Inflation is like beauty. Despite thinking, or being deceived into thinking, that a universal measurement is possible, what I see is different from what you see. Last year I wrote a couple of posts on the effects of the recent inflation surge on me and my family. Other than highlighting Read more
This post was born as a quick reaction to the 2022 Golden Butterfly portfolio performance and then morphed into a collection of thoughts about portfolios, diversifiers, cash vs trend, a levered version of the Permanent Portfolio and…probably other things that will hit my brain while I perform the week-long writing Read more
Today I will review the ASYMmetric S&P500 ETF, ticker ASPY, in an unconventional way. I still remember when I listened to the very first episode of the Animal Spirit podcast because I was on holiday in Costa Rica, traveling by bus from the capital to a surf spot on the Read more
I had this post in my ‘queue’ for a while; I was hoping to ride a bit of the Netflix wave about the Madoff doc but I had other 3k things going, including surgery so…here we are, finally. The initial flash of inspiration came when I watched this video from Read more
A week ago I received a message from a reader, who just finished university and is starting his first internship in a few months. Considering the new phase of his life, he wanted to discuss saving and investment strategies. I immediately felt the guy deserved the very best answer I Read more
The Safe Withdrawal Rate is one of the most debated concepts about retirement. Why? The human being is a creature that needs certainty. Assurance. Certitude. We cannot accept that what happens to us is simply…random. The existence of humanity itself happened by chance. And yet we created religions, God(s), philosophy, Read more
In April last year, I introduced The Italian Leather Sofa model portfolio. As a reminder, here is the portfolio composition: 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 Read more
When I tell people that Twitter is one of my best working tools, most of them think I am joking. Most of them do not use Twitter. Years ago, when FB was still a thing for under-65, someone correctly said that on FB you find the friends you have while Read more
Two weeks ago, in the Pirates of Finance podcast, Jason Buck said “every great family wealth has been built on a great swindle”; you can imagine how I chuckled when I read this article on Bloomberg on how cocaine smugglers infiltrated the (now) world’s biggest shipping line, MSC. To give Read more
In order to save optimize time (which I do not have), I thought I could browse for new, interesting ETFs available for European investors, meaning UCITS compliant, and then write a post about them. This is a search I do regularly, mostly because my Twitter feed talks only about US-listed Read more