The Sharpe ratio, a widely cited yardstick of risk-adjusted performance, measures return earned per unit of risk. What it captures well, and its four blind spots: it treats gains and losses alike, assumes well-behaved returns, can be inflated by smoothed prices, and stays a noisy estimate.
Jul 18, 2026 · 10 min read
Rebalancing returns a portfolio to its target weights to hold the risk you chose — not to chase return. Why its first job is risk control, where the conditional "rebalancing bonus" comes from, what spreads and stamp duty cost, and how to choose between a calendar rule and a tolerance band.
Jul 18, 2026 · 9 min read
"Risk" means three different things: volatility, drawdown, and permanent loss of capital. Why they sometimes diverge, why only the last one ends portfolios, and how leverage and forced selling turn a temporary decline into an unrecoverable loss.
Jul 18, 2026 · 9 min read
Every foreign asset hides a second bet: the currency. For a Swiss investor, the franc — strong and safe-haven — tends to rise when markets fall. What hedging does, why it costs roughly the interest-rate differential, and why foreign bonds are usually hedged but equities are a judgment call.
Jul 18, 2026 · 9 min read
Lose 50% then gain 50% and you are left with 75%, not par. Why the average of yearly returns always overstates compound growth, how volatility is paid for in compound return, and why stability is worth strictly more than choppiness at an equal average return.
Jul 18, 2026 · 8 min read
Management fees, transaction costs, spread, stamp duty, custody: an investment's cost stacks in layers, several of which appear on no fact sheet. Why one extra point of fees costs not one point but nearly a third of final capital over thirty years, and why cost is one of the few variables an investor controls.
Jul 18, 2026 · 8 min read
A benchmark is not a neutral thermometer, it is a rule: a way of selecting, weighting, and maintaining a basket of securities. How cap-weighting, free float, dividends, and rebalancing decide what an index measures, and why “beating the market” is, before costs, a zero-sum game.
Jul 18, 2026 · 8 min read
A real estate fund borrows by mortgaging its buildings, but no more than one third of their market value (art. 96 CISO). How 30% debt amplifies NAV swings by nearly half, why a fall in property values mechanically tightens the debt ratio, and what that reveals about capital increases.
Jul 18, 2026 · 8 min read
A listed real estate fund is liquid in its units, never in its buildings. The investor has two exit routes: selling on the exchange at the day's price, or redeeming at NAV on twelve months' notice (art. 66 and 67 CISA). In times of stress, liquidity is preserved in quantity but not always in price.
Jul 18, 2026 · 7 min read
Independent experts, the DCF method, deferred taxes, appraisal smoothing: how a real estate fund's net asset value is produced, why half a point of discount rate moves values by more than 10%, and why the NAV behaves like a moving average of market value.
Jul 17, 2026 · 8 min read
Seven numbers, three texts, one timed itinerary: how to use the AMAS standardization to extract the essentials from a Swiss real estate fund's annual report, including NAV, rental losses, leverage, TER REF, distribution coverage, and the discount rate.
Jul 17, 2026 · 8 min read
Finance's only "free lunch," taken seriously: what correlation does to risk, why 4% of stocks account for all the market's net wealth creation above Treasury bills, how many independent bets a portfolio contains, and why the protection fades precisely in crashes.
Jul 17, 2026 · 9 min read
Why some distributions are largely tax-exempt while others are taxed like dividends: direct vs. indirect holding, withholding tax and the separate coupon, tax values and capital gains, plus a worked example and the method for checking any fund.
Jul 17, 2026 · 10 min read
Factors, z-scores, deciles, the information coefficient: how a quantitative equity rating is built, why it is a relative ranking rather than a forecast, and the five questions that separate a disciplined score from a decorative number.
Jul 17, 2026 · 10 min read
Since 2021, a token can carry a security: ledger-based securities (art. 973d CO), crypto-asset segregation in bankruptcy, and DLT trading facility licenses. How the DLT Act gave tokenized securities the full legal status of securities under Swiss law, and what remains to be built.
Jul 17, 2026 · 11 min read
Survivorship bias, data ahead of its publication date (a 73-day median publication lag across the reports in our database with a recorded release date), overfitting, forgotten costs, the single regime: why simulated curves outshine reality, and the questions that expose them.
Jul 17, 2026 · 9 min read
1.99% vs. 3.64% yield, 34% vs. 10% agio, yet nearly identical balance sheets and a "residential" label fuzzier than it looks: what separates the two segments, measured with Apollo 8's proprietary data.
Jul 17, 2026 · 11 min read
A structured product, not a fund; a claim against the issuer; launched in weeks: what an actively managed certificate is, why it is so widely used in Switzerland — including for crypto strategies — and the points its documentation should clarify.
Jul 17, 2026 · 10 min read
About CHF 4 billion raised by listed funds in 2025, a record: why funds issue when agios are high, how subscription rights work, and dilution measured fund by fund with Apollo 8's proprietary data.
Jul 17, 2026 · 11 min read
Around 2¼% on average, but a threefold spread between funds: current levels, the gap over Swiss Confederation bonds, the yield-agio trade-off, payout stability, and taxes, measured with Apollo 8's proprietary data extracted from official reports.
Jul 16, 2026 · 13 min read
Why do listed Swiss real estate funds trade above the value of their buildings? What the agio is, how interest rates drive it, and the fund-by-fund dispersion measured with Apollo 8's proprietary data extracted from official reports.
Jul 15, 2026 · 11 min read
Diversification, liquidity, taxes, leverage: a detailed comparison of direct property purchase and listed real estate funds for investors residing in Switzerland.
Mar 18, 2025 · 13 min read