📈Investing
This is not financial advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Stock analysis tools
Tikr Terminal: Equity screener and access to financial data & metrics. Useful for idea generation. Access to US based stocks is free, global stocks starts at 14.95/month
Portfolio Visualizer: Useful for backtesting portfolio compositions
Resources
The Poor Swiss: Good analysis of brokers, banking and other financial services from the view of a swiss person. The country is relevant for this kinda stuff due to local laws, taxes etc.
Ben Felix: Common Sense Investing (YouTube)- Fact based explanations about various financial topics.
Communities
/r/Bogleheads: Reddit community about long-term, diversified, passive index investing
/r/ETFs: Reddit community about exchange traded funds.
/r/Wallstreetbets: Gambling addicts playing the stock market, generally a good place to see things that should be avoided. It's best to keep in mind that usually topics are overhyped and don't actually play out the way this community imagines.
Inspiration
A History of Share Prices (1500-2016): Stocks always go up. Every crisis seems big in the moment but doesn't have a lasting impact on long term stock prices.
ETFs
$VOO: S&P 500, US only, TER 0.03%
historically S&P 500 has done very well, this is no indication for the future. It is heavily focused in tech, which suits me well. Reddit Bogleheads don't like this ETF as much, they would recommend more $VT or $VTI, $VXUS combo to have more diversification.
There are other ETFs replication the S&P 500 ($SPY etc.) what's the difference? tldr; there's very little difference in terms of performance, so it's worth it to take the cheapest ETF to reduce long term fees. E.g. $SPY has a TER of 0.09% so it's about 3x more expensive then $VOO
$VTI vs. $VOO: $VTI includes more stocks but has very similar profits to $VOO. In long-term investing it likely does not matter whether someone's investing in $VOO or $VTI
$VOOG: S&P 500 growth focused, US only, TER 0.10%
heavier focus on growth companies in the S&P 500, therefore higher possible return if this growth is realised. However the TER is worse than plain $VOO.
$VXUS: tracks FTSE global all caps, only non-US (developed & emerging) TER 0.07%
Basically a newer version (2011) of $VEU with more stocks. $VXUS and $VEU have pretty much the same curve, however $VXUS contains also small cap stocks. ($VXUS ca. 7000 vs $VEU 3000). This makes it more diversified for the same price.
$VEU: FTSE, only non-US (developed & emerging), TER 0.07%
Good way to get exposure into non-us stocks.
$CHSPI: Tracks companies on the SIX Swiss Exchange, TER 0.10%
the poor swiss uses this for their swiss market exposure
It's a common tactic to have some exposure to your home stock market
$AVUV: Small cap value, US only, TER 0.25%
good for tilting towards small cap value stocks in order to get an additional factor risk premium
Factor Investing
Single Multi-factor ETFs
$VFMF: US only, "active", TER 0.18%
Best trading days when investing on a schedule
Buying: middle of the month (10th - 15th) & middle of the week & middle of the trading window
Selling: around the turn of the month (27th+)
Why? Periodic flows of money tend to be concentrated at the turn of the month (salary, automatic investments into mutual funds etc.) (source)
Prices also tend to be most stable during the middle of the trading window - whereas right after opening or closing prices can fluctuate more.
Vocabulary
ETF: Exchange Traded Fund
Hedging
Should you use currency hedging in your portfolio:
it's unclear if hedging can improve long-term results
you should not hedge more than half of your portfolio
hedging currency is akin to an insurance, insurance services cost money, therefor hedged investments have higher fees then normal ones
they argue the average US investor is overweight in USD, from a swiss point of view I might be overweight in USD as well, so hedging would reduce this a bit
Special Corporate Situations
Spinoffs
Company A spins off a devision into a new company B
Spin off companies can be profitable to invest in because of two reasons
For large institutional investors they're too small two invest in
For private investors they're two new and there's not enough analyst coverage. This makes private investors hesitate to buy the stock as well.
This creates a window of opportunity where the stock of a newly spun off company is below its actual value.
Finding Spinoffs about to happen:
Mergers and acquisitions
When company A buys company B they generally use cash + stocks to buy the other company. However sometimes company A will also use other security to pay for company B.
When company A pays e.g. a part in bonds the investors receiving the payout will often just sell the bonds because they're not interested in holding those.
This creates an opportunity to buy those other securities cheaper.
Future bets & potential for long term growth areas
A collection of ideas on how the world might turn out 🔮. Predicting the future and betting on individual sectors, companies or specific outcomes is always highly risky.
Aging population: the world's demographic, especially in developed economies, is shifting more towards elderly people. Therefor there is growth potential in companies producing goods for the elderly, especially common medical goods such as contact lenses, drugs, hearing aids, quality of life treatments etc. [Demographic: 45+]
Climate change: the climate is getting hotter and I'm pessimistic that we will make significant impact in stopping this any time soon. This benefits developed economies more then the ones that are still developing because developed economies have the resources to adapt more easily to a changed climate. The focus on low-co2 products will likely also unfairly impact developing countries that do not yet have the resources to reduce their co2 output. [Economy: Developed] [Economy: Emerging]
AI: the rapid progress of AI models benefits companies of all sectors that can reduce their workforce due to an increase in productivity. Direct revenue from AI models mostly benefits the established big software companies (MAMAA) due to the costs involved in training a suitably large model. Also regulatory capture is in full swing where some of these companies are attempting to sway governments to regulate AI in there favour. This will make it increasingly expensive for new players to enter the market. AI startups will likely get a lot of short-term investments but fail to capture a significant market shares from the large players. Large players will likely copy or buy their innovations. To profit off AI its probably best to invest into broad market indexes as it has an impact on nearly all sectors. [Total market] [Big Tech] [AI Startups]
Space: the increasingly cheaper access to space allows for new business models involving constellations of satellites ranging from communication (internet access, private networks), monitoring of geo conditions, surveillance and research. In the long term manufacturing of speciality goods that take advantage of microgravity (medicine, artifical organs, ..) might also see rapid growth. But it is too early to invest in those. For now it's best to focus on companies that reduce the cost of access to space. Old space companies that are heavily intertwined with nation governments will likely continue to see a decline.
Algorithmic Trading
AlgoTrading101: Blog with some ideas/inspiration about self-implementing algorithmic trading. Mostly uses Python but ideas may be transferable.
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