I like David Dredge’s metaphor of a portfolio like a racing car: you do not need to reduce cruise speed when you have brakes. The 60/40 is a car moving always at the same speed, the one that would keep it on the track even on the nastiest turns (what Read more
A few weeks ago The Rational Reminder podcast did an episode on the Lifecycle Model. The episode features Ben Matthew, an economist with a PhD from the University of Chicago, who has developed a financial planning tool based on the lifecycle model from economics. This model aims to optimize financial Read more
Here at The Italian Leather Sofa I run a Model Portfolio, an empirical summary of all the concepts around asset allocation and diversification discussed on the blog. It is a short, and hopefully understandable, recap to the “ok, but how do I apply all the theories I read on the Read more
“The question of whether, when, and how to hedge foreign exchange risk has been a vexing one for investors since the end of the Bretton Woods system in 1973.” Probably, if you do not live in the US 🙂 Anyhow, we don’t so yes, we care. That’s the incipit of Read more
In April 2022, I introduced on this blog 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 Read more
I have been in the investing world, in many different roles, for two decades. There has never been a single bloody year where people around me coming Christmas said “Next year will be easy, I know what to expect”. As every weekend, I am reading BankerOnWheels link-fest and I stumbled Read more
When it comes to alternative lazy portfolios, I have two main sources of inspiration: Nomadic Samuel and Roger Nusbaum. Here Roger presents an alternative to the classic Permanent Portfolio (“PP”) that I found interesting. The concept behind the PP is simple and effective: This table from PortfolioCharts summarises well the Read more
It has been a while since I wanted to re-read and comment on Sam Hinkie’s resignation letter. Sam was the Philadelphia 76ers (an NBA team) GM and left in 2016. At the time, he took on a crappy team and tried to make it better by…making it even crappier. At Read more
These days, chaps are busy thinking about Xmas gifts…and I am thinking about bonds. This post is highly unstructured, as it is a sort of stream of consciousness. I have collected many thoughts about bonds this year from reading papers, looking at portfolios and listening to podcasts. Bonds can provide Read more
Finally, the day has arrived. With slightly less fanfare (and universal interest) than the Jake Paul—Mike Tyson fight, WisdomTree launched the Global Efficient Core UCITS ETF, aka NTSG. As per the title, NTSG is the Global version of NTSX, WisdomTree 90/60 ETF with exposure to US assets only. If you Read more