Blog Posts

We’re looking at the topic of Bitcoin in the context of a balanced portfolio. For this, we’re looking at standard portfolios that are a mix of diversified stocks and bonds, with 15% gold. Then we add Bitcoin in allocations of 10%, 5%, and 3% and look at the results. After that, we look more carefully […]

What are the highest-returning – but sustainable – ETFs? What we’re doing in this article isn’t just listing option-income funds (like JEPI or QYLD) or levered ETFs (which aren’t appropriate beyond day trading purposes due to tracking error) but ETFs that are more strategically engineered to provide higher returns. These could include overlays, alt exposures, […]

When it comes to investing, few names carry as much weight as Warren Buffett, as one of the world’s most successful investors. Over the decades, Buffett has developed an investment approach that has made him one of the world’s most successful people by conventional measures. What especially stirs up public interest in Buffett is his […]

Exchange rates have always been one of the noisiest variables in global finance.  If you trade interest rates, the rate is either there by date X or it’s not. If you trade bonds, they move based on duration and sometimes credit risk, but the payout is usually known ahead of time. But exchange rates are […]

Why have small-cap stocks historically outperformed large caps? And does this still hold true today? That’s the basis of the size factor, nested in the broader area of finance known as factor investing. Factor investing fundamentally is about isolating specific characteristics of assets – e.g., size, value, quality, low volatility – to harvest either: outperformance […]

The pursuit of value – finding assets priced below their intrinsic worth – has been a cornerstone of investing for centuries. Despite the variety of strategies today, value is still the bedrock of many today – i.e., how can you get the most out of what you pay? What yield do you need to justify […]

The UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbook covers a 125-year dataset of financial returns over 35 markets and multiple asset classes. It’s useful to investors and long-term allocators because it provides insights into what kind of returns can be expected and how to go about making portfolios more resilient.  For traders and shorter-term allocators, this is […]

In this article, we have an era-by-era compendium of stock-market-relevant facts and statistics. We go from ancient antecedents and early joint-stock experiments, through the Dutch birth of the modern exchange, to today’s high-speed, ETF-soaked, options-heavy markets.    Ancient and Medieval Antecedents (to 1500) In classical Athens (5th-4th c. BCE), private bankers (trapezitai) took deposits, made […]

Limiting drawdowns and tail risks is one of the key goals – or at least considerations – of a portfolio. How do we reduce drawdowns without paying for insurance in the form of options (which tends to be expensive and drags down long-term returns)? That’s what we’ll cover in this article.   Key Takeaways – […]

Asset correlation is the degree to which different assets move together for the chief purposes of diversification value. Bitcoin, since its introduction in 2009, has evolved from a speculative asset among a niche audience to an emerging macro asset. For many individual traders, they’re more interested in the volatility and price movement. For institutions, they’re […]