4Q2024 Investing Briefing

Notes from Investing in 2024

This isn’t advice on how to invest your money or someone else’s money. I’m sharing my experience so that it serves as an example to develop your own framework.

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Markets performed well in 2024. Stocks, real estate investment trusts (REITs), gold and, particularly, Bitcoin (!?) rose substantially.

As I have for years now, I stuck with the rough 1/3 stocks - 1/3 real estate - 1/3 reserves (currencies, bonds, commodities) as my framework for my “personal / conversative” funds. I made few trades over the year, with some light rebalancing towards more cash-like instruments (mostly towards inflation protected securities, TIPS). I remain cautious about owning any long duration bonds - because of a meaningful risk of interest rates rising due to high levels of government debt.

For my “growth / ambitious” funds my stock picks from some years ago continue to perform well versus the S&P500 and I have made no changes. On the private investment front, I made five new investments and have started to refine my strategy as I better appreciate just how hard it is to beat the S&P500 because of the fees involved.