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Practical, opinionated guides on ETF investing. No fluff, no affiliate links. Just what you need to invest with confidence.
Practical, opinionated guides on ETF investing. No fluff, no affiliate links. Just what you need to invest with confidence.
REITs hedge inflation over decades. In the year inflation arrives they can fall hardest. A US REIT fund lost 24.40% in 2022, global infrastructure held flat.
The companies that supply a boom get paid whichever brand wins. Finding them inside an ETF is harder than the idea suggests, and the holdings show why.
Oil, pipelines, utilities, grid equipment and uranium all sit under the word energy. The sector mix inside each fund is what tells them apart.
A 60/40 portfolio left alone for 92 years averaged 85% in equities. Rebalancing controls that risk, and barely touches what you earn.
MSCI puts emerging markets at 12% of the investable world. Adding a separate EM fund is an overweight, and the index you pick changes a quarter of it.
Most contributions are already dollar-cost averaging. The decision that moves your portfolio is where each one goes, and it can rebalance for free.
Ray Dalio's all-weather portfolio balances risk across economic regimes. Why the design leans on bonds, what 2022 did to it, and what the packaged ETFs cost.
You found a cheaper ETF. Selling the one you own can trigger a tax bill on your gains. When the switch is worth it, and how to switch without selling.
Your broker shows a nominal return. Fees, tax, and inflation shrink it to your real return, and how much depends on where you invest.
There's no clean US ETF for AT1 CoCo bonds. You already own them inside preferred funds, and some hold far more of them than others.
Value, momentum, and quality are real return premia. Capturing them means holding a tilt through a decade of underperformance most investors abandon.
Holding the same allocation in every account leaves money on the table. Asset location puts each asset where tax hurts least, and the rule changes by country.
Cat bond ETFs can diversify a portfolio because disasters do not follow the business cycle. The trade is a real loss risk and a costly new wrapper.
A core-satellite portfolio keeps broad market exposure at its centre and gives every smaller position a defined job and cap.
A bond ETF keeps replacing maturing bonds. Learn how duration and credit quality shape the job it can do.
The right number depends on how much you're investing. A practical scale from one fund at $2k to six past $100k, with the reasoning behind each tier.
Physical gold trusts, mini versions, gold miners, UCITS equivalents. What gold does in a portfolio, and how to pick the right wrapper.
Leveraged, YieldMax, JEPI-style covered-call, buffer ETFs: the structural traps that look attractive on paper but underperform a plain index over time.
Short-term Treasury and money market ETFs pay real yields with near-zero credit risk. What they hold, where they beat a savings account, and where they don't.
Low-volatility ETFs cut portfolio swings and trail the market by 2 to 4 points a year. The trade pays off in a few narrow situations.
Investors everywhere overweight their home country. History shows why that's a risk, and how globally diversified ETFs fix it.
The expense ratio is the most important number on an ETF factsheet. What it is, and why a fraction of a percent costs you six figures over decades.
Beacon classifies every ETF by the job it does for your portfolio, then scores it on cost, size, liquidity, and track record. The full method, no black box.
An ETF is a basket of investments you can buy in a single trade. How they work, and where the modern ETF market hides its traps.
Three index funds. That's all you need for a diversified, low-cost portfolio that beats most professional money managers over time.
Growth is the default goal for most investors. How to build a growth ETF portfolio that compounds for decades, and what to keep out of it.
Dividend ETFs can pay steady income, but high yield often hides risk. Sustainable income comes from dividend growth: companies that keep raising payouts.
Decades of data show almost nobody consistently beats the market. Why that's good news for how you invest.