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Weekly Update 12 February 2024

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This content is provided for information purposes only. It is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security.

eToro awards membership of The Legacy Club to those Popular Investors who made a profit for 3 consecutive years. Thank you eToro for the certificate.

Reflecting back on the last 3 years, 2021 was an easy year for all and it would have been difficult not to make money.

2022, by contrast, will probably serve as an indicator of who will outperform this decade. 2022 saw higher interest rates and geopolitical instability. I believe these features will be typical of the decade as a whole.

In 2022 most areas of the market – stocks, bonds, cryptos – did badly. The pockets of the market that outperformed were the Energy and Defence sectors (due to the Ukraine war) and Value in general (due to higher interest rates).

Moving to last year, 2023 was again an easy year for most, especially those investing in Tech. The people who did well in 2020-21 but whose portfolios plunged in 2022 could recover simply by investing in the large tech names. I would view 2023 as an aberration, not a year setting any new trends for this decade.

In the last 20 years of investing, I have made money in 17 years and lost money in three.

In 2008, the Global Financial Crisis caused a 16% fall in the value of my portfolio.

In 2014, my previous strategy of investing in microcap companies stopped working and I had to develop something new – the strategy I run today.

In 2018, I misjudged how much the slowing economy would affect cyclical stocks and had my worst year by far.

Each time, the losing years were followed by some of my best years.

It would have been a terrible mistake to stop investing just because of losing money over 12 months.

In the future, I expect more losing years will occur. Three-year winning stretches will occur frequently too.

The focus of the long-term investor should not be on the next year, but the next decade; or even better, the next 30 years.

It is over such timeframes that serious, life-changing amounts of money can be made.

Making 1000s of %s, as my portfolio has done over the past 20 years, requires patience and time in the market.

I hope that the Legacy Club Membership is one milestone on that journey.

2024 performance
@triangulacapital +0.6%
$SWDA.L +3.6%

Portfolio changes
None

Copy Trading does not amount to investment advice. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk. Past performance is not an indication of future results.

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© Pietari Laurila 2024 | All rights reserved.

Disclosures

eToro is a multi-asset platform which offers both investing in stocks and cryptoassets, as well as trading CFD assets.

CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 51% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work, and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.

eToro (Europe) Ltd., a Financial Services Company authorised and regulated by the Cyprus Securities Exchange Commission (CySEC) under the license # 109/10.

eToro (UK) Ltd. is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) under the license FRN 583263.

Your capital is at risk. Other fees may apply. For more information, visit etoro.com/trading/fees.

Pietari Laurila is not a registered investment advisor and does not offer investment advisory, fund management or wealth management services.

Triangula Capital is a brand name, not an incorporated entity.

This page is provided for information purposes only. It is not a recommendation to copy the Triangula Capital strategy or to buy, sell or hold any security.

2009-2020 performance figures are from Pietari’s personal Interactive Brokers account. They are time-weighted returns calculated in accordance with the Global Investment Performance Standards (GIPS).

From 2021, performance is calculated by eToro.

Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Track Record

It is often said that past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.

That is true. But there is also some evidence indicating that portfolios that performed better in the past, do perform better in the future.

“[…] top-decile prior-alpha funds produce annual future alphas of about 150 bps, net of fees” Source

Risk warning: That is only one study. In general, past performance is not indicative of future results.

Aligned Incentives

Pietari invests the majority of his net worth in the strategy. This ensures that his interests are aligned with investors who copy the strategy.

“Funds with high-incentive contracts deliver higher risk-adjusted return, and the superior performance remains persistent. The top incentive quintile of funds outperforms the bottom quintile by 2.70% per year” Source

Risk warning: Pietari holds accounts with multiple brokers and may therefore have a conflict of interest when deciding which accounts he should trade in first.

Unconstrained Investments

The strategy has fewer constraints on its investments than traditional mutual funds.

The strategy portfolio can be invested in stocks, bonds or cash and these allocations can vary over time.

Compared to traditional mutual funds, the strategy also:

  • holds fewer securities
  • trades more
  • avoids following the index

Each of these points has been shown to be an important predictor of portfolio performance.

“We […] find that portfolio concentration is directly related to risk-adjusted returns for institutional investors worldwide” Source

“A one-standard-deviation increase in turnover is associated with a 0.65% per year increase in performance for the typical fund” Source

“We find that truly active funds significantly outperform closet indexers. Further, we find that the truly active funds are able to outperform their benchmarks on average by 1.04% per year” Source

Risk warning: Concentrated portfolios with few positions can suffer large losses if bad news arrives about any of the companies in the portfolio.

Cheap Stocks in Cheap Sectors

The strategy invests in geographies and sectors where values have collapsed due to macroeconomic problems.

Within these geographies and sectors, the strategy overweights stocks that trade at low valuations on measures such as price-to-earnings or price-to-net asset value.

Every stock in the strategy portfolio must also be a good company, with no obvious red flags or long-term threats to its business model.

The aim of the strategy is to maximize returns, even if this means taking more risks than usual.

Risk warning: The strategy portfolio tends to be concentrated in risky stocks, which means that its losses in any market downturn will likely exceed those of the market index.