Investing Archives - The Poor Swiss

Interview of Patrik Schär – CEO of Selma, Robo-Advisor

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting, SwitzerlandLeave a comment

I had the opportunity of interviewing Patrik Schär, the CEO of Selma Finance. For those of you that do not know, Selma Finance (Selma) is a Swiss-Finnish Robo-Advisor company. It is a young company. Patrik founded it, with three other people, in 2016.

I have not yet talked about robo-advisors on this blog. However, they are getting more and more popular. The idea is that you can get smaller fees by automating most tasks, hence the robo-name. And it is much simpler than investing by yourself. It provides a good entry point into the investment. And Selma is a great option for those that would choose that route!

First, Selma is different from a bank in that it is almost entirely automated. It has lower fees than a bank. It gives you a personal investment assistant that can assist you all the time. Another cool thing with Selma robo-advisor is that they follow passive investing philosophy, reducing the fees and following the market performance.

But enough from me, Patrik Schär, the CEO, will tell you everything there is to know about Selma!

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How to choose a stock market index to invest into

Mr. The Poor SwissInvestingLeave a comment

If you are convinced that index investing is the way to go, you need to choose the indexes you want to invest in. You can create a portfolio that contains several indexes in which you are going to invest.

We have already talked about index investing and the way indexes were replicated. But we have not looked into details how to compare stock market indexes. There are a lot of stock market indexes. In fact, there are now more indexes than stocks. So index picking may become as difficult as stock picking. There are some very special stock market indexes. In this post, we are only going to focus on broad market indexes.

I am not going to go into details into exactly the portfolio you can choose. The post is really about choosing between different indexes. For instance, what is the difference between small indexes and large indexes? Or should you choose a market-cap weighted index or an equal-weighted index? If you already know you want to invest in U.S. equities, how do you choose between all the U.S. indexes?

This post should help you choose between indexes to invest into. There are many different indexes, even for the same country.

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What is the Russell 3000 Index?

Mr. The Poor SwissInvestingLeave a comment

(This post was first published on StojFinance. Thanks a lot to Jasper for the opportunity of guest posting.)

We have already discussing index investing in details. There are many stock market indexes. Sometimes, it is very difficult to pick a stock market index to invest in. But we have not covered any index in particular. You have probably already heard of the S&P500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) indexes. But have you heard of the Russell 3000 index? It is not as widely known as other indices. But it is a very interesting index that covers a larger part of the United States stock market than more popular indexes.

The Russell 3000 Index is managed by the FTSE group that also manages many other popular indexes. It contains the 3000 largest U.S. companies in the stock market.

In this post, we are going to see exactly what is the Russell 3000 Index. We are also going to see a few related indexes from the same group, such as the Russell 2000 Index. Finally, I am going to compare the S&P 500 index with the Russell 3000 Index. They are both popular indexes and people often misunderstand the difference between both.

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Best Personal Finance Books

Mr. The Poor SwissBudget, Financial Independence, InvestingLeave a comment

Since I started my journey to a better financial state, I have read many Personal Finance books. I have mostly read books about Investing. I have also read some more general personal finance books that are going all around. I thought it would be interesting to compile the list of all the books I have read so far.

Here, you will find the list of all the best personal finance books I have read. I have put them into several different categories. I will keep this page up to date with the future books I am going to read.

If you have any suggestion of book for me, I would be glad to hear about it!

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How to change broker and transfer your portfolio

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting8 Comments

Recently, I have opened a new broker account at Interactive Brokers. Since DEGIRO does not let me trade in U.S. funds anymore, I decided to stop working with them and change broker. I still like the DEGIRO broker. But I would only recommend it if you only want to invest in European funds. Currently, Interactive Brokers lets me trade in these funds. Moreover, I may also save on some fees by using the Tiered pricing of Interactive Brokers.

However, that means that I currently have two broker accounts. I plan to only finance the Interactive Brokers account. For me, there is no current advantage in having several broker accounts. Therefore, at some point, I will have to transfer my existing portfolio from one broker to the other.

In this post, we are going to see the two main ways to change broker and transfer your positions from one broker to another. And I am going to discuss how to choose between the two.

If you have ever changed broker account, I would really like to hear about your experience!

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How to open an Interactive Brokers account

Mr. The Poor SwissFinancial Independence, Investing13 Comments

In 2020, Swiss investors will lose access to U.S. domiciled Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). This is because of a new set of laws from the Swiss government. These laws are following the ones already impacting the European investors. Unfortunately, DEGIRO decided to implement these laws in advance and therefore I already lost access to these funds one year in advance. Therefore, I decided to create an Interactive Brokers account.

Interactive Brokers is an excellent United States broker. It is known for its cheap fees and its excellent range of offered investment products. It is being used by many personal finance bloggers for instance.

In this post, I am going to go over the reasons I need to open a second broker account. I am also going to go over some detail about Interactive Brokers. Especially, I am going to go over the details of how to open an Interactive Brokers account. It is not very difficult but there are a few things you need to know before you start your application.

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January 2019 – Off to a good start!

Mr. The Poor SwissBlogging, Investing, Monthly3 Comments

It is already the end of the first month of 2019. I am still doing the mistake of writing everything with 2018 so far. I need to get used to the new year. So far, the year started well for us and our finances.

In January 2019, we managed to save a nice percentage of our income! This is great to start the year with more than 50% of savings in the first month! Moreover, the stock market finally started recovering from the terrible last months of 2018. With this, our net worth got a very jump ahead!

As you read this post, I will already be in China where I will be celebrating Chinese new years with family in law. Thanks for the magic of scheduling posts, you will still be able to read my posts! I shall be able to read comments normally.

In this post, we are going to see what happened to us and our finances during the month of January 2019.

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Financial Freedom – Book Review

Mr. The Poor SwissFinancial Independence, Investing, Side Hustle4 Comments

Financial Freedom is a book by Grant Sabatier. Financial Freedom is about reaching Financial Independence, or Financial Freedom as the author is calling it. The book is set to be released on February 5th. Grant was nice enough to offer me access to a pre-release Kindle version.

It follows mostly the story of Grant who achieved FI in about five years. He was able to become more than a millionaire in less than five years although he was unemployed at the beginning of his story. His story is really interesting and motivating. Oh, and by the way, Grant Sabatier is the successful blogger behind the Millenial Money blog.

However, the book is not only about the story of Grant Sabatier. It is mostly about the lessons that Grant learned during his journey. He will try to teach you all there is to know about how to become Financially Independent yourself.

In this post, I am going to go over the Financial Freedom book into details. The things I liked, the things I did not like and what the book has to offer you!

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Buy or Rent – Which is Right for You?

Mr. The Poor SwissBudget, Frugality, Investing, Real Estate7 Comments

This is a guest post by Jasper L. Stojanovski from Stojfinance.com. Jasper is a 19 years old man with a passion for investing that hopes to pursue a career in finance. I am very happy to have him contribute to this blog.

Are you moving out of your home and cannot decide whether to buy or rent?
Many people prefer owning a home. However, financially, this might not be an option for you now. In this post, I will explore the pros and cons of each, so you can decide what is best for you. But before I begin, you will need to answer a few questions:

How long do you plan to live here?
What is the price of housing in your area?
Do you have any savings?
Do you have a good credit rating?
Can you afford to perform regular maintenance?

Once you will have the answers to this question, you will be ready to consider whether you should buy your home or rent your home.

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2018 Top Five Posts from The Poor Swiss

Mr. The Poor SwissBlogging, Budget, Frugality, Investing2 Comments

Now that the year is over, I thought it would be interesting to see which of the posts I wrote in 2018 have been the most popular. Therefore, I collected the list of the Top Five posts from the blog in 2018.

For this Top Five list, I took the five most visited posts of the year, counting page views. I did not take any pages from my blog into account. In fact, the most popular page on the website is the home page, closely followed by the About The Poor Swiss page. I should note that this may not be the best metric to check popularity. Indeed, some posts are older than others and as such have more views than really recent ones. Moreover, even though some posts have a lot of views, they do not have a lot of comments. So this is not a perfect list. Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to see what come out!

Stay tuned for the five most read articles from The Poor Swiss blog in 2018!

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