No. of Recommendations: 6
A headline that caught my eye this morning:
“ A Spectacularly Underappreciated 15 Years”
https://ritholtz.com/2025/04/an-amazing-15-years/The last few years I’ve had a nagging feeling that my investment success was pretty obviously too good to be true. I was an unsophisticated car salesman who started buying Berkshire in 1998 (like I said, unsophisticated), and continued buying as long as our small car dealership was profitable. I got a little bit more intelligent later on and only bought when the P/B ratio was in my favor. The GFC killed the car business in 2009 so I stopped buying Berkshire and retired at the early age of 45 with what I thought was just enough to live on. I got nervous in 2011 and started up a small used car business, and ran that and saved a bit more money over the next 5 years, and retired again with a better (but still not super large) portfolio size.
Fast forward to the past few years, and I’ve ended up in the top 1% of NW in the US according to stats I read. I knew in my mind this was ridiculous, and probably too good to last, so we never spent much money like most “rich” people. I hate to say it, but it looks like the chorus from this old Merle Haggard song might be coming true:
Are we rolling down hill
Like a snowball headed for hell?
With no kind of chance for the Flag or the Liberty bell
Wish a Ford and a Chevy
Could still last ten years, like they should
Is the best of the free life behind us now?
Are the good times really over for good? 