Category: Investing

Investing is an essential part to building wealth. If you invest your savings in stock market or in another form of investment, you will greatly increase the speed at which your net worth increases.

Below, you can find all the articles from this blog about investing. Find out about Cash, Bonds and Stocks. There are also many articles about index funds which is the instrument I am using to invest! Find out why index funds are the best way to invest right now. And also why Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are great investments.

Interview of Julius Kirscheneder, Founder of The Neon Bank

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting, SwitzerlandLeave a comment

Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing Julius Kirscheneder, one of the founders of Neon. I hope you will like this interview as much as the other interviews I have made in the past on this blog.

Neon is a great Swiss bank. I have already talked about it as one of the best banks in Switzerland. What makes it different from the other banks is that it is entirely digital. You will not find Neon offices in Switzerland. Instead, you will have your bank in your pocket all the time!

Another way they distinguish themselves is that they are very cheap. In fact, if you use it well, they are free!

Neon was founded in 2017 in Switzerland by four people, one of whom is Julius that I will be interviewing today. They now employ ten people, mostly in Zurich. In fact, they are not really a bank since they do not have a banking license. They are working with Hypothekarbank Lenzburg acts, which acts as their banking partner.

So, let’s hear what Julius Kirscheneder, Founder of the Neon Bank has to say!

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13 Greatest Stock Market Myths that do not die

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting2 Comments

The stock market is a strange place for many. It is surrounded by many myths. And if you are not careful and believe in these myths, you may well end up losing a lot of money. Some of these myths make people not want to invest in the stock market. As such they are losing a nice opportunity to invest their money.

Some of these myths came from the early stock market where it was indeed more difficult to start investing. However, many things are not true anymore and some things that were facts long ago are now myths.

It is important that you do your own research. And it very important that you base your investing strategy on facts and not myths. For this, it is very interesting to go over the myths to make sure you do not fall for one of them.

In this post, I am going to list the 13 biggest myths of the stock market.

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Why Dollar Cost Averaging is not as good as you think

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting10 Comments

When you have a large sum of money to invest, you have two choices. Either you invest it at once or you cut it in smaller sums and you invest it over a longer period. The latter option is called Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA).

Most people will tell you that you should always Dollar Cost Average your investments. However, I believe that investing a lump sum is always better than using DCA.

In this post, we are going to see what is DCA exactly and what are its advantages and downsides. With that done, we will know how to invest a lump sum.

We are also going to talk about Continuous Investing. This when you invest your savings every month, as soon as you have it available. Some people call this DCA, but I think this is not accurate. These are two different things. One is great, but the other is not.

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Interview of Felix Niederer, CEO of True Wealth Robo-Advisor

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting3 Comments

Today, I have the pleasure to interview Felix Niederer, CEO of True Wealth! I have done several interviews in the past on the blog and they were well received. One of my readers, Roy, suggested that I interview the CEO of True Wealth as well and this is now done!

True Wealth is an online wealth management company, based in Switzerland. It was founded in 2013 and is well established in the asset management sector. Its founders are Oliver Herren and Felix Niederer, the latter is also the CEO and the one I am interviewing today.

They are part of the Robo-Advisor movement that has started this last decade. Instead of paying large fees to active traders, you pay lower fees and an automated system will do the investing for you. This is the case of True Wealth. You choose a portfolio and then every time you add money to your account, it gets invested according to your portfolio.

So, let’s hear what Felix Niederer, CEO of True Wealth has to say!

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How to start investing in P2P Lending

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting23 Comments

You probably have heard of P2P Lending! It is the new trend of investing these days. A lot of people are investing and some people are even using it as their sole investing instrument.

When I created my Investor Policy Statement, I stated that I could consider investing between 5% and 10% of my net worth outside of stocks. Therefore, I decided to start researching P2P Lending. And after a while, I decided to start to invest some money.

I have not invested a lot of money into it yet. And I do not plan to invest a lot of money at all. This is just some small diversification. I believe this could not replace stock investing. And I believe this is riskier.

In this post, we are going to see the basics of P2P Lending. And I am going to detail my current investments.

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How I moved my portfolio with Cash and Market Timing!

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting8 Comments

I am sure you have heard many times that market timing is bad! I have even said it on this blog several times. But recently, I did some market timing. I had to transfer my entire portfolio from one broker to another. And by the time the money was transferred, the price had increased too much. So I timed the market!

And market timing saved me about 1000 CHF. But do not take me wrong, I still would not advise this to anyone. Hell, I would not even do it again. It would have been much better to automatically transfer my portfolio from my previous broker to the new one!

In this post, I am going to detail how I switched my portfolio from DEGIRO to Interactive Brokers. I used some extra cash to help me. And I ended up timing the market to buy back my shares. You need to keep in mind that my portfolio is fairly small. I only had to transfer about 50’000 CHF worth of shares. Some of the things I did would not have been possible with a much larger portfolio. There is no solution that would fit all situations!

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Distributing Funds vs Accumulating Funds: Which is better?

Mr. The Poor SwissFinancial Independence, Investing5 Comments

It can be difficult to choose between Distributing Funds and Accumulating Funds when you need to choose two funds. And the problem is also the same when you need to compare two Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). At first, it was not clear for me which one was better when I started designing my portfolio. Now, I always prefer Distributing ETFs.

Most shares pay a dividend to its shareholders. If you hold shares of a company paying a dividend, you will receive cash dividends several times each year. Since a fund is holding many shares, every fund will receive dividends. Once a fund receives a dividend, it will have to give it back to the real shareholders: you!

There are two ways for a fund to give back the dividends back to the investors. First, it can give back the money directly to the shareholders. This is a Distributing Fund, also called an Income Fund. Or, it can reinvest directly the dividends into the funds, hence increasing its value. This is an Accumulating Fund or a Growth Fund.

Whether you talk about funds or Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) is exactly the same in this context. A Distributing ETF is simply a Distributing Fund traded on the stock market.

In this post, we are going to go over the differences between Distributing Funds and Accumulating Funds.

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The 5 Most Used Stock Market Order Types for Investing

Mr. The Poor SwissInvestingLeave a comment

If you are using a broker, you probably have seen that there are many types of stock market order types that you can for investing. Are you overwhelmed when you see all these options? Do not worry, most of them you will never need.

Personally, I have only used three different stock market order types in my investing life. Active Traders may use many stock market order types. But passive investors are not going to need more than a handful of them. In this post, I am going to go over the five most-used stock market order types that are available in most brokers.

All of these Stock Market Orders are available in Interactive Brokers (IB), my current stock market broker. But most of them should be available in most serious brokers.

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Transferwise vs Revolut: Which Is Best For You?

Mr. The Poor SwissFrugality, Investing12 Comments

TransferWise and Revolut offer services that are quite similar. They are both proposing cheap money transfer in many different currencies. I now have both cards. But, I am mostly using my Revolut card. So, many of my readers asked me why I was mostly using my Revolut card where I could have only used my TransferWise card. Today, I am going to answer the question: Which is better between TransferWise and Revolut?

When I started using Revolut, there was no way to top it up for free from my bank account since they did not have a Swiss bank account. Therefore, I was using a TransferWise card as an intermediary between my bank account and my Revolut account. Now, Revolut has a Swiss IBAN and I do not have to use my TransferWise card anymore. Let’s see why I am using Revolut more than TransferWise.

Both companies will help you save money on foreign currency exchanges. However, they are still different in their fees and their offers. In fact, they both have some pros and cons. And that is exactly what we are going to go over in this post.

For this comparison, I am only going to go over the personal accounts, not the business accounts. Both TransferWise and Revolut offer accounts for businesses. But this is out of scope for this article.

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Neon Bank: Free Swiss Digital Bank

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting, Switzerland4 Comments

Neon is one of the newest Swiss Digital Banks! It offers an entirely free bank account. Having a free bank is very important if you want to save money for managing your money. Swiss Banks are becoming more and more expensive. It is great to see some free alternatives!

Neon is a digital bank. It has no offices. You can manage your money entirely from your phone. With your bank account, you will receive a Mastercard that you can use for your payments. And you can use the mobile application to pay your bills and transfer money to other bank accounts.

One of the great things with Neon, compared to other digital alternatives is that your funds are insured! If it goes bankrupt, you are insured up to 100’000 CHF! You have the same security as if you had a class bank account.

We are going to see exactly what is Neon! Should you use it? How does it compare to other Swiss banks? And what about Revolut?

If you keep reading to the end, I will have a special offer for you!

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