know what they are talking about is ridiculous, your crystal ball is no better.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Unfortunately this is also common - someone who does not become familiar with a topic is fine posting their views on it.  The thread becomes a discussion of the people who know the least, and adds noise to any conversation.  Your post is actually an example of the noise I usually avoid by avoiding to post new topics.

WTF @MustacheAndaHalf. This thread you started is similar to the crypto thread- you ASK A QUESTION, people pst their opinions to those questions and then you have a tantrum and argue with anyone whose opinion is different. And then you resort to suggesting that those with different opinions just don’t know what they are talking about.

If you don’t want differing opinions, don’t start the thread with a question. Ask people to post their active trading wins, or their crypto wins and see if you can start a conversation in that direction.

And FYI- I like others on the form do know what we’re talking about, from both personal and professional experience. I retired at 44 with $4M and I did it without crypto, hot stock trades, or the lotto, just using the principles espoused here.

And as far as the crypto discussion- I voiced my opinion that it’s a scam and it doesn’t belong in anyones portfolio. You disagree. Arguing that those with that view just don’t know what they are talking about is ridiculous, your crystal ball is no better.

Notice how you strip away vital context and then pretend I was talking to you, when that was a reply to JohnnyZ.  Where are JohnnyZ's comments in your quote?  They talked about "miss on hot tips on crypto or the next GME", which is not an accurate description of the "low % of crypto" thread.  And by the way, if you're calling crypto a scam in a thread titled "a low % of crypto", maybe you shouldn't complain about someone not sticking to a topic.

Maybe the crypto discussions could be better managed so they don't just go back and forth between "it's a scam!" and "but I made so much money", but if you're afraid to miss on hot tips on crypto or the next GME this is probably not the place to look for them.

While I mentioned "it's a scam" earlier here, the rest of your post has nothing to do with the contents of the crypto thread.  Who is talking about "I made so much money" in that thread?  And then you put words in my mouth claiming I am "afraid to miss on[sic] hot tips on crypto or the next GME", which is also false.

Unfortunately this is also common - someone who does not become familiar with a topic is fine posting their views on it.  The thread becomes a discussion of the people who know the least, and adds noise to any conversation.  Your post is actually an example of the noise I usually avoid by avoiding to post new topics.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

You know, M1.5, I like you, I really do, but you gotta lose the chip on your shoulder. Yes, you're going to have to deal with some indexers calling active investing a bad idea. That's really not the end of the world.

But doesn't that trivilize what happens?  Even seasoned active investors are hounded about passive investing here, so they eventually leave.  I even left for a few months near the end of 2021, and didn't post anything here when I saw much higher interest rates being likely in 2022.  Creating a new topic isn't worth it.

If other seasoned active investors tolerated the environment, and posted frequently, yes I could tolerate well.  But that was year ago, when forum activity was twice what it is now.  People say this forum is mostly active investment topics, yet where are the seasoned active investors?  This forum is both trying to hound active investors so they leave, and depending on active investment topics for it's activity level.

[deborah]

The Australian investment thread has talked about active and passive investment over the years. There hasn’t been belittlement. But then I remember an off topic thread we had about our election (probably four years ago), and an American commented that although we were on opposing sides, we were having a respectful discussion.

As I’m not American, and our financial system is different, I don’t read many of the investment threads. However, I can remember more active investors belittling passive investors than otherwise over the years. For example, mr orange.

[BeanCounter]

Unfortunately this is also common - someone who does not become familiar with a topic is fine posting their views on it.  The thread becomes a discussion of the people who know the least, and adds noise to any conversation.  Your post is actually an example of the noise I usually avoid by avoiding to post new topics.

WTF @MustacheAndaHalf. This thread you started is similar to the crypto thread- you ASK A QUESTION, people pst their opinions to those questions and then you have a tantrum and argue with anyone whose opinion is different. And then you resort to suggesting that those with different opinions just don’t know what they are talking about.

If you don’t want differing opinions, don’t start the thread with a question. Ask people to post their active trading wins, or their crypto wins and see if you can start a conversation in that direction.

And FYI- I like others on the form do know what we’re talking about, from both personal and professional experience. I retired at 44 with $4M and I did it without crypto, hot stock trades, or the lotto, just using the principles espoused here.

And as far as the crypto discussion- I voiced my opinion that it’s a scam and it doesn’t belong in anyones portfolio. You disagree. Arguing that those with that view just don’t know what they are talking about is ridiculous, your crystal ball is no better.

Notice how you strip away vital context and then pretend I was talking to you, when that was a reply to JohnnyZ.  Where are JohnnyZ's comments in your quote?  They talked about "miss on hot tips on crypto or the next GME", which is not an accurate description of the "low % of crypto" thread.  And by the way, if you're calling crypto a scam in a thread titled "a low % of crypto", maybe you shouldn't complain about someone not sticking to a topic.

Maybe the crypto discussions could be better managed so they don't just go back and forth between "it's a scam!" and "but I made so much money", but if you're afraid to miss on hot tips on crypto or the next GME this is probably not the place to look for them.

While I mentioned "it's a scam" earlier here, the rest of your post has nothing to do with the contents of the crypto thread.  Who is talking about "I made so much money" in that thread?  And then you put words in my mouth claiming I am "afraid to miss on[sic] hot tips on crypto or the next GME", which is also false.

Unfortunately this is also common - someone who does not become familiar with a topic is fine posting their views on it.  The thread becomes a discussion of the people who know the least, and adds noise to any conversation.  Your post is actually an example of the noise I usually avoid by avoiding to post new topics.

Wow. Ok.
I wasn’t complaining about anyone “not sticking to the topic”. Nowhere in my post does it say anything about that. I said that if you don’t want different opinions you shouldn’t ask questions.
I’m the crypto thread the question was “what do you think of a low % of crypto” and my answer was that I think it’s a scam so no I don’t agree with even a low % of crypto. That is an answer to the thread question and absolutely not off topic.
Finally, I don’t think or pretend you were talking to me. I also don’t care. It’s a forum. I took issue with your comment that “the thread becomes a discussion of the people who know the least and adds noise to any conversation” and responded to just that part of the comment because there are lots of posters on this forum who know a lot about what they post about from either their experience or education or both. Not that you would ever be able to see past your own nitpicking and arguing to see it.