Comment by ThrowHitJackpot | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThrowHitJackpot | Hacker News Reader

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ThrowHitJackpot

Good point. However, as I understand it Vanguard's funds have < 0.2% management fee, so hopefully smaller than .35, e.g. https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/fees

But you're right. If manager charges 0.5% and fund charges 0.2% I'm still losing 0.5% of principal and 0.2% of my gains per year.

I don't see a reason for hedge funds. In my mind those are folks who have a proprietary edge on the market due to location, information, or experience.

To me, private equity ("PE") are folks who know how to reshape companies.

I spent a fair bit of time working w/ and for and sort of as a VC - that is a fun lifestyle but their risk adjusted and fee adjusted return is not impressive:

http://www.industryventures.com/2017/02/07/the-venture-capit...

The weighted average of table "Early Stage Venture Returns" shows about 2.5X on money with an assumed period of 10 years.

That's about 10%. When I invested $400k in venture capital in 2000 [timing...] it was worth $250k total return by 2018 - so not as great.

This is true about vanguard fees being low. Ideally your advisor would only use Vanguard, but if they try to get you diversified into more exotic etfs or mutual funds, expect to pay a fee closer to 1% to be invested in that fund.

> But you're right. If manager charges 0.5% and fund charges 0.2% I'm still losing 0.5% of principal and 0.2% of my gains per year.

Be careful with your math here. It sounds to me like you think .2% fee is only on gains, however it also it on your principal.

Here is a concrete example.

You hire an advisor at .35% per year. In one scenario, they invest you in Vanguard S&P 500 for .04% a year. You will pay .39% a year of your principal in fees. In another scenario they invest you in a hedge fund fully, where the hedge fund charges 2% on principal and 20% on gains.

Here you will end up paying 2.35% per year, EVEN if you are losing money. And if you gain money. The hedge fund will take 20% from that. So best case you are paying 2.35% in principal fees, and pocketing 80% of the profit. Worst case, you pay 2.35% to lose money.

Two extremes of the fee spectrum, so likely you will end up somewhere between the two.

Be wary if you advisor tries to push you away from Vanguard and into a different brand (they can have incentives that don’t perfectly align with you). For instance A Charles Schwab advisor might push you to use a Charles Schwab branded s and p Mutual fund with .25% fee on top of his .35% fee. When the actual fund is exactly the same as the Vanguard one that is only .04% fee.

You raise a good point, I am wrong you are right. Of course the costs are on the entire principal, thank you for correcting me.

Investing in PE/Hedge/VC again is not likely for me. So I agree, with an advisor at .35% and vanguard at 0.04% - it's .39% per year. With 10M invested in VSTAX under these numbers, maybe it gains 4% but i pay out .39 or almost 10% of the gains. Far better than the 2% - but we are on the same page.

Agree that the advisors can have misaligned incentives - I trust the two I'm working with though based on relationships who trust them, so I'm fairly certain they are altruistic, a bit.

By the way, really good podcast on Hidden Forces with Ben Hunt for Demetri Kofinas about the "awesome renumeration" for money advisors, as long as you're right :)

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