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Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by opportune on Sunday April 21, 2019 @07:45PM (#19715273)
I do this but I'm beginning to wish there were a way to exclude specific stocks from the ETF to improve performance. Basically looking for something exactly like SPY but with a way to blacklist certain stocks that I think are poor investments (e.g. Lyft). As far as I know there isn't any way to do this short of buying tons of individual stocks to create my own diversified portfolio without the stocks I want to avoid, which simply isn't worth my time given the sums I have invested and how much performance benefit I think I would get with those stocks excluded.

I have a theory that with a modicum of common sense you can probably increase your gains by 1-3% per year by avoiding stocks that are overbought by ETFs simply by virtue of their market cap or industry (meaning, the main reason these stocks hold their current valuation is that they have a lot of buy-side support from the fact that they are included in many ETFs).

Maybe a good fintech business opportunity since afaik this type of product doesn't exist!

Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by unforeseen9991 on Sunday April 21, 2019 @10:34PM (#19715959)
The product you are looking for exists in the form of hedging out what you don't want in the ETF. Buy your ETF, and short the stocks you don't want in it.

ETF's are low to no rates because they don't have active management, and you are talking about active management.

With active management, you are describing the job of a hedge fund manager, and essentially wanting to create your own fund.

Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by opportune on Sunday April 21, 2019 @10:45PM (#19716006)
If I do that though then I pay a premium to open the put/short position in the form of theta and interest respectively. And since my portfolio isn't that big I would end up allocating a sizable percent of it to open short positions on all the stocks I want to exclude. So as far as I can tell, it's considerably more expensive than just not holding those stocks to begin with

What I really want is a way for a company like vanguard to let me purchase something based on an index but in the form of a weighted basket of fractional shares. That why I can keep the same allocation as SPY but hold shares that I can micromanage to "fix" any issues I have with the ETF. Theoretically that should be possible to set up for not very much money since there's no active management on behalf of the fund.

Or, you define your own ETF, maybe initially based on some existing ETF or well known index, and then you can dump arbitrary amounts of money into it - but without actually having to individually buy the shares yourself. Maybe a product like this exists already but I don't know what it's called. I would be willing to pay a higher expense ratio than normal low-cost ETFs charge to use this product, but not as high as a hedge fund (since I am the one actively managing it).

Re:Ask HN: What is your money-making side project outside pr... by hammock on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @05:00PM (#19732807)
There is a new company that lets you build your own basket of up to 30 stocks or ETFs. It's not exactly what you're looking for but might be helpful. https://www.motif.com/motifs/byo