Using the rounded returns below, my portfolio was behind the benchmark by 5.5 percentage points over the reported seven months.
Seven months in. My portfolio is up 11%. The index is up 16.5%.
Editorial update, October 11, 2026: These are the rounded returns published in January 2026, not a current performance report. 16.5% minus 11% is 5.5 percentage points. Exact account dates, cashflows, benchmark series, dividend treatment, fees, taxes and currency conversion records are not supplied, so the underlying comparison cannot be independently reconciled here. Vanguard's VOO factsheet and Invesco's QQQ explanation identify the respective funds and indexes; they do not validate my portfolio returns.
That comparison made me question my choices. Without matched dates, cashflows, fees, taxes, currency and dividend treatment, it does not establish the exact result of a hypothetical SPY purchase.
I'm publishing this anyway.
Not because I think I'm about to turn it around.
Not because I have some clever thesis about why I'm actually winning.
I'm publishing it because I think most investment content is fake, and I'd rather be honest and wrong than impressive and full of shit.
So here's what I actually own, why I own it, and why I'm okay being behind.
The ghost in every decision
Before I tell you what's in my portfolio, you need to know what's behind it.
I lost $300K trying to be smart.
Custom algorithms. Backtests. "Edges" I thought I'd found. Thousands of hours staring at charts, convincing myself I was one insight away from cracking the code.
I wasn't. I was just gambling with more steps.
That $300K was a house down payment. It was years of work. And I lit it on fire trying to be clever.
I wish I had spent less time on that experiment and considered a simpler investment approach. This essay does not reconstruct the dates and cashflows needed to show that VOO would have recovered the full $300,000 loss.
So now I do something radical: almost nothing.
What I actually own
Seven positions. That's the whole portfolio.
VOO is the biggest piece, about 31%. It's just the S&P 500
VOO is an ETF that seeks to track the S&P 500, a large-company U.S. stock index. It is not the entire U.S. market or the index itself.
I own it because I've accepted something that took me way too long to learn: I don't have an edge here.
I'm not smarter than the market. I'm not going to find the next Amazon before everyone else.
So I just own the market and move on with my life.
Berkshire Hathaway is 28%
This one's personal. I own it because Buffett thinks the way I want to think.
Long-term. Patient. Focused on businesses, not stock prices. I can't replicate what he does, but I can let him do it with some of my money.
It's up less than 1% since I bought it. I don't care. I'm not selling it for decades.
QQQ is 26%. Nasdaq 100. Tech-heavy, growth-tilted
QQQ is an ETF based on the Nasdaq-100 index. The fund and its underlying index are different things.
I own it because I think technology keeps eating the world, and I'd rather have exposure to that than not. It's my best performer right now, up almost 17%.
Surviving the post-AI world, a lot of the edge is going to come in to the old 'technology' indexes.
I expected AI-related infrastructure demand to matter. That expectation does not guarantee those assets will rise or that an expensive purchase becomes cheap over time.
Brookfield is about 9%
This is my one "I like this company" pick that isn't an index.
Infrastructure, asset management, long-term stuff. It's up nearly 18%.
Infrastructure is the moat in the post-AI world. AI can't build houses. AI can't build bridges and roads.
Brookfield has a strong infrastructure team and a strong fundraising team to do both that.
Still a small position because I don't trust myself to pick individual stocks. The $300K taught me that.
SCHD is 4%. Dividend ETF
I reinvest everything. This is my nod to the "get paid to wait" philosophy. Boring. Slow. Fine.
UnitedHealth is 2%
One individual stock pick in healthcare. My smallest real position.
It's up almost 40%, which is funny because it's the one I was least confident about. That probably proves something about my stock-picking abilities.
Healthcare is a key sector moving forward. While I disagree with a lot of the things I see from the patient perspective for this company, it is an important sector.
I remain interested in the industry and will invest more in healthcare in the coming months. Healthcare is a strong moat in the post-AI world.
And then there's 1% in T-bills
Cash equivalent. Basically nothing. It's there because I haven't deployed it yet, not because I'm timing anything.
It's a bit uncomfortable to even have 1% in T-bills, but it's there, it's okay. It's short-term, temporary, and meant to go to 0% allocations eventually.
That's it. Seven things. No crypto. No options. No clever spreads or hedges. Nothing I need to monitor.
Why I'm okay being behind
Here's what I know about myself: I don't have an edge in public markets.
I'm not a professional investor. I don't have access to information others don't.
I'm not going to out-analyze the thousands of people whose entire job is analyzing these exact stocks.
But I do have an edge somewhere else. Building businesses. That's where my returns come from. That's where my attention should go.
Every hour I spend trying to optimize my portfolio is an hour I am not spending on the work I would rather improve.
If work on my business offers a better use of my time, I would rather focus there. The original 30%, 50% and 100% returns-on-effort figures were illustrations, not a measured investment comparison.
My aim was a portfolio that needed less attention, not a rule that nobody should ever sell or review their holdings. That approach still involves risk and changing personal circumstances.
Seven months in, my reported figures were behind the benchmark. I might remain behind. That uncertainty did not make me want to resume the trading experiment.
I'm still not changing anything.
The trap I used to fall into
The mistake I made before wasn't losing money.
It was believing that activity was the same thing as progress.
Trading felt like work. Research felt like intelligence. Tweaking models felt responsible. I was "doing something" - and doing something always feels smarter than doing nothing.
But none of it created value. I was just moving money around and paying fees for the privilege of feeling busy.
This portfolio looks boring because boredom is the signal that my attention is in the right place.
If I'm not tempted to touch it, that means I'm spending my energy where it actually matters.
The moment I feel the itch to optimize, to trade, to "improve" things - that's when I know I'm drifting back into the old pattern. The pattern that cost me $300K.
The actual bet
The bet isn't that my portfolio will beat the market. It probably won't.
The bet is that it doesn't matter.
If I can build businesses that generate real cashflow, if I can own equity in things I actually control, if I can compound inside structures where I have an actual edge - the stock portfolio is just where the overflow goes.
It's the holding tank. The thing that grows quietly while I'm not looking.
I don't need it to be optimal. I need it to be good enough and out of my way.
The uncomfortable part
Most people who share their portfolios only do it when they're winning.
Up 40%? Post the screenshot. Down 15%? Silence.
I get it. It's embarrassing to be wrong in public. It feels better to pretend you're crushing it.
But I've already lost $300K being stupid. At this point, what's a little underperformance?
I originally described automatic brokerage updates and quarterly public comparisons. Those live-data features are retired from this publication; the historical snapshots are not a current feed or a continuing reporting promise.
This historical snapshot records the underperformance I reported then.
What "return" actually means
I cannot establish why most investors underperform from my own experience.
In my case, repeated trading and research consumed time and money without producing the advantage I hoped for.
I already paid $300K to learn that lesson.
If this portfolio never beats the S&P, but keeps me from doing something stupid again, it will be the highest-return investment I've ever made.
What I am planning to learn next
Capital allocation is going to be one of the most important skills moving forward in a post-AI world.
The truth is, it's not just about reading the 10-Ks, it's not just about understanding the numbers. It's about knowing where to put the money.
Still learning - just doing better slowly and slowly. In a year, we'd be at a different place.