Seasonal Musings 2022

[VWHOFF]

Have been following Seasonal Musings posts for years. Any chance we will see a Seasonal Musings 2023? Aitrus, thanks for all you do!

[Aitrus]

VWHOFF,

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be continuing my Seasonal Musings threads. There's a couple of reasons why, but foremost among them is that family comes first for me.

I've spent years doing what equates to about a day's worth of work on the project each month, plus another couple of days at the beginning / end of each year for the year's initial posts and end of year Round Up. It's been a labor of love, and the readership levels made it worthwhile because I knew that a lot of people were befitting.

However, as time went on, readership levels fell away. Some stopped reading after 2018 (which had a very bad ending to the year, and caused some to doubt the system). Some stopped reading after a series of political dust-ups I was involved in here on the forum. Some stopped reading after mjedelin purchased the site from TSPKing. Some started following a TSPCalc strategy of some kind (so my info became redundant / lagging for them). And some just went on to other methods of investing (back to buy-and-hold, over to technical trading / trend following, etc.) Some have retired and no longer need the information. All of these were completely understandable and reasonable reasons.

When I made the cross-country move, it came with some additional responsibilities / opportunities that have encroached further on my free time. I've had to reassess my priorities and decide whether I could continue with the project, especially given that it doesn't pay. Doing this project has always been completely pro bono on my part (aside from a membership gift that a certain somebody provided me one time - you know who you are, and I still use it all the time - thank you). So I decided to wait and see how long it took before somebody noticed that I wasn't posting and asked me about it, and that would tell me if it would be worthwhile to continue.

You're the first person to ask about the status of Seasonal Musings after I last posted an update in October.

I don't plan on leaving TSPCenter. I like it here, and I made a commitment to mjedelin to moderate the forum for him. I'm on here every day, reading every comment, and answering every email that comes lands in the site's help desk inbox. It's my pleasure to keep doing so as long as he's willing to keep having me do it.

But I think the time has come for the Seasonal Musings project to come to a close. It served the main purpose for which I created it in the first place:

- To educate people about an alternate way of investing with the TSP.
- To generate discussion about the method's pros and cons.
- To document my own thoughts about the market.
- To collect and condense into one series of threads all the pertinent information I could find on the subject (both on TSPCenter and elsewhere) so that those who are curious about the method could have a one-stop location of data.

The project inspired the creation of TSPCalc and the associated Facebook group, and probably some other things I'm not aware of as well. Seasonal Musings Mixes can still be followed on TSPCalc - mjedelin has several of the Mixes I tracked right on the landing page for anybody to check out and compare. My posts are here and will be available for as long as the site is up and running (and there's probably a copy on the Wayback Machine, but I haven't checked).

I'll be keeping the 2022 thread link in my signature line. I'm not sure if mjedelin wants to Pin the thread to keep it readily available to find - it's not something I've discussed with him.

Thanks for following me for such a long time, VWHOFF. Hopefully you'll continue to be a member of the site (and of TSPCalc, if you're a member there as well). Same goes with anybody else who was a reader of my work.

Who knows, maybe I'll start it back up again in the future if my commitments and priorities change. I won't rule anything out, but for now, it is what it is.

[VWHOFF]

Thank you for the response. I certainly respect your commitment to your family and the reasons for not continuing Seasonal Musings. Just know this, your educational post have made an impact on my investment approach as I’m sure it has for many others. I am retired now for two years and have been quite successful at building my TSP wealth. My family and I have enough to live the life we want in retirement mostly due to following a strategy you have laid out.
Thank you again and appreciate all you do!

[Aitrus]

Many thanks, VWHOFF. Those words mean a lot to me.

[jdoma]

Thanks for all the hard work and hate to see it end. A suggestion by those who still follow seasonal strategies: maybe create a fantasy account called Jahbulon for that strategy so we can keep it on our watchlist and if the model ever gets tweaked in the future, we'll see it in an alert. Thanks again.

[nweis]

There is a Jahbulon's basic benchmark you can follow on tspcalc.com.

[jdoma]

Yes, it's #27. But every now and then the seasonal mix may change due to past returns. I believe this mix changed around 7 years ago from F in February to S. Tspcalc.com would not reflect this change. Unless you can edit a previous mix?