Your friend’s stock first skyrocketed, then hit a plateau, and ultimately lagged behind the market. Sound familiar? That’s because it’s a tale as old as time. He’s now so attached to it, he can’t bear to sell. Imagine a world where he didn’t agonise over every buy or sell. A world without the balancing act of portfolio rebalancing. He probably hasn’t even heard of Vanguard LifeStrategy. Enter a quasi Golden Retriever Portfolio in a single fund. Let’s dive into why every investor should at least give it a glance.

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If you focus only on returns and covariances over a one-year investment horizon, you may conclude that commodities have no place in an investment portfolio. The efficiency of commodities improves dramatically over longer investment horizons, however, especially when using expected returns and maintaining historical serial dependencies. We’ll demonstrate how allocations to commodities can change across investment horizon, especially when considering inflation.

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One of the defining characteristics of the current market environment is the extent to which a few companies are dominating the top of the stack. The 10 largest US companies account for almost one-third of the US equities market cap—a degree of concentration we haven’t seen in decades. In this report, we take a historical look at how market champions of the past have risen and fallen in significance to shed light on how those mechanics may play out today.

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We explore Rick Ferri's approach to simple, low-cost investing and discuss how his insights apply to various investment strategies, including factor investing. We cover topics such as favoring simplicity, the enduring relevance of the 60/40 portfolio, the importance of fees, and looking to history for guidance. Throughout the discussion, we relate Rick's ideas to our own experiences in quantitative investing and financial planning, offering our perspectives on how these principles can be applied in practice. We also have some fun connecting each lesson to a KISS song.

There are a lot of misconceptions about Bogle, especially amongst his fans and the Bogleheads community. Eric’s book is not a biography of John Bogle in the conventional sense nor is it an introduction to his claim to fame, that is, index investing. The book may be characterized as an attempt to chart Bogle’s impact on the history of the mutual fund industry. Bogle was the Steve Jobs of Finance. He didn’t invent Index Funds, not ETFs. But he popularised them and made investing cheap.

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The 2024 J.P. Morgan ETF Handbook provides a detailed overview of the $13 Trillion global ETF market. The first part of the report describes ETF markets in the Americas, Europe and Asia, and discusses new market developments and trends in the industry. The second part of the report provides a complete categorized listing of all ETFs trading worldwide, grouped first by region, and then by asset class and market segment.

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In this latest pile of TRAP, the Trap Pack discuss TRAP’s first award (yes, really), IRIS, JP Morgan Guide to Retirement, Powerball winners fleeced, humans trusted more than AI (no shit) or Schroders Adviser Survey 2024 and a Banker on Wheels' guide to Equity Indices (46' minute)

“Reasons to Ride” takes an intimate look at the fifth edition of the Silk Road Mountain Race, an unsupported 1,880-kilometer bikepacking event in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Find the 15-minute film with an introduction from race director Nelson Trees here…

Join Russell Napier for a fascinating discussion with Harold James, author of Seven Crashes: The Economic Crises That Shaped Globalisation. And unlike many of our episodes, brace yourself for a relatively optimistic conclusion!