Anonymous wrote:Some posts make it seem very rare (which I’d expect), and others make it seem like every attorney in DC has twice this by age 40. We are 60 and our NW at this level is from a combo of inheritance and recent market growth. Not quite sure how we fit in. Country club members seem like they’re all regularly flying private to mansions Aspen, which doesn’t seem prudent even at this NW.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:AI provided this answer, although it is silent with regard to how many people have given levels of wealth and also post on this forum:

As of late 2025, the greater Washington, D.C. area is home to approximately 6,460 ultra-wealthy individuals (defined as having a net worth of $30 million or more), ranking it among the top 10 cities globally for this demographic. The region also boasts 28 billionaires as of April 2025.

Key UHNW statistics for the D.C. region:
Total UHNW individuals: ~6,460 ($30M+ net worth).
Billionaires: ~28 (as of April 2025, per Forbes).
Centi-millionaires: 88 (individuals with $100M+ in investable wealth).
Millionaires: Approximately 28,300 individuals have $1M+ in liquid investable wealth.
Growth: The area saw a 23.6% increase in the number of ultra-wealthy people over the past year.
Key, affluent residential areas often include McLean, Great Falls, and Potomac.

The stats for people with 100M+ are off. I know multiple people with this amount. There is also no way that the number of centimillionaires is only 3-4x the number of billionaires. Mathematically that doesn’t make sense.

Anonymous wrote:AI provided this answer, although it is silent with regard to how many people have given levels of wealth and also post on this forum:

As of late 2025, the greater Washington, D.C. area is home to approximately 6,460 ultra-wealthy individuals (defined as having a net worth of $30 million or more), ranking it among the top 10 cities globally for this demographic. The region also boasts 28 billionaires as of April 2025.

Key UHNW statistics for the D.C. region:
Total UHNW individuals: ~6,460 ($30M+ net worth).
Billionaires: ~28 (as of April 2025, per Forbes).
Centi-millionaires: 88 (individuals with $100M+ in investable wealth).
Millionaires: Approximately 28,300 individuals have $1M+ in liquid investable wealth.
Growth: The area saw a 23.6% increase in the number of ultra-wealthy people over the past year.
Key, affluent residential areas often include McLean, Great Falls, and Potomac.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.

lol. I bet $5k on Nokia a long time ago because they were going to be the comeback kid with Windows phone. Despite lots of insight into tech markets I've never managed to pick a big winner deliberately. Now I just invest in VOO.

All the "experts" on here are full of it. If it's so easy to go from 200k to millions then it should be equally easy to do it again and go from millions to 100M and then a billion. Just keep betting it all on the next winning horse.

PP here who made that $190K “bet” on AZO in 2002. Never said I was an expert. I’ve had my share of losing investments as well.

And now I’m working on my next $10M LOL. Bought into a San Diego based tech company called Cymer in the late 1990s. I doubt you’ve heard of it. This company developed the technology to make EUV lasers for photolithography. They were bought by a Dutch tech company called ASML in 2013 in a cash/stock deal when ASML was trading around $75/share. You may have heard of this company. They are in my opinion THE ultimate tech company. They have a monopoly on EUV photolithography for making advanced chips. Without their advanced EUV photolithography machines to make cutting edge chips there is no AI, Nvidia, iPhones, Apple, Meta, Taiwan Semiconductor, Google, Samsung, Intel, AMD, Micron, etc. The modern tech-based economy would not be where it is today. ASML is current trading around $1400 per share. Successful market beating individual stock investing can be done by us lowly common folk without the Ivy League degree or the high power finance career. Happy investing.

So you had $2M 24 years ago and you only have $10M now?! So you didn't replicate it. Hope you don't lose it all now on this unicorn stock.

What? No. $10M from that one investment. I didn’t mention my other investments Sorry I wasn’t clear.

You need to diversify. These companies still have their life cycle

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.

lol. I bet $5k on Nokia a long time ago because they were going to be the comeback kid with Windows phone. Despite lots of insight into tech markets I've never managed to pick a big winner deliberately. Now I just invest in VOO.

All the "experts" on here are full of it. If it's so easy to go from 200k to millions then it should be equally easy to do it again and go from millions to 100M and then a billion. Just keep betting it all on the next winning horse.

PP here who made that $190K “bet” on AZO in 2002. Never said I was an expert. I’ve had my share of losing investments as well.

And now I’m working on my next $10M LOL. Bought into a San Diego based tech company called Cymer in the late 1990s. I doubt you’ve heard of it. This company developed the technology to make EUV lasers for photolithography. They were bought by a Dutch tech company called ASML in 2013 in a cash/stock deal when ASML was trading around $75/share. You may have heard of this company. They are in my opinion THE ultimate tech company. They have a monopoly on EUV photolithography for making advanced chips. Without their advanced EUV photolithography machines to make cutting edge chips there is no AI, Nvidia, iPhones, Apple, Meta, Taiwan Semiconductor, Google, Samsung, Intel, AMD, Micron, etc. The modern tech-based economy would not be where it is today. ASML is current trading around $1400 per share. Successful market beating individual stock investing can be done by us lowly common folk without the Ivy League degree or the high power finance career. Happy investing.

So you had $2M 24 years ago and you only have $10M now?! So you didn't replicate it. Hope you don't lose it all now on this unicorn stock.

What? No. $10M from that one investment. I didn’t mention my other investments Sorry I wasn’t clear.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.

lol. I bet $5k on Nokia a long time ago because they were going to be the comeback kid with Windows phone. Despite lots of insight into tech markets I've never managed to pick a big winner deliberately. Now I just invest in VOO.

All the "experts" on here are full of it. If it's so easy to go from 200k to millions then it should be equally easy to do it again and go from millions to 100M and then a billion. Just keep betting it all on the next winning horse.

PP here who made that $190K “bet” on AZO in 2002. Never said I was an expert. I’ve had my share of losing investments as well.

And now I’m working on my next $10M LOL. Bought into a San Diego based tech company called Cymer in the late 1990s. I doubt you’ve heard of it. This company developed the technology to make EUV lasers for photolithography. They were bought by a Dutch tech company called ASML in 2013 in a cash/stock deal when ASML was trading around $75/share. You may have heard of this company. They are in my opinion THE ultimate tech company. They have a monopoly on EUV photolithography for making advanced chips. Without their advanced EUV photolithography machines to make cutting edge chips there is no AI, Nvidia, iPhones, Apple, Meta, Taiwan Semiconductor, Google, Samsung, Intel, AMD, Micron, etc. The modern tech-based economy would not be where it is today. ASML is current trading around $1400 per share. Successful market beating individual stock investing can be done by us lowly common folk without the Ivy League degree or the high power finance career. Happy investing.

So you had $2M 24 years ago and you only have $10M now?! So you didn't replicate it. Hope you don't lose it all now on this unicorn stock.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.

lol. I bet $5k on Nokia a long time ago because they were going to be the comeback kid with Windows phone. Despite lots of insight into tech markets I've never managed to pick a big winner deliberately. Now I just invest in VOO.

All the "experts" on here are full of it. If it's so easy to go from 200k to millions then it should be equally easy to do it again and go from millions to 100M and then a billion. Just keep betting it all on the next winning horse.

PP here who made that $190K “bet” on AZO in 2002. Never said I was an expert. I’ve had my share of losing investments as well.

And now I’m working on my next $10M LOL. Bought into a San Diego based tech company called Cymer in the late 1990s. I doubt you’ve heard of it. This company developed the technology to make EUV lasers for photolithography. They were bought by a Dutch tech company called ASML in 2013 in a cash/stock deal when ASML was trading around $75/share. You may have heard of this company. They are in my opinion THE ultimate tech company. They have a monopoly on EUV photolithography for making advanced chips. Without their advanced EUV photolithography machines to make cutting edge chips there is no AI, Nvidia, iPhones, Apple, Meta, Taiwan Semiconductor, Google, Samsung, Intel, AMD, Micron, etc. The modern tech-based economy would not be where it is today. ASML is current trading around $1400 per share. Successful market beating individual stock investing can be done by us lowly common folk without the Ivy League degree or the high power finance career. Happy investing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.

This.

I'm one of the PPs who is worth >$20M in our mid 40s (husband is in finance). He routinely is asked by friends which individual stocks they should invest in. His response? Index funds, index funds, index funds. His position is that he does it for a living and it's incredibly hard - you'd be a fool to risk your life savings on individual stock investing. Wanna play around and have fun? Go for it, but earmark a small amount for that and otherwise - index funds. He practices what he preaches, and our nest egg is invested accordingly.

Yet so many single stock winners here!

PP here. That's good advice for the average joe. But I'm not a single stock winner....more like a multiple stock winner with some losers here and there. I would never put all my eggs in one stock basket. And just because you work in finance doesn't mean you know how to pick stocks. Doesn't make them anymore qualified. I have lots of friends in finance and they don't know any more than the next guy about picking individual stocks. They say the same thing as your husband. Anyone can learn to read a P&L statement, balance sheet, perform discounting cost models, listen/watch earnings calls (body language & voice inflection can be very telling by the way), perform channel checks, talk to experts in the industry, etc. Those things are helpful for more mature companies but not companies in their early stages. You don't need a fancy degree to do that when it can be all learned online for free if you have the time and the desire. But in the end, do as Buffett says, invest in what you know and diversification is for people who don't know what they're doing. I bought a lot of stock in a boring non-tech company called AutoZone back in 2002 around $75/share because I repair the two cars I own and always buy parts there. Thought it would make a great investment. I'm sure you've heard of it. Good management, good cash flow, profits, expansion, management repurchases stock, etc. And car owners are keeping their cars much longer than before especially during and post-COVID thus driving up the need for car parts. The stock now trades for about $3790 for almost a 5000% gain and has made me a deca-millionaire. The S&P500 index in the meantime is up about 600% in the same timeframe. Boring stock for a company that I knew was growing and has made me wealthy. You don't have to pick the next great tech stock. Think out of the box. If you want to go with the flow and take minimal risk then sure go with index funds.

You would have had to put massive amounts of cash in AZO to get that return. That's definitely a "single stock winner" mentality. Who was putting $200K in AZO in 2002?!?!

https://stoculator.com/

I did. It actually was a little less than $200K investment. About $190K. I took gains from another winning stock and rolled it into AZO. It was about 10% of my portfolio at the time so I was ok with taking the risk. But I held for 24+ years because I knew what I owned. And sorry I rounded up to deca-millionaire. My bad. It made me a $9.5 millionaire.

That’s great. You made a bet and got lucky. You also held longer than probably 99% of AZO investors during that run. This is not repeatable by watching the body language of a CFO on an earnings call, and it’s a bit ridiculous to suggest it is.

Whatever. I wasn’t suggesting body language during an earnings call can make me hold an investment for 24+ years. But it can be somewhat telling in the short term on how the company is doing. Extensive due diligence and investing in what you know is the key. And I guess I’m an anomaly and in that 1% who hold for a very long time because I have other investments that I’ve held even longer that are crushing the market. By the way, Warren Buffett is famous for saying his holding period for investments is forever and he’s done OK for himself. He’s had investments in Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dairy Queen, etc for decades.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.

lol. I bet $5k on Nokia a long time ago because they were going to be the comeback kid with Windows phone. Despite lots of insight into tech markets I've never managed to pick a big winner deliberately. Now I just invest in VOO.

All the "experts" on here are full of it. If it's so easy to go from 200k to millions then it should be equally easy to do it again and go from millions to 100M and then a billion. Just keep betting it all on the next winning horse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.

lol. I bet $5k on Nokia a long time ago because they were going to be the comeback kid with Windows phone. Despite lots of insight into tech markets I've never managed to pick a big winner deliberately. Now I just invest in VOO.

All the "experts" on here are full of it. If it's so easy to go from 200k to millions then it should be equally easy to do it again and go from millions to 100M and then a billion. Just keep betting it all on the next winning horse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.

This.

I'm one of the PPs who is worth >$20M in our mid 40s (husband is in finance). He routinely is asked by friends which individual stocks they should invest in. His response? Index funds, index funds, index funds. His position is that he does it for a living and it's incredibly hard - you'd be a fool to risk your life savings on individual stock investing. Wanna play around and have fun? Go for it, but earmark a small amount for that and otherwise - index funds. He practices what he preaches, and our nest egg is invested accordingly.

Yet so many single stock winners here!

PP here. That's good advice for the average joe. But I'm not a single stock winner....more like a multiple stock winner with some losers here and there. I would never put all my eggs in one stock basket. And just because you work in finance doesn't mean you know how to pick stocks. Doesn't make them anymore qualified. I have lots of friends in finance and they don't know any more than the next guy about picking individual stocks. They say the same thing as your husband. Anyone can learn to read a P&L statement, balance sheet, perform discounting cost models, listen/watch earnings calls (body language & voice inflection can be very telling by the way), perform channel checks, talk to experts in the industry, etc. Those things are helpful for more mature companies but not companies in their early stages. You don't need a fancy degree to do that when it can be all learned online for free if you have the time and the desire. But in the end, do as Buffett says, invest in what you know and diversification is for people who don't know what they're doing. I bought a lot of stock in a boring non-tech company called AutoZone back in 2002 around $75/share because I repair the two cars I own and always buy parts there. Thought it would make a great investment. I'm sure you've heard of it. Good management, good cash flow, profits, expansion, management repurchases stock, etc. And car owners are keeping their cars much longer than before especially during and post-COVID thus driving up the need for car parts. The stock now trades for about $3790 for almost a 5000% gain and has made me a deca-millionaire. The S&P500 index in the meantime is up about 600% in the same timeframe. Boring stock for a company that I knew was growing and has made me wealthy. You don't have to pick the next great tech stock. Think out of the box. If you want to go with the flow and take minimal risk then sure go with index funds.

You would have had to put massive amounts of cash in AZO to get that return. That's definitely a "single stock winner" mentality. Who was putting $200K in AZO in 2002?!?!

https://stoculator.com/

I did. It actually was a little less than $200K investment. About $190K. I took gains from another winning stock and rolled it into AZO. It was about 10% of my portfolio at the time so I was ok with taking the risk. But I held for 24+ years because I knew what I owned. And sorry I rounded up to deca-millionaire. My bad. It made me a $9.5 millionaire.

Yeah, that's my point. You had $2M 24 years ago. It's easy to make money with $2M. IDK how old you are, but that's also a gamble at any age to put such a large sum, 10% of your cash in one stock.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.

This.

I'm one of the PPs who is worth >$20M in our mid 40s (husband is in finance). He routinely is asked by friends which individual stocks they should invest in. His response? Index funds, index funds, index funds. His position is that he does it for a living and it's incredibly hard - you'd be a fool to risk your life savings on individual stock investing. Wanna play around and have fun? Go for it, but earmark a small amount for that and otherwise - index funds. He practices what he preaches, and our nest egg is invested accordingly.

Yet so many single stock winners here!

PP here. That's good advice for the average joe. But I'm not a single stock winner....more like a multiple stock winner with some losers here and there. I would never put all my eggs in one stock basket. And just because you work in finance doesn't mean you know how to pick stocks. Doesn't make them anymore qualified. I have lots of friends in finance and they don't know any more than the next guy about picking individual stocks. They say the same thing as your husband. Anyone can learn to read a P&L statement, balance sheet, perform discounting cost models, listen/watch earnings calls (body language & voice inflection can be very telling by the way), perform channel checks, talk to experts in the industry, etc. Those things are helpful for more mature companies but not companies in their early stages. You don't need a fancy degree to do that when it can be all learned online for free if you have the time and the desire. But in the end, do as Buffett says, invest in what you know and diversification is for people who don't know what they're doing. I bought a lot of stock in a boring non-tech company called AutoZone back in 2002 around $75/share because I repair the two cars I own and always buy parts there. Thought it would make a great investment. I'm sure you've heard of it. Good management, good cash flow, profits, expansion, management repurchases stock, etc. And car owners are keeping their cars much longer than before especially during and post-COVID thus driving up the need for car parts. The stock now trades for about $3790 for almost a 5000% gain and has made me a deca-millionaire. The S&P500 index in the meantime is up about 600% in the same timeframe. Boring stock for a company that I knew was growing and has made me wealthy. You don't have to pick the next great tech stock. Think out of the box. If you want to go with the flow and take minimal risk then sure go with index funds.

You would have had to put massive amounts of cash in AZO to get that return. That's definitely a "single stock winner" mentality. Who was putting $200K in AZO in 2002?!?!

https://stoculator.com/

I did. It actually was a little less than $200K investment. About $190K. I took gains from another winning stock and rolled it into AZO. It was about 10% of my portfolio at the time so I was ok with taking the risk. But I held for 24+ years because I knew what I owned. And sorry I rounded up to deca-millionaire. My bad. It made me a $9.5 millionaire.

That’s great. You made a bet and got lucky. You also held longer than probably 99% of AZO investors during that run. This is not repeatable by watching the body language of a CFO on an earnings call, and it’s a bit ridiculous to suggest it is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$15m is hard to get to without generational wealth, getting lucky in tech, or slaving away in big law.

Not true! Many small business owners have done it. My husband did it in the corporate world doing risky turnarounds that he invested in. He bet on himself. He never inherited anything but a very good work discipline.

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone noticed that in DCUMlandia nobody has EVER picked a stock loser?!?

This place is magical.