I find your nonchalant carefree attitude to that amount of cash well within the borders of disgusting.
Mr. P, this response is disappointing. First, the numbers we're talking about are the numbers of early retirement. This entire forum--the entire blog--is premised on the idea of building up investible assets to the point that one can retire based on that. Those numbers are always in range of hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more.
Second, people are trying to provide helpful advice. It appears from an outside perspective that you're costing yourself money in an effort to prove yourself right with the occasional win on a stock pick or concern about losing 10-20% of an investment account whose eventual gains should dwarf that over the long term. Statistical evidence supports this, and you've demonstrated your own inability to pick well based on your own predictions here.
Nobody is trying to tear you apart. This isn't a personal attack. People are trying to point out that there's nothing to demonstrate that you have the incredibly rare ability to outthink and out-analyze the market. You suggest that means we're calling you stupid. To the contrary, I consider myself an intelligent individual, but I index because I understand the limitations of what I can know versus the market and what the likelihood of consistently outperforming the market is.
You latch on to the amounts as somehow an attack on you, when they were intended to show that concern about losses should not distract you from smart, rational investments in the market. You have a lump sum equal to your salary? I get it. I just moved double my salary to international in the last month. Was that a nonchalant, carefree approach to money? No. It was the exact opposite. I researched the issue on the web, posted a thread here, got input, and after some particularly helpful data from users like Interest Compound, I realized that it made sense to move the money. But it still caused me some grief. Why? Because the S&P 500 has dusted international over the last 10 years, and people like Buffett and Bogle are making comments about how it's really not necessary. So, yeah, I think about risk with large amounts of money. As does the majority here, because again, many are building their investment accounts into the hundreds of thousands of dollars aiming towards early retirement. Your sum of money is large for you--but the point of this thread and the forum is to give people good investing advice that applies to any amount of money.
Finally, you claim that you have nothing to learn here, so what's the point. Fine. Nobody else's life is going to be materially better or worse (other than your family's, of course) based on what you do. But here's the thing. You post a lot in response to people asking for investment advice. You trumpet your market forecasts, your stock picks, etc. But if you're not interested in learning or advancing the discussion, don't do that. Or at least understand why people are going to respond when you do so. Because many of us believe that your investment approach is wrong, and it would be risky for others to follow. That's not personal. It's part of helping to ensure that this forum continues to be a collection of sound, well-reasoned financial advice for people interested in learning more.