What investment is making you 10%+ yearly?

[void]

I didn't refer to those 10% but to what seems like a huge investment of time and effort - time and mental well-being are the scarcest "asset" we have and too precious to be directly exchanged for money
no disrespect whatsoever to @jafo and all those who are willing to get their hands dirty to learn, get experience or build up some capital but everybody should at least try to find their unique niche and let the money/contacts/software/others/... work for them as there is always time to have two jobs and spend their life "at work"

 

[jafo]

😉 None taken! I love differing points of view as they provide alternatives I may be too focused to see.
I started as a software engineer on Sperry Univacs system 80, IBM 3090, System 390 etc (we were called "computer guys" back then 😛 ). Of course, it started in college as my major was electrical & computer engineering. It was fun. Made a lot of money, but being in an office stagnant for so long became boring to me. I love what I do now because it provides so much travel time and new adventures every single hour of the day. It's an incredible exercise and I meet new people on an hourly basis. Basically, I do a hybrid of this:
(1)




and this:
(2)




but on a much larger scale because my clients demand it and the clients are large wholesalers and some are even multinationals

If I let others do it, they'll screw it up as they have so many times in the past. stupi#21 Luckily, it was my clients who demanded I "train" others to do things correctly but you can't train people to have "energy, intelligence, honesty, and integrity". 🙄 I don't think most people are mature enough to care NOT to make a mistake or ensure they do NOT cause problems for others, including but not limited to my clients.

Also, the pay is awesome. The percentage is "small" but the numbers are sizeable due to my clients' revenues. Moreover, I would let too many people down if I quit tomorrow. Even if I won the Powerball lottery tomorrow (even if it was $1.5 B), I would NOT stop working. You can think of me as the "Mr. B" of the wholesale business. Mrs. B was one of the people who surprised me the most in my life. Here's Warren Buffett explaining Mrs. B





PS. Mrs. B passed away at the age of 103 because her family (who inherited her wealth) kept harassing her to stop working. ca#"! Let that be a lesson to you all 😉 rof/%

 

[DeepDrilling]

life has so many different faces.

 

[void]

considering this makes it a whole different story then

I hear you... my daily dilemma as well - either burn your own scarce time or accept imperfection and impact on your own reputation :|

 

[jafo]

I'm indefinitely borrowing this great maxim! 😎

Thank you for sharing!

 

[baltic7]

This is the best advice for investments that anyone can receive. Follow this and you life become easy.

 

[Radko]

I make more than 10% trading Futures contracts.

If you don't know how to trade derivatives, then just buy a few Covered call ETFs that are yielding +10%, just create a portfolio of these ETFs, it's an easy way of getting constantly passive income.

 

[JimBeam]

Many papers (stocks/etfs) yielding 10%+ may turn into yield traps.
So make sure you know what are you getting into.

 

[OCT2023]

For the low-risk portion of my portfolio I've got cash in a Bank Savings Accounts at 5% (withdraw any time) and Bank CDs at 10% (1-year). I deposit funds monthly into new 1-year Bank CDs (which pay interest monthly). Whenever I don't need the funds I roll it back into the next 1-year CD. This way I've always got cashflow and my money is not held for longer than 1 year. My Medium-Risk and High-Risk portions are entirely different, and are more to play with than to retire with, so anything I make from Medium and High a portion flows back into the Low-Risk portion.

 

[pomegranate]

Where do you get that? Are the banks defaulting?
(I assume we are talking USD)

 

[OCT2023]

Ecuador, the banks are doing great, and yes, USD

https://tradingeconomics.com/ecuador/interest-rate

 

[jafo]

This truly shows your brilliance @baltic7 - Few people pick up on this! @bio really nailed it.

NGL, I read it BEFORE (read it in I²) I heard Warren Buffett say it. Then Warren said it. He repeated it. I still didn't get it rof/% ...it was finally Charlie Munger who kept repeating it over and over again! Finally, I understood stupi#21 . This life-saving investment maxim kept falling on my deaf ears.

Benjamin Graham wrote this in his 1949 book "The Intelligent Investor"
Source: Amazon.com

Warren Buffett has been repeating this since the early '80s (as far as I can remember!)

Here he is repeating it in the '90s:





@uranium would recognize this from the Annual Berkshire Shareholders Meetings. 😉

PS. Hence why I always mention "My circle of competence"

 

[baltic7]

@jafo i read it in the book of Peter Lynch, One Up On Wall Street.

In the book he tells how the best investments he made were through the consumption habits of his wife and daughter.

It is a book that I totally recommend reading, since it is quite enjoyable when it combines investment terms with personal stories.

I have also read the books that you recommend, The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham is more technical, but a must read for those interested in Value Investing (it is the form that I like the most of investment and the one that I have followed all my life).

 

[jafo]

The Limited clothing store. 😉

My ex-wife (an all-American girl), who taught University graduate classes, used to take summer jobs at The Limited (in the late 80s and early 90s) so she could get discounts on her clothes 😳

Notwithstanding ALL that, The Limited was lost on me. It was right in front of me, but I NEVER thought about it. I had the winning lottery numbers right there, and I never took a swing. stupi#21
When I say I am dumb ... I am actually overestimating myself rof/% rof/% rof/% rof/% rof/%

 

[baltic7]

This has happened to all of us. In 2012, I bought 45 BTC at $180 each. And I sold them a year later for $1,000 to buy a Porsche Cayman when I turned 18 and got my driver's license. bar#"

I mean, the Porsche Cayman cost me a whopping 2.5M if I think about it. stupi#21 rof/%

Now I have a Jewish mentality and I don't sell anything at all. My girlfriend tells me that I have a kind of financial Diogenes syndrome, of accumulating some shares that are literally s**t but that I am embarrassed to sell. rof/%

Another book that I really recommend reading is "Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics" by Richard Thaler. More focused on the sociological aspect of economics. Well, I recommend reading any of his books, they are simply brilliant.

Can you recommend any books outside of the usual must-read ones? You have a lot of experience, you could even open a thread in the Gold group recommending your essential books outside of the typical lists that everyone can find on the internet.

 

[jafo]

rof/% I don't feel that bad anymore! smi(&% You got a Bugatti! smi(&%
My first "employer" and mentor was a Jewish businessman named Henry! May he RIP! One of the nicest people I ever met! Never tried to convert me. He was trying to set me up with his granddaughter, though, and she was older than me, so maybe he wasn't really so lovely. 🙄

I agree 100% with you! Richard Thaler is beyond brilliant. All his books are excellent.

Here are a few great ones IMHO...
(1)

(2)

(3) The Psychology of Money

(4) And my favorite of all time:

If you can't find the original, a modern version should be the same. Of course, the title and the image are all you actually need to understand banking and bankers 😉

We should definitely have a Book Club community 😉

 

[Radko]

How can a bank in Ecuador give you 10% on a 1 year CD in USD, I don't understand? There must be a catch!

 

[JimBeam]

I mined about 100 BTC when it all started with 2 GPUs. The price at the time was single digit!
Sold it all around $36 after a Silkroad scandal.

Hope you feel a bit better now LOL

 

[Kirito]

Easy, they charge between 16% and 23% per loan, credit cards charge 16% flat. They don't have floating rates.

However, I don't think the party will last much. 3 years ago, the best rate you could get was 7% (yeah, still pretty good)

 

[Radko]

There has to be some risk attached to a CD with a 10% yield, I don't know any country, at least not in the western world, that will give you that much for a USD CD.