Category Archives: ETF

March Madness: Final Four Investing Bracket 2026

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Mr. Market:

It’s that time of year again. The nets are being cut down, the office bracket pools are being filled out, and somewhere right now a 12-seed is about to ruin someone’s perfect bracket. Welcome to March Madness…the one time of year when a school nobody has heard of can knock off a powerhouse, and when the chalk favorites don’t always survive the first weekend.

We’ve been publishing our annual March Madness Investing Bracket longer than anyone else on Wall Street, and each year it gives us the opportunity to do something most investment firms won’t: put our themes, our convictions, and our best ideas out in public, bracket them against each other, and let the logic play out. Not every pick wins. Not every #1 seed survives. That’s kind of the point.

This year’s tournament feels particularly loaded. Duke and the Boozer twins are the consensus favorite to cut down the nets…a Blue Blood program with generational talent that almost no one is betting against. Michigan, Arizona, and UConn round out the projected #1 seeds. But if March has taught us anything, it’s that favorites get humbled, Cinderella stories emerge from nowhere, and the team that survives isn’t always the one that looked the best in February.

Sound familiar?

Continue reading →

RETIRE Right: Six Keys to a Stronger Financial Plan

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Mr. Market:

This morning I had the pleasure of speaking at the Seal Beach Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the Beach House … a room full of business owners, community leaders, and friends. For those who don’t know me, I’m Matt Pixa, founder of My Portfolio Guide, LLC, an independent fee-only wealth management firm. I’ve been honored to serve on the Chamber’s Board of Directors in the past, and was named 2021 Businessperson of the Year. While my schedule doesn’t allow me to attend as often as I’d like, it’s always a privilege to come back, reconnect, and hopefully provide a few takeaways that help people make smarter financial decisions.

Instead of giving a 15-minute “commercial” about my firm, I wanted to do something more interactive. So I asked everyone to take one of my business cards, flip it over, and write down the word RETIRE. Each letter became a conversation point for one of the six key areas of financial planning every person should be thinking about — no matter their age or stage of life.

These are the pillars that determine whether your financial plan can withstand market volatility, economic uncertainty, and life’s inevitable curveballs. If you missed the breakfast, here’s a recap of the discussion (and yes, you can watch the full 18-minute video below).

Read more: RETIRE Right: Six Keys to a Stronger Financial Plan Continue reading →

March Madness: Final Four Investing Bracket 2025

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Mr. Market:

This is perhaps one of our favorite articles and times of the year; not necessarily because of basketball but rather it allows us the opportunity to articulate our main investment themes we see playing out for the remainder of the year. My Portfolio Guide, LLC was the first investment firm to publish a March Madness investing bracket where we share our picks and match them up against each other.  We break down and assign each of the four “regions” with an asset class and then pick teams (stocks) that we think have the best chance at doing well relative to others. 

Not only is this “exercise” a way for us to share our ideas from a macro perspective, but it offers a fun platform to dig into a couple specific investments and themes we are following or excited about. While NCAA teams battle for supremacy on the court, our annual March Madness Investing Bracket pits stocks and ETFs against each other to determine the investment themes we think are likely to outperform the remainder of the year. The competition spans four “regions”: Large Cap, Small & Mid Cap, International, and Bonds & Alternatives.

Who will be this year’s champion? Let’s break it down (click here to see the full bracket).

Read more: March Madness: Final Four Investing Bracket 2025 Continue reading →

Can Microreactors Make Nuclear Energy Cool Again?

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Mr. Market:

Are you enjoying the Senate confirmation hearings with all the theater, finger pointing, and viral media clips? From an investment standpoint there was one hearing to pay attention to on Wednesday and that was with President-elect Trump’s pick for Energy Secretary, Chris Wright. At first glance he certainly touts the “drill baby drill” narrative but Wright said he’s excited about geothermal (heat energy that comes from the Earth) as “an enormous, abundant energy resource below everyone’s feet.” Wright said he wants to accelerate the development of nuclear energy so it can meet a far greater share of the world’s demand for electricity.

Have you also noticed how small things often pack a big punch? Microchips power our digital world, microplastics remind us of our environmental duties, and now microreactors are poised to redefine how we think about energy. Let’s dive into whether this is the investment opportunity of the century or just another overhyped promise in the energy space.

Continue reading →

March Madness: Final Four Investing Bracket 2024

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Mr. Market:

If your alma mater or favorite college team did not make the tournament on Selection Sunday, we’ve got another option for you!

Even if you don’t like or follow college basketball, we think you’ll enjoy what we pioneered and have put together.

My Portfolio Guide, LLC was the first investment firm to publish a March Madness investing bracket where we share our picks and match them up against each other.  We break down and assign each of the four “regions” with an asset class and then pick teams (stocks) that we think have the best chance at doing well relative to others. 

Not only is this “exercise” a way for us to share our ideas from a macro perspective, but it offers a fun platform to dig into a couple specific investments and themes we are following or excited about in the year ahead.

Click here or below to see or enlarge the entire bracket for 2024. 

Our Final Four Investing Bracket slots 48 positions against each other and we mainly want to show why we see one investment doing better than another over the course of the next year. One caveat to keep in mind is that while there are 48 total investments within our bracket, it does not mean we like them all; some are there for illustrative purposes or to discuss a certain theme playing out in the stock market. Lastly, the way these are initially “seeded” does not reflect our current confidence in them. For example, a #1 seeded investment could lose right out of the gate just as a #12 could potentially win it all. In other words, these investments (or “teams”) are ranked and seeded on a number of factors but one of the main drivers is how hot they recently performed within the past few months or recent year.

Continue reading →

100 Reasons Why Your Financial Advisor Should Not Use Mutual Funds

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Mr. Market:

The stock market is made up of thousands of choices and one easy way to gain exposure to it is via mutual funds. While we don’t want to broad brush the topic, we’re going to get right into it and explain 100 reasons why you or your financial advisor should not be using mutual funds versus ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds).

Continue reading →

Going Long in Two Fields: Why TLT Could Be Your MVP During Recessions

Posted on by
1

Dear Mr. Market:

First off, if you want to know how amazing Artificial Intelligence is, the following list of article titles were generated for this article in the matter of four seconds! (we picked the first one and the rest of this article is typed with regular human toiling!)

FYI: If you’ve never used ChatGPT, before try it! Much of its delivery is on what and how you ask things and in this case here is the prompt/reply that we asked of it:

Certainly! Here are a couple of article title ideas that play on the “going long” football reference while discussing extending bond allocations, especially in a recessionary context and using the TLT ticker symbol:

  1. “Going Long in Two Fields: Why TLT Could Be Your MVP During Recessions”
  2. “Huddling Up for Stability: TLT’s Game Plan for Going Long in a Recession”
  3. “Scoring Big in Bonds: Going Long with TLT Amidst Recession Signals”
  4. “Touchdown for Investors: TLT’s Playbook for Going Long in Uncertain Markets”
  5. “Bonds and Touchdowns: TLT’s Strategy for Going Long in Recessions”
  6. “From Gridiron to Portfolio: Going Long with TLT’s Defensive Play”
  7. “Executing the Long Game: TLT’s Endurance in a Recessional Season”
  8. “Tackling Recession Risk: Going Long with TLT’s Defensive Line”
  9. “The Bond Field Advantage: Going Long with TLT Amid Market Turbulence”
  10. “Scouting for Opportunities: Going Long with TLT’s Recessional Defense”

Now…on to business and what we’re talking about today, which is not related to football but rather recession worries, market strategy, and in our opinion how one should consider adjusting the bond piece of their allocation to hedge what we see coming. If you’re in the growing and increasingly popular camp of preparing for a stock market crash or just a general recession, here’s one adjustment and hedge that you may want to consider.

Continue reading →

March Madness: Final Four Investing Bracket 2023 

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Mr. Market:

March Madness is back!  

And so are we… The world stopped pretty much everything at one point during the pandemic and sports were of course no exception. For true sports fans there was nothing more depressing than watching cornhole tournaments or empty arenas void of fans, sounds, and energy. Even if you don’t like or follow college basketball, we think you’ll enjoy what we pioneered and have put together. 

We’re proud to say that My Portfolio Guide, LLC was the first investment firm to publish a March Madness investing bracket where we share our picks and match them up against each other. We break down and assign each of the four “regions” with an asset class and then pick teams (stocks) that we think have the best chance at doing well relative to others.  

Not only is this “exercise” a way for us to share our ideas from a macro perspective, but it offers a fun platform to dig into a couple specific investments and themes we are following or excited about in the year ahead. 

Click here or below to enlarge and see the entire bracket for 2023.  

Continue reading →

Permanent Portfolio Review

Posted on by
1

Dear Mr. Market:

Simple allocation ?

In a year where the stock market has provided zero safe places to hide…you may have changed, the markets certainly have, but one thing has not; the Permanent Portfolio.

We’ve reviewed the Permanent Portfolio before but believe it’s time to check in and provide an update on how it’s doing relative to the broad markets now as well as chime in on whether the strategy still has merit going forward. For some quick background, our first original review was written in June of 2013 (click here to see that). Most recently we revisited the topic with an update in November of 2020 (click here) as we climbed out of one of the wildest years in world history amidst a global pandemic.

If you didn’t hit the embedded article links above, the Permanent Portfolio is pretty simple at face value. The Permanent Portfolio is a seemingly basic portfolio allocation strategy created by investment advisor Harry Browne in the 1980’s and outlined in his book Fail-Safe Investing back in 2001. Here’s the secret (simple) sauce and how each asset class should do during repeatable economic cycles:

Continue reading →

Investing & Diversification: When Less is More

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Mr. Market: download

In many of our letters to you we discuss the ups and downs of the stock market. In doing so, we often times will share basic knowledge and investing reminders to our readers to help guide them. Without question, even a rookie investor will have learned the simple advice of diversifying their portfolio. “Do not put all your eggs in one basket!”

While that “advice” is intuitive and seems to make sense, it’s mainly regurgitated by every financial advisor because of one alarming reason. Yes, on one hand it’s with the intent of managing risk but part of the dark reality is because most people (pros included) don’t know what they’re doing. This last sentence may sound harsh but our job is to be candid and also share ideas and truths that you may need to know yet not always hear elsewhere.

If you stop reading this article right now do yourself a favor and at least spend seven minutes when you have more time. The seven minutes we want you to spend are watching the following clip of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Click here to view it and learn their basic belief that most investors over diversify and are simply “protecting themselves from ignorance”. Continue reading →