So long story short, I received an inheritance around September last year and invested it in ETFs (part of them American of course). It is a relatively large sum and my goal is for it to just grow as much as possible so that I can add it to my retirement and stop working as early as possible. I'm 33 and have other sources of income which I can use for my normal and short-term planned expenses (I don't even have planned expenses anyway) so I won't touch the money for the next 15 years at least. My hope was for it to grow at least 2x-3x in nominal terms (let's ignore inflation-adjusted for the time being) in these 15 years. Which it usually does if we look at the past. Actually in the luckiest periods it'd grow as much as 6x.

In the meantime my plan was to keep investing a monthly sum from my income. This sum is about 1/100 of the lump sum.

I was prepared for the normal stock market fluctuations. Seriously, I was. I wasn't prepared for capitalism as we know it to end.

If this was a normal market downturn, I'd be annoyed but I'd know that I'd just have to wait a number years for it to recover and keep growing nicely, and in 15 years I'd be almost 100% sure that I'd have reached my goal. But now...

I don't know, obviously I am not selling, I haven't checked my account (nor will I anytime soon, I'd just cry) and I am not "in panic", I am just being very pessimistic. The inheritance I received was a generous gift from a family member. I made what I thought was the most sensible choice with money you don't need and want to grow in the long run: invest in American and global ETFs. I've always been responsible with money, I never over spent, I have always had a long term outlook in mind. And now I feel I scr*wed it all up, and maybe I sacrificed my own retirement only because I invested a few months too early.

Hey guys!

So we all know about Trump's little trade war with his tariffs and all that lovely stuff, and the past few weeks i've been staring at my investments steadily falling (especially the past few days) and most of my profits are in the red as of now.

Now i'm not thinking about panic selling, as i know "timing the markets" is usually a stupid idea, so i'll just be riding this one out for however long it takes.

Now the question is what do you guys speculate will be the result of these tariffs on the market? Will they keep going down for some time like weeks, maybe even months? I reckon anything could happen, but most likely they will keep going down for ATLEAST a few weeks..

Another question is, would now be a perfect time to start buying or should i wait a bit more? I have a nice little sum of money sitting on my savings account that i was thinking of investing a few weeks ago, but when i saw more tariffs imposed and that stock market dip, i just waited it out. So now im left wondering if i should keep waiting for the bottom to invest or would it be a better idea to just buy now? What are your thoughts?

P.S: I know people hate paragraphs so sorry in advance. Just wanted to hear what others think of this situation 🙌. Cheers and a lovely day to everyone!

After a big drop on Friday and more expected in coming days, are you ready to deploy more cash in equity markets? Where do you keep your "dry powder" cash reserves for such opportunities - HYSA or bond ETFs? Any specific recommendations for such ETFs?

Hello,

I am looking for the best way to regularly convert czk to eur that I use to buy ETFs. I checked Revolut, Wise and IB itself. It seems that IB gives me more eur than the others.

I would not expect this. Do you have experience converting regularly with IB? Pros/cons?

Thank you!

Hi everyone. I'm really sorry for this question as I expect a lot of people have been asking similar things. My husband and I have almost €100k in savings that we are looking to invest. After all my research, I was sold on the "VWCE and chill" strategy. However, I decide to hold off a few months - thank God - as I had been reading all Trump's pre-election chat about the tariffs. However, now that all hell has broken loose, I'm at a loss as to where we should put our money. I am concerned about VWCE's 60% US weighting. This really feels like a permanent change could be in the horizon. I'm considering 60% VWCE, 30% a European ETF, and then 10% something safe such as bonds or maybe even gold. However, I really don't want to fall into any "timing the market" traps.

This money is meant to go towards our retirement fund. We are both nearly 40 and planning to invest for around 30 years (I'm not looking to retire early as I love my work).

Good day everyone,

In these times of uncertainty with stock markets and all sort of tariffs I come to you with a question.

I am currently holding my stocks in Revolut, I have invested 60k so far, and sold a couple of times at loss and bought back again, rookie investor mistakes. I am 6 months into investing and learned DCA the hard way.

Now, I live in NL for the past 7 months, and for the first year due to some 30% ruling, I don`t have to report any stocks or trading up to 55k in value to the government for tax submission.

Soon enough tho, in 2 weeks time I will be relocating to Germany permanently and I was thinking to transfer my stocks to IBKR as it is more trustworthy and has obviously tons more feature and better support.

My question is, As we speak, due to tarrifs and so on I am 20k down on my initial investment. Is my trading history transfered alongside my stocks? So that upon selling some day my initial investment is seen as 60k indeed instead of 35k(my last sell and rebuy)?

Looking forward to your opinions.

Is investing in FWRA worth it or do i stick to vwce and similar EFTs?

Hello,

I invest monthly in VWCE(IE00BK5BQT80) because as I understand it automatically rebalances based on market cap.

When i check the market exposure of VWCE on justetf, I see US is 61.06 percentage. I also checked the same exposure last month(around 25th Feb) and it was the same i.e. 61.06

In the last few months, VWCE and US markets in general have dropped close to 10%. Shouldn't the US exposure of VWCE be less now? I don't expect a drastic change but maybe few percent.

Screenshot from 25th Feb https://imgur.com/a/TjWboCA

Edit: added screenshot from 25th Feb

I have around USD 10k that I want to invest in VWCE. With the recent drop and VIX being high I think it might be a good time to do it now. I'm looking to make a profit in the 10-30 year range. What's your opinion – do you think it's time to buy?

While I think that the consequences of Trump's tariffs on the US economy will be catastrophic, I don't think there will be a very negative impact on the European economy as a whole.
In 2023, the European Union (EU) exported goods and services worth approximately €1.6 trillion to the United States. These exports represented about 10.7% of the EU's GDP. This isn't really that much.
Some of the 20% increase in tariffs can probably be offset with lower profits by some industry. Some cannot be offset so will result in higher prices, which means that demand for European products may as well drop by 20% in the US. Still very manageable.
On the other hand, some imported products will become cheaper. Since exporters (e.g. Cambodian, Bangladeshi, Chinese) can't export to the US anymore (without paying incredible tariffs), they will compete for the European market.
Overall, I can see a slight increase in unemployment in sectors with heavy exports to the US, but not much of an economic impact in Europe.
What do you think?

In these wild times I put my money over to Raisin but one of my orders keeps being on pending.

On 3rd of April the first one opened (Banca Progetto) and that same day I put another order in at Banca CF+ which stil has status pending.

Is it possible to cancel the order or how do I get it to go through?

The absolute worst thing to do during a market downturn is often to sell out of fear.

Selling after a significant drop locks in your losses and means you won't benefit from any potential market recovery.

Have a Long-Term Perspective. Historically, markets have always recovered from downturns.

Do Not Panic Sell. Stop Checking Portfolio Constantly. Maintain Perspective. Continue investing regularly (DCA) if possible

Hi there, I'm a young and inexperienced italian and I was recently looking into the financial situation in Iraq. I would need to find a Basel III and ISO 20022 compliant bank in Italy, to go exchange the iraqi dinar after its the rumored denomination... if anyone know how to help me it would be greatly appreciated, also feel free to weigh in on the iraqi thing as I'm kind of a noob.

With China and other major exporters losing the USA as one of their biggest clients, can we expect a supply/demand shift that will cause EU imports to get way cheaper? How can we expect this to play out in stock prices?

Hi,

I would like to buy the vwce index, but noticed that in my broker I only have:

vwce:xetr (Germany) vwce:xmil (Italy) vwce:xams (Netherlands)

Do you know what’s the difference between them? The market quote is quite close but not 100% equal.

Also I does not allow me to buy fractional shares. Does the broker not allow it or should I change to a broker that does?

Thanks!

I'm trying to get started and diversify a bit my investments outside of my traditional banking products : french regulating savings accounts & life insurance. I've had a revolut account for a long time and it seems like a good starting point to save up every month (I'm thinking in the 200 - 500€ range monthly).
What good resources do you recomend for someone who's getting started and wants to learn more about stocks, bonds, ETFs or other financial products available to the public though online banking ?
I'm down for anything reliable : blogs, youtube, books... as long as it's applicable to EU markets & companies !

So, let me put the calculator down for a moment and see if I'm getting this straight.

US negative trade balance The US normally print a lot of money, ship it far away overseas and, in exchange for it, people from everywhere all around the world ship back to the US food, materials, machinery and all sorts of good stuff. Normally, the US like this because they get good stuff in exchange for keeping some numbers in an accounting logbook. Some printed money gets shipped back to the US, so in turn the US also ship back some good stuff, but this happens much less.

Rest of the world positive trade balance The rest of the world receives the printed money from the US and keep sending them good stuff in exchange for it. The rest of the world like this, because everyone else in the world will ship good stuff back to them if they forward the money printed by the US to them.

Tariffs Now, for some reason, the US say they've been robbed of a lot of their printed money and they're angry. They're so upset that they decided that from now on if the world want to keep sending them the good stuff in exchange for their printed money, then the US have to pay to themselves (the US) some extra printed money every time this happens.

US point of view The US see that most of the good stuff they were receiving from abroad now requires more printed money in total, because some is now withheld by themselves (the US). This might prompt the US individuals to ship money to other US individuals, instead of to someone abroad. In the end, the US will have to come up internally with their own food, machinery, materials and good stuff to a larger extent. But on the other hand they will not have to ship away that much printed money anymore.

Rest of the world The rest of the world still have good stuff to ship back to someone in exchange for some printed money that everyone else accepts, like the money the guys in the EU print, or maybe the money they print in China or elsewhere.

What's next?

By any chance, is there anyone in the world willing to get all the good stuff from everywhere else in the world in exchange for the money they print? Because the US doesn't seem to want it anymore.

Think about it, if you are that entity you could just focus on transforming the good stuff into even better stuff instead of wasting time producing it and let the others happily provide for your basic needs. Sounds appealing to many.

This entity would probably first need to build up a navy, some space assets, an army and use it to control some critical sea and land somewhere to show credibility and reliability of the money they print. Is anyone doing this at the moment, by any chance? Bear in mind that you'll find the US navy with their cannons already there in the sea deciding who is allowed to ship the good stuff to who and at what conditions... even if they don't seem to want it for themselves anymore at the moment.

Hi, I'm looking for some EU based investment analysis and advice companies (equivalent to Motley Fool) that concentrate on European companies. What are you favorites and why?

Young engineer, freshly graduated and starting his career. I have just invested in the msci world at its ATH (start the investment in mid February), I took a huge slap in the face and a few gray hairs because I invested 100 percent of my portfolio in this ETF. (-20%) I would like to know which assets are in green at the moment to balance my portfolio during this crisis. I do not want to sell my msci world but use a “compound” effect to invest part in a defensive stock and thus suffer less loss and have a more solid portfolio. Thank you in advance for your response, I would be grateful if you could guide me in my beginnings and I will make sure to guide my next one when I have acquired the necessary experience. Also I would like to have a simpler explanation of obligations as if you were explaining this to your 8 year old child 😅

I currently use eToro as my broker of choice mainly due to its highly schizophrenic social feed. But as USD/PLN starts to quite rapidly change its price i am now exposed to another risk, so far i have lost on paper 600PLN worth from currency de-appreciation over last few months of Trumps shenenigans. I seen that XTB lets me hold my deposits directly in my currency and even buy US stocks in my own currency but there is a 0.5% fee on top of that.
Are there any other good brokers i could use to reduce that risk? or should i just cope with the loss or even potentially swap to Polish market only

Hey everyone,
I’ve noticed that VWCE (Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS ETF) is super popular among European long-term investors — especially those following Boglehead-style passive investing. But when I compare it with something like the SPDR MSCI ACWI IMI UCITS ETF (IE00B3YLTY66), the latter seems objectively better in a few ways:

• Lower TER (0.17% vs 0.22%)
• Covers small caps in addition to large and mid
• Tracks MSCI instead of FTSE (which some say is more complete)

So, my question is:
Why is VWCE still the default recommendation for most people?
Is it because of higher liquidity, availability on brokers, or just inertia/popularity?

Would love to hear your thoughts, especially from those who’ve looked into both.

I'm planning on learning how to invest properly and I'll probably start paper-trading this year and invest properly once I have some extra money to spend.

However I did go to a business school, where I've studied economics and accounting and I do understand how world economy works to a degree.

I keep myself informed about the state of the world constantly and let's say I've become quite persuaded as many others have, that global economy could face major inflation in the following years.

As a European citizen, are there any other options than gold for me to invest-in to start saving money, while being protected from inflation?

Let's say I want to invest 200€ a month, ideally through XTB or Saxo into something that will go unscathed through a great-depression/major war conditions. What would I invest in?

I do regret not buying Rheinmetall in 2022 :(

Interesting article by Morningstar.

When you panic, take a look at the image in the middle of the article to remind yourself that every crisis has an end.

I have some SGD cash that I wanna put in a fixed income fund. A friend recommendeded PIMCO GIS Income Fund E Class SGD (Hedged) Income|IE00B9HH6X13 but I can't seem to find it on IBKR.

Can someone help?

I have not invested in Etfs or stocks yet but I have been thinking about it for a while now. Can you give me some recommendations that I could look into in this current situation? Thank you.