First, a Pretentious Peachy Prologue: 2,500 years ago there was a bloke who fancied himself a bit of a philosopher and liked to rant and declaim his wisdom. The common folk of Miletus taunted him: “if you’re so bloody smart, then why are you so poor?!”.
So this bloke, Thales, used his superior understanding of the environment to forecast that there would be a bumper crop of olives next year… when everyone was expecting a poor crop. He raised the money and bought up/leased all the local olive presses, so that when the large harvest did arrive, he was able to let them out at a rate which brought him considerable profit. In this way, Thales answered those who reproached him for his poverty.
With that background, let us now quickly compare how the MB boys understanding of the environment compares to Peachy’s. Here’s what the MB fund has done lately:
MB fund performance
It peaked in early 2020, fell to March (red line above) and has done bugger all since, perhaps falling some. Flat, fizzling, falling. The boys haven’t published any updates since October, despite it being late December. Go figure.
Even looking at things since inception, the boys haven’t even managed to eke out 10%pa:
So if you put $20,000 into the fund in March this year, you’d still have $20,000 or so. (If you put it in at inception, you’d have $26,000.)
(refer update below)
Update: newer figures. Worse news.
So, since this was originally posted, some Peachy Partisans have shares more recent MB find performance figures:
It is now abundantly clear that most recent values are below March peaks. Eyeballing it, it’s gone from 131 to 128.
With that sort of pricing, someone who put in $20,000 in March would now have $19,500.
All this at a time when a blindfolded hairdresser with a dartboard would have struggled not to bank some serious profits in stonks! Yikes! To add insult to fiscal injury, this is how the losses have been narrated:
we have missed some recovery upside but caution was warranted given the unprecedented nature of the virus risk.
Extract of a recent dispatch from the Deflation Imaginarium
Nobody wants to say it. So I will, as usual. DUDES! YOU HAVENT “MISSED SOME UPSIDE”. YOU HAVE LOST MONEY!
end update
Peachy Portfolio Performance
Now, let us turn to the Peachy Portfolio. What’s the Peachy Portfolio, you ask? Well, this was announced in March 2020, which enables comparisons between the MB Fund and the Peachy Portfolio from that date:
Here are Credit Corp and Afterpay from 23 March 2020, courtesy of Investing.com:
So if you put $20,000 into the Peachy Portfolio in March this year (equally split for diversification!), you’d have $150,000!
“Laughing all the way!” as is the customary quip this season. Hahahahaha!
So, to end, an Enlightening Epilogue Echoing the Pretentious Peachy Prologue. Understanding your environment pays very handomely. Misunderstanding the environment costs a lot. A lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of frustration.
Learn and understand the workings of the #ezfka. Ignore or misunderstand it at your own risk!
PS: Subsequent update here:
If I were a professional trader selling my fund to the public and failed to make a cracker during the biggest bull market of all time, I’d seriously think about handing back everyone’s money and calling it a day.
Not being funny but that’s reality.
There’s got to be some tension at MB HQ. I can see either DLS, Chris, Leith, Damien having a moment of clarity after one whiskey too many over the festive break. One of them sends out late night group email with the heading “URGENT” asking for a 9am Zoom meeting on the 4th January.
Funny I received a cold call from Nucleus recently. They hadn’t bothered calling me for a long time and out of the blue a missed call. Must be trying to drum up business and raise some capital. Wonder what all those that have invested with them must be thinking and if people are pulling their money out…
The fund wouldn’t have had broad appeal to begin with and possibly less now that they have failed to make a cracker during the biggest bull run of all time.
@CA:Nah mate. The blokes may not be geniuses and they may not be bad guys.
But they are not saints either.
They’re in this to make money, so I doubt that they’ll wind the game up and do themselves out of a job, out of commitment to some principles.
They are EZFKA residents too, even if they don’t like to admit it. They’ll keep going and try to keep existing fum and probably attract new fum.
They’d have a much easier job at it if they had known when to pivot from the Uber-bear views a few months ago. Now only have very bland performance stats to point to.
The selling point may be “come invest with us if you want to gain 10%-14%, ….provided that we get another global pandemic or Other catastrophe!”
It’s a very niche offering. Would’ve been much easier selling 35% returns.
It is frustrating to watch the fund value go no-where that is for sure.
They did a great job avoiding the plunge but then forgot to buy any of the dip, and now have gone hard on stocks just as markets are looking really frothy, so it is entirely possible a 10% correction is around the corner and everyone’s funds nosedives again. Facepalm stuff.
Heya beastie! At this stage it’s looking to me quite a bit like a stopped-clock performance.
The perma-bear predictions happened to be right for a short moment in time. But because they’re so carved in stone, there was no ability to capitalise on it.
nothing for it but to sit back and wait until the next cyclical dip for the find to post some returns???
Yes it is a stopped clock performance, and Q2-Q4 last year was a total train wreck to be honest. Frankly I’m not far away from considering pulling my money out.
The thing is they got Q1 so very right – as a result of the permabear exposure. But didn’t have the guts to re-balance when it mattered. There is no point having a fund positioned for market corrections which happen 5%-10% of the time when like you said, this was the biggest sharemarket rally in god knows how long and they completely botched asset allocation.
Another thing completely botched was the FX exposure. The AUD crash DLS in particular had banged on about for who knows how long finally happened thanks to COVID, then after predicting it correctly, the boys didn’t see fit to re-balance the portfolio to a more $AUD centric position. Why on earth was most of the cash still in $USD funds, and share exposure to unhedged US shares, with the AUD at sub $0.60? C’mon.
@DD: Yeah mate, this figures.
As I’ve said above in response to Chinese Astoturfer, I’d expect them to double down and try to get more fum & more fees. Whether they have been right or not in their views and whether they have made or lost money for their investors.
Standard EZFKA operating procedure.
Would be extra funny if they lost their bear-nerve just as the next cyclical dip arrives and wipes out another 10-15% for the bag-holders!
😅
I actually feel bad for the ones investing and not doing well/losing money. The broader game is rigged and just because the uber bears think something they want to happen or morally should happen doesn’t mean it will happen. MB is very convincing and has unfortunately mislead many people. I don’t think it’s out of any malice but more an inability to admit the system is rigged. I’ve said for a while now that reausa, who began as a parody, has been the most right on there…
I started following MB in 2012 and if I hadn’t of listened to their bear news all this time I’d be in a far better position today. COVID was the perfect storm and look where house and stock prices are heading today.
Aaahahaha…seems my trolling of macrotards such as grindr boy brenten, arrow, timmeh, bcbich etc was more than justified. Wonder how much money those nuthugging dunces have lost?
😂
bcnich has been nowhere to be seen for the last couple of months. Run off with his tail between his legs now he looks like such a fool with his outlandish predictions!
Stop it or they’ll cry
I think it was last month they suddenly turned uber bullish for stocks.
The US market is very overbought in some sectors and I think we’ll see profit taking in the new tax year.
Only paid subscribers can post in or view the latest comments.
It will be a happy little echo chamber from now on. Maybe it’s just a trial.
I don’t think they realise that most people visit for the comments, certainly not for their predictions of economic, political, COVID-related trends. You’d be renting, have a small super fund that hasn’t grown in years, and gold bars hidden under the mattress if you did that.
I still think DLS should get his real estate licence he’s not cut out for the finance game.
He’s really creative with his headlines he’d be good writing ads and coming up with new flyers.
Yep looks like they are locking comments some days and other days just deleting unpaid commenters posts. Seems like a crappy business plan going into the future! I’d happily pay $200 if they actually were kicking goals. I recently said I’d buy a 10 year membership if they ever got their predictions right, knowing full well my money was safe in my pocket. One big circle jerk deluding people to never buy a home, never take any risk and forever be on the losing side.
This site looks to have more potential than the MB echo chamber. How do I go about applying for residency in Peachistan?
Residency, eh? Well, it’s not like we have a process, really.
Would you like to have an account to post rants, or just comments?
I’d be interested as well.
Will rants have to meet a quality threshold, lol. I’m sure I could find something to rant about 🙂
If they were kicking goals they would be able to fund the site themselves…
“Actually, I think it is going to zero. Below zero if it triggers wider carnage.”
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2018/02/why-bitcoin-is-going-below-zero/
I wrote about their btc fantastic fail here: https://www.ezfka.com/2020/10/29/macrobusiness-true-to-form-100-wrong-on-bitcoin-doubles-down/
but I hadn’t realised that they predicted sub-Zero!!! 😹 Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
I’ll need to do an updated post to reflect the even-larger-than-though fail score.
Lets be fair here, Economic forecasters with a high accuracy rate tend to keep the predictions to themselves and use them to profit either themselves or the corp they work for. Widely publicizing these predictions would change investment patterns and could affect the profits achievable.
Forecasters with a more *ahem* checkered prediction history tend to prefer being paid for their opinions rather than putting their money where their mouth is.
Are Fisho’s welcome?
Are Fisho’s welcome
Peachy’s probably on holidays still. Probably needs to sort out some sort of register thingy though. Maybe she should get some IT help. *programmer quickly exiting the room*
Hopefully this will evolve into the comment section MB used to be pre regular banning.\
I must have been banned at least half a dozen times and don;t think I was overly critical.
Register thingy is also exactly what I thought the site needs! IT geeks will arrange it, no worries.
Thanks, I was half heartedly offering to help but web really isn’t my thing so was hoping it wouldn’t be requested.
Hi Peachy.
This is the site that we’ve been waiting for! I’ve put in a lot of time over the last 5 years or so reading MB. It used to appeal so much to many of us who feel aggrieved by economic and social injustices in so many forms. I still have articles such as https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2015/03/dumbest-bubble-history/ and https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2016/07/the-blatant-pillage-of-australias-youth/ in my favourites. But I’ve also kept screenshots of some of DLS’s savage put-downs, and use them to remind myself of why I should never subscribe to the site or the fund. In particular, I’ve got a screenshot from May 2016 of a spat between DLS and “The Patrician”. DLS had praised a recent RBA rate cut, to which TP had responded that the RBA was just “luring FHB patsies with the lowest interest rates in history”. Seemed a very apt comment to me, but he was threatened with a permanent ban by DLS.
Now it’s just one rant after another in support of QE and MMT. Barely a word about negative consequences or the complete lack of an exit strategy.
I’m not personally too critical of the mediocre MBFund performance recently: I want to play it fairly safe at the moment too, so I think it’s fair enough that they haven’t tried to ride the bull wave and then look for the exit just in time. I would be more inclined to invest with them if I was more confident that they are well positioned to profit from a crash, whenever that might happen.
Please keep improving this site!
Cheers.
This site is hilarious.
MB I always viewed as a counter narrative economics blog but DLS has over the past couple of years in particular hi-jacked it with more and more political click bait stories in addition to getting grumpier and seemingly only wanting to listen to his own economic opinion more and more. And yes some of his financial forecasts have been horrific, although cudos to his oil going to zero call earlier last year.
Leith/UE – who has been the only one posting with DLS on leave, is far more rational, econonically minded and writes interesting and informative analysis that is worth the money. If you read the blog posts this week and last MB is much truer to form than when DLS rolls in these days.
Maybe it’s time MB gives DLS the boot?
“more and more political click bait stories in addition to getting grumpier”
This seemed to have a strong correlation with the addition of advertising to the site. Perhaps their forecast of how profitable being an economics blogger would be was right up there with a lot of their other forecasts for accuracy.
They wouldn’t have been taking a big risk at all getting back into the market back in March or April. They already got a 30% discount. They stayed completely out of stocks for a long time and were long the USD.
They only way they could have won is if the AUD went to 40 cents against the USD. They did not anticipate at all that China would stimulate hard again like after the GFC.
I think they got greedy and arrogant in their views.
Ah yes! The threatening of banning people if they don’t pay $200 and subscribe to his nonsense bear calls that have proven to be wrong time and time again. Nothing like being a dictator to improve customer relations! I was recently heavily censored because my Trump comments went against his own narrative.