Weekend Reading – Managing Your Portfolio Through Downturns & UK Broker Landscape
Weekend Reading is a collection of Investment Research and Lifestyle topics from all corners of the Web. We source the highest quality insights from Wall Street and Main Street that you may apply to your investment process. Unlike the rest of Bankeronwheels.com, this series is provided without additional guidance. As usual, everything is to be used at your own risk. Below is the type of content we shortlist:
You can’t predict. You can prepare.
Featured
UK Brokers: Choose Your Broker Tribe (Banker on Wheels)
This is part 2 of Bankeronwheels.com’s Definitive Guide to choosing a Stock Broker in the UK.Over the past year we’ve published 15 reviews of UK brokers. It’s time to pull what we’ve found together for a deep dive into the UK broker landscape. In this first article, we look at the structure of the UK retail investor world – the accounts available, the regulators, the kinds of investors involved, and the kind of products provided by brokers.
Portfolio Construction
Asset Allocation
Asset Allocation: Vanguard guiding on moving from 60/40 to 40/60 (Vanguard)
Elevated interest rates and high starting equity valuations continue to imply a narrow equity risk premium. As a result, our time-varying asset allocation (TVAA) portfolio, which emphasizes starting valuations, maintains a significant overweight to fixed income relative to a 60/40 benchmark.
- How To Protect From The Next Market Crash? (Banker on Wheels)
- Vanguard's forecasts have fairly subdued expectations for U.S. stocks. (Basis Pointing)
- Who’s Afraid of Rising Treasury Yields? Not Stocks (Advisor Perspectives)
- The Rate of Return on Everything, 1870–2015 (San Francisco Reserve Bank)
- Stock Market History Illuminated US vs EUROPE (Albert Bridge Capital)
Managing portfolios through equity market downturns - market history (Cambridge Asssociate)
The last major equity market downturn ended more than a decade ago, and today investors worry about slowing growth and worsening trade wars. Whether the next downturn is a few months away or a few years away, this is an excellent time to prepare portfolios to successfully navigate equity stress. We believe the best way to navigate an equity market downturn is to enter it with a plan in place.
Understand Financial Markets
At more than $10 trillion outstanding, the eurodollar market is one of the biggest forms of shadow banking activity out there. It's also one of the most interesting markets in existence, allowing non-US banks to hold and lend offshore dollars that effectively sit outside of the Federal Reserve's control. But where did eurodollars actually come from? Why did the US allow these "shadow dollars" to exist at all? And what do eurodollars mean for the greenback's role in the global financial system?
How To Invest
Active Investing
Factor Investing
Decomposing the market's return (Verdad)
2024 was another stellar year for US equity performance, with the S&P 500 Total Return Index returning 25%, following a stellar 2023 performance of 26%. Over these same two years, we have been hard at work building our own internal factor model here at Verdad to help decompose the drivers of return and volatility within global markets. We believe these types of factor models are instrumental for both making sense of the world (return and volatility attribution) and for building mean variance–optimized portfolios.
Small Cap Value Investing: Is It Still Worth It in 2025? (Forget About Money)
Karsten Jeske (Big Ern) and Paul Merriman engage in a lively debate about Small Cap Value Investing versus Broad Market Strategies. Should you tilt your portfolio toward small-cap value to capture a potential risk premium, or is sticking with broad-based funds like VTSAX the more reliable approach? Karsten and Paul offer opposing yet insightful perspectives to help you refine your long-term investment strategy.
Discretionary Investing
- The Discounted Cash Flow Dilemma: A Tool for Theorists or Practitioners? (CFA Institute)
- Stock picking is an individual sport so the winning streaks are intoxicating and the losing streaks excruciating. (microcapclub)
- How New S&P 500 Companies Performed in 2024 (Visual Capitalist)
- European equity - it’s always darkest before the dawn (Robeco Qauntitative Investing)
- Data Update 1 for 2025: The Draw (and Dangers) of Data! (Aswath Damodaran)
- What's Wrong with XOVR and SpaceX (Echo Beach)
Sustainable Investing
Alternative Asset Classes
Wall Street
- Singapore’s stock exchange hits 20-year low in listed companies (FT)
- How Analyst Job Cuts on Wall Street Are Reshaping Equity Research (Bloomberg)
- The Single Biggest Individual Financier In The World. The Richest Woman In America: Hetty Green (Colossus)
- Hindenburg Research is closing shop (Hindenburg Research)
ETFs
UCITS ETFs
US ETFs
Wealth Management
Personal Finance
Should I overpay my mortgage or invest? (Vanguard)
With interest rates expected to fall in 2025, you might be wondering how to make the most of any extra savings or cash left over in your bank account each month. In this article, we summarise the pros and cons of overpaying your mortgage. We also compare how much someone could potentially save on mortgage interest with the amount they could earn from investing.
Platforms
UK’s Neobrokers: Which One Is The Best For You? (Banker on Wheels)
Apple released the first iPhone in 2007. 17 years and 16 iPhone generations later, the generation born around the turn of the century now have jobs and money of their own. They haven’t known a world without handheld, app-based tech products. A new wave of brokers has emerged to meet the needs of this market. This generation of investors are not particularly bothered about well-known names. Today, let’s focus on Tier 2 Brokers – those neobrokers that target the new generation of investors in the UK.
(Early) Retirement
Financial Independence Planning in 2025 – The 3 Early Retirement Checklists (Banker on Wheels)
Bankeronwheels.com is dedicated to helping you become Financially Independent. Some of our readers are also part, or interested in, the Financial Independence, Retire Early Movement (also known as “FIRE”). As part of Bankeronwheels.com Lifestyle series, Kathrin shared how she discovered FIRE. Today, she shows how she implemented her plan through checklists. How can you use her experience in 2025 to reinvent yourself?
Financial Advice
- The Financial Advisor Checklist: What To Look For (And Avoid!) (Peter Lazaroff)
- Attracting Clients Who Want To Align Their Investments With Their Values With A Sustainable Investing Approach, With Peter Krull (Kitces)
- 9 Questions for Financial Planning Columnist Bob Veres (Morningstar)
- Planning Your Best Year Yet (TRAP)
Design Your Lifestyle
Personal Development
Health & Wellness
Careers & Entrepreneurship
Financial Entrepreneurship (CFA Institute)
Are investors more like sprinters or marathon runners? This research brief addresses this question and explores how the choice of a time horizon sets the pace of the investment “race,” while entrepreneurship fuels the strategy. In this race, some investors sprint to uncover temporary market inefficiencies. Other investors are in for the long haul, drafting behind the wisdom of the crowd. And, as in the world of running, each racer can be a winner in his or her own course.
Travel
Adventure More: Inside Across Andes Race (Bikepacking.com)
Across Andes is known for being the first ultra-cycling race in Chile, crossing the longest mountain range in the world from Chile to Argentina. Each year, riders from all over the globe gather in Chile, with the sights set on the challenging 1,000-kilometer route. Among them was athlete, director, and photographer Sami Sauri, who returned in 2024 after pulling out of the race the year before.
Tech & Economy
Economy
Dependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality (McKinsey)
In confronting the consequences of demographic change, societies enter uncharted waters. Absent action, younger people will inherit lower economic growth and shoulder the cost of more retirees, while the traditional flow of wealth between generations erodes. Long-standing work practices and the social contract must change. More fundamentally, countries will need to raise fertility rates to avert depopulation—a societal shift without precedent in modern history.
Tech & Science
And Finally
Good Luck and Keep’em* Rolling!
(* Wheels & Dividends)
Trade Wars, Real Wars, but Equities Close To All-Time Highs: Is It A Good Time To Invest?
7 Reasons Why Japan May Be Your Next Cycling Adventure
Nomads in 2026: Genki vs SafetyWing – Which Travel Insurance Wins?
How You Can Cycle The World – A Practical Guide
Weekend Reading – Vanguard Cuts Fees across 15 ETFs & IBKR launches prediction markets
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