Rent vs Buy Break-Even: House Price Growth Dominates
Build the rent versus buying comparison properly and one input does most of the work. Across the range UK house prices have actually deli...
· 10 min read
Portfolio & Risk | LedgerTouch Intelligence
Second Home Total Return: the Rent You Never Collect
Long-run housing returns are price growth plus rent. A second home you keep for yourself collects the price leg and almost none of the re...
· 11 min read
Commercial Property in a SIPP: Rules, Costs, Risk
A pension can buy the building your business trades from, and the rent lands untaxed. The rules on what counts as commercial are unforgiv...
· 13 min read
Off-Street Parking Planning Permission: the 5 sq m Rule
A driveway of any size is permitted development in England if the water can drain away. The 5 square metre rule bites only on impermeable...
· 11 min read
Mortgage Leverage: How 5.8% a Year Became 10.2% on a Deposit
Nationwide's series shows UK house prices compounding at 5.8% a year from 1995 to 2025. On a 75% mortgage at the period's average 2-year ...
· 13 min read
How Much Can a Service Charge Increase in a Year?
There is no percentage cap on a variable service charge in England. The limit is that costs must be reasonably incurred, and the record s...
· 13 min read
Housing Inflation Hedge: Real Returns in Five Regimes
Across 18 advanced economies from 1950 to 2020, real house prices rose an average 0.5% in the years inflation ran above 10%, and rose in ...
· 13 min read
Equity Release Compound Interest Over 10, 20 and 30 Years
Legal & General's own table puts £50,000 at 7% at £193,484 after 20 years. UK house prices grew 2.66% a year over the last two decades. T...
· 11 min read
Downsizing in Retirement: £110,864 Gross, £98,725 Net
Downsizing releases the gap between two houses, not the sale price. On Nationwide's Q2 2026 UK averages a detached to semi-detached move ...
· 12 min read
Five-Factor Model: What Profitability and Investment Add
Fama and French added profitability and investment to their three-factor model in 2015. On portfolios sorted by those two variables the a...
· 11 min read
International Factor Investing: Value and Momentum Led
Kenneth French publishes the same five factors for developed markets outside the US and for emerging markets. Over the 409 months to July...
· 10 min read
Multi-Factor Funds: The Tilt Is Smaller Than the Label
A multi-factor fund promises value, size, quality and momentum. Regress five well-known US ones on the Fama-French factors and the value ...
· 12 min read
Equal Weight Factor Exposure: More Value Than Size
Equal weight beat cap weight by 271 basis points a year from 1967 to 2009. Only 81 of those points came from the size tilt. The value til...
· 11 min read
Factor Timing Tested: No Rule Improved Risk-Adjusted Return
Buying a factor when it's cheap and selling it when it's expensive is the oldest idea in factor investing. Run 12 versions of it on 69 ye...
· 13 min read
Factor ETF Returns: Live Records Trail the Backtests
Five iShares factor ETFs tracked their index to within 0.21 percentage points a year since launch. The indices themselves are a different...
· 10 min read
Sector Returns by Decade: 100 Years, 11 Industries
Healthcare returned 11.57% a year over the 100 years to July 2026 and telecoms 8.80%. That narrow spread hides the fact that every one of...
· 10 min read
Naive Diversification vs Optimisation: 10 Menus Tested
DeMiguel, Garlappi and Uppal found in 2009 that no optimiser beat a simple even split. Run the same test on 10 asset menus and 259 months...
· 13 min read
Stock Bond Correlation: Inflation Moves It, Rates Don't
Split 72 years of US returns by the direction of the 10-year yield and the stock bond correlation barely budges: +0.05 rising, +0.12 fall...
· 11 min read
Managed Futures in a Crisis: Six Drawdowns Tested
Across every developed-equity fall of 20% or more since July 1990, a standard trend following rule gained money six times out of six, by ...
· 12 min read
Multi-Asset Fund Diversification: 94% Is Equity Risk
A 60/40 multi-asset fund looks through to 12,261 holdings held via four index funds. Measured on 98 years of US returns, 93.7% of its var...
· 9 min read
Gold as a Safe Haven: The Worst 5% of Equity Months
Over 655 months since 1972, gold's correlation with US equities was 0.01. In the worst 5% of those months it rose to 0.31 rather than tur...
· 12 min read
Emerging Markets Allocation: 5%, 10% and 20% Tested
Over the 420 months from January 1991 to December 2025, adding emerging markets to developed equities at 5%, 10% and 20% raised annualise...
· 12 min read
Bond Ladder vs Bond Fund: Duration, Cost and Cash Flow
A ten-rung gilt ladder priced on the Bank of England's curve for 8 September 2026 carries 4.61 years of modified duration. The all-stocks...
· 10 min read
Does International Diversification Still Work? 36 Years
Correlations between the US and the rest of the developed world did converge, and then they stopped: the 60-month rolling figure peaked a...
· 10 min read
Concentrated Stock Position: What Each Exit Actually Costs
One stock, most of your net worth, and a capital gains bill in the way. Staged selling, exchange funds and collars all promise a way out....
· 10 min read
REIT Correlation: 0.74, and 0.86 When Stocks Fall
A REIT fund is sold as property, a different asset from the shares you already own. Measured over 521 weeks of returns to September 2026,...
· 10 min read
MSCI World Top 10 Index Weight: 9.77% to 26.61%
Ten lines on a factsheet carry 26.61% of the MSCI World Index. In October 2015 they carried 9.77%, and the index held 362 more companies....
· 10 min read
Time Diversification: What Shrinks and What Doesn't
Over 155 years of US data, a longer holding period cut the spread of annualised real returns by a factor of six and widened the spread of...
· 12 min read
Currency Contribution to Returns: One Index, Three Bases
MSCI publishes the same global index in local currency terms and in each base currency, which lets you split a foreign equity return into...
· 11 min read
Diversification Benefit: 15 Sleeves Added to a 60/40
Fifteen candidate sleeves, each added at 10% to the same 60/40, over 433 months of monthly returns. The best raised the Sharpe ratio by 0...
· 11 min read
Small Caps Beat Large Caps in 67% of 10-Year Windows
Over 100 years of US data the smallest companies compounded 1.48 points a year faster than the biggest. Strip out January 1975 to June 19...
· 10 min read
Moving to Cash in a Crash: 10 Bear Markets Tested
Moving to cash when the market is 20% down beat staying invested at the eventual trough in 8 of the 10 US bear markets since 1926. Measur...
· 10 min read
Gold Inflation Hedge: The Record at 1, 5, 10, 20 Years
Gold beat US inflation in 53.1% of one-year windows since 1975, 52.2% at five years and 53.4% at ten. At twenty years it was 62.4%, and m...
· 10 min read
Are Index Funds a Bubble? The Ownership Evidence
Index domestic equity funds held 19% of the value of US stocks at the end of 2025, and all passive investors together held about a third....
· 10 min read
The Permanent Portfolio: 46 Years Against 60/40
Harry Browne's four-way split returned 7.44% a year from 1980 to 2025 against 10.24% for a 60/40. That gap is the price of a worst year o...
· 9 min read
Rent Is Dead Money: So Is 45.6% of a Mortgage
UK mortgage holders paid £224.40 a week in 2024-25 and only £122.10 of it built equity. Once upkeep, stamp duty and the deposit's forgone...
· 10 min read
GDP Growth and Stock Returns: The Emerging Markets Test
Emerging economies really do grow faster, by 2.5 percentage points in 2025 on the IMF's numbers. Across ten of those markets, the correla...
· 10 min read
Small Cap Tilt Sizing: What 5%, 10% and 20% Buy
Tilt size decides one thing with certainty: tracking error. Over the century to June 2026 a 20% small cap tilt bought 3.14% of it, a 5% t...
· 10 min read
Sector Concentration: What a Capped Index Actually Caps
MSCI World held 28.87% in one sector on 31 July 2026. Every diversification rule that binds a fund caps issuers, not sectors, and the ind...
· 10 min read
Rebalancing Band Width: One 5-Point Rule, Six Answers
A 5 percentage point tolerance band is not one rule. On a 60% equity sleeve it fires on a 23.8% relative move; on a 5% gold sleeve it nee...
· 12 min read
Risk Parity: The Financing Spread Ate Half the Advantage
Risk parity looks best on paper because the paper does not charge for the borrowing. Financed at Treasury bills, it beat the US market by...
· 11 min read
Global Equity Allocation: The Flat Middle of the Risk Curve
Varying a UK investor's home weight from 0% to 100% against MSCI World barely moves portfolio volatility across the middle: 9.55% to 10.0...
· 9 min read
How Many Funds Is Too Many? The Arithmetic From 1 to 20
One global index fund held 7,500 stocks at 31 July 2026 for a 0.23% charge. The factsheet arithmetic from 1 fund to 20 shows most additio...
· 9 min read
Inflation Hedge Assets: Linkers, Commodities, Gold
Three inflation hedge assets met one real inflation shock between 2021 and 2025. Commodities paid while prices were rising, gold paid onl...
· 11 min read
Endowment Model Portfolio: What Illiquidity Actually Paid
Yale's reported ten-year lead over a typical 70/30 portfolio fell from 3.8 percentage points a year to 2.2 between two consecutive annual...
· 11 min read
Portfolio Currency Exposure Scales With Your Equity Weight
Hedged and unhedged versions of the same global index differed by 0.26 percentage points a year in sterling and 7.85 in yen over the deca...
· 10 min read
Cash as an Asset Class: 92 Years, Six Rate Regimes
A permanent 10% cash sleeve cost a 60/40 portfolio 0.49 percentage points of real return a year over 92 years. That average is made of er...
· 10 min read
Equal Weight vs Market Cap: The 50-Year Record
Rebuilt from Kenneth French's CRSP data, equal-weighting the largest 30% of US stocks returned 12.04% a year over the 50 years to June 20...
· 10 min read
Bond Allocation by Age: Three Glide Paths Tested
A glide path from 75% equities to 36% and a fixed 55.5% weight hold the same average equity over a working life. Across 59 overlapping 40...
· 11 min read
Liability Matching: Same Income, Three Times the Price
An age rule answers the allocation question with a percentage. Liability matching answers it with a price. The income a 55-year-old needs...
· 11 min read
All Weather Portfolio, Rebuilt in ETFs: What It Cost
Bridgewater publishes the All Weather concept as a risk diagram with no weights and no returns. Rebuilding it from six US-listed ETFs giv...
· 11 min read
The 60/40 Portfolio: Where the Ratio Came From
No paper derives 60/40. The trail runs to a fund launched in 1929, a 1952 theory that hands you a curve instead of a number, and pension ...
· 10 min read
The Cost of Switching Funds After Underperformance
Your fund lagged for three years and the one at the top of the table didn't. On Morningstar's data to June 2026, a randomly chosen active...
· 11 min read
Fund Manager Tenure: What a Long Record Predicts
Manager tenure is on every factsheet because the SEC made it mandatory in 2004, not because it forecasts anything. In the studies that pu...
· 12 min read
Leveraged Portfolio vs 60/40: 8 Points Apart in 2022
A 40/60 portfolio levered 1.5 times holds the same 60% in equities as a plain 60/40, and 50 extra points of bonds. In 2022 that cost 8.13...
· 9 min read
Morningstar Star Rating: The Record After 5 Stars
Morningstar's own study of 43,698 funds found 5-star funds beat 1-star funds by about 0.25 percentage points a year. Vanguard measured th...
· 11 min read
Survivorship Bias: The Funds Missing From the Record
Of the 2,376 US domestic equity funds you could have bought at the start of 2005, 36.41% were still running twenty years later. The recor...
· 9 min read
Active Funds in Less Efficient Markets: What the Data Shows
The last redoubt of active management is the claim that it works where markets are less efficient: small caps and emerging markets. Over ...
· 10 min read
Closet Indexing: The Active Share You Actually Pay For
Regulators who went looking for closet indexing found it: ESMA flagged up to 15% of EU equity funds as potential closet indexers, and the...
· 11 min read
Do Fees Predict Fund Returns? The Regression Evidence
The FCA regressed UK active fund performance on charges twice. Before fees, the relationship was statistically invisible. After fees, it ...
· 12 min read
Fund Performance Persistence: What Five Years of Data Show
Sort every active fund into quartiles, wait five years, and sort again. Only 11.79% of top-quartile US equity funds stayed on top, while ...
· 10 min read
Fund Size and Performance: What Scale Actually Costs
A fund that doubles in size trades worse. The best estimates put that cost between 65 basis points and 2% a year before fees, and only in...
· 10 min read
How to Read a Fund Factsheet, Line by Line
Two real published factsheets, read line by line. The 0.19% charge that excludes dealing costs, the benchmark that comes in two versions,...
· 12 min read
The Size Premium After Banz: 45 Years, -0.30% a Year
Banz documented the size effect in 1981, making it the oldest anomaly in finance. Since April 1981 the Fama/French size factor has compou...
· 12 min read
The Low Volatility Anomaly: Beating the Market at Half the Risk
Sort US stocks by beta and the riskiest tenth has returned less than the safest tenth since 1963 — 9.53% a year against 10.79%, at more t...
· 12 min read
Securities Lending: the Manager's Cut, 7.7% to 37.5%
Index funds lend their holdings out for a fee, and the manager keeps a share of it. That share runs from 7.7% at Vanguard's Irish range t...
· 11 min read
How ETF Creation and Redemption Keeps Price Near NAV
An ETF tracks its net asset value because a handful of firms can swap the fund for its contents. They are not obliged to. Grayscale's bit...
· 11 min read
The Momentum Premium Pays 6% a Year. Then It Crashes 78%.
Momentum is the largest of the classic equity factor premiums — 6.19% a year in the Fama/French series since 1927, against 3.59% for valu...
· 12 min read
Physical vs Synthetic ETFs: the 10% Counterparty Cap
A swap-based ETF exposes you to a bank. UCITS caps that exposure at 10% of assets, and the big providers reset it to zero every trading d...
· 13 min read
REITs vs Direct Property: Same Buildings, Different Risk
In 2022 US equity REITs returned -24.95% and the appraised MSCI UK Annual Property Index returned -7.1%. Almost none of that gap is the b...
· 10 min read
Tracking Difference vs Tracking Error: The 0.32% Gap
Two S&P 500 ETFs, one charging 0.03% and one charging 0.12% all-in. In calendar 2025 the expensive one beat the index by 0.32 points and ...
· 12 min read
The Value Premium After 1992: 1.5% a Year, Not 4.8%
Fama and French documented the value premium in 1992. Their own HML series compounded at 4.84% a year across the sample they studied, and...
· 11 min read
Calendar vs Band Rebalancing: Why the Calendar Won
Calendar vs band rebalancing: a five-asset portfolio rebalanced each December scored 0.43 on Sharpe from 1972 to 2014, a 20% tolerance ba...
· 9 min read
Bitcoin Allocation at 1-5% of a 60/40: What It Added
A 1% bitcoin allocation added 0.64 points a year to a 60/40 since 2015 and 5% added 3.19. Shift the start to 2025 and the 5% sleeve subtr...
· 10 min read
The Rebalancing Bonus Is Real, but Smaller Than You Think
Vanguard's 92-year test: a 60/40 rebalanced yearly returned 8.19%, never rebalancing 8.74%. The rebalancing bonus is mostly risk control,...
· 9 min read
Position Sizing When an Asset Can Go to Zero
Position sizing when an asset can go to zero: a total loss at 5% weight needs a 5.26% gain elsewhere. What Bessembinder, Kelly and Thorp ...
· 10 min read
Checking Your Portfolio Daily: What It Costs
Checking your portfolio more often makes losses louder. In a 1997 experiment, people shown results every round bet 50.5%; those shown eve...
· 9 min read
Performance Chasing: What Happens After Money Arrives
Performance chasing, measured: specialised ETFs lost 30% risk-adjusted in five years post-launch. What fund flow data shows, and where th...
· 9 min read
Overconfidence in Investing: The Cost of Trading More
Overconfidence in investing shows up as turnover, and turnover costs return. What the Barber and Odean evidence measures, and where the m...
· 10 min read
Lump Sum vs Cost Averaging: What 46 Years Show
Lump sum vs cost averaging, tested by Vanguard across three markets from 1976 to 2022: investing at once won 61.6% to 73.7% of the time. ...
· 9 min read
Loss Recovery Arithmetic: a 50% Fall Needs 100%
The loss recovery arithmetic: a 50% fall needs a 100% gain. What that cost in real drawdowns since 1871, why bonds are not exempt, and wh...
· 9 min read
Loss Aversion: Where the 2x Figure Comes From
The 2.25 loss aversion coefficient came from 25 graduate students in 1992. A 607-estimate meta-analysis says 1.96. A re-analysis of it sa...
· 9 min read
Risk Contribution in a Five-Asset Portfolio: Where It Sits
Extending a 60/40 to five sleeves cut modelled volatility from 15.7% to 12.4%, yet equities still supplied 76% of the risk contribution. ...
· 10 min read
Equity Allocation Tested: 60/40, 80/20 and 100% in a Crash
Three equity allocations through five crashes on one 1928-2025 series: how far each fell, how long each stayed underwater in real terms, ...
· 10 min read
Employer Stock Concentration: a Decision Framework
Only 42.6% of US stocks beat Treasury bills over their lifetimes. What that record, and a 42% cost estimate, mean for employer stock conc...
· 10 min read
How Many Stocks Is Diversified? 30 Isn't the Answer
How many stocks is diversified? The classic answer is 30, from variance reduction. Bessembinder found 4.31% of US firms created all net m...
· 9 min read
Selling Winners, Holding Losers: The Disposition Effect
Investors realise 14.8% of paper gains but only 9.8% of paper losses. The evidence on the disposition effect, what it costs, and the case...
· 10 min read
Buying Dips vs Monthly Investing: 100 Years Tested
Buying the dip tested against steady monthly investing on 100 years of daily US market and Treasury bill data. The threshold you pick dec...
· 10 min read
Currency Hedging Halved Bond Volatility. Equities: It Depends
Why the standard currency hedging rule covers foreign bonds and leaves equities unhedged, the volatility maths behind it, and how a base ...
· 10 min read
Crypto Rebalancing: 516 Trades From One 5% Band
Crypto rebalancing on a 5% band around a 5% bitcoin sleeve fired 516 times in ten years. The same band on the equity sleeve fired five ti...
· 9 min read
Correlation Instability: Why a Fair-Weather Friend Fails
Correlation instability, measured: a correlation of 0.50 reads 0.21 in calm months and 0.62 in volatile ones, and the equity-bond sign ha...
· 10 min read
Core-Satellite Portfolio: When the Satellite Runs the Plan
In a core-satellite portfolio a 10% bitcoin satellite supplied 28.1% of variance over ten years. Gold at the same weight supplied 2.2%. T...
· 9 min read
Rebalancing With Contributions: Where It Stops Working
Rebalancing with contributions holds a 60/40 on target until the portfolio passes about 17 times annual savings. Past that, the median ye...
· 10 min read
Dry Powder or Drag? What Portfolio Cash Really Costs
US bills returned 0.5% a year after inflation since 1900 against 6.6% for equities. What portfolio cash drag costs, and whether waiting t...
· 10 min read
100 Minus Age: The Rule vs Real Glide Paths
Vanguard holds 50% equities at 65 where the 100-minus-age rule says 35%. What provider glide paths, human capital research and the critic...
· 10 min read
How Long Bear Markets Last: Recovery Times Since 1968
Eight major US drawdowns from the December 1968 peak onward. The median took 31.5 months to reach a new high in nominal price terms and 6...
· 10 min read
Diversification in a Crisis: What Actually Worked
Across the six times developed-world equity fell 20% or more since 1990, 10-year Treasuries and Treasury bills carried almost all of the ...
· 12 min read
Volatility vs Drawdown: The Risk You Actually Feel
US stocks in the 1970s and the 1980s had annualised standard deviations of 13.41% and 13.17% — as close to identical as two decades get. ...
· 11 min read
Fund Overlap: Five Funds, 39% in Ten Companies
Five funds — a total-market fund, an S&P 500 fund, a growth fund, a tech fund and an innovation fund — hold 1,533 companies between them,...
· 10 min read
Home Bias: How Much of Your Equities Are Foreign
The United States was 62.09% of world equity value at 30 June 2026; Australia was 1.56%. That single fact makes the home-bias question a ...
· 11 min read
Your House as an Investment: Housing vs Equities
Across 16 countries since 1870, housing's real total return of 7.05% a year edged equities' 6.89% with less than half the volatility. Tho...
· 12 min read
Investment Policy Statement: Does Writing One Help?
An investment policy statement is a rule written before the decision arrives. CFA Institute lists 16 elements, CalPERS runs 120 pages, an...
· 11 min read
Portfolio Drift: How Far a 60/40 Wanders in One Year
A 60/40 portfolio left alone ends the year a median 3.2 percentage points off target. But the distribution is lopsided: the biggest singl...
· 10 min read
Rebalancing in a Crash: Evidence From 2008 and 2020
Equities are down 30% and a 60/40 has drifted to roughly 50/50. Moving it back to target beat leaving it alone in both October 2008 and M...
· 12 min read
Risk Tolerance vs Risk Capacity: What Scores Miss
A questionnaire says you are 'moderate'. It's measuring how you feel about risk, not how much of it your plan can absorb, and those answe...
· 10 min read
Sequence Risk: Same Returns, Opposite Outcomes
Run 30 years of real US 60/40 returns forwards and backwards. A $1,000,000 lump sum left alone ends at exactly $5,116,739 either way. Add...
· 11 min read
Three-Fund Portfolio: A Stress Test, 2008 to 2025
Three funds at Vanguard's own 60/40 target weights returned 6.44% a year from 2008 to 2025, or 3.91% after inflation. Nominally 2008 was ...
· 12 min read
The Behavior Gap: What Bad Timing Really Costs
The folklore says your own timing costs you 4% a year. Morningstar's data says 1.2%. A 2026 Financial Analysts Journal paper says the par...
· 8 min read
Rebalancing Frequency: Annual vs 5% Threshold Bands
Over 92 years of Vanguard's data, every sensible rebalancing rule landed within 0.2 percentage points a year of every other one. The choi...
· 8 min read