Category: In the Press

Active Rebalancing of Bitcoin Improves Portfolio Performance

Posted on by Mark Justin Valek

Similar to the gold standard, cryptocurrencies are competing to become the dominant digital store of value protocol. A mixed gold and bitcoin portfolio has had a higher risk-return performance than single asset portfolios because of the low correlation between gold and bitcoin. Combining the gold and bitcoin portfolio with rebalancing bands, allows investors to manage Bitcoin’s volatility and transaction fees on turnover.

Speakers:
Demelza Hays is a research analyst for Incrementum AG and is responsible for the Crypto Research Report published by Incrementum. Moreover, she is developing innovative investment solutions in the field of cryptocurrencies.

Mark Justin Valek is a partner of Incrementum AG and responsible for Portfolio Management and Research.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) friendly (Part one)

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen
 
In last week’s part one on ESG investing, I shared some very basic information on ESG investments. Today I would like to point out some of the difficulties one faces when investing in ESG-friendly products. However, the short format of my weekly mail will not allow me to go into the topic very deep, but I am convinced I will make you reflect.
 
Let me start with an interesting and somewhat extreme example. Just imagine you were running a portfolio with an ESG-friendly touch and now just imagine for risk (volatility) reasons you were holding government bonds. No problem you may think, and most investors wouldn’t even think a second about that part of the portfolio. But it strikes me that even though most investment managers who offer ESG-friendly strategies would never invest in a weapons producing company, they are happy to give loans to countries spending enormous amounts of money on weapons of all sorts and sometimes even nuclear devices.
 
Ladies and Gentlemen, by buying government bonds and/or treasuries of the United States of America, Israel, the U.K., China, India, Pakistan, etc. investors are supporting the financing of weapons of mass destruction. The average investor does not think badly about it, I even think the average investor would not think about this at all and yet by buying government bonds and/or treasuries, investors are providing loans to governments, which the respective governments may use to buy and/or build weapons of mass destruction.
 
This is why I am of the opinion that if so called ESG-friendly products contain government bonds and/or treasuries and/or gilts or whatever one wants to call such papers, no truly ESG-friendly investor should touch such products.
 
You see my point, right? When investing in ESG-friendly products you have to be careful because sometimes you do not get what you expect. On the other hand the run on ESG-friendly products is important these days, especially as regulation forces investment managers in that direction. Trouble is, realistically there are simply not enough truly ESG-friendly investments available and therefore investment banks and financial product designers must become “creative”.
 
Anyhow, there is one more thing I want to add. Today everyone is fixed on CO2 emissions even if “greenhouse gases” in general are a much more important factor than CO2 emissions only. By now just about everyone should appreciate the fact that it is greenhouse gases we have to look at because greenhouse gases (GHGs) are absorbing infrared radiation and cause the so-called greenhouse effect. As you may know GHGs are both natural gases, such as carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, and nitrous oxide, as well as human-made gases, including chloro- and hydro-fluorocarbons. Yet, it is very easy to blame a diesel car taxi driver for polluting our cities but let’s face it keeping for example a house pet for the sheer pleasure of keeping a house pet is probably even worse. According to the Humane Society of the United States, there are 86.4 million cats and 78.2 million dogs in homes around the U.S.. Just imagine, the enormous amount of greenhouse gases the global population of house pets is producing directly and indirectly.
 
Now tell me, why is the media not tackling this issue, why are they so concerned about fossil carburates but do not seem to be considering house pets, or children, farming, etc? I would almost assume, because you cannot win elections by telling the electorate to put to sleep their house pets and to stop reproducing, i.e. stop having children. It is much easier finding one weak opponent – today it’s the diesel car producers and drivers – and bang on their heads until everyone believes that producing diesel cars is the worst thing that ever happened to humanity.
 
What drives me crazy is that large masses of people can be irritated and thus manipulated so easily.
 
Ladies and Gentlemen, I urge you to ask questions, always. Do not just believe what the media and politicians want you to believe. The first ones have only one interest, to catch your attention for as long as possible, like this they can charge higher rates for adds and thus earn more money, the later ones only interest is either to be elected or to be re-elected. This is it! They don’t care about you, they either want your attention to make money or your vote to get power and make money.
 
As always, I encourage you to send me your feedback and/or questions but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:
 
smk@incrementum.li
 
Many thanks, indeed!
 
And now, Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.
Kind regards,
 
Yours truly,
 

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG

Environmental, Social and Governance friendly (Part one)

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Once every few weeks I receive messages by readers that ask me about Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) friendly investments. I think it is about time to take up this topic.
 
This week, in part one, I would like to share some basic information and explain some of the terminology used in connection with ESG friendly investments. Next week I would like to offer my point of view on the difficulties arising when trying to choose ESG friendly investments.
 
Let’s start with ESG. ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance and defines certain standards used to screen investments.  You may have read or heard of the following terms, like SRI and/or CSR. SRI (Socially Responsible Investments). SRI basically covers as the name would suggest the field of socially responsible investing and looks for investments that are considered socially conscious because of the nature of the business the company conducts, while CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) is a business model that may help companies be socially somewhat accountable to it its stakeholders and the general public.
 
When looking for an investment, one my come across the terms of “Impact Investing” and/or “Green Fund”. Impact investing aims to generate specific beneficial social or environmental effects in addition to financial gains and green funds should invest only in sustainable or socially conscious companies, avoiding the rest of the investment universe.
 
When looking at ESG investments, statistics on CO2 (carbon dioxide) emission are probably one of the most common denominators used to explain negative environmental effects. However, I prefer statistical data on so called “greenhouse gases” as such statistics offer a wider, more complete picture. The most commonly known greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone.
 
Ladies and Gentlemen the above basics are needed for my next weekly, which I promise will be somewhat more spicy.

As always, I encourage you to send me your feedback and/or questions but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.

Kind regards,

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG

The Good News about the Next Recession

Posted on by Ronald Stöferle

The Federal Reserve is switching gears and halting interest-rate hikes for the near future, amid fears of another global crisis.

The United States is entering a recession and there will be quantitative easing again, predicts Ronald Stöferle. He argues that the worst is over for mining stocks and the gold price, as they stand to gain enormously from sliding faith in fiat currencies.

Low inflation is going to stay for some time! Readers feedback

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

My last weekly mail on Japanese conditions in global government bond markets triggered a few messages by readers. Unfortunately the format of my weekly mail doesn’t allow me to publish all of the answers in full length but as usual I am very happy to include some of the ideas and comments I have received. In general everyone seemed to agree that there were no signs of higher bond yields, nor any sharp inflation increases on the horizon, at least not in advanced economies. My old friend Mark could even imagine negative inflation especially since he strongly believes that borrowing reduces future growth and I wouldn’t argue against that.

Anton added his believes of interest rates remaining under the manipulation of central banks for some time in the future, as to allow continuous debt servicing going forward. However, he sees at least two major issues with this. First artificially low interest rates are bad for efficient capital allocation (i.e. low interest rates in the US have incentivised corporates to lever up, do M&A and share buybacks at the expense of investment spending, including higher wages. Second artificially low interest rates benefit owners of financial assets at the expense of savers. Again, I wouldn’t argue against that.

You know, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am seriously troubled when other people’s ideas become “religion” and whenever this is the case, I think we need to be careful. Anton made an interesting statement in this respect. He mentioned that this is why he valued “so dearly the Enlightenment as a philosophical, theological and scientific movement because it liberated our civilisation from dogmatic thinking…now and again our society falls back into that rigid form of looking at things, but that’s the echo of the cyclical nature of human history…perhaps the future is brighter.” What a statement, I sure like that one and hope for my remaining life span to be long enough to live that bright future!

Last but not least I wanted to share a short statement by Robert, who pointed out to me an important fact in respect to the cash-flow strategies I am so fond of. Fact is that depending on where you are domiciled, cash-flows stemming from investments in financial assets are taxed in different ways and sometimes even in a “prohibitive manner” and thus taxes most probably will have a more or less negative impact on the strategy as such. This is certainly true. However, as I cannot possibly know all the different tax laws, I hope for your understanding.

As always, I encourage you to send me your feedback and/or questions but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.

Kind regards,

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG

Japanese conditions – low inflation is going to stay for some time!

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Japanese conditions in global government bond markets are more and more likely. But what does it mean for our investors with reference currency Euro or Swiss Francs, if Germany’s 10-year government bond yields 0% or almost 0%, Switzerland’s 10-year government bond even yields -0.75%. What does it mean, if central banks own large portions of their countries’ government bonds (the Bank of Japan owns 49% of Japanese government bonds, the European Central Bank owns 20% of European government bonds and the U.S. Federal Reserve System owns 13% of U.S. government bonds)?

The answer is not so trivial and since we do not have any long-lasting experience in this, we cannot really know where the situation is heading. One thing is certain though, as long as central banks are buying government bonds in the primary (direct at source) or secondary (at exchanges) markets at current or even increased rate, government bond markets will not become free markets (free in an economic sense) but stay manipulated. Manipulated may be a strong word for one or the other of you and I am not judging, but let’s face it if in any market of any product in the world one single buyer buys all the “leftovers” there will never be a fair price defined by offer and demand for that very product. In the case of government bonds one would assume that a country as over-indebted as Japan would have to pay much higher interest rates to sell their government bonds to investors than for example Germany a country running on a much, much lower debt to GDP ratio than Japan, only that this is not the case. The reason for this is central bank intervention.

Personally I believe Japan is indicating a direction in this respect as Japan is somewhat running ahead of us sitting here in Europe. Japan is running on low or ultra-low interest rates for decades already and Japan is in a situation of constantly increasing government debt levels that have reached roughly 250% of GDP. What we can learn from Japan and what we can expect to experience in Europe including Switzerland (at least partially and maybe to some lesser extent) is the following:

  • Debt to GDP ratios will rise.
  • Interest rates will stay low due to central bank interaction.
  • Government spending discipline is not going to increase.
  • Government bond markets stay manipulated by central bank interaction.
  • Government bond markets’ liquidity problem is going to stay due to central bank interaction.
  • Inflation will stay low.
  • Central bank status quo for decades.

This list is by all means not complete. But it shows why I believe there will not be either a quick fix or hyper-inflation anywhere soon.

Therefore, ask yourself if you really want to invest your money following an unlikely scenario? Because maybe it makes sense to invest in cashflow returning strategies and keep some precious metals for the ultimate worst-case scenario, no?

What is your opinion?

As always, I encourage you to send me your feedback and/or questions but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed!

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.

Kind regards,

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG