Getting Started
The decisions that only need making once
Most of investing is a handful of choices made at the start and then left alone. The rest is maintenance.
Joachim Brandt
Funds writer, The Investment Habit
Joachim writes about index funds, trackers and reading a fact sheet without being sold to.
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20 articles
Funds & Trackers
Reading a fund fact sheet without being sold to
A fact sheet is a regulated document and a marketing one at the same time. The useful parts are rarely the largest.
Funds & Trackers
Diversification is not the number of funds you own
Three funds tracking the same market are one investment held three times, at three sets of charges.
Getting Started
The annual review that takes twenty minutes
A long-term portfolio needs maintenance, not management. Here is the whole list.
Funds & Trackers
Fund choice absorbs the effort that changes the least
Investors spend weeks selecting between broadly similar funds and minutes deciding how much to contribute. The attention is…
Funds & Trackers
How a portfolio quietly becomes an identity
Once holdings become part of how you see yourself, selling one stops being an adjustment and starts being an admission.
Funds & Trackers
Simple portfolios feel like an admission of ignorance
A single diversified fund looks like something you settled for. The discomfort is social, not financial.
Funds & Trackers
The fund you researched longest is the one you cannot sell
Effort already spent should have no bearing on what you hold next. It reliably does.
Funds & Trackers
Say out loud why you own each holding
A portfolio you cannot narrate is a portfolio you will manage by instinct, and instinct is the expensive part.
Funds & Trackers
A satisfying portfolio is a warning sign
Investing that feels rewarding week to week is usually delivering entertainment, and entertainment has a price.
Funds & Trackers
Comparing portfolios is a category error
Another person return tells you nothing useful, because you cannot see their horizon, their risk, their contributions or their…
Getting Started
Opening the account is not the same as being invested
Money that arrives in an investment account sits in cash until somebody tells it what to buy. A surprising amount of it never gets…
Getting Started
What your platform actually does with the money you send it
Custody, nominee accounts and client-money rules decide what happens if a provider fails. Almost nobody reads about them until it…
Getting Started
The paperwork that decides where the money goes without you
A nomination form takes ten minutes and can override assumptions that would otherwise take years to unwind. Most accounts are…
Getting Started
Raise the contribution when the pay rise arrives
Money you have never had in your bank account is far easier to invest than money you have grown used to. The window closes within…
Getting Started
Investing for a child asks a different question than investing for yourself
Whose money it is, when they take control of it, and what happens if plans change are the real decisions. The fund choice is the…
Funds & Trackers
Market-cap weighting decides your concentration for you
A size-weighted fund holds most of its money in whatever has already grown most. That is a design feature, and it has consequences.
Funds & Trackers
Physical and synthetic replication carry different risks
Some funds own the index. Some own collateral and a contract promising the index return. The difference surfaces only when…
Funds & Trackers
The letter telling you your fund is changing
A holding you never intended to sell can be merged, repriced or wound up without your involvement. The letter arrives with a…
Funds & Trackers
Bond funds do not behave like the bonds inside them
An individual bond matures and repays a known amount on a known date. A fund of bonds never matures, and that changes what it can…