What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

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chris319
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What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by chris319 »

What is your longest-currently-held investment? IOW, what investment that you currently hold have you held longest?

For me it's QLD, the 2x NDX fund which I've held since 4/17/2017, over 4 years. I have no intention of selling it.

After the dot-com boom went kaboom, I had a system for trading individual stocks which was thoroughly backtested. I was being scientific about it and had a system all worked out using a subscription service. I traded the system religiously every Sunday night but the results were dismal. The system backtested well but it just didn't hold up in real-world trading, so I eventually ditched it. I became a buy-and-hold man and have never looked back.

Leveraged ETF's have done well for me, but I'm still playing catch-up to cover my dismal post-boom performance.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by ruud »

Shares of VTI bought in 2009 in a TLH exchange. (They were bought as VTSMX, later converted to VTSAX, and more recently converted to VTI)
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Ed 2
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Ed 2 »

VTSAX since 1999, VGTSX since 2000. 4 years is not long enough to call it investment :greedy
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MathWizard
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by MathWizard »

TIAA annuity and a stock index fund tracking Russel 2000.

Though my PhD was an investment in human capital that was earlier, and it paid off well
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anon_investor
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by anon_investor »

Does VFIAX count if it was originally VFINX and Vanguard converted it to Admiral class shares?
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Harry Livermore
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Harry Livermore »

Top Three:

VFIAX from 1990
AFL stock from their DRIP plan, starting in 1994
VTSAX from 1999

Cheers
NiceUnparticularMan
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by NiceUnparticularMan »

Maybe some Vanguard REIT in an IRA? I think the changeover in 401K options means that might be our oldest. If not that, then probably S and I funds in the TSP.

I'm terrible at these games because I don't track these things.
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calmaniac
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by calmaniac »

AAPL October 12 1993

Yeah, I learned a lot of hard-knock lessons in the 2000 dot-com bubble. FOMO stock picking is a sure way to lose $. Never again.

This AAPL and paired MSFT stock are the only company stocks I have left. Rest indexed ETFs.
"Pretired", working 20 h/wk. AA 75/25: 30% TSM, 19% value (VFVA/AVUV), 18% Int'l LC, 8% emerging, 25% GFund/VBTLX. Military pension ≈60% of expenses. Pension+SS@age 70 ≈100% of expenses.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Bubba24 »

VTSAX 3/4/1996
Fallible
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Fallible »

Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, yay! After reading a WSJ column by Jonathan Clements in the early '90s, I switched from Vanguard's Index 500 to VTSAX and never looked back. If I recall correctly, Clements's point was that the Index 500 was fine, but VTSAX gave investors the whole U.S. equity market, so why not go there? :)
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Marseille07 »

Anything in 401K. I just set it to the lowest ER fund resembling S&P500 and forget it.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by backpacker61 »

MCI (a closed end fund); owned since 1979.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by pseudoiterative »

chris319 wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 6:39 pm What is your longest-currently-held investment? IOW, what investment that you currently hold have you held longest?
I started investing in 2014. Outside of retirement accounts (where I don't get to meddle and select weird individual investments) the oldest investments I hold are from 2015. Back then I was reading about basic value investment concepts and sunk money into a number of per-country ETFs that appeared cheap from rather naive valuation metrics such as CAPE & Price to Book value (uh oh):

Here are my amusingly daft naive-value-country-tilt investments from 2015:
  • ENOR - ishares MSCI Norway ETF
  • EWO - ishares MSCI Austria ETF
  • RSXJ - Vaneck Russia small-cap ETF
I also bought into a Turkey ETF but let's not dwell on that.

On a bit of a tangent:
chris319 wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 6:39 pm The system backtested well but it just didn't hold up in real-world trading, so I eventually ditched it.
Thank you for sharing the anecdote. Buy-and-hold is much easier and seems to give pretty good results!

When I read "backtesting" what I hear is overfitting -- may not have been true in your case but I reckon this is true in the overwhelming majority of cases. Unless the framework for running experiments to evaluate model or system performance is incredibly carefully thought out and flawlessly executed, to accidentally prevent information about "the future" being used to tune a proposed model or system and thus give a massively over-confident estimate of the system's ability to perform well in future on genuinely new data. See also cross validation.

Andrew Gelman's blog often discusses statistical mistakes made in academia where researchers do not use valid experimental setups or valid statistical approaches, and intentionally or accidentally draw bogus conclusions about statistical relationships that do not actually exist in reality, that end up published in journals. This stuff is hard to get right and kinda interesting.
Last edited by pseudoiterative on Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
LeslieSmiley
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by LeslieSmiley »

APPL since 1998
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Marseille07 »

LeslieSmiley wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:16 pm APPL since 1998
Very nice. This quote just came to me :D
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by z3r0c00l »

$3000 worth of total stock market purchased in March of 2009, my first at Vanguard, also my best investment by far. Too bad I didn't liquidate the emergency fund and invest it all. Had junk mutual funds before then and CDs since childhood but they are all long sold.
70% Global Stocks / 30% Bonds
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by rockstar »

I've owned AXP since 2004.
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pahkcah
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by pahkcah »

Started investing in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) C Fund (S&P 500) in 1991, which was the first year Federal employees under the old Civil Service Retirement System were allowed to contribute to this fund. Longest non-Government held investment is VTI, which I have had since 2008.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Dontridetheindexdown »

Altria (MO) and its predecessor firms, since 1980, when I first began investing.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by LittleMaggieMae »

4 shares of a utility from 46 years ago (when I was 11). My dad died and my mom split up the shares between me an my older brothers. It was in a dividend re-investment plan. I think when I was in my early 20's I may have made a couple of $25 purchases (wrote a check and mailed it in). The total amount of the shares (I have a lot) is around 50K right now. I never paid much attention to it - and mostly held it out of nostalgia. I have the paper Certificate for 4 shares in my safe deposit box. :)
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Pu239 »

Silver coins pulled from circulation during the 1960s and a $20 gold coin bought in 1968.
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LeslieSmiley
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by LeslieSmiley »

Marseille07 wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:18 pm
LeslieSmiley wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:16 pm APPL since 1998
Very nice. This quote just came to me :D
Lieutenant Dan got me invested in some kind of fruit company. So then I got a call from him, saying we don't have to worry about money no more. And I said, that's good! One less thing.

:D run Forrest run!
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by livesoft »

Some TIAA traditional annuity from the mid-1980s.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Normchad »

I’ve still got my Wellington shares that I bought in 1992. Not the exact same shares due to 401K rollovers, etc, but I’ve been in VWELX continuously for the last 29 years. I don’t remember when I started buying 500 index funds, but that was in the mid 90s sometime….
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by RetiredAL »

My Dad's Trust has shares of SNXFX ( Schwab 1000) bought on 8/5/1999.

My Son still shares of SWPPX (SP500) in what was his former UGMA account that I bought for him in 2003.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Ferdinand2014 »

FXAIX (Fidelity 500 Index Fund) and its multiple ticker symbol changes since 1996.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by 22twain »

TIAA Traditional and CREF Stock annuity accounts in my 403(b) plan, since 1984.

My wife started with them even earlier, probably about 1978-79.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by LFS1234 »

I still have several 1-oz gold coins as well as some old US silver coins that I bought from my local coin dealer around 1981-1982. I hid them under my fridge. We were in an inflationary spiral and older, wiser folks were convinced that the dollar was going to zero and that financial assets weren't far behind.

Longest still-held investment in publicly traded common stocks: It's a tie between Home Depot and Coca Cola, both purchased on the same day in September 2003.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by grabiner »

Vanguard Total Stock Market was my first Vanguard fund, bought in 1997, and I still hold it. (I don't hold the shares I bought in 1997, as I sold those shares in a tax loss harvest in 2009. My current holdings of the fund date to 2008-2009.)

The oldest shares are I hold are a lot from Vanguard Developed Markets ETF, purchased as Tax-Managed International in 2002 and converted to the ETF class in 2011. I won't hold these shares forever, as I am using them for charitable donations.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Peebs »

I bought $5k worth of Philip Morris in 1991. Turned into MO, PM, MDLZ and KHC. On DRIPs the whole time. Now worth $150K+. Buy and hold works, apparently.

Sold stocks half way through the 2008-2009 slide (at a significant loss), started buying in 2009 and thereafter. Also bought UNH, UPS, FDX, VHT, VEXAX, VWUSX and so on in 2012 as recovery bets. Still have the positions. Lather, rinse, repeat in March - April 2020 and beyond with tech stocks, consumer discretionary (recovery bet), et al. All buy and hold now. No more short term stuff. We will see in another 9 years how these turn out.

I would imagine that Bogleheads would/should have positions that are 10, 20, 30 years old.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by sofarsogood »

health care fund in 1997 and added more in 2004
started s&p 500 fund in 1996 and kept adding since then
capital opportunity in 2004
still holding on these today
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by CABob »

I'm not positive but I suspect it is McDonalds bought in 1995.

Edit: And then there are some EE bonds that have reached 30 year maturity that I have cashed in in recent years. I'm going to miss that 4% fixed income interest.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Vanguard Fan 1367 »

Vanguard’s S & P 500 fund I bought in the mid 1990s
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by jeff1949 »

I-Bonds purchased in 2001.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Sandtrap »

Longest held investments….

R/E Multi Unit Residential Income Property. Many Decades.

Vanguard Total Stock Index
Vanguard Total Bond
Vanguard Balanced Index Fund

Also….businesses.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Lucky2Invest »

calmaniac wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:03 pm AAPL October 12 1993

Yeah, I learned a lot of hard-knock lessons in the 2000 dot-com bubble. FOMO stock picking is a sure way to lose $. Never again.

This AAPL and paired MSFT stock are the only company stocks I have left. Rest indexed ETFs.
Wow, what’s the basis on these?
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by esteen »

VTSAX since I believe 2001.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Thesaints »

VGHCX from 1999, not counting that they converted to VGHAX at some point.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by peterinjapan »

When the first iPhone came out, I bought APPL stock and rode it up to 10x my investment. I recognized that things were getting unsustainable and exited my position, at the peak last September and a little later. Felt weird to do but it was clearly a good time to take profits.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by gcb65 »

VPMCX converted to VPMAX bought VPMCX in 1995.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by mcblum »

the S&P 500 index fund which is part of the Thrift Savings Plan which was migrated to VFIAX after my retirement.
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calmaniac
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by calmaniac »

Lucky2Invest wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 10:42 pm
calmaniac wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 7:03 pm AAPL October 12 1993

Yeah, I learned a lot of hard-knock lessons in the 2000 dot-com bubble. FOMO stock picking is a sure way to lose $. Never again.

This AAPL and paired MSFT stock are the only company stocks I have left. Rest indexed ETFs.
Wow, what’s the basis on these?
My account web page at Fidelity lists it at $0.22/share (60,048% gain). When I bought it, the actual dollar cost of the shares was much greater than 22 cents, the $0.22 takes into account stock splits over the years.

And just to point out, this was a matter of dumb luck, not of my investing prowess. Even if one can beat the market by investing in individual stocks, it's not worth the time and mental bandwidth. Life is too short for that and I have better things to do with my time. Index investing allows for near maximal return without all of the angst, risk, and gamification of picking stocks and "riding them" to....wherever.
"Pretired", working 20 h/wk. AA 75/25: 30% TSM, 19% value (VFVA/AVUV), 18% Int'l LC, 8% emerging, 25% GFund/VBTLX. Military pension ≈60% of expenses. Pension+SS@age 70 ≈100% of expenses.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Broken Man 1999 »

I bought 10 uncirculated silver dollars, years 1879-1888, when I was 12 or 13 years old. So, somewhere around 55 years. $23.50 for the 10 coins. I haven't priced them in years.

For Vanguard holdings it would be Total Stock Market Index bought in 2011. Started as mutual fund, now held as ETF.

My first Vanguard holding was Target Retirement 2025, purchased in 2003 when I rolled over my 401K plan from Fidelity. I switched out of the Target Retirement 2025 in 2011, to cut the ERs by buying the component pieces.

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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by hnd »

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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Silverado »

Peebs wrote: Thu Jun 17, 2021 9:52 pm I bought $5k worth of Philip Morris in 1991. Turned into MO, PM, MDLZ and KHC. On DRIPs the whole time. Now worth $150K+. Buy and hold works, apparently.

Sold stocks half way through the 2008-2009 slide (at a significant loss), started buying in 2009 and thereafter. Also bought UNH, UPS, FDX, VHT, VEXAX, VWUSX and so on in 2012 as recovery bets. Still have the positions. Lather, rinse, repeat in March - April 2020 and beyond with tech stocks, consumer discretionary (recovery bet), et al. All buy and hold now. No more short term stuff. We will see in another 9 years how these turn out.

I would imagine that Bogleheads would/should have positions that are 10, 20, 30 years old.
I think my Philip Morris is the oldest, bought in 2001, and of course as you said, I now own a few others from it.

I have a couple other stocks from that same timeframe, now with all reinvestment turned off and funneled to VTSAX. Nice reminders of the old days before I learned how to invest…they will be donated at some point.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by atdharris »

Facebook stock I bought in 2013 and Microsoft in 2015. I didn't know much about ETFs back in those days but even after I adopted the Bogle approach, I have not parted ways with those companies.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by AllieTB1323 »

We bought Wellington in maybe 1990. Our next oldest holding is probably Disney which was purchased in 2002? At about $17.00 per share.

The Wellington is a single purchase into an IRA is showing a 1950% gain. There must be something to that “time in the market” claim!
Last edited by AllieTB1323 on Fri Jun 18, 2021 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
Onlineid3089
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by Onlineid3089 »

Looks like for me it is 7/31/13. I opened my Roth IRA that day and bought 210.0840 shares of VFIFX, Target Date 2050, @ 26.18.
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by BrooklynInvest »

SPY since 2001. DIA and QQQ(Q) shortly thereafter.

Yeah I know. Problem (ahem) is cap gains got large in a hurry so I just accept that collectively they're my large cap position in my taxable account. Call my strategy "boglehead adjacent."
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Re: What Is Your Longest-Held Investment?

Post by THY4373 »

My godfather gave me a single share of KO (Coca Cola) in 1977 for Xmas which has been on reinvestment ever since. The investment is now worth $25k-ish. Probably the best xmas gift I have ever got. I still hold it because it honestly hasn't been a bad investment over the years and I am sort of attached to it now.
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