What’s the risk that the FED next move would be a rate increase? I just listened to The Compound and Friends podcast and someone mentioned this. I do not think is a far-fetched idea, considering that we had three months of increasing CPI above 3%. Do you remember all those lagging items inside the CPI that should have brought it down? I am still waiting That theory made sense and yet… I obviously have no clue where rates would go. That’s why I run the portfolio I run. But I sense there are some groups, like commercial real estate investors, that were keeping their asses tight waiting for som ..read more

In April 2022, I introduced on this blog The Italian Leather Sofa Model Portfolio. As a reminder, here is the portfolio composition: 60% stocks (via NTSX) 40% bonds (via NTSX) 20% trend (via DBMF) 10% commodities trend (via COM) 4% Tail risk (via TAIL) -34% cash The idea behind the portfolio is stolen from here. The link offers the best explanation to what I think is the most common question related to it, i.e. why the portfolio uses leverage (and why in this context leverage decreases risk). It represents a simplified version of the portfolio I have been building since I moved to Switzerla ..read more

Thanks to Bankeronwheels, last week I read this post from Early Retirement Now on trading options. A quick self-reflection digression. I know the existence of ERN because Mr.Rip once told me about it. I had a peek at the blog and immediately my brain rejected it because of “bad layout – too much text”. This is a funny thought for someone who runs a blog with a very bad layout. Years ago I wrote to the guys behind Monevator asking…a general opinion on TILS (obv it was just a lame attempt to make them aware the blog existed). They kindly came back to me with constructive comments like “the layo ..read more

Did I buy a billion of bonds, as notional amounts, in my career? Probably. For sure if I consider various bond buyback exercises. Did I buy every single one on Bloomberg? YES (or…no? I recall once I implemented TradeWeb but I am not 100% certain I ever use it outside some tests. I changed too many jobs). By bonds I mean bonds, not bond ETFs or bond funds. Meaning each time I had to check issuer, maturity, rating, seniority, yield to maturity, spread and so on while comparing available alternatives. For this, Bloomberg is worth its cost; plus, Bloomberg is the only place where you can trade th ..read more

In the years between the end of high school and the beginning of university, I tried to participate in Magic the Gathering Pro Tour. How to define “trying” is pretty tricky. I was dedicating a lot of time to it, skipping lessons here and there, but I was not skipping the Saturday night out with friends even if the next day I had to wake up at 6am to drive 3 hours to a Qualifier tournament. I was not a natural and despite what I might have told myself, I didn’t want to put in the work. Only later I realised how ‘fatalistic’ I was about certain situations of the game: if I was finding myself in ..read more

I cannot recall how long ago I discovered @NomadicSamuel on Twitter. My definition of “Canadian Travel Blogger” might not be 100% accurate but take it as is; he’s a great chap who, for some reason, got the finance bug along his journey. In particular, he got the Picture Perfect Portfolio (the name of his blog) bug, an interest in combining great ETFs to build even greater portfolios. I love it. He made me discover ETFs that employ innovative strategies and combined those insights with interviews with fund managers, to offer even deeper enlightenment. What Talk Your Book by Animal Spirit podca ..read more

Tony Robbins just published a book about investing that is a not-so-hidden pitch to bring revenues to a Private Equity firm he’s a shareholder. Nick Maggiulli wrote a review that exposed the fact. Nothing out of the ordinary, you would say? Nick Maggiulli is a famous (? Can we say that? Not sure what’s the reference these days) blogger but, more relevant, he also wrote a book that sold 200k copies, a big success for a non-fiction author. The typical marketing process for a new book contemplates the sharing of early copies with other authors. While it is not written anywhere, the expectation i ..read more

I had some difficulty deciding whether to write about Flexible Funds (FF) in English for a broader audience, or to suggest an Italian-only guest post with FinanzaCafona. FF are definitely popular in Italy among retail investors but I have never come across them outside of my home country. However, this may be due to my lack of research on the topic. Although I will primarily refer to Italian products, I believe that there are enough universal lessons to be learned that would be beneficial to a wider audience. Sometimes the best way to expose a charlatan is to ask their opinion to a different ..read more

Jared Dillian just released a book about personal finance (?) called No Worries – How to live a stress free financial life. Who’s Jared? I am not sure how to describe him, he worked in finance, has a paid daily newsletter about finance but he also lives in South Carolina (not really a “finance” place) and writes about many things. I discovered him via Jason Buck: I love Jason and if he says to check out this Jared-guy I’d do but…I have mixed feelings about him. He is too American. Like those “the European minds cannot understand” memes: correct, going deer hunting (already) with a machine gun ..read more

A few weeks ago I listened to a great episode of the Rational Reminder podcast about Professor Cederburg’s latest research. A research that seems to disrupt traditional thinking in the field of Lifecycle Investment Advice. Two main things are considered common knowledge in the field that the paper disrupts: one is to diversify across stocks and bonds and the other is that the young should invest more heavily in stocks than the old. Here is the link to the paper and here is the link to the podcast episode. If you have the time (and the courage, considering the boring topic), I suggest you list ..read more