About
Hello, I'm Mohammed.
A DIY investor from Kuwait.
I'm many other things too: a photographer, a game developer, a music director and a research analyst. I'm sure I'm missing a thing or two.
For the past six years, I've spent every day reading books and research papers, listening to countless investment theses, and studying stock markets around the world. I have enormous respect for the Bogleheads and for index investing, but I believe I have an edge, and the temperament to use it, that lets me beat typical market returns. The results below are my case for it. I manage my own money, and this is where I've decided to work it out in public.
What I do here
- Portfolio analysis. I enjoy building my own portfolio, then measuring how it behaves in good years and bad, and how it stacks up against plain index funds. I do my own risk assessment, and I'm good at carrying out a well-researched plan. Market meltdowns shake me, but they don't shake my plan.
- Retirement solutions. I stress-test retirement plans against real market history, including lost decades, stagflation and the great crashes, to see which ones hold up.
- Testing ideas before I trust them. Backtests, simulations and plain arithmetic, backed by research and shown in charts rather than simply asserted.
On this blog I use percentages and ratios, never account balances or dollar amounts. The shape of the result matters more than the size of the pile.
The first run
In early 2021, I had saved enough to invest and had no idea what to do with it. I wanted my money to grow at least faster than inflation. A middle-class upbringing in West Asia doesn't teach you much about investing, so it took me until my thirties to understand the stock market, and the S&P 500 in particular. I spent a month devouring every resource I could find, and made plenty of mistakes along the way.
From February 2021 to October 2026, I ran one hell of a wildly swinging portfolio. I stuck to the principles I had studied and stayed away from crypto scams, NFT nonsense and every other fad of the day. It turned into a legendary run, one for the books. Here is how it ended.
My portfolio returned +211% in total, or 22.0% a year. Over the same stretch the S&P 500 returned +104% (13.2% annualized) and the Nasdaq 100 +110% (13.9% annualized). These are time-weighted returns, so the money I added along the way doesn't flatter the result, and index dividends are counted after US withholding tax.
Percentages tell one side of it. The other side is money: what all of my deposits grew into, measured against what they would have become in an index fund, and against the best case my advisor drew for me in 2021.
Ahead of every yardstick
What my portfolio is worth against the money I put in, the same deposits invested in the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq 100 in the same months, and the best case my advisor drew in 2021. Shown as an index: his best case for today = 100.
- My portfolio
- Nasdaq 100, same deposits
- S&P 500, same deposits
- Advisor's best case
- Money I put in
Today the portfolio is worth 2.8× everything I put in, and about 2.1× where my advisor's best case said I would be by now. The same deposits would have grown to 1.7× in the S&P 500 and 1.8× in the Nasdaq 100.
Year by year
Return in each calendar year. I came out ahead of both indices in three of the six.
- My portfolio
- S&P 500
- Nasdaq 100
Enormous risk
The extra return was not free. It came with a much rougher ride than the indices gave.
The cost of the ride
The deepest drop from a previous high, measured on month-end values.
At its worst my portfolio lost 52% from its peak and needed 28 months to get back to it. I held through it, but a fall that deep is not one I want to repeat.
Why this blog exists
I learned a lot, and I want to prove to myself that it wasn't dumb luck. So I'm running it back, one more time, with panache. This blog documents that attempt: repeating the performance, this time with better risk management.
The new plan is called New Game Plus. After the run, I split my portfolio into two pots. Most of the money now sits in a Safety pot of broad index funds, left to compound on its own, with no more money going in or out. The smaller pot holds the more aggressive New Game Plus core. A bad year should hurt less, without giving up the chance at a great one. Every month I'll post my performance with my own analysis and market commentary: the trades, the numbers and the mistakes, as they happen.
What you won't find here
I have no trading courses to sell and no products to market. I think a lot and read even more, so I needed an outlet for my ideas, and a way to keep challenging myself to become a better investor.
Please don't ask me what to buy. Do your own research and talk to a financial advisor; I have one, and you should too. If you must ask, I'll point you to an S&P 500 index fund. You can buy one knowing nothing about the stock market, and over the long run you'll likely beat most professional fund managers. But if you know nothing about the stock market and buy anything else for no better reason than “it might 10x”, you're a fool.
It's only a casino if you treat it like one.