Warren Buffett is a nifty picker of stocks. In hiring Ted Weschler to help select investments at Berkshire Hathaway, he’s turned out to be a nifty stockpicker-picker, too.
Buffett would hardly have hired a bozo – it was nailed-on that former hedge fund manager Weschler could pluck an Apple or an Amazon from the also-runs.
But new figures prove Ted Weschler has some truly serious investing smarts.
DIY tax haven
Ted Weschler’s returns have surfaced after a huge kerfuffle in the US about Roth IRAs – a kind of retirement tax shelter that’s closest to the UK’s ISA.
It turns out some savvy American moguls have managed to use these mainstream tax shelters to shelter vast fortunes from the taxman.
In particular, tech mogul/bogeyman Peter Thiel has amassed $5bn in his ‘retirement account for the middle class’, according to ProPublica.
Can you imagine if James Dyson, say, was revealed as having a billion pounds in his ISA?
Even million pound ISAs are mostly marketing pornography. A billion pound ISA would be the money shot to end them all.
Well more or less that’s what’s happened in the US.
Check out ProPublica for the details of how Thiel did it. The short version is he was able to stash a few thousand dollars in very cheap unlisted shares in a startup into his Roth IRA, and those multiplied into millions. His snowball supercharged into an avalanche. The rest is compound interest.
What Thiel did wouldn’t actually be possible in an ISA (sorry James!) due to restrictions on what you can hold in the UK vehicles.
If there’s a scandal, it would seem that – from my imperfect vantage point across the ocean – the Roth IRA rules weren’t sufficiently tight in the first place.
Weschler was here
So much, so Business As Usual for the taxes-are-optional uber-rich.
But the controversial $264m that Ted Weschler has similar been outed as having amassed in his Roth IRA is still notable for Monevator purposes.
You see, when ProPublica approached Weschler for comment about how he shoehorned all those millions into an account with tight contribution limits, he was (un)happy enough to tell them.
Weschler says that in the early years of his career he contributed to his employer’s IRA plan. He then converted it to a self-directed IRA, where he could make his own investments, claiming:
Over the ensuing 29 years (through the end date you quote of year-end 2018) I invested the account in only publicly-traded securities i.e., all investments in this account were investments that were available to the general public.
There follows some back and forth in the letter about US regulations and taxes that needn’t concern a humble investing blog in Blighty.
The key point is Weschler was picking from the same sort of stocks as a Reddit punter today. He wasn’t investing in unlisted microcap tech startups at the start of the Internet revolution.
And here’s the money shot:
…each $1 saved as a 22 year old in New York City grew over the ensuing 35 years to over $9,000 – certainly not an expected result, but the sort of example that can hopefully help motivate generations of future savers.
Well, quite. That is an extraordinary return!
In simple annualized terms it implies a near-30% return a year over 35 years.
Weschler smashed the market
I’m sure there were plenty of ups, downs, lucky breaks, and obscure – albeit still stock market-listed – investments in the mix for Weschler.
But to turn $1 into $9,000 in 35 years you have to be doing a lot very right.
The number of other famous investors who done as well over such a long period is not high.
- Buffett clocks in at around 20% annualized, albeit he did much better in his early days with less money.
- From memory George Soros comes in at around 20%, too.
- Peter Lynch achieved about 30% in annual returns for his investors at Fidelity for a dozen years before hanging up his spurs.
- Although… Joel Greenblatt, the professor and fund manager who wrote the wonderful You Can Be A Stock Market Genius has a private partnership Gotham Capital that boasts 40% returns.
You’re slacking, Ted!
Could you be the next Ted Weschler?
As this blog’s resident naughty active investor, am I inspired and motivated by Ted Weschler’s prowess, as he suggests we all could be in his letter?
Honestly, yes and no.
I’ve long known it’s possible for a small proportion of people to achieve market-beating returns. And I believe such outperformance is far likelier to be done by directly investing in shares – as opposed to by running or investing in funds, with their contradictory incentives and fee drags, respectively.
The trouble is it’s hard to get truly stonking rich without managing other people’s money, and taking and compounding that fee tithe for yourself.
That’s what makes Weschler’s returns so astounding.
In principle it shows what’s possible – at least if you started in 1985 and you’re either an investing savant or one of the luckiest people on the planet.
For context, if you could put the maximum £20,000 into an ISA every year for 35 years and achieve the same returns as Ted Weschler, you’d end up with…
£785,459,150!
Clearly that fails a few sanity checks as an aspirational stretch goal.
(Although I don’t doubt that – assuming no rule or contribution changes – we will eventually hear about £100m ISAs in my lifetime).
Many happy returns
I’ve been doing this for long enough to know that I’m not clocking up 30% returns annualized, and I’m never likely to, either.
So Weschler’s returns can only motivate me so far.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m pleased with my own record. And I’ve mostly enjoyed nearly 20 years of investing in individual shares. No regrets.
But am I set to turn £1 into £9,000 in 35 years? Reader – I’ll probably need a few more years than that!
People will want to draw lessons from Weschler’s achievement. Without seeing his trades in detail, the lessons are likely to be platitudes.
And of course most people will have a happier life and end up richer if they passively invest through index funds. Even Warren Buffett says that.
But at least I now know why Buffett called up Ted Weschler for the role at Berkshire Hathaway, rather than me!
p.s. We’ve finally transitioned to a new email system. As best I can tell it’s all working great, but I did delete some email addresses that were bouncing. If you have any problems, I’d suggest re-subscribing. Have a great weekend!
From Monevator
How to future proof your kids’ financial future – Monevator
Three months into post-FIRE life – Monevator
From the archive-ator: Returns from alternative asset classes – Monevator
News
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Happy 50th birthday to the index fund – CFA Institute
Google tightens rules to stamp out scam ads – Which
Britons resume borrowing as the economy reopens – Guardian
US house prices rise fastest in 30 years. Is there a global bubble? – ThisIsMoney
Restaurants and bars forced to shut due to staff self-isolating – BBC
Slough goes bankrupt after discovery of ‘£100m black hole’ in budget – Guardian
Monevator named No. 1 personal finance blog in a UK top 10 – Vuelio
Two and 20 is long dead. Hedge fund fees continue to fall – CNBC
Products, services, and spending
More on the upcoming Green Savings bonds from NS&I – Which
Visiting the factory that turns out two prefab houses a day – ThisIsMoney
Special offer: Open a SIPP with Interactive Investor and pay no SIPP fee for six months – Interactive Investor
Festivals 2021: which ones are still going ahead? – BBC
Sign-up to Freetrade via my link and we can both get a free share worth between £3 and £200 – Freetrade
Three rural properties on sale with businesses attached – ThisIsMoney
Homes for sale near a football stadium, in pictures – Guardian
Comment and opinion
How a little Bitcoin can change your 60/40 portfolio a lot – Morningstar
Magic number – Humble Dollar
How to protect your portfolio against inflation [Search result] – FT
Why annuities act like a ‘licence to spend’ in retirement – Think Advisor
Planning for life after full-time work [Podcast] – Rational Reminder
We shouldn’t be too worried about the pension time bomb – The Evidence-based Investor
The hidden assumptions of financial calculators – Morningstar
Follow your passion is good financial advice – Incognito Money Scribe
16 unbelievable facts about the markets – A Wealth of Common Sense
EIS and VCTs: higher risks with big potential rewards [Search result] – FT
Naughty corner: Active antics
In search of 100-baggers in the start-up space – Meb Faber
Five lessons from owning five shares for ten years – Maynard Paton
15 years of income and growth from UK-listed investment trusts – Getting Minted
Bitcoin is anti-fragile, as China’s mining crackdown is about to prove – AVC
Everything is looking very rosy in the US right now – Investing Caffeine
How ‘evergreen’ private equity funds change things up – Institutional Investor
Covid corner
Indian-made AstraZeneca vaccine batches could cause travel issues – BBC
How a misleading stat claims more vaccinated people die – BBC
Britain thinks it can out-vaccinate the Delta variant – CNN
Don’t rush to get your second jab too soon – BBC
UK teens using lemon juice to fake positive Covid tests and skip school – iNews
Life after the 1918 flu has lessons for our post-pandemic world – CNN
Where’s my Lyme vaccine? – Slate
Kindle book bargains
The $100 Startup by Chris Guillbeau – £0.99 on Kindle
A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Collapse of Lehman Brothers – £0.99 on Kindle
SAS: Leadship Secrets from the Special Forces by various authors – £0.99 on Kindle
Ultralearning: Accelerate Your Career, Master Hard Skills, and Outsmart the Competition by Scott Young – £0.99 on Kindle
Environmental factors
Californian agriculture has run out of water – New York Times
Red squirrels and pine martens could lose protection in planning rules review – Guardian
Off our beat
How to remember you’re alive – Raptitude
Past, present, and future time perspectives – Darius Foroux
The distraction-free benefits of five-hour work days – Reasons to be Cheerful
And finally…
“It isn’t what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.”
– Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
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Comments on this entry are closed.
I know it’s mediocre compared to 30% but I am happy with the 17.23% annualised return over 3 years of my 60/40 ISA which I achieved using only Vanguard ETFs. It’s got a bit more more than the usual amount of global small caps, FTSE250, and EM on top of LS100 and government bond ETFs.
@TI – congrats on the number 1 placing on Vuelio.
I suspect if the Monevator team added up all the money they have indirectly helped others accumulate over the years all of those $1 would far exceed the cumulative $9000!
I’m sure there are quite a few regular (and hopefully new readers) who will make far better returns after reading Monevator. That’s definitely the case for me! Thanks for a great blog!
I disagree that Roth IRA rules are not sufficiently tight. The government/regulators should only define how much you can invest. It shouldn’t define how you invest it.
The problem is that ISAs are so bizarrely regulated that it makes it difficult to achieve high returns without taking disproportionate risks. Meaningless requirements like a fund havng ‘reporting status’, the inability to trade very safe products like futures/options etc make it impossible to achieve any leverage in a controlled downside manner. All they allow you to do is punt on equities.
My biggest personal investment is in the fund I work for. Skin in the game etc. It’s a very low risk hedge fund: a 30 year+ track record, returns of 15%/annum (so 23% pre fees), just one down year in that time (-3%), and a volatility of 5% (so <30% of the S&P). 90% of it's cash is in T-bills.
Yet somehow I cannot invest via my ISA in this fund because it's 'too risky'. I can invest my whole ISA in a single lethal small cap stock that move 10% in an hour, I can invest in toxic P2P or equity crowdfunding, but not in a well-established fund with a 200+ uncorrelated trading teams and a stop-loss of 5%.
Similarly, I can invest in a high risk S&P tracker but cannot buy low delta call options on the S&P. Buy a high risk long duration bond fund but not a low risk bond flattener via futures. It's just utter nonsense.
In the FCA's view Woodford was acceptable but the fund I work for is not. How did that work out? Could regulators like the FCA just bog off and let me do what I want with my money? Is that too much to ask?
Rant over.
@ZXSpectrum48k — Afternoon! 🙂 Your situation does seem particularly incongruous, I agree. At the least there could be some sort of self-cert “sophisticated investor” type box you could tick that would enable you to invest in non-reporting funds like that of your employer.
To be fair I was talking about Roth IRAs, not ISAs, though, and I said “if there’s a scandal” as I’m not certain there is. 🙂
It does appear Thiel was able to somehow transfer a bunch of potentially sweetheart-cheap PayPal shares (1.7million at a cost of $1,700 to him) into his Roth IRA when PayPal was in start-up mode. I doubt that was what the legislation permitting citizens to completely tax shield their assets intended.
Then again most startups go bust or deliver poor returns, so you would presumably not get a lot of Peter Thiel-like returns even if it was all completely encouraged. It might be a price worth paying to encourage risk-taking, startup-ing, etc.
The caveat is I haven’t spent a lot of time discovering if those PayPal shares were super-abnormally cheap when he put them into the Roth IRA versus their true market value. That kind of distortion (which you see wealthy types do with all kinds of assets, and even ordinary people do when e.g. trying to get under stamp duty thresholds in buying a property) is clearly not on, but it’s also presumably covered by other financial legislation.
So I imagine there’s an enforcement/resourcing issue here *if* anything untoward happened, which is another issue entirely. But one can see how tighter rules can constrain the policing problem.
As I say I’m no expert on US financial regulations, so all the above from me conjecture. 🙂
p.s. I doesn’t take long to see how softer rules could be exploited, mind you.
For example, I could set up a spivvy non-reporting fund / non stock-market listed security. I could then sell it my flat for £20,000. I could buy all the units in the fund within my ISA. I could then sell the flat, bank the outrageous gain in the fund, sell all the units of the fund and wind it down, and be left with getting on to million quid or whatnot in my ISA at a cost of £20,000, with all future growth forever tax-shielded. (A simplified example to make my point).
Clearly that behaviour is not what regulators want to encourage and while it could be policed against, I agree, it’s going to be more practical and cheaper to have some kind of limits I think? 🙂
The vuelio blog has blown TI’s cover! I feel a little sad – I quite liked the air of mystery.
Don’t worry. His cover had been blown ever since his BBC interview seven years ago, maybe even earlier…
Congratulations on your Vuelio rankings very well deserved
Only one quibble from me-all your quotes tend to be from the left of centre media-any chance of the Times,Telegraph or even perhaps the Spectator making a contribution -purely in the interests of “Diversification “ -that well established principle for all situations?
Keep up the great work -very much appreciated
xxd09
@xxd09
I recall that TI has been asked this before. The Times and Telegraph put (most of?) their material behind a paywall which prevents readers from seeing it (unlike the FT, this can’t be overcome so readily). I dare say the content of the Spectator may be limited to some to extent.
@The Investor
Aren’t “full” SIPP’s somewhat loop-holey like this w.r.t commercial property?
I’ve read a bit of stuff about business owners buying commercial premises inside their personal pension wrappers and then leasing it to their own businesses. In doing so they can funnel extra money to their retirement pot without going through PAYE or paying corporation tax prior to dividends. I believe this effectively bypasses the £40K annual allowance as well, since the rent will be income/growth to the company held within the pension and not considered personal or employer contributions.
I’d love to know exactly how Thiel smuggled unlisted equity into a Roth IRA of all things. Presumably you need to be friendly with a platform administrator or some specialist provider.
The Roth IRA is similar an ISA on tax but it is a retirement account – there are heavy penalties for early withdrawal. Also the max annual contribution to an IRA is a cool US$6k.
Unfortunately there is no real US equivalent to the ISA (cash or S&S). If you’re saving for a mortgage downpayment for example, there is no tax shelter available. Somewhat incongruous for such a tax-averse country.
The penalty to withdraw an IRA early is only 10% on top of the regular income tax. It’s a bit, but not exactly a “heavy penalty”. And you can withdraw penalty-free for a number of reasons, including buying a house or education. We should also note that, penalty or not, the US is one of the few countries that allow early access to retirement accounts.
@Tom-Baker Dr Who – Am I reading you correctly (Apologies if not), you’ve received 17.23% annualised returns using Vanguard ETFs in a 60/40 portfolio? Is this recently? If so, is this something an unskilled small investor could look at achieving? Is it something that takes a more effort balancing / more watching? Rather curious.
@Investor
“It does appear Thiel was able to somehow transfer a bunch of potentially sweetheart-cheap PayPal shares (1.7million at a cost of $1,700 to him) into his Roth IRA when PayPal was in start-up mode. I doubt that was what the legislation permitting citizens to completely tax shield their assets intended. [….] It might be a price worth paying to encourage risk-taking, startup-ing, etc.”
We have entrepreneurs relief which limits CGT to 10% although it was cut last year from £10m to ‘only’ £1m I think
Still its stupidly generous but that is exactly what the legislation intends
@Bal – Yes, that’s right. The catch is that this ISA only started in 2018 and the portfolio changed wa bit with time. Initially I had a huge chunk in the Vanguard global Value ETF but when Vanguard ended this ETF, I moved that allocation to LS100, a bit more global small caps, and a lot of FTSE250. So there has been a bit of active trading and 3 years is a short time. It has always been 60/40 though.
@Tom-Baker Dr Who – Thank you for getting back and confirming I wasn’t misreading anything. Congrats, it sounds like things are going pretty well. My portfolio is about a year old and mainly HSBC global strategy dynamic with a smidge of Vanguard global small caps (which probably takes it up to 80/20) which has been working fine but I’ve been sitting on the fence about tinkering but like the idea of going more to Vanguard especially with the lower platform fee but haven’t managed to work out anything which was significantly better than what I had already have in my eyes at the time. Would like to bring my portfolio to 70/30 or less so very curious with your approach being 60/40. If you don’t mind answering (apologies if this seems rude/nosey – please ignore if you prefer not to answer) is your bond portion a single Vanguard global or gilts ETF or is it mix of bond ETFs? how did you work out your percentages for your equity ETFs? Did you work out a formula/plan or decided on what felt right to you? How volatile is the portfolio as a whole? Is there a reason for LS100 over say global all cap or anything else? Would you say your portfolio is heavy UK with the UK tilt of LS100 + a big chunk of FTSE 250 – sorry, I ask quite a few questions as I try to understand how things might work in my head. Thanks again.
@xxd09 — As NewInvestor says, those sites are pay-walled so not an option.
Understood
Is it a Monevator principle not to pay for info?
Those media outlets are pretty low cost and might be worthwhile
Just a thought
xxd09
@Mousecatcher007 – I believe most of these reveals get TI and TA mixed up. But perhaps TI can clear this up!
@xxd09. To be fair, there are lots of links from This is Money, which is the Daily Mail’s offering. It’s generally less rabid than the paper itself, though some of the comment pieces are… interesting. And the comments BTL are often unintentionally hilarious. It’s main failing in my view is a tendency to sensationalise and scaremonger about things like inflation and pensions. Good for clicks I expect. And it’s not as though the Guardian isn’t also occasionally guilty of the same thing, though on different subjects.
@Bal – No worries, the questions are welcome. I think 3 years is not long enough to draw any serious conclusion about the performance, but it doesn’t stop me from being happy about it.
The bond part is mostly the Vanguard US gov bond ETF which is hedged to Sterling and has a net duration of about 8 years. I also have their global bonds ETF as well which is basically developed government bonds and some investment grade corporate bonds with a similar duration all hedged to Sterling. There is also a small allocation to the short duration version of the global bonds (also hedged) and another small allocation to their US Treasuries ETF which is not hedged to Sterling.
It is heavily UK tilted because LS100 is already tilted (that is the main reason I favoured it over a global equities tracker) and having about 12% of the portfolio in the FTSE 250 enhances the tilt even more. I view LS100 as mostly large caps, so I wanted to increase the exposure to mid and small caps.
I worked out the percentages by starting with some allocation that was basically evenly distributed geographically in developed markets (i.e., 1/3 US, 1/3 Europe + UK, 1/3 Asia) then tilt to UK, EM, and Asia (Japan + the rest with more in Japan). The last bit was very heuristic. I haven’t applied any formulas.
The idea was just to be contrarian and try to find value. I think that the market always exaggerate everything. Following Brexit the market was very negative about the UK. It’s also been very negative about Japan because of the big crash in the late 80s early 90s and terrible demographics of Japan.
This is the most volatile portfolio I have created so far. Unfortunately I haven’t bothered to calculate the std dev yet. I do have weekly data on the portfolio valuation from insertion though and can do that. If you are interested, I can get back to you on this later.
@Tom-Baker Dr Who – very interesting indeed, thank you for sharing. Agreed, 3 years is a short period of time but v.good results so far. Yes, I’d be really interested to know how things pan out for you (hopefully it’ll be very positive), thank you for the offer.
I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to work out a few different things on spreadsheets that I’ve stumbled over recently such as various ways to play around with Vanguard funds to understand how they might work in a different way in practice.
One idea is how to work out which regional funds are over/under valued to purposely tilt to cheaper markets (e.g. if US is overvalued then would it work to buy UK, em or Pacific funds instead) as a kind of monthly buying indicator (I’m not expecting it to work but I might learn a few things along the way). Currently wondering if Jack Bogle’s expected returns formula could be used for each fund as it looks simpler than other options. Also would like to know how HSBC calculate their multi factors on their global strategy funds.
Trying to work out how to get all the data I need (such as dividend yield) from sources (Google finance, ft.com, yahoo finance, etc.) into Google sheets but all the example solutions I’ve found haven’t worked for me.
Anyway, sorry for going on about my mad capped learning projects which are not always the same as what I might look to tilt my portfolio towards (something I’m currently conservative with but would like to move to be more contrarian). Thanks again 🙂
Well done and congrats on being number 1 on Vuelio. I guess an award like the one TA recently got will be out of the question as we’d be able to put a name to the bobblehead!
@Tom-Baker Dr Who: I have been wanting a US Treasury bond £-hedged ETF from Vanguard but could not find one on iWeb. What’s the code for yours? Thanks
@Onedrew – The ISIN is IE00BFATDB69. Here is the link to the fund description (it’s actually a fund not an ETF as I mentioned before, the ETF which I also have got is unhedged): https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-us-government-bond-index-fund-gbp-hedged-acc/overview?intcmpgn=fixedincomeusa_usgovernmentbondindexfund_fund_link
@TI – I have just noticed the good news on Vuelio now. Congratulations! Also, I could not resist the curiosity and had to listen to that BBC radio interview that blew your cover. Nice to hear the actual voice behind the blog!
@Bal – I like your idea of using Jack Bogle’s expected return formula for each fund. I might try that too in the future.
@ Mousecatcher & Christof – it is I, TA, who blew his cover. Vuelio mistakenly names me as Monevator’s bossman when it’s TI. Don’t worry, TI is still a man of mystery. Even to himself 😉
@ Andrew – yes, you’re right about commercial property owners selling their own buildings to their full SIPP. I’ve come across people who arrange such transactions. Dodgy as f-
@ xxd09 – TI often links to the FT as well, and I can assure you from personal experience that he doesn’t have much time for ideological bias. In my view he ranges freely across the spectrum from centre-right to centre-left.
Re: “Is it a Monevator principle not to pay for info?” I’m aware of no such principle and, again, I’ll cite the example of links to the FT plus The Economist and New York Times. TI and myself would probably be better off if the principle of free content in the internet age had not established itself. Given that it has, I guess you can understand why the preponderance of links go to free content.
@ Tom-Baker – it is I, TA, who was the public voice of Monevator in that interview etc etc 😉
@TA – Cool! Sorry for the confusion. I recall now that they only referred to you as a blogger during the BBC interview not as TI! That was an implicit assumption of mine that went completely wrong.
Well, this means that we now know both the voice and the face behind those inspiring blog posts!
Thanks for that info
I certainly class the New York Times aka the Guardian,the Economist and FT as politically left of centre publications and treat their output accordingly
The change in the FTs politics was quite remarkable
Finance you would think would tend to lean to a more conservative outlook but no more
I blame all that “free” money floating about
Let’s hope it doesn’t all end in tears!
xxd09
@ xxd09 – for clarity’s sake, I cited the NYT and The Economist as examples of TI linking to content that is paywalled to some extent. The beauty of those publications of course is they give you a couple of pieces free before you hit the paywall, which is a nice approach. Don’t think anyone in their right mind would think the Guardian or NYT are other than centre-left.
My personal take is that Monevator is a pretty good place to find a plurality of views. I certainly enjoy hearing the multiplicity of takes to any given issue, even when they’re pretty ‘out there’ (from my perspective). The only thing that frustrates me is when people entrench or misrepresent.