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Tag: Index Funds

Asset Allocation of Your Investments

As you start to build some wealth, you’re presented with a new set of challenges. You’d ideally want your money to work for you and make money in return and you’d at the very least like to preserve your wealth with respect to purchasing power i-e fighting inflation.

Asset allocation is a strange topic for me because I’ve received all sorts of advice here. The advice, however, varied the most depending on the wealth of the person giving the advice.

As a general rule, the richer you are, the more conservative you’re with your allocation. Really wealthy people put a large amount of money at work, for low-risk returns, generating a decent chunk of cash. While up and coming investors and younger folks are aggressive and put a large portion of their wealth to generate high-risk above average returns.

I’m not going to give specific wealth advice, but personally I design my allocation such that 10% of my investments can make up to a maximum of 90% of my returns and 90% of my investments can potentially make 10% of the returns for me.

It is also why I really like crypto class of assets and I think every person should experiment with 5-10% of their wealth for trying to achieve really parabolic results. While the rest of the wealth should be allocated in safer assets such as equities, bonds, real-estate etc.

For equities, I like to build lazy portfolios with 70% sub-allocation for US indexes, 20% for other developed-world indexes, and 10% for the emerging economies.

And like everyone else, a major chunk has to get into real-estate which is not only safe in the most cases, but helps with both capital gains and recurring income.

The Invisible Indexes Everyone Should Be Paying Attention To

A few weeks ago, I spoke of the benefits of building lazy portfolios that you can do so by buying certain indexes. That seems to be a good strategy at least while the over-all market is growing and not going through the bearish sentiment.

There are other types of indexes that we often can’t see. They are hidden in plain-sight and I think we all should be paying attention to them.

Yesterday, Saad RT’d this. And I couldn’t agree more. Both with the original tweet and Saad’s comments.

Stripe is a really great company and despite being a fintech company, it’s really open and inclusive. Fintech companies are driven by mega regulations and can struggle with innovation. And considering that, Stripe’s openness is a surprise for me.

Off to the original tweet, Stripe is not just innovative and inclusive, it’s also an index. It’s an index of all internet commerce companies collectively powered by Stripe. Have a look at how Stripe has grown over time

Shopify could also be an index like that. And as investors we should be paying attention to these indexes.

In the crypto sphere, Coinbase could be an index. However, since only private investors could participate in Coinbase’s growth and the IPO hasn’t happened yet, the retail investors can not buy that index yet. But there’s 1 crypto index, that you could still be buying, at your own risk of course. A few years ago I tweeted about it

$BNB is a native token of Binance which is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world. And despite what direction crypto markets move in, Binance always makes a profit. And as $BNB holder, you can be party to that.

At the time of my tweet, the total market capitalization of all crypto assets collectively valued at $381 billion dollars. Today the collective market cap is $216 billion dollars which is almost 45% lower.

Combined market-cap of all crypto-assets on 13th March 2018.

BNB’s market cap at the time of my tweet was $814 million dollars. Today the market-cap stands at $2.2 billion dollars. BNB has posted growth of 2.7x despite the over-all performance of the crypto-market.

$BNB’s market-cap on 13th March 2018.

So watching out for these proxy indexes can be a relatively safer way to grow your investments.

Disclaimer: The information provided is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered legal or financial advice. To the maximum extent permitted by law, I disclaim any and all liability in the event any information, commentary, analysis, opinions, advice and/or recommendations prove to be inaccurate, incomplete or unreliable, or result in any investment or other losses.

Lazy Portfolios; Simplest Way to Invest In Stocks

Stocks are often misunderstood, especially in Pakistan. I haven’t met many people who are comfortable investing in them. Stocks make Pakistanis so uncomfortable that less than 1% Pakistanis invest in stocks compared to over 50% Americans.

Personally, I also never understood stocks until recently when I realized how easily Americans are pouring in part of their earnings every month in stocks without having to pick and choose, re-balance, trade etc. They would simply build what is known as a “Lazy Portfolio”.

Lazy portfolio generally comprises of 2-3 funds. But it can even have as little as 1.

There are 2 reasons in my opinion why this kind of investment works.

Firstly, you pay close to nothing in management fee. Such funds have low operating costs as there is no human intervention and the fund only tracks a particular index such as the S&P500 Index. You buy one fund, and your money goes into 500 largest publicly traded US companies automatically in the same ratio as their market capitalization.

Secondly, since you’re not picking stocks yourself, you’re not exposed to the risk of each individual company. Instead your only bet is that collectively largest 500 publicly traded US companies will be larger in size tomorrow than they were yesterday.

To learn, what basket options you can buy, check out this. To learn more about investing in stocks, read this and this.

Disclaimer: The information provided is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered legal or financial advice. To the maximum extent permitted by law, I disclaim any and all liability in the event any information, commentary, analysis, opinions, advice and/or recommendations prove to be inaccurate, incomplete or unreliable, or result in any investment or other losses.

The Power of Compounding When Investing

Yesterday, I wrote a bit about importance of investing. I showed the returns of S&P 500 Index for 10 years from Jan 2009, to Jan 2019. I mentioned that your returns would be over 200% in 10 years in USD. I further mentioned, that if you re-invest your dividends, you would have a return of 270% in the same period. See the additional 70%? This is where all the magic happens.

Let me explain this with an example. Suppose you receive a sum of Rs 100,000 at your graduation at the age of 22. You invest this money at an average rate of return of 10% per year and you keep this money invested for 40 years until your retirement at 62. During this investment, you have two options; you can either withdraw your returns every year at Rs 10,000 per year or you could re-invest your profit. Let’s discuss in detail what happens in both cases.

If you withdraw profits every year, after 40 years you would have Rs 400,000 (40 x 10,000) profit and Rs 100,000 principal. Giving you a total of Rs 500,000 after 40 years. Not so interesting, is it?

But if you re-invested Rs 10,000 profit every year, you would have Rs 4,525,925 after 40 years. A bit more interesting, isn’t it?

You invested the same amount of money, your rate of return was identical, and with the first option your capital stood at 5X while with the second option it stands at a whooping 45X. Here’s a compounding calculator for you to test all sorts of cases.

Is Cash Really Trash?

If you’re like me, born and raised in a Pakistani middle class family, you would have to earn your financial freedom. You weren’t born with it and you have to work your way up. Thankfully, unlike the previous generations, it’s easier for us to do so. With access to global markets, and a potential reach of 3.2 billion, you’ll make it even if you get fraction of the market.

But what happens once you achieve your financial goals? You earn a certain amount of money, and you stash your banks with cash and you feel it’s going to last for a certain period of time. But along the way, you also realize its running short faster than you thought.

There are 2 reasons why that could be happening. You may be over-spending and not keeping track of your finances. And that the inflationary financial system is not designed with you in mind. It is eroding your purchasing power, and pushing you two step backwards as you try to take a step forward.

This is especially true for Pakistan where inflation is high as well as the PKR has only weakened against the USD since the inception of the country. But it is also true for US where inflation at average is 2% per year for the last 10 years. Bitcoin on the contrary has only increased purchasing power in its life cycle and hence can be categorized as a deflationary currency, although some disagree.

But how do you solve this crisis? By not keeping the majority of your savings as cash. Cash can be bad, especially if it’s PKR you’re holding onto. Over 50% Americans invest in stocks for the long-term to preserve and grow their wealth while 0.125% Pakistanis do the same in comparison.

If you had held on to S&P 500 index for 10 years starting from Jan 2009 to Jan 2019, you’d have had a return of over 200%. It would have been over 250% if you re-invested dividends and this would be in USD, of course making additional money for you if your base currency was PKR.

Even if you invested in 2007 at the market peak and went through the financial crunch of 2008, you’d still be up over 100%, and 150% if you re-invested dividends.

If stocks isn’t your thing, and it wasn’t my thing too, you could invest your money anywhere you like. But it is absolutely necessary to do so. Because at the very minimum, you have to preserve your purchasing power, even if you’re not trying to increase your wealth with aggressive investing strategies.

It is still a good idea to hold on to some kind of cash. It’s great to have it in emergencies, and it’s what you need to survive. Having access to cash is also great when things are trading at a discount and markets are in turmoil. At the same time cash is the only asset that is guaranteed to lose value, other assets may or may not. And the only point I’m actually trying to make is cash isn’t as safe as I originally thought or as most people probably think.

Disclaimer: The information provided is for informational purposes only. It should not be considered legal or financial advice. You should consult with an attorney or other professional to determine what may be best for your individual needs. I do not make any guarantee or other promise as to any results that may be obtained from using my content. No one should make any investment decision without first consulting his or her own financial advisor and conducting his or her own research and due diligence. To the maximum extent permitted by law, I disclaim any and all liability in the event any information, commentary, analysis, opinions, advice and/or recommendations prove to be inaccurate, incomplete or unreliable, or result in any investment or other losses.