Resuming Posting

It’s been almost two years since I last posted on my Investment Studies blog. I’ve decided to resurrect this process. I’m 72 years old and have had some significant health problems in the last few years. Because of a major problem in early 2014, I decided to reorganize our investments. The goal was to simplify them for my wife in case I suddenly disappeared. At the time, there were some alternative investments available.  I decided to test them and created some accounts and invested in some of these. I also decided to document my experiences in this blog for my friends and family.

Somewhat to my surprise, I’m still here and capable of pursuing my passion in life, analyzing data. I’ve working on projects involving Lending Club, crypto currencies, and sports analysis. Since I’m going to get pretty deep in the weeds, I’ve decided to begin sharing these efforts with the general public. I don’t know if there’s going to be any interest, but if I help one person then it will be worth the effort.

First, a look back. It started afew years ago with Personal Capital. I opened an account with this web site to track my daily balances over multiple financial accounts (I now use Mint to do this). They contacted me to offer their financial management services. During this interaction, I discovered the robo-advisors concept. In particular, Betterment and Wealthfront. These were the kind of investments that I was looking for so I opened test accounts with both. Later Schwab entered this market with Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, so I added this to the mix.

Meanwhile I was also interested in peer to peer lending and opened accounts with Lending Club and Prosper. They both has secondary markets with Folio Investing.  Folio Investing is a brokerage firm with some unusual offerings that really appealed to me so I opened a trading account with them.

In the end, I had 5 test accounts, Betterment, Wealthfront, Schwab, Folio Investing, and Lending Club. I documented the results in this blog starting in late 2014 and published the results over several months. In the end, I whittled my interest down to 2 accounts, Betterment and Lending Club. I have a small cash account with Betterment and a larger IRA with Lending Club. When I’m asked for investment advice by an acquaintance I direct them to Betterment. It’s a trouble-free way of investing.

The primary result for me is an IRA with Lending Club. That one has been disappointing so I’ve embarked on some analysis and strategies in an attempt to rescue the investment. That effort will be the focus of my next several posts.