Best Medium Term Investment Options (3 - 5 Years)

Most of the time I talk about long-term investing but not everyone has a long time to invest. What if you are saving for a house deposit or your children’s education and you only have three to ten years? In this video, I develop some principles to guide your investments over these shorter periods of time.
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Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:34 Drift risk & return
02:03 Short term investing is unpredictable
03:38 What matters?
5:20 Three principles
09:23 How many years for 1% chance of loss?
10:25 Conclusion
Where Else You Can Find Me
🎧You can check out my weekly podcast all about investing here many-happy-returns.captivate....
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Tools I Use To Create My Videos
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Take A Look At Some Of My Other Videos & Playlists
📹 Investment Strategies playlist • Investment Strategies
📹 Economy & Investing playlist • Economy And Investing
📹 Behavioural Investing playlist • Behavioural Investment
📹 Investing Strategies From Beginners To Advanced video • Investing Strategies F...
DISCLAIMER
All information is given for educational purposes and is not financial advice. Ramin does not provide recommendations and is not responsible for investment actions taken by viewers. Figures that are quoted refer to the past and past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
#Investin #StockMarket #PensionCraft

[@stlouisix3]

Pension-craft videos are always very informative💯💫👍🏻

[@Pensioncraft]

Thanks I appreciate that @St Louis IX

[@stlouisix3]

@@Pensioncraft keep it up, mate👍🏻

[@Nkunkuchanel]

This is really helpful, thank you!

[@Pensioncraft]

You're very welcome @James Austin

[@AlessandroBottoni]

Great video! Kudos! You just conquered a new subscriber (and a "like") from Italy.

[@Pensioncraft]

Welcome aboard! @AlessandroBottoni

[@equestrianadvice]

Again a very helpfull presentation on the mechanisms which influence investment results. Congratulations on the briljant didactic effort!

[@Pensioncraft]

Glad it was helpful @Roeland Veenendaal

[@gerry2345]

I like this vid. Good insight.

[@Pensioncraft]

Thanks @GerrysPlace

[@waelfarah8347]

Hi Ramin. Thank you for the great video, I just subscribed to your channel. In your Monte Carlo simulations, how was the money invested? Single one-time buy-in at the start of the investment period or Dollar Cost Averaging over the simulation's investment period? If the former, I would like to learn what you think about DCA and its effects on softening market fluctuations in the short-mid term. Thanks!

[@jespersahnerpedersen]

In Denmark, we have pension products with built-in benefit guarantee options, e.g. you can decide to turn on the guarantee (secure the benefit) 10 years before retirement (at the price of a risk premium). Moreover, if your goal solely is your own economy buying a life annuity (with no guarantee) is an option since you earn the negative death risk premium (which increases with age). This extra return can be quite substantial (and even tax-free), especially in a low-interest environment.

[@blumousey]

Better than cash can be premium bonds and high interest current accounts.

[@jroig824]

Could you do one about REITs? They look really cheap atm

[@luispineres3212]

this is amazing, thank you.

[@Pensioncraft]

Thank you too! @luispineres3212

[@AreaCode865]

I really appreciate these videos Ramin, thank you very much for your detailed and systematic, unemotive approach. I have always been suspicious of financial advisors who in my experience have chiefly promoted their profit. My extremely cautious approach though, has meant I have missed out on any investment opportunities in my 30 year career. I had recently contacted a financial advisor with a rather significant amount to invest. To my amazement, they weren't interested. Even at a rather high (I thought) percentage commission of what I wanted to invest, they weren't interested. I'm still cautious about investing in equities, but will be keen to invest if markets drop substantially. I know I need to listen to you re 'time in the market' ... I'm getting there! Thanks again, I'm going to keep watching and listening

[@therealrichot]

Hi Ramin, would ultra short term bond funds be a reasonable solution for a short time frame like you discuss here? For example JPST or ICSH? I was thinking you would mention these in this video so it makes me wonder what the downside is to them. Thanks!

[@deeps2169]

Looking to invest in this way, so a super useful video. Cheers

[@Pensioncraft]

Glad you enjoyed it @Deeps

[@MacroHiker]

Great video as usual

[@Pensioncraft]

Thanks again @K Cov

[@alphasecurity3456]

I loooove your graphs ramen, best noodle man about

[@Pensioncraft]

Thanks @Alpha Security

[@adamhopkinson7299]

What do you think about lifestratrgy 20 as option for the medium term?

[@chocolateraj]

Are there vanguard money market funds you would recommend?

[@wesley5nipes]

Noob question here. My medium term window is 6-9 years in a taxable account (I max out my tax advantaged options every year). Given that window, would it make sense just to go 100 equity, say the S&P 500, and just pull out the money at some point after year 6 when its on a tear? I'm quite new to all this theory, but it seems to me that downturns of two years or longer are fairly rare so this strategy would be ok if you're risk tolerant which I seem to be.

[@jemimaunicorn6446]

Good video, can you look to add chapters please

[@Pensioncraft]

There in now thanks @JemimaUnicorn

[@shannonoliver7992]

In my opinion, the Goldenbutterfly portfolio or the Permanent Portfolio is the perfect solution for this scenario. Your drawdown is very limited, and the upside is much higher. Vanguard Wellesley or Wellington would work, too, depending on your risk tolerance. Wellesley ( more Bonds) more than Wellington ( more equities) , perhaps

[@mattsennett]

Really good video. I have the 40% markets / 60% bonds fund which I use for 15% of my portfolio. I am a long term holder, 5 more years minimum, so don't want too much leaning towards bonds but value having some sort of hedge there.

[@Pensioncraft]

Good stuff @Matt Sennett

[@djayjp]

Money market funds lol. Good luck beating inflation. Negative real return locked in.

[@agsmith001]

Hi Ramin, I felt like covered call funds would help mitigate risk for medium term, which is my horizon. I am still kind of on the fence about it (as you may know from my previous comments) but it still seems like a safer bet than pure equity funds or leveraged CEF's (which i like for their income production but not for expenses or leverage). Currently I have a lot of JEPI, QYLD, RYLD and HNDL. My portfolio is only down 1.7% for the year so I guess it has been a good strategy at least for this year.

[@Pensioncraft]

Hi @A.G. Smith that's the income principle in action! I'm glad that strategy has helped you minimise your losses this year. Is it a medium term portfolio that you've got or was the shift into covered called funds a tactical move? Thanks, Ramin.

[@agsmith001]

@@Pensioncraft Both really. I am 57 and my Daughter will be going to college soon so medium term yes but a fairly austere lifestyle also makes an income portfolio a good fit.

[@iaintoft7003]

Can you share your code on GitHub? Would like to see how you generated this data. The other dimension would be to plot those distributions for different horizons.

[@neijiagongfu]

Totally underestimated topic, many say that you can make money in the long term with stocks, but i don't think so many people have a time horizon of 50+ years. 100% equity portfolios are often not the best advice and I would like to see more contributions for medium term investments, meaning less than 10 years.

[@colin3217]

50 years seems like a stretch

[@chrisf1600]

Yes agreed. Even over the 15-20y timeframe (which I think many would consider long term), there's no guarantee of a real return from stocks. As investors, I think we've been spoiled by 40 years of incredible returns for stocks and bonds alike. Personally, I have been thinking far more about holding a properly balanced portfolio, with more thought about what might do well in a (eg) stagflation type environment. 2022 has been a wake-up call for me in terms of how quickly the market can flip from greed to fear (and what a devastating effect that can have on your savings)

[@michellezatlyn3664]

Okay

[@robmaxwell9054]

@@colin3217 Anyone under 40 has a 50 year horizon give or take.

[@chrisf1600]

@@robmaxwell9054 Depends on your goals, I suppose. Is a 35 year old really willing to wait till they're 85 before taking profits ? If you're saving for care home fees and medical costs then yes, but I'd guess that a lot of people are set on nearer-term goals like buying a nice house or car.

[@Descrypto]

Do these analysis take inflation into consideration?

[@Differenshit]

2 year bonds did over 2k % from 2021 to 2022

[@Trunks9Thousand]

Tx Ramin! Is volatility here used the same as standard deviation? Furthermore how was the volatility measured with these lifestrategy funds? Was this by analysing all price action since inception and looking at the yearly standard deviation? If so, how long was the period used to calculate this deviation?

[@Trunks9Thousand]

I see now it's from 2011 until now. Isn't this volatility too optimistic then? Because 2000-2008 just passed but had more volatility

[@fredatlas4396]

Check out the US lifestrategy funds, they go back further. They could give some idea, but they are invested in different Vanguard funds

[@fredatlas4396]

Hi Ramin Please could you tell me do Vanguard lifestrategy funds hold any shorter duration bonds

[@Pensioncraft]

Hi Fred, they've got a pretty good filter function on their website now, so if you look for bond funds there are four I could see. Three of them are corporate bond funds where you're taking investment grade credit risk i.e. they sell off at the same time as equity but fall less. The USD one isn't hedged so you'd also be taking a punt on GBPUSD. www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-global-short-term-bond-index-fund-gbp-hedged-acc www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-global-short-term-corporate-bond-index-fund-gbp-hedged-acc www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-uk-short-term-investment-grade-bond-index-fund-gbp-acc www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-usd-corporate-1-3-year-bond-ucits-etf-usd-distributing Thanks, Ramin.

[@djayjp]

There's no difference, in the end, in terms of risk of loss, between currency hedging or not. It's an illusion (in fact I bet hedging has a higher risk due to the costs associated of doing so).

[@fredatlas4396]

I agree with equities. But you don't want a load of volatility in your bond funds, surely the bond part of your portfolio is there to give some stability. You don't really want currency fluctuation with bond funds, not usually. This appears to be the common consensus that international bond funds should be Hedged back to your currency

[@rossnewton3396]

This is probably more a question for your slack/discord (I still have to sort my **** out and actually join.. am on it promise) but I always wondered since the returns distribution is asymmetric.. could you *in theory* say go long the sp500, then hedge away some/all the downside risk with a long duration put option with strike at either current or say 10% below current?? Would be interesting to see the viability and how it affects return vs volatility (obviously including fees) in these cases??

[@chrisf1600]

Hi Ross -- sure, you can do these things. The problem is that hedges cost money, and the better the hedge the more expensive it's likely to be. Option strategies also require a bit of maintenance - you need to think about which strikes & expiry dates you want to buy, and then remember to buy new options as the old ones expire. You can buy tail risk funds that do this stuff for you, but they generate negative returns most years and they can be tough to stick with (eg check out the Cambria Tail Risk ETF). Plus, these strategies tend not to work well when there's a slow grind downwards. For most people it's probably simpler just to sell some stocks to get the risk down to a level they're comfortable with.

[@rossnewton3396]

@@chrisf1600 Hi Chris, thanks for the reply.. had a look at the fund and wasn't quite what I was looking for, but take your point. Did a bit more digging/research and still think that using long dated puts vs. an index as a small hedge is still an interesting strategy I want to explore, but with both 'typical' return being lower than a fire and forget ETF of the index, and the risks & complexity of options.. understand why Ramin wouldn't necessarily be too keen to talk about/suggest he is endorsing such an approach. Now, with that said, I'm desperately trying to find a platform that will let me buy very long dated options, instead of trying to steal my money selling me CFDs.. much easier said than done! 😂

[@garethg7111]

I prefer premium bonds to money market funds for short term cash with zero risk, then a few 0-3 treasury bonds and 0-5 corporates. But if I was really risk averse I'd just stick to the premium bonds and hope to win the million in the prize draw :)

[@jam99]

Sure, but not an option for ISA or SIPP as far as I am aware.

[@garethg7111]

Premium Bonds and any winnings are tax free. I use a shares ISA for longer term investments.

[@konicky]

@@garethg7111 I have some money in premium bonds but the chance of winning big is less than The Lottery!

[@garethg7111]

True, but at least you have 100% of your money left after every draw.

[@jam99]

@@garethg7111 After every draw you have lost value due to inflation. What is the average return? About 1%? Savings accounts are now available at 2%. Personal savings allowance means that is tax free for most, too.

[@ruborenyt]

I think it's a mistake to dismiss gold because of that very long term comparison. If the comparison starts in 1971, the gold price is much more competitive. It would be interesting to repeat the analysis by replacing gold for bonds in these 20%-80%, 40%-60% etc. portfolios. Who in his right mind invests in bonds right now?

[@capri2673]

Gold doesn't pay you anything, though.

[@sunaxes]

If you want to profit within 5 years, you need more info as an input (i.e. understand macro context), that's it.

[@christopherfairhurst978]

First 🙌🏻

[@hypermap]

Regarding the assumption that investment in say the S&P 500 is safe long term relative to inflation and gold I think there are three issues: 1. The usual S&P index since 1870 graph suggests phenomenal growth in the average investment in companies that make up the S&P 500 compared to Gold n Inflation - BUT the S&P 500 companies in say 1920 are not the same S&P 500 companies as today - many of the S&P 500 companies of say 1920 long ago evaporated / went bust, yet this graph assumes they are the same - that they are still in the S&P index (when of course they are not). Obviously a company drops out of the S&P 500 as it fails and is replaced by a new up and coming more profitable company with better prospects - but those invested in the failing companies lost share value yet their lose is not represented in this S&P 500 index graph! So the comparison with gold and inflation is false. This is not to deny many have done exceedingly well investing in the stock market during the 20th Century ... just not on average 9.2% plus a large number of people made huge loses. 2. The period 1870 to say the year 2000 (note for example the last 20 years before 2000 huge power increases in computers n the development of the Internet).. since the year 2000 there have been new developments re: using the newly powerful computers n the Internet but not many if any really huge fundamental technological developments n really huge changes in fundamental physics understanding (eg quantum mechanics - which is behind integrated circuit design and so the increasing power of computers n the Internet) to feed huge future fundamental technological developments ... the S&P growth has been fed by fundamental physics understanding and on the back of this huge fundamental technological developments... but this pattern may not continue / may even have ground to a full stop? The evidence since about the year 2000 is that it has ground to a halt may be there is little new to learn in fundamental physics, less applicable to technological development and / or less investment and interest in fundamental physics research to drive technological breakthroughs eg in cheap long term battery storage, super conductivity (low resistance and therefore cheap electricity), fusion reactors, quantum computing etc. 3. There has been huge world wide political stability especially since the early 1990s and in general since world war II leading to world wide trade and so huge friction-less trade and the S&P companies for example have benefited enormously but that trend seems to be coming to an end with China and Russia retreating from global markets plus aggressively tending towards war with former 'colonies' plus Western countries setting up trade barriers to world wide trade and immigration in an (I think misguided) attempt to protect their home markets and populous plus Western democratic voters tending to chose popular leaders rather than the best people for the job. It's the usual past performance is not an indicator of future performance... I take issue with assuming that stock market investment is long term a low risk choice... right now with high inflation we can see there is almost no investment that is likely to return a gain if we take inflation into account. Personally I in the UK have 5 year NS&I CPI tracking bonds maturing in 2026/27 which were/are only available to those with already maturing NS&I CPI tracking bonds - That is because I always view inflation as currently the greatest threat to assets and NS&I CPI (formally RPI) tracking bonds plus possibly UK property as the best counter balances to inflation... investment in a small careful selection of potentially growing UK companies already providing a good dividend yield ... buying in say 1 or 2 years+ time within an ISA (tax protected) --- when the recession / depression may be bottoming out may? also work out well long term... to provide passive income - of course who really knows ... it's almost impossible to predict the future... so many variables and too many unknowns. Regarding investing - The greatest rewards and losses are always associate with the greatest risk - may be that is the one thing we can state with certainty. Just my humble opinion.

[@wesmorgan8082]

PhD -do Monte Carlo for a living. You need to be very clear on your input distributions, your random variables, or this isn’t useful. All the appearances of sophistication, without underlying rigor. I could be wrong, but as a professional engineer, I can’t make use of this data

[@Kavanhugh]

My medium-term portfolio: 30% Equities 45% Gilts 25% Gold

[@Pensioncraft]

Interesting - thanks for sharing James. I guess the gold has held up pretty well so far in 2022? Thanks, Ramin.

[@Kavanhugh]

@@Pensioncraft Indeed! It’s been a magical combination, what more can I say!?

[@mikemike5973]

How's your gilts performing these days I would imagine dramatic loses no?

[@Kavanhugh]

@@mikemike5973 I’ve had better decades! But with the drop in performance comes higher-yields going forward - swings and roundabouts!

[@mikemike5973]

@@Kavanhugh not sure on the length of gilts or if it varies but isn't it a case of everyone rates rise your gilt value decreases aswell as effectively locking in a real negative rate due to inflation being higher. Isn't that the case or is there something I am missing? Genuine question by the way

[@noway2708]

by listening to you, I realized that I am not a dummy

[@Pensioncraft]

Glad it is helpful @ no way

[@user-sg1qu8io6v]

Making 50-100% a quarter thanks to volatility. Volatility is your friend! The rate of return is depend on human capital. T in the equation is the most critical. They always talk about your retirement in 25 years and not how you can get wealthy in less than 5 years. Gatekeepers are everywhere in the system. You need to think for yourself.

[@chrisf1600]

It's interesting that you alone seem to have cracked the secret whereas even the most highly cutting-edge quant hedge funds with armies of PhDs fail to beat the market on average. If there were a reliable way to "get wealthy" in 5 years, everyone would have done it already.

[@user-sg1qu8io6v]

@@chrisf1600 Either you’re a gatekeeper with conflict of interests or your public opinion have become reality. Don’t ever try to go beyond your believes. Stay “safe”!

[@nickfifield1]

Lost £1500 on life strategy 20-80 in 3 mths. Not safe . Bonds crap! Big mistake. If you need it before 3-5 yrs, keep in cash .

[@nacalle76]

as a percentage ?

[@mutton_man]

What % loss is that? Alot of assets are down at the moment. Hang in there hopefully will bounce back and then some by the time you have to drawdown.

[@nickfifield1]

@@nacalle76 15%