Category: worth knowing

Interview by Chris Marcus from “stockpulse” (How To Keep Making Money In Volatile Markets with Stefan Kremeth)

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Today I would like to share a 20 minutes video from an interview I gave to Chris Marcus from stockpulse (www.stockpulse.com). I hope you will enjoy it and if you do, I would appreciate if you did “like” the video on youtube.

Please do not hesitate to share your thoughts with me on the interview or on whatever seems interesting or bothering to you. Please feel encouraged to do so 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

An intriguing misconception about Gold

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

I am really happy for all your feedbacks and for all the encouraging words I am receiving. When I write about topics stemming from my readers or from myself, I am of course never quite sure if I will create enough interest on your side. This is why I am always happy to receive your very open feedback. Thank you very much!

In the last two weeks, gold had a good run and I have received a few comments by SMS, WhatsApp, e-mail and I even received one or the other call. The comments came mostly from personal friends who happen to be on the “Stefan’s weekly” distribution list.

One topic that came up over and over again was the topic of gold. Now, most of you know that I like gold as an investment, a very long-term investment. However, I really like physical gold in a portfolio only for one reason, to store value long-, if not very long-term. Gold futures or ETFs for short term speculation is not my thing and thus if gold is going up or down 5% or 10% is not important to my whatsoever.

Now, it is in there that I see a major misconception.

Apparently, there are people who believe that we can get rich just by holding physical gold. I personally don’t believe in this. In a purely economic sense there needs to be a productivity factor and by just holding physical gold I don’t see that. Goldmines do offer access to that productivity factor but physical gold doesn’t. But physical gold may be seen as one possibility that maybe can help you storing value during very, very difficult economic and/or monetary market conditions. Nonetheless, gold will basically only go up in price, if market participants see (systemic) risks of any sort (inflation, currency reforms, deep recessions, fear of political conflicts, etc, etc.). There may be exceptions, but I think you get the idea, and therefore this also means, if you hold physical gold and you do want to get rich with it, you are basically banking on a crisis of some sort. (This is exactly why I think gold makes such a great investment because in the past it was the case that gold was great for storing value long term, even very long term and even during multiples catastrophic periods).

To sum it up, I personally see gold as some sort of a hedge or insurance. To me gold is a bit like a car insurance, I have one, but I hope I will never need it.

Just imagine, if an investor hopes for some economic misery to arrive just so that her/his gold would go up, this would be like hoping for a car accident to happen so that the insurance company will finally pay back a part of the premiums the policy holder was paying over the last years. This would be somewhat ridiculous, no?

And now, once again, Ladies and Gentlemen, please keep in mind that I can’t foresee the future and whatever I am sharing with you in my weekly mails reflects my very own personal opinion and please keep on sharing your thoughts and ideas with me. Please feel encouraged to do so but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks indeed, Ladies and Gentlemen and now I wish you a great day and weekend.

Kind regards.

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG

Stefan’s weekly: Healthy Correction, Crash or Bear Market?

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Many thanks for the encouraging messages I received to my last weekly mail containing a link to the latest edition of our Incrementum Crypto Research Report. My colleagues from the Incrementum Crypto-Team have again invested a lot of time and effort to make it a worthy product. If you have not had the chance to look at it, maybe you do want to spend a moment to do so over the weekend, I think it is well worthwhile.

Now, for this week I would like to look at what is happening at financial markets right now. You know, the large European indices don’t look so cool with the SMI being down 7.92% so far this year, the DAX down 10.67% and the EuroStoxx standing at minus 8.41% year-to-date.

What is happening you may ask. Is this just a healthy correction, a crash or the beginning of a bear market?

First, I personally think there is not much wrong on the corporate side. Almost all companies we are screening have reported decent numbers so far this year, some of them even reported very good numbers.

Second, statistically the fourth quarter in U.S. mid-term election years, such as 2018, is usually a positive one for U.S. equity markets. Yet (and we have to keep that in mind) those statistics only show a picture of aggregated numbers and while the aggregated numbers may show a positive result over time, individual years may still be negative.

Third, investors are worried about higher yields. Large US bond ETFs have taken quite a beating lately.

Forth, the general news flow seems somewhat tilted towards the negative. According to mass media we seem to see more and more tensions stemming from global political leaders and other global political forces.

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, this somewhat kills the vibe, no? In such an environment, investors are just not willing to commit for the purchase of equities, investment funds, ETFs, etc.

…and to answer the initial question if this is just a healthy correction, a crash or the beginning of a bear market, I can only answer that: “I don’t know!”, as I can’t possibly foresee the future which I admit is a pity but nevertheless a fact.

However, if you are in the game for the long run and you have done your due diligence before investing and you are convinced to have the right stocks in your portfolio, during periods like this you may want to consider buying more of the same at lower prices.

…and it pays off to keep a reasonably balanced portfolio. For example, look at the performance of gold over the last few days. If you have a small allocation of gold in your portfolio it must have added positively to the total return during the last days and thus took some of the negative volatility out of your portfolio

Diversification helps during difficult times but in order to have a diversified portfolio for difficult times you may want to consider building it up while markets still look healthy.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, please keep in mind that I can’t foresee the future and whatever I am sharing with you in my weekly mails reflects my very own personal opinion and please keep on sharing your thoughts and ideas with me. Please feel encouraged to do so but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Many thanks, indeed! Your comments keep me going!

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

Kind regards.

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG

Incrementum Crypto Research Report – October Edition

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Our Crypto-Team just published the latest issue of the Incrementum Crypto Research Report, please have a look at it:

Bitcoin has entered its third bear market that has lasted over six months. The year-to-date return is roughly -50 %, although, the year-over-year return is about +150 %. This edition concludes our first year of publications, and we are excited to embark on our second year of writing the Crypto Research Report with our newest Premium Partner, Bitpanda, one of the largest cryptocurrency brokerages in the world.

Exclusive interview with Liechtenstein’s Prime Minister, Adrian Hasler: Liechtenstein’s new “Blockchain Gesetz” describes how tangible assets can be tokenized and traded on public blockchains. The world’s first regulated security token was approved by Liechtenstein regulators in September.
Smart Contracts: Utility coins underperformed payment coins during the last year; however, some utility coins have a bright future. In our Coin Corner chapter, we compare Ethereum, NEO, and the newly released EOS. Despite a rocky launch, EOS’ strong legal and development team in the U.S. is garnering investor attention.
How to Value a Cryptocurrency’s Fundamental Value: Our network calculations overwhelmingly indicate that the cryptocurrency market is still overbought, and according to this valuation method further corrections could be ahead.

The Incrementum Crypto Research Report can be downloaded from the following links:

Crypto Research Report – (73 pages) – English
Crypto Research Report – (81 pages) – Deutsch

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, please keep on sharing your thoughts and ideas with me. Please feel encouraged to do so but please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

Ladies and Gentlemen I wish you a great day and weekend.

Kind regards.

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth
Wealth Management
Incrementum AG

Tel.: +423 237 26 60
Cell: +41 79 303 48 39
Im alten Riet 102
9494 Schaan/Liechtenstein
Mail: smk@incrementum.li
Web: www.incrementum.li

Why would you bet on one scenario only?

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

If you do want to receive this weekly message in future, you will have to confirm your subscription under:

https://www.incrementum.li/publikationen/incrementum-newsletter/

and tick the box “Stefan’s weekly” and/or the box of any other publication we produce on a regular basis.

I am sorry for the inconvenience, but we are forced to do this because of the newly introduced “General Data Protection Regulation”, which came in law this year in Europe.

But now let us quickly check out the question “why would you bet on one scenario only?” which was asked by one of my regular readers and try to find an explanation for this.

Well, I think the reason why an investor would bet on one single scenario is quite simple, if you get the scenario right and if you get the timing right, you can make a lot of money. Therefore and to some extent betting on one single scenario is speculation. But if you don’t get the scenario right or if you don’t get the timing right or if you don’t get either right you will lose money and maybe get frustrated. As one of my partners keeps saying: “it’s not about being right, it’s about making money” and he is totally right there. Now, when managing other people’s money, like in my case, because that is what I mainly do, the goal must be to protect my client’s assets and to deliver some sort of positive return over time. This is why I wrote about the toolbox-approach some time ago. Various tools for various scenarios and even better a combination of tools to reach some minimal diversification.

The world, nature, people, politics, financial markets, currencies, etc. are in constant motion. Even if you are using various tools for different market cycles and investment scenarios within your strategic or tactical asset allocation it is difficult to make money these days but by betting on one single scenario only, you most probably will miss out on a lot of (other) opportunities. Therefore, and to answer the question, I think betting on one single scenario may lead to very large profits but from my point of view I prefer at least some minimal diversification.

What do you think? Please let me know your points of view!

But please don’t forget (instead of hitting the reply button) to send your messages to:

smk@incrementum.li

If you are still happy to spend a quick moment with me, feel free to read this short text under the following link:

Independent and Flexible Boutique Approach

Many thanks indeed for your interest and participation!

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

Kind regards.

Yours truly,

Stefan M. Kremeth

Stefan’s weekly: Interview with Andy Häberli, Profond’s CIO

Posted on by Stefan Markus Kremeth

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen

Last week we had the chance to interview Andy Häberli, Profond’s CIO. When looking at Profond’s asset allocation one immediately notices that over 50% of all assets are invested in equities and another 30+% is in real estate. Profond invests mainly in real assets.

Now, Ladies and Gentlemen, there is a good reason for this.

At Incrementum we are also very much in favour of real assets, equities and real estate belong into this group. We furthermore like to approach financial markets with a toolbox containing various investment tools. According to investor’s needs and risk appetite we may offer individual investment solutions. The toolbox approach can be somehow compared to a medical doctor offering various medicines according to patient’s needs. Just imagine a doctor only offering one pill to cure everybody for every disease at all times. This probably would not be a very successful strategy. Same is true for approaching financial markets.

Since we cannot foresee the future and therefore cannot know where financial markets are heading, we have to develop and sometimes adapt a strategy that makes sense even during markets turmoil. A portfolio delivering regular cashflows, even if the market price of the portfolio goes up and down, is already a solid achievement. I am a firm believer of the value of positive cashflows, in fact I think cashflows are never out of fashion. If for example, you are able to generate a positive cashflow of around 4.5% p.a. over 10 years stemming from your portfolio, you have effectively built up some sort of financial safety cushion of 45% without even taking the effect of compounding into consideration.

You will still suffer and go through all the negative feelings during any potential markets crash but the great thing is that your portfolio will continue delivering cashflows regardless of the market prices of the individual holdings in your portfolio.

This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is what Mister Andy Häberli is looking at in Profond’s portfolio. Cash return on invested capital and of course he is very happy to harvest in addition price appreciation on individual investments, but it is the cashflow that makes the difference. This complex and large multi-billion Swiss Francs portfolio, managing pensions of 40’000 policy holders, is successfully run over decades including during difficult times like the financial crisis. Obviously the portfolio was hit during the financial crisis but not only did it recover but it recovered very well and exceeded its initial value by far while distributing above average payouts. This approach of seeking positive cashflows is what we are doing for years for our private clients at Incrementum,as well.

And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, please keep on sharing your thoughts and ideas with me. Please feel encouraged to do so 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