My son is just graduating from high school and wants to go to university. The difficult question now is how he can invest his reserves (gifts of money, prize money, jobs) sensibly for the next few years.
He knows a little about the stock markets and has already gained some experience with precious metals and crypto. So he knows that the markets can fluctuate considerably.
Saving for retirement interests him just as little as the stock market or money in general. He looks at his portfolio from time to time, but doesn't want to worry about it. First of all, he wants to concentrate on his education and his studies. That's what he needs his savings for in the next few years (apartment, travel, equipment). I currently have his custody account with Zero in my name, but when he turns 18 he'll get it transferred.
His risk profile is somewhat special:
1. he doesn't want equity ETFs because of the medium-term volatility. He wants to be able to use the reserves at any time. If he needs the money in 2-3 years' time, he doesn't want such an ETF to be 50% under water.
2. he is also not interested in bond ETFs, as he does not want to grant loans in the current geopolitical situation. Moreover, the distributions would be peanuts given the size of his portfolio.
3. money market ETFs are more interesting because of the low risk, but only yield minimal interest. It should be a little more.
4. gold and Bitcoin are attractive because they tend to stand for security in uncertain times. BTC is also cool. However, both are also volatile.
5. he wants a maximum of 10% risk, but also the chance of >5% returns over the next few years.
So the profile is: low risk. Short-term availability, but still a return above the overnight interest rate.
My proposed solution, which he has accepted for the time being:
80% $XEON (-0%)
10% $IGLN (-2,39%)
10% $WBIT (+3,15%)
So that's 80% safe liquidity. 10% risk/return with BTC and 10% security with gold (annual rebalancing). The volas of gold and BTC should balance each other out so that the influence on the overall vola of the portfolio is as low as possible. A short backtest since 2018 has shown an annual return of approx. 10% with a max drawdown of approx. 10%. Whether this will work out in the future is of course unknown, but the portfolio has obviously survived the sharp drawdowns of BTC well.
What do you think of this - admittedly unconventional - concept? Does it make sense under the given circumstances? Have I missed something? I would be interested to hear your views.
Your Epi
