I’m undertaking a 1000-day reinvention project, focused on launching a writing and advisory business around personal finance for GenXers. I’m blogging here daily to track my progress. In Sunday Planning, I plan for the week ahead.
Yesterday I worked my way through the transcript of this very informative podcast episode from the Meb Faber show, Whitney Baker on the End of ‘Buy the Dip’ & the American Bubble. I plan to write a newsletter article this week about investing in emerging market stocks and bonds. I’m thinking of giving it the spin that investing in emerging markets is a chance to understand our world better. If you just pick an emerging market index fund you might get things you don’t really want:
- Taiwan Semiconductor, which almost functions as a shadow member of the Mag 7
- A lot of China, which may not be where you want to be
- And a lot of India as well, but the India stock market is almost as expensive as U.S., measured on a global CAPE basis
To do a good job with emerging markets, you need to actually understand what you’re buying. What regions and countries are in your ETF? What sectors (finance, commodity, tech, etc)? You don’t have to be able to predict the future but you do want to make some attempt to buy the things that have some hope of doing well in the coming decade, not just get something by default because it’s been a winner over the past decade (Taiwan Semiconductor and India stocks, I’m looking at you).
In that podcast episode, Baker said we’re “going from a golden age of beta to a golden age of alpha where it’s winners versus losers.” Beta is when your portfolio does well because it follows the broad market, and the broad market does well. Alpha is when you’ve picked good investments using understanding and skill.
I’m excited to write something that has both an interesting perspective—investing around the world can be a source of learning and engagement—and a lot of nerdy details.
logistics
My calendar is more full than usual, with events schedule for every day of the week:
- Monday walk with a close friend coming into town
- Tuesday installation of fiber Internet
- Wednesday oil change at the Mazda dealer
- Thursday dog walking shift at Humane Colorado
- Friday meeting a friend to view the Compartmentalize show at the Lakewood Cultural center and have lunch
- Saturday plein air painting for the Littleton Plein Air Art Festival
Most of those things happen right during my morning writing time, so I’ll need to be ready to find productive writing time later in the day.