Series
Gold, bonds, property, Bitcoin, index funds, derivatives. What each one actually is, what it is for, and who it is genuinely wrong for.
9 episodes
10:00 Episode 1
The four-step audit a banker runs on any ETF — and why it filters out most of what is on the shelf.
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9:49 Episode 2
Why the P/E ratio tells you far less than you think, and what professionals look at instead.
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10:17 Episode 3
Bonds are the 'safe' asset — until they are not. What actually happens when a bond goes to zero overnight.
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7:09 Episode 4
Index funds versus mutual funds. The cost difference is small, certain, and compounds against you for decades.
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7:48 Episode 5
REITs or bricks? What institutional allocators actually own when they want property exposure — and why.
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10:31 Episode 6
Central banks are buying gold at record levels while most institutional portfolios hold none. Both can be right — here is why.
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13:37 Episode 7
Bitcoin is often sold as digital gold. Its actual correlation behaviour says otherwise — and BlackRock's own framing shows it.
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10:55 Episode 8
The derivatives market is quoted at $846 trillion, and the number is almost meaningless. What it really measures.
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13:05 Episode 9
The finale. Institutions do not win through access — they win through rules. The system behind $50 trillion, and how to copy it.
Read the written version →The expense ratio is the promised cost, not the delivered one. Four checks a professional runs before buying a fund — and the one that costs Europeans the most.
Earnings are an accounting construct. Cash is not. Here is the number professionals use instead — and the hurdle it has to clear before a stock is worth owning.
A bond has a place in the queue, a maths problem called duration, and a risk called the credit spread. Ignore any one and the floor becomes a trapdoor.
Over ten years, 98.44% of euro-denominated global equity funds lost to their index. That is S&P's own scorecard — so what is still worth paying for?
Listed property trades at a 16% discount to its assets. But office is down 34% and healthcare trades at a 25% premium — the discount is a price tag on a problem.
In 2022 US inflation hit 9.1% and gold went nowhere. It does not track prices — it tracks real interest rates. And it once took 28 years to break even.
Same year, same fears: gold rose 67.4%, bitcoin fell 6.3%. It does not trade like a safe haven — it trades like a leveraged tech stock.
Eight times the world economy, they say. The actual market value is about $22 trillion — and after netting, far less. Here is what derivatives really are.
Norway's fund holds no hedge funds and no private equity, costs 0.04%, and returned 15.1% in 2025. Yale returned 11.1%. The difference is governance, not access.
