Blog
5 Common Crypto Scams
With crypto summer emerging, the scammers are back with their old bag of tricks. This post is a n00b-friendly introduction to the most common crypto scams you should be aware of. Note: even if you self-custody, that’s not protection against lack of common sense. Having control of your coins makes you your own bank, i.e. …
Capital Gains and Wealth Tax in The Netherlands (Box 3 Taxes)
In this post I’ll explain how capital gains and wealth taxes work in the Netherlands. Let’s first cover the one that’s easier to explain. Capital Gains Tax in The Netherlands The capital gains tax in the Netherlands is 0%. Yup, you’ve read that right! Regardless of how much gains you realize, you pay nothing on …
The Best Emerging Market ETF for Europeans
Including an emerging market ETF in your portfolio is a great way to increase diversification, especially because of their lower correlation with developed markets ETFs. If you already invest in IWDA or you’re not happy with the internal allocation of VWCE, you might want to add an emerging market ETF to your portfolio. I’ll list a few options that …
Asset Allocation โ Finding Your Ideal Distribution
Asset allocation is a wealth distribution strategy. It represents the way an investor’s portfolio is divided into different investments. Determining the asset allocation is one of the most important decisions an investor needs to make before deploying capital in any investment. Examples of Asset Allocation Let’s say an investor is exposed to the following asset classes: …
Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts by Sally M. Winston & Martin N. Seif (Book Notes)
I’d definitely place “Overcoming Unwanted Intrusive Thoughts” among the books that had an actual positive impact on my life. As an extreme pragmatist, I always strived to dissect my worries into actionable steps. Although this works amazing most of the time, I sometimes got stuck in unecessarily long cycles of thought patterns. And only after …
Market Efficiency (Efficient Market Hypothesis)
Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) is the hypothesis that securities trade at their fair value i.e. their prices reflect all currently known information. In this post, I’ll explain how we determine if a market is efficient or not, in a beginner-friendly manner. Basically, it’s a matter of how fast trading activity reflects new information in prices. …
The 4 Year Cycle – Bitcoin Price Prediction ๐
“The 4 Year Cycle” is one of the most important posts you’ll ever read. I mean it. People that understood the cyclical nature of the markets will never struggle financially. In this post, I’ll explain the single most relevant indicator for Bitcoin’s price and how I used it to build a position with full conviction. …
Index Investing & Index Funds – A Gentle Introduction
Index Investing represents an investment strategy which aims to track the performance of a market index. Not “picking winning stocks”, not “timing the market”, not “beating the market”. This strategy is synonymous with matching the market – at least the one you choose to match. Index Funds An index fund is a special type of an …
How to Do What You Love
How to do what you love? After years of contemplating this question, I’m confident to say that I figured it out. And I can answer it in a single sentence. However, in order to relate to such an information-dense summary without misunderstanding it, we need to cover a lot of ground. I’ll start with the …
The Death of the Gold Standard – The Aftermath (Part 2)
In my previous post on this topic, I wrote about events in recent history that lead to the death of the gold standard. I’ll do a short recap and jump into the aftermath – what’s been going on after we went off the gold standard. The Gold Standard: Modern History These are the major events …
Stock Market Index โ Explanation and Examples
After publishing my post on ETFs I received many questions about how to approach picking one. Understanding stock market indices is crucial for this. In this post, I’ll cover what is an index and how to use one for your investment strategies. What is a Stock Market Index? Directly from Investopedia: A market index is …
Airdrops – The Real 0 to $100k Opportunity
An Airdrop represents a distribution of free crypto to users’ addresses. These distributions may be worth up to 6 figures and oftentimes require no financial investment. However, they’re rarely announced or guaranteed. As a veteran in the DeFi space and a recipient of over 100 airdrops, I want to shed some light on the process. …
How We Gave 3 Citizenships to Our Son (๐ณ๐ฑ, ๐ญ๐บ, ๐ฒ๐ฐ)
We’re proud to have guaranteed the status of a world citizen to our son before he was even born. We did this by granting him 3 citizenships: Dutch, Hungarian, and Macedonian. Besides emotional and financial stability, we consider multiple citizenships the biggest gift for a newborn. With all the being said, here is how we …
CSPX vs VUSA vs IUSA – My Thoughts
A US ETF is usually the core of most investors’ portfolios. For Europeans, the questions of CSPX vs VUSA or VUSA vs IUSA often pop up. In this post, I’ll do my best to answer the trilemma and give my recommendation. CSPX Ticker symbols: CSPX, SXR8, CSP1; ISIN: IE00B5BMR087 CSPX (iShares Core S&P 500 UCITS …
Obstacles to Efficiency – Taxes, Price Controls, Trade Restrictions
Welcome to the third and last post of the Supply and Demand Series. The first two posts described the self-regulatiing nature of the free markets and their efficiency in maximizing revenue and benefit to society. In this post, I’ll talk about government intervention and regulation. Specifically, how government impositions make the markets less efficient by …