I am pleased to inform you that as of this week, we are publishing articles periodically in the prestigious GurusBlog. There we will be able to reach an audience that until now did not know us, and therefore our work of disseminating our way of seeing wealth management will have a wider reach. We will not always publish all the articles there and here in duplicate, but some posts will be published only in one of the sites. However, we will always try to publish short notes referring to our articles published in GurusBlog. I hope you enjoy it and here is the first one: «Who moved my Value? The compass of the New Normal«
No hay peor fracaso que el de quien renuncia al éxito. Algo parecido les ocurre a los fondos de inversión que se ciñen a sus índices de referencia, confiados en que, a pesar de su mediocridad, las entidades para las que trabajan no van a tener ningún problema en comercializar masivamente dichos fondos, y jamás les culparán por no brillar. La capacidad comercial de una entidad bancaria es directamente proporcional a la mediocridad de sus productos de inversión. Será por aquello de que el hambre agudiza el ingenio, y los gestores de fondos de gestoras independientes (que no pertenecen a bancos, al menos directamente) sólo pueden competir por hacerse un sitio en el escenario de la venta de inversiones, demostrando pura calidad y superioridad en los rendimientos en comparación con sus competidores.
Hay algo peor que ser pobre e insolvente, y es que además se deba esconder la misera y simular opulencia y grandeza. ¡Ay de quien deba disfrazarse de rico, sin serlo, para poder subsistir en su negocio! Porque la insolvencia y la pobreza, con sinceridad y honradez se tornan más dignas, más esperanzadas y menos miserables. Y es que dedicarse a un negocio, como el bancario, que necesariamente obliga a quien lo ejerce a simular riqueza y solidez para ganarse la confianza de sus clientes, es algo con lo que se puede convivir cuando realmente la entidad bancaria es rica y solvente. Pero cuando el negocio se tuerce y el apalancamiento intrínseco a la propia actividad bancaria se come con patatas la solvencia y la solidez de las entidades, esa fachada de opulencia se convierte en una macabra mentira, que acaba con la pérdida esquizofrénica de todo contacto con la realidad (como dijimos en
We are in the eye of the storm. But not because of injustice or envy of our northern neighbours—no—but because of our own foolishness. That foolishness which has led us in the past to vote for governments of both political stripes, yet with one thing in common: an inability to manage the Spanish economy. We have missed a golden opportunity, given that economic growth and the surge in job creation in the Eurozone allowed us to boast of macroeconomic figures that made even those of France itself pale in comparison. And so Zapatero proclaimed on occasion, although today it is the Mercozy duo who must stifle their feelings in the face of the grotesque and surreal tragicomedy of the current periphery. «Spain is doing well,» we proclaimed to the four winds just a decade ago. Those were years when illusions of grandeur led the presidents of Spain and Portugal to meet in the Azores with the very presidents of the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Aznar, Barroso, Blair and Bush together shaping the plans that were to govern the New World Order. That was only nine years ago, but it seems so long ago…
En muchas tertulias y medios escritos estamos escuchando voces que proclaman la insensatez y el delirio de los Mercados respecto a la situación de la economía española. Se argumenta que, el hecho de que antes de hacer públicos los presupuestos más austeros de la democracia española Mr. Market penalizase los intereses españoles, y que después del tijeretazo también lo hagan, es una prueba irrefutable de la demencia de los Mercados. Dicen que esa es la prueba de que las directrices económicas de este país deben marcarse al margen de lo que los Mercados puedan opinar. Que «la dictadura de los Mercados» es algo que debemos obviar y contra lo que hay que luchar… Pero no. Veamos algunas de las razonas por las cuales no debemos ni podemos obviar a Mr. Market:
First of all, we must tell you that the subject we are going to deal with today is complex and may offend some professional sensibilities. But that is not our intention at all, but rather our interest is focused on clarifying a situation that is currently generating a lot of confusion and, more importantly, is damaging families with a certain amount of wealth. Both large fortunes and small savers. We will therefore discuss, for example, Santander's convertible bonds, the recent inflammatory statements by Greg Smith (ex-Goldman Sachs), the types of assets that a properly diversified wealth should contain, the Spanish and Luxembourg regulators, banking, EAFIs, Family Office, or how to distinguish between a perverse advice and a perverse advice. comme il faut. We apologise for the length of the post, but we have chosen to publish it in its entirety so as not to lose the thread in the middle of the reflections that follow.
This week I came across an article published in FundsPeople titled «
Knowing which types of assets or which companies’ shares are going to skyrocket in the coming months is the pipe dream of those who, rather than investing, speculate. Of those who are hoping for a windfall to bail them out of the financial difficulties they have got themselves into through their own foolishness. But even if Lady Luck were to smile on them, their poor judgement would remain just as bad. Consequently, they will believe themselves to be shrewd investors rather than merely lucky, and their cycle of financial difficulties, windfalls and further difficulties will repeat itself, at best. In the long run, the result for most of them is that their forays as speculators (even though they describe themselves as investors), far from supplementing their income, cost them a significant portion of the wages they have earned through the sweat of their brow over the years. And if at any point they were to make an objective calculation of their gains and losses—something they consciously or unconsciously avoid doing—the balance sheet would reveal the harsh reality: that throughout their investing lives, a large part of their own and their families’ well-being has been taken by Mr Market.
Just a few days before it was announced 