FI
Fiserv, Inc.
stock NYSE

I do think you need to be realistic about the scenario where you are laid off during a recession, and he's much runway you'll have. 
Unless you're already FI, the answer is not going to be "infinite". So there always will be some residual risk if you cannot get another job at all, which is not comfortable, but also not fixable by anything other than accumulating large assets.
If you have a couple of years of spending in brokerage, and it drops by 30% while you cut expenses by 30%, you may think that's enough.
The flip side is that keeping your money invested will help you get to FI faster, at which point you no longer need to worry about buying laid off.
I did this strategy when my income and assets were much smaller and it worked out. To some extent I was lucky.
Again, it's very personal. I'm just trying to offer a counterpoint.

Bro i was in same confusion 6-7 months back. Had zerodha for stocks and was doing mf on groww. My cousin told me about Fundsindia and I tried it mainly because they have this fund comparison thing and also advisor support without paying extra. Not saying groww is bad. I still use it for small SIPs but for main portfolio I shifted to FI because tracking and insights are better also one thing don’t go demat route for MF, SoA is always better. You can switch anytime without headache

Ben Felix did a great 3 part series on Youtube about these types of funds ([Part 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygVObRx9X68), [Part 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzDFbv_JSks&t=647s), [Part 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzDFbv_JSks&t=647s)). In part 2 of the series he looked at a bunch of the "better" covered call funds that have 10 year history's (most of these funds are very new) and ran some back testing. He set up 2 portfolios with the same amount of money, one with a covered call fund and another just holding the underlying index or closest approximation if an index was not used for the CC fund. He then assumed the holder of the covered call fund spend the entire distribution (dividend) and then forced the other portfolio to withdraw an equal amount from their stock portfolio, usually threw a combination of dividends paid from the fund and selling shares. In these test he found that the ending balance for just holding the underlying fund with no covered calls outperformed on average by 26%, keep in mind that is while actually spending the same amount of money.
Due to the how CCs work, the capped upside combined with the very little down side protections that CCs offer means you will get hit with largely the same losses as the underlying fund and will stunt growth when stocks do recover, stocks have been shown to have mean reverting tendencies. Sequence of returns risk which is basically what you are talking about here, is largely determined by withdraw rate and inflation adjustment. The dirty secret about sequence of returns risk is that a stock market crash is actually less detrimental to a risk appropriate portfolio accompanied with a reasonable withdrawal rate compared to inflation. Stocks have been observed to have mean reverting tendencies after a crash and generally outperform inflation in the long run. The worst time to retire based on the[ Bengen’s 94 paper](https://www.financialplanningassociation.org/sites/default/files/2020-05/7%20Determining%20Withdrawal%20Rates%20Using%20Historical%20Data.pdf) (which is where the 4% rule comes from) would have been a retirement in the late 60s right before a spike in inflation and market stagnation. If you look at the [FI Calc](https://ficalc.app/?additionalIncome=%5B%5D&additionalWithdrawals=%5B%5D&annualWithdrawal=40000&bondsFees=0.05&bondsFinalRatio=15&bondsInitialRatio=40&cashFees=0&cashFinalRatio=5&cashGrowth=1.5&cashInitialRatio=0&changeAllocationsOverTime=false&equitiesFees=0.04&equitiesFinalRatio=80&equitiesInitialRatio=60&inflationAdjustedFirstYearWithdrawal=true&initialPortfolioValue=1000000&maxWithdrawalLimit=60000&maxWithdrawalLimitEnabled=false&minWithdrawalLimit=20000&minWithdrawalLimitEnabled=true&numberOfYears=30&portfolioRebalanceEquation=linear&rebalance=true&rebalanceFrequency=1&retirementStartingAge=60&withdrawalStrategyName=constantDollar) you see that even the great depression doesn't create a scenario where you become particularly close to running out of money.
Covered calls may actually be detrimental when used in a retirees portfolio.

Wires fees are also higher because they more often require human intervention by the FI. Credit/debit/ACH very rarely do.

FI ALLY

We started posting in this sub in August 2025. A year on, we went back through everything we published and looked at how those stocks have actually done.
The table below includes every individual stock deep-dive we published in this sub. No cherry-picking. That transparency is usually missing - people brag about winners and never post about losers. The only thing we left out is posts where we covered a few stocks at once, just to keep the table readable (we plan to post them separately).
There's also a drawdown column. Some of these are green now but were badly red on the way. Showing you the end point without the middle would tell you nothing about what actually holding them felt like.
Prices as of 4 September. "Worst after" is the lowest closing price since we called it. Not all of them were positive calls. We concluded Nike was not attractive at the price, and that Google was overvalued.
The tickers link back to the original posts, so you can see what we actually said at that time.
|Date|Stock|Price then|Worst after|Drawdown|Now|Change|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|6 Aug 2025|[DECK](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/SwWANZ4NXB)|$105.72|$79.54|\-25%|$85.81|\-19%|
|11 Sep 2025|[PHM](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/Eeowujr4Mb)|$138.66|$110.11|\-21%|$124.45|\-10%|
|29 Oct 2025|[REGN](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/FCCK93yTDC)|$652.91|$600.66|\-8%|$827.72|\+27%|
|31 Oct 2025|[LULU](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/1vTQ06yiuE)|$170.54|$100.61|\-41%|$100.61|\-41%|
|3 Nov 2025|[ADBE](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/TPhJ32ZMys)|$337.47|$193.41|\-43%|$266.51|\-21%|
|1 Dec 2025|[FI](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/X5cENHPafl)SV|$63.80|$47.18|\-26%|$53.00|\-17%|
|2 Dec 2025|[MSFT](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/pPJ6WxVCFa)|$491.92|$352.83|\-28%|$499.70|\+2%|
|9 Dec 2025|[MA](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/APV2V1jk21)|$537.55|$471.55|\-12%|$579.21|\+8%|
|27 Feb 2026|[APP](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/GB5eNiNbgQ)|$434.77|$298.59|\-31%|$320.56|\-26%|
|4 Mar 2026|[CTSH](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/PUQBTshArk)|$65.12|$38.73|\-41%|$62.31|\-4%|
|13 Mar 2026|[PAYC](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/A7ipitmg00)|$125.71|$113.59|\-10%|$231.67|\+84%|
|19 Mar 2026|[CRM](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/Q44U6oFQqT)|$194.99|$150.12|\-23%|$259.23|\+33%|
|23 Mar 2026|[NOW](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/iRp0mH9wSa)|$110.95|$83.00|\-25%|$141.26|\+27%|
|2 Apr 2026|[MU](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/1xttZpDgm8)|$366.24|$366.24|\*|$1,016.59|\+178%|
|9 Apr 2026|[ORCL](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/c1b0b93FPV)|$135.00|$114.99|\-15%|$158.78|\+18%|
|4 Jun 2026|[EXEL](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/vYV8inO5B9)|$52.49|$50.38|\-4%|$59.01|\+12%|
|30 Jun 2026|[MSFT](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/OAikJR2VYG)|$373.02|$373.02|0%|$499.70|\+34%|
|2 Jul 2026|[META](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/tAfkJDtIHY)|$582.90|$539.03|\-8%|$616.77|\+6%|
|7 Jul 2026|[GOOGL](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/bqrctoEDuD)|$367.03|$317.69|\-13%|$338.46|\-8%|
|8 Jul 2026|[ORCL](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/f77zYkdo0D)|$140.49|$114.99|\-18%|$158.78|\+13%|
|9 Jul 2026|[NVDA](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/s/OLwMDFURiy)|$202.78|$190.01|\-6%|$230.36|\+14%|
|12 Aug 2026|[NKE](https://www.reddit.com/r/ValueInvesting/comments/1vn59x8/does_wall_street_expect_a_recovery_or_more_pain/)|$40.51|$38.12|\-6%|$38.40|\-5%|
\* MU story was [originally posted on X](https://x.com/nav_dhand/status/2040266659940946123?s=20), and we were a bit late to post here. Micron is dated from the 1 April selection rather than the post.
What we take from it
\- Buying quality when it's undervalued 'generally' works. The calls that worked did so because we ran both sides, quality and valuation, not one or the other.
\- Most fell below our entry price at some point. Average maximum drawdown was about 18%. If you sold during those, you lost money on calls that were right. Patience is so important in value investing.
\- Good analysis plus patience still doesn't guarantee anything. CTSH fell 41% and has since recovered, but LULU fell 41% and is still sitting at its low. ADBE fell 43% and is still down 21%. APP is down 26%. Nothing in the analysis separated those from the ones that worked when we posted.
\- The 2025 calls did worse than the 2026 ones. When we backtested our quality algo last year, cyclicals were the one group that consistently didn't work. So we excluded them by default from the quality strategy page, though you can switch them back on. Three of the five 2025 calls still underwater are consumer cyclicals: DECK, PHM, LULU. But ADBE and FISV are not, so the sector story only explains part of it. Nothing from 2026 is cyclical. One year is far too short to conclude anything.
\- MSFT is really two separate analyses, and both worked. We assessed it as overvalued in December 2025 at 492. It fell to 353, a 28% drop. In June, at 373, we assessed it as undervalued. It's at 500 now, up 34%.
\- We avoided the value traps. Nike had fallen 75% and looked like the obvious bargain. We said it wasn't, and it hasn't gone anywhere since.
\- ORCL is the one that looks like a miss and isn't. We assessed it twice, in April and July, and both times concluded the debt load made it unattractive regardless of the growth story. It's up 18% and 13% from those posts. We're not troubled by that. You don't need to own every stock that goes up. We still won't buy it due to the balance sheet issues.
If something in the table looks wrong or if we have missed any post, say so.
Disclaimer: We may hold positions in some of the stocks mentioned, and those can change without notice. This is a review of our published analysis, not investment advice or a recommendation. DYOR.