Portfolio Charts

[jennypenny]

Nah -- I'm still waiting for my first non-serious offer.

Let me be the first to throw my hat in the ring.

You don't have to clutter the site with ads to monetize it. You could have a simple calculator and a few portfolios available for free, and put the rest behind a paywall. Negotiate with brokerages like Vanguard and Fidelity to give their clients 'free' access to the information behind the paywall for a monthly rate or a fee charged per client visit. You could reel them in if you have sample portfolios that matched their recommendations and used their funds as examples in the calculator.

Haha ... don't you love all of this unsolicited advice?!

[jacob]

edit: also, the graphs look a bit silly for ERE types half way into accumulation. Not sure if it needs a fix or not.. I think having the constant axis is fine for this calculator so... yeah, not much you could change.

There's not much you can do about this except subtract the number of years you already saved and offset one axis. Otherwise, you'd have to go 3D and add another axis.

It's very hard to substitute thinking for plotting

[jennypenny]

edit: also, the graphs look a bit silly for ERE types half way into accumulation. Not sure if it needs a fix or not.. I think having the constant axis is fine for this calculator so... yeah, not much you could change.

There's not much you can do about this except subtract the number of years you already saved and offset one axis. Otherwise, you'd have to go 3D and add another axis.

If you equate savings with credits like in HS or college, you could show people starting off as a freshman, sophomore, etc. based on how many 'credits' they already have.

[Tyler9000]

@jennypenny - Clearly sales & marketing are not my strong points. You've got the job!

[jennypenny]

I'm sorry for overstepping with my 'advice' but ... you've got a great product with a unique presentation. Most tools are either geared toward money managers or people who actively avoid managing their money. PC works for both.

Don't give it away for free. (except to us, of course )

[vexed87]

Don't give it away for free. (except to us, of course )

was just a bout to chime in!

I love all the info about the permanent portfolio, haven't been able to find anything like this, keep up the good work!

[Tyler9000]

Don't give it away for free. (except to us, of course )

Your advice is always welcome!

TBH I haven't given monetization very much thought to date. I've always mostly assumed that it would either fizzle completely over time or somehow take care of itself if it really took off, and I didn't want to get greedy and put the cart before the horse. But having outside eyes and feedback is kinda refreshing.

I've always had a personal aversion to paywalls, but I imagine they have a place if done well and truly add value. The idea of having sponsored access/portfolios is pretty interesting, and it follows more the Mint model which I kinda like (free to use, but a platform for paid content). That deserves some thought. I've also had a few requests for native versions of the full spreadsheets, and I imagine there's a potential market for that as well.

That said, the site is still pretty new and I'm in no rush. I'd rather take my time and build something thoughtfully than rush to capitalize and cap the potential audience in the process.

[rube]

What a great tool! I am sure if you want, you can monetize it.

I would love to see the option to select European funds, primarily to see the effect of a European PP. But I believe good data for that is more difficult to obtain and therefore probably too difficult to implement. Still, even for people outside the USA it is a great tool to play around with.

[akratic]

This website is the bomb. I especially like the recent charts that viscerally capture how important volatility is.

My wishlist for the site is:

1) More data, especially from other countries. As a start, you could use this data. I grabbed it off the Crawling Road forum a few years ago.

2) Instead of embedding the spreadsheet with an iframe, use javascript to stick it in a div, which will allow you to create dropdowns and other javascript elements that interact with the spreadsheet. Then on the calculators you could have a dropdown for US, UK, Japan and also I'd love to see a dropdown with each of the lazy portfolios, and selecting one of them simply populates the Asset Allocation numbers. (You could also clean up the janky SustWR=1 SafeWR=0 1)

I don't know how familiar you are with javascript, but if you want you can come check out my new apartment in South Congress this Saturday or Sunday and we could jam it out together. PM me or even better email at dan@akratic.com

[Tyler9000]

Thanks for the kudos! Having others use this stuff is definitely rewarding.

Nice data, Akratic. Send more! I'd also love to find Canadian funds, as well as a bit of international variety beyond the PP assets. BTW, also very high on my want list is US data for the assets I already have back even just another 10 years or so to the early 60's. I know that presents complications for gold because of the gold standard, but I'm more than happy to deal with that if I can stretch the data set for things like the WR calculations.

I'd love to get some dropdown menus on the site, but for now I'm using Wordpress.com which has strictly no javascript. It's the price you pay for a super easy hosting experience. I'll still take you up on the offer if I ever transition to somewhere else, and am happy to check out your new digs regardless. Welcome to Austin!

[Egg]

I have no suggestions or insightful comments, but the site is really excellent. Great work, Tyler!

[black_son_of_gray]

@Tyler: Love the site, the following is just a suggestion / just me spitballing - I have no idea if it is feasible or it anyone is really interested...

Is there any way to have a calculator for 'income'/yield stability? By that I mean you have a field where you compose a portfolio (your standard list of options will probably be much smaller), and the graphic output might be %yield over time (either average yield +/- variability for a given X year period or just performance from a given starting year). The reason I'm interested: different asset classes that provide a yield might be behave differently during some economic shock (e.g. 2008), and it could be useful to play around with different portfolio compositions to see how they perform. Probably a lot of people would be interested in having some idea how resilient an 'income' portfolio is during different stressors. Granted this wouldn't allow individual stock portfolios, but maybe important lessons could be learned by broad asset classes?

Seems like the bond data would be fairly straightforward to get/calculate, and maybe things like S&P500 divs (maybe dogs of the dow?), NAREIT might have some data. Hope that was articulate - just throwing it out there.

[Tyler9000]

It's true that the site has a particular focus on total returns. Yield is already baked into the data, and separating it out historically would take some serious data hunting. That's an interesting idea, though, and looking at things through a few different lenses would be cool. I'll have to think about ways to approach that.

[Tyler9000]

So I've figured out a novel method for running portfolio optimizations without requiring any special code or solver add-ins. For example, given up to four asset classes I can tell you what percentages of each asset will maximize or minimize a desired result. Combined with my other techniques for studying multiple timeframes simultaneously, that will allow me to add some fun new tools to the site. Now I just need to figure out what to optimize.

I have a few ideas for where I'd like to start (and biases against certain curve-fitting behaviors I don't want to encourage), but the possibilities are wide open. So here's an open question to consider while you're taking a break for (or from) the holidays: What kinds of asset allocation problems would you like to be able to solve?

[Dragline]

All I want for Christmas is updated Portfolio Charts!

Maybe its not what you are asking, but I'd still like it to have a "plug" that would represent alternative investments (annuities, p2p, rental housing whatever), for which you could just set a fixed interest rate. So I could just say -- I'm going to put 10% into this alternative investment that I estimate the rate to be a fixed 5% (or whatever).

[Tyler9000]

Yeah, I suppose it's also a good time to dig back through the suggestion box. There are several good ideas still floating around.

January should definitely be busy with the new 2015 data and the various updates that entails. I hope to start adding a few more new things as well.

[jennypenny]

I like the new section explaining the asset classes.

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I probably just need more coffee, but I can't figure out why the sustainable WR for this chart is so much lower for a 10yr duration. What am I missing?

[FBeyer]

The one thing I'd love to have, is the ability to type in one asset allocation, and then get output from the entire range of figures one can produce.
Like FIretime, pixels, and safeWR chart all at once, say.

[fips]

I like the new section explaining the asses classes.

I probably just need more coffee, but I can't figure out why the sustainable WR for this chart is so much lower for a 10yr duration. What am I missing?

Methodically, the sustainable WR shows the worst possible time range, as explained here.

[jennypenny]

I like the new section explaining the asses classes.

Yeah, I really need more coffee this morning.