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Mario Becker

  • Joined: November 13, 2022
  • Articles: 16

DFO Reflections – Q3 2023

After stock and bond prices rose unexpectedly strong in the first half of the year, quite a few storm clouds gathered in the third quarter. The months of August and September presented an echo of the financial market weakness of…

DFO Reflections — Q2 2023

With few exceptions, global financial markets continued to develop very favourably in the second quarter, which is positively reflected in the portfolios of our clients. Above all, the strong rise of the Nasdaq 100 index by more than 30 %…

DFO Reflections — Q1 2023

After last year’s historically bad development in global financial markets, 2023 has so far shown itself to be a year in which some trends of the previous year, such as the ongoing increases in central bank interest rates, will continue, but other trends are already reversing strongly: For example, technology stocks are again among the winners of the new year. The Nasdaq 100 Index, which contains many well-known technology stocks, is already up almost 20 % and can make up for a large part of the losses of 2022.

DFO Yearbook — 2022

DFO Yearbook 2021
2022 was a historic year in that it has seen the biggest bond bear market of our lifetime. Maybe historians will use words like ‘Bond Bubble Burst’ or the ‘Big Bond Reset’ to describe a market, in which global bond market aggregates lost more than 15% of their value. These are losses that couldn’t be witnessed in more than 100 years. The good news is that the massive overvaluation of global bond markets should now come to an end. The same goes for the experiment with negative interest rates, which lasted for almost a decade.

DFO Reflections — Q4 2022

The final quarter, as well as the year, did considerable damage to our safety building blocks. Above all, the building blocks that invest in European government and corporate bonds have suffered further paper losses because the ECB has made it clear that it is not yet finished with its interest rate hiking campaign.

DFO Reflections — Q3 2022

After a strong global equity market rally in July, an equally strong correction followed in late August and throughout September, so that at the end of the third quarter we are basically back to where we saw ourselves at the end of the second quarter. This means historic losses for global government and corporate bonds, which haven’t occurred since the 1930s and 1970s, and large losses in global equities.

DFO Reflections — Q2 2022

DFO Reflections Q2 2022
Due to the very poor development of the first quarter, I assumed that we should see a reprieve in the second quarter. Unfortunately, that did not happen. Instead, we had to experience another round of price drawdowns in all relevant asset classes. Interestingly, losses in the global government bond markets were also more pronounced in the second quarter than in the broadly diversified global equity markets. This is a very rare occurrence, as government bonds are primarily a portfolio stabiliser. Government bonds only move very strongly when there are unexpected changes in price levels. This is currently the case and hasn’t been seen since the 1970s.

DFO Reflections — Q1 2022

DFO Reflections Q1 2022

We started 2022 with moderate expectations due to the generally good results in 2021. However, we would never have dreamed that by the end of the first quarter we would already feel as if a whole year was behind us:…

DFO Yearbook — 2021

DFO Yearbook 2021

I’m very happy to present the 2021 edition of our DFO Financial Yearbook, which is meant to provide a robust context for long term investing. Especially in my early years as an investor, I was wondering, which realistic long term returns…