I'm Underperforming the S&P 500 (And Publishing It Anyway)

I'm underperforming the S&P 500 by 5.4%.

Seven months in. My portfolio is up 11%. The index is up 16.5%.

If I'd just bought SPY and done nothing else, I'd have more money right now.

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.

If I'd bought VOO - literally just the S&P 500 - and done absolutely nothing, I'd have that money back and then some. Plus I'd have all those hours back. The hours might actually be worth more.

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

The entire US market in one ticker.

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

Still passive, still an index.

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.

We have new GPUs, TPUs, data centers, LLM providers, all going to ride the wave. Overvalued? Maybe, but in decades, the current pricing would be cheap.

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'm not spending on the thing I'm actually good at. The math on that is brutal. I

f I can generate 30%, 50%, 100% returns on effort in my business, why would I spend that effort trying to squeeze an extra 2% out of my stock picks?

So the portfolio is designed to be ignored. Buy boring stuff. Never sell. Check it once a quarter at most. Let it compound in the background while I do real work.

Seven months in, it's behind the index. I might be behind for years. I might be behind forever. If I'd just bought 100% VOO, I'd be doing better right now.

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?

The portfolio updates automatically from my brokerage. I can't fake it. Every quarter, you can see exactly how I'm doing.

Right now, that means watching me lose to an index fund.

What "return" actually means

Most people don't underperform because they picked the wrong assets.

They underperform because they couldn't leave things alone.

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.