Market Reflections
Monthly and quarterly letters from our founder Mario Becker — a disciplined read on global markets, factor and model-portfolio performance, and what it means for client capital.
DFO Yearbook — 2025 Investment Universe
The eighth edition of the DFO Financial Yearbook: long-term risk and return data, stress tests and current valuations across fixed income, equities and commodities, as of 31 December 2025.
The Archive
42 past issues
DFO Yearbook — 2024 Investment Universe
Dear Investor, After a rewarding 2023, global financial markets carried their momentum into 2024. Equity markets, in particular…
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DFO Reflections — Q4 2024
While the third quarter was marked by the stock market crash in Japan and its global impact, the re-election of Donald Trump as…
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DFO Reflections — Q3 2024
The third quarter, notorious for its high volatility, is now behind us. In fact, the crash in Japan on August 5th was…
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DFO Reflections — Q2 2024
The first half of the year has been very pleasing for global equity investors. This can be easily recognized by the fact that…
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DFO Reflections — Q1 2024
After very high returns towards the end of 2023, we had expected a consolidation for the start of 2024. Instead…
PDF ↓DFO Yearbook — 2023 Investment Universe
After the ‘Big Bond Reset’ of 2022 and the associated fallout in global financial markets, we could witness a very pleasant and highly rewarding…
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DFO Reflections — Q4 2023
A very good year with only a few losers! Expectations for financial markets in 2023 were modest, especially against the backdrop…
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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…
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DFO Reflections — Q2 2023
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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…
PDF ↓DFO Yearbook — 2022
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’…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
PDF ↓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.…
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DFO Reflections — Q4 2021
2021 was the year for which we expected victory over Covid, as it seemed that successful vaccination programs could defeat the pandemic. However…
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DFO Reflections — Q3 2021
The 3rd quarter largely followed the developments of Q1 and Q2. Depending on the vaccination progress of a given country we can…
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DFO Reflections — Q2 2021
The second quarter of 2021 continued much of the same trends as the first quarter: Equities of small and mid-sized companies, as well as more…
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DFO Reflections — Q1 2021
In many respects, the first quarter of 2021 followed the performance of the final quarter of 2020: shares of small and medium-sized companies as well…
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DFO Reflections — Q4 2020
The final quarter of 2020 followed the good performance of previous quarters. Particularly corporate bonds (which were badly hit in the spring and…
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