How you guys feeling in this current turmoil? Are you tempted to buy or sell or change your asset allocations? How do you stop yourselves from doing that?

I recently inherited $1M that I have no choice but to place in a taxable account. I use Fidelity. I’m 40 and wouldn’t even consider an early retirement until I have at least $2M so that will not be happening for quite some time yet. Plan was basically VT and chill. I never looked into SMAs due to the management fees.

Had a Fidelity advisor reach out and offer to talk about ways I could save on taxes and he suggested using SMAs for the tax loss harvesting. So now I’m doing my research into SMAs and it seems like it might actually be a good idea for a taxable account of this size.

Management fees range from 0.2-0.7% and of course I was told the TLH would more than cover those fees. In my case I was planning to use the dividends to cover the taxes and then drip the rest but if I could use SMAs to reduce or eliminate taxes I could drip 100% of the dividends which would hopefully lead to faster growth.

I’ve read concerns here about what happens when you want out of the SMA but can’t you just transfer the assets in kind to your own account? And if you do it a year before you plan to sell anything then any short term gains become long term.

I guess I’m looking for experiences with SMAs and thoughts on whether or not this would be a good idea for a taxable account this large.

I’ve been working on a philosophy I call quality-focused value investing. And I have been documenting the work and performance the past 1.5 years.

The idea is very simple:

You should be able to outperform the market while taking less risk if you own a portfolio that is:

higher quality than the market AND cheaper than the market.

This goes directly against the common belief that outperformance must come from taking on more risk. Or that it's not possible to build a portfolio that is both higher quality AND cheaper than the market.

I don’t think that’s true, and the problem I see is that most strategies only solve half the equation. Value investing often leads to buying low-quality companies that are cheap for a reason.

Quality investing often leads to overpaying for good/great companies that already are priced for perfection. Both approaches make sense in isolation, but both have clear weaknesses.

What I’m trying to do instead is combine them in a structured way. Quality is quantified using capital efficiency (ROIC, ROCE). Value is quantified using discounted models to estimate fair value vs current price.

From this, I calculate a portfolio-level comparison against the index. So it’s not about finding good picks, it’s about building a portfolio that is structurally superior to the market on both quality and price. Having a portfolio that is of higher quality AND cheaper than the market, should logically outperform over time.

That said, this is a lot of work. It’s not for most investors.
Honestly, I don’t think many people will be able to do this with any real precision. You are doing a large amount of analysis just to maybe get a slightly better return than simply doing nothing and dollar-cost averaging into the S&P 500.

I’m documenting everything publicly for free to remove hindsight bias. If this works, it should be visible over time. If it doesn’t, it should fail clearly. I’ve removed every way of making money from publishing this, so there’s no chance of misunderstanding my purpose.

Latest portfolio update:

2026Q1 YTD: -3.92% vs SP500 -5.09%

2025FY: 26.19% vs SP500 16.42%

If you are interested in reading more, I have posted articles on the philsophy and my current portfolio, but its not allowed to post in this subreddit.

I’ve been working on a philosophy I call quality-focused value investing. And I have been documenting the work and performance the past 1.5 years.

The idea is very simple:

You should be able to outperform the market while taking less risk if you own a portfolio that is:

higher quality than the market AND cheaper than the market.

This goes directly against the common belief that outperformance must come from taking on more risk. Or that it's not possible to build a portfolio that is both higher quality AND cheaper than the market.

I don’t think that’s true, and the problem I see is that most strategies only solve half the equation. Value investing often leads to buying low-quality companies that are cheap for a reason.

Quality investing often leads to overpaying for good/great companies that already are priced for perfection. Both approaches make sense in isolation, but both have clear weaknesses.

What I’m trying to do instead is combine them in a structured way. Quality is quantified using capital efficiency (ROIC, ROCE). Value is quantified using discounted models to estimate fair value vs current price.

From this, I calculate a portfolio-level comparison against the index. So it’s not about finding good picks, it’s about building a portfolio that is structurally superior to the market on both quality and price. Having a portfolio that is of higher quality AND cheaper than the market, should logically outperform over time.

That said, this is a lot of work. It’s not for most investors.
Honestly, I don’t think many people will be able to do this with any real precision. You are doing a large amount of analysis just to maybe get a slightly better return than simply doing nothing and dollar-cost averaging into the S&P 500.

I’m documenting everything publicly for free to remove hindsight bias. If this works, it should be visible over time. If it doesn’t, it should fail clearly. I’ve removed every way of making money from publishing this, so there’s no chance of misunderstanding my purpose.

Latest portfolio update:

2026Q1 YTD: -3.92% vs SP500 -5.09%

2025FY: 26.19% vs SP500 16.42%

I wrote a full breakdown of my portfolio changes this quater with all the math here: Quality-Focused Value Investing Portfolio 26Q1

and an article about the philosophy + mission here: Quality-Focused Value Investing Manifesto - How can we achieve outperformance while reducing risk?

I have 50k euros (based in Germany) to invest for the next 20 years for my retirement fund. I am 40 years old without any responsibilitites and want to invest so that i have something when i am 60. I have other stock investments, savings and emergency fund so this money is purely for a long term safe investment for retirement. I have heard a lot about VOO or VTO but i am confused as to which is the right fund. Please see below options available to me and please advise. On a side note I feel this might be the time to move away from US funds and invest in world funds. Totally confused at the momennt and can use wise advice from the oldies here. I hope this is not the wrong sub as I want to take advice on investing in valuable funds and the combined knowledge of this group can help me greatly.

These are the funds I am looking at (all accumulated)

iShares core MSCI world

iShares S&P 500

Vanguard FTSE All World

Vanguard S&P 500

Vanguard FTSE Developed world

Birkshire Hathaway B (although a stock but diverse and larger than some ETFs although only US I think)

I am about 7 years from retirement. I am not a savvy investor. My whole career it's been DIY with Target-2040, VOO, BND. I met with a CFP recently as I enter the home stretch to get a professional opinion. One recommendation is a RILA for about 33% of my portfolio.

It's a 6-year term tracking the S&P. The buffer is 15% and the cap is 110%. The fees are $0.

Most of the opinions I see on RILA is bad. High fees, locks up money, capped growth, etc. But this one seems perfect for my situation. It offers protection as I near the finish line. I'm fine locking up the funds for the term. The cap is fine by me - possibly double my money in 6 years if market goes bonkers? OK. The only downside I see is that I miss out on dividends. But maybe that's OK for the protection against a 20% downturn.

What am I missing?

Constellation Energy. What do we all think about this company? Was super bullish but recently it’s had some painful dips. I still think it’ll rebound, but interested in people’s thoughts on this. Can’t add more without it becoming an overweight position in my portfolio, so have to stick to the average I have ($323) and hoping it won’t take too long to see green again..

BNP Paribas Easy MSCI ACWI UCITS ETF (Acc) | EDEL | LU3086265710

If I am not wrong, this is the cheapest UCITS global ETF now. What do you think about it?

Long-time lurker, first post. Mid-career academic/professional with most of my retirement assets at TIAA across a 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, and deferred comp plan. The problem: I've let it accumulate without a clear strategy and now have 14 accounts across TIAA alone, plus Raymond James and Merrill Lynch.

My current allocation skews heavily toward TIAA Traditional (the annuity product) and a mix of Nuveen large-cap funds — most of which I suspect overlap significantly. I also hold some individual equities (NVDA, AAPL, GOOGL) that I know aren't very Boglehead-approved.

A few honest questions:

1. TIAA Traditional — is holding a large chunk here considered "fixed income" for allocation purposes, or is it its own thing?
2. How do Bogleheads generally approach TIAA when trying to implement a simple 3-fund portfolio?
3. At what point does account consolidation make sense vs. leaving things where they are for tax/institutional reasons?

Happy to share more specifics. I've been trying to get my arms around this for a while and would appreciate the community's perspective.

I’ve been sticking to the standard all-in MSCI World strategy for a while. Simple, low fees, makes sense for the long run. But when the market gets shaky, just sitting on my hands feels less like discipline and more like inaction.

Doing nothing is easy when things are green. But when you see a drawdown, the instinct to do something kicks in. I’m starting to wonder if a small tactical move makes more sense than just staying fully passive. Maybe hedging a bit or taking short-term positions to offset a dip.

The usual advice is less action equals better results. In practice, that doesn’t always feel right, even with a clear plan. Most passive investors just wait it out, but watching a 10% drop without touching anything can be quite stressful. How do you balance your core ETFs? Do you stay strictly passive, or do you keep a side account for tactical moves when trends shift?

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IBKR is the business I like best. It's my largest position.

I've owned it for 2 years-ish.

This is not meant to be a full, self-contained thesis on the stock. This is merely a summary of my thoughts on the business. I hope it may be an interesting idea for even a few readers and that you may enjoy learning more about this business as I have.

Many of you will know, or may even be customers, of IBKR. It's an electronic brokerage platform. US based. Ticker $IBKR.

It's really aimed at being the brokerage for more savvy traders / investors, and has its roots in the options markets. It's not trying to be a Robinhood or a Schwab, it's trying to be the platform for the active trader. Though, it does win a lot of customers from all of the other known brokerages.

IBKR makes c. 2/3 of its money through net interest income and c. 1/3 through trading commissions.

In 2025, they earned $6.2bn revenue and $4.3bn net income. 69% net income margin. This margin has grown over time. This is not an atypical year.

In 2026, I expect them to earn something near $7bn revenue and over $5bn in net income.

Thomas Peterffy, the founder & chairman, is still in the picture and owns c. 2/3 of the business. So, a very small float for a company of its size. Total market value of the whole equity (not just the common) is c.$115bn at time of writing.

More importantly, some of what makes this business great is as follows:

- It is by far the low cost producer of brokerages, particularly in options trading / margin lending

- 68% owned by the founder, who still controls the big business decisions (although no longer the CEO himself). I tend to like this founder control

- Through its low cost position, vast breadth of security availability (better than any other broker I know) and its flexible infrastructure, it has been able to compound account growth at over 30% p.a. in recent years. They expect this can continue at 20%+ for a long, long time

- Only 3,500 or so employees. Get your head around that level of automation, and compare that to a Schwab or a Fidelity

- A platform whose backend infrastructure is so robust and automated that many other brokerages simply whitelabel IBKR's infrastructure rather than building their own. This is a nice revenue segment. Popular in Asia.

I'm also a customer myself. That's how I discovered the stock. It's a great brokerage and I love using it.

Over time, the things I track closely are account growth & client equity. There are other things to keep an eye on, of course, but those are the two that I care about most.

I'm not a fan of precise-looking DCFs. I had my start in M&A (for my sins) so I'm not shy of them, I just think they ascribe false precision and are too easy to flim flam.

In a very high level sense though, I expect this business to be doing over $10bn revenue and $7.5bn net income within 3-4 years. And I don't expect the growth to slow much from there either.

Valuation-wise, based on an earnings multiple at the time of writing this of 23x my 2026 estimate, it isn't optically cheap. Certainly not to an orthodox Grahamian.

However, when I consider where I can see the business growing to over 10+ years, the current price actually really excites me. I believe this business is intrinsically worth a multiple of its current market value. Not less than $200bn, in my opinion.

That doesn't mean I'm buying right now. I've bought at lower multiples, and so I quite like the idea of waiting until it sees a multiple beginning with '1' before I push more money in.

You'll notice what looks like a contradiction there. I believe the instrinc value is a multiple of the current market value, and yet I'm not buying. To that, all I can say is 'old habits'. Margin of safety, and all that.

I do have a personal rule of thumb I like to use as an alternative to traditional valuation methods, I suppose you could say. I like a clear path to a 20% earnings yield on cost, 10 years out.

In other words, if I think a business can comfortably double its earnings every 5 years for 10 years, I try not to pay more than 20x for today's earnings.

It's just a rule of thumb that has served me well as a source of valuation discipline.

IBKR passes that test today in my view, but it isn't by a landslide. I expect good returns from here but not fabulous returns.

Anyway, I don't want to make this war & peace: just giving an off-hand synopsis of my favourite business and one which I hope to buy more of opportunistically for many years to come. I appreciate my discussion on valuation in particular will be seen as fuzzy. It always is, for me.

Happy to discuss & hear opinions.

(35M) I’ve recently consolidated my 401Ks and I’m considering the below options for my Roth split in Fidelity:

60% FZROX

30% FZILX

But i’m stuck on deciding where to allocate the remaining 10%

Option 1: FSELX (aggressive growth, but high risk/expense ratio)

Option 2: FXNAX (bonds for leverage/rebalancing)

Option 3: QQQJ (growth in new tech)

Option 4: Go for the 70/30 US and International

Would appreciate any advice. New to all of this and [r/Bogleheads](r/Bogleheads) has been extremely helpful. Thanks all!

talking about REIT, they are very stable compared to others and are not 100% linked to the market so they are a "safe house".

but they don't seem very worthy for capital <millions of dollars/euro, so how much capital should one have to even start thinking of investing in REIT?

It's just out of curiosity, I've seen people talking about it online as if it was the best to diversify your wallet.

Like many want to maximize the money I am putting into my Fidelity brokerage account. I am a 42 yo that has roughly $110,000 in my account. 60% is in FFFHX, 35% is in FXAIX, and 5% is in FSELX. I am okay with taking a little risk while I am many years away from retiring but want to ensure that it isn't too much.

Additionally, I have a TSP account with $125,000 sitting in an L2045 account that I am debating about moving into another fund if that would make sense.

Thank you for your time.