Boris Grozev's Blog

” To be an investor you must be a believer in a better tomorrow. ” Ben Graham

The Background

My journey in financial services started about seven years ago. I have assumed various roles and responsibilities in customer support, business and product development. One of the most interesting observations that I have made while working with financial professionals across Europe, Middle East and South East Asia is that although professionally, many of them are charged with managing other people’s money, personally they often forget to invest for their own future.

There are various explanations for that – it sometimes is the fact that from a regulatory point of view there are smaller possibilities they could use to secure their own retirement, it could also be the fact that they are simply too tired from their daily work to focus on their own portfolio, or that they are procrastinating on the starting date. By no means, am I an investment expert, at the same time I do invest with a long term objective.  Also, I help many senior investment professionals with their portfolio management, optimization and reporting.

The important stuff

Given the aforementioned context of my daily life, I have come to realize how important is to start investing as early as you can. It is also equally paramount to do that and as wise as possible. We are lucky enough to live in a digital age, where investment advice and information are common place and often at the access of our finger prints. In my view the challenge we mostly have is finding the right information so that we can educate ourselves enough to not only learn the basics of investing but also take smart enough decisions that would eventually empower our cloudless financial future.

This is why, I though that sharing some non-mainstream resources that have helped me build my portfolio, learn about investing and of course smartly consume consume freely available research.

1. www.savvyinvestor.net is a brilliant research aggregator platform. It pulls a lot of excellent information from the worlds best investment banks and research houses. Given the impact of recent MIFID II regulation had on research publications distribution, I am inclined to think that being able to read macro economic reports, sector studies and white papers from the likes JP Morgan, Investec, UBS, Credit Suisse, Nomura, Wells&Fargo and many many more can be very useful.

2. www.zerohedge.com most contrarian view of the market. It is described as a “markets-focused” blog, that presents both in-house analysis, as well as analysis from external contributors. It is adhered to Austrian School of economics and credit cycle, which is why it is beleived to have bearish view of the stock market. It is beleived that Daniel Ivandjiiski, a son of a Bulgarian Soviet era diplomat is the founder of that website.

3. http://www.nethworthy.com first the blog on the website is great, second and most importantly the calculator to financial freedom is brilliant. It allows to build various scenarios so that you can calculate how much left you have to save so that you can become financially independent ( i.e. being in a position that allows you not to need a full time job).

4. www.morningstar.co.uk is one of the most recognisable names of the fund selection industry, however very few people know that it also offers a free portfolio tracking tool with advanced analytics for up to as well free research of their own.

5. www.seekingalpha.com describes itself as an industry leader mining the wisdom of the crowds for insights on every topic of interest to investors. 53 editors curate content from a network of 15000+ stock analysts, traders, economists, academics, financial advisors and industry experts — all who engage in our community.

The above said, it is worth using investopedia.org to constantly build up your financial skills as well as keeping an eye on the main market moving media outlets such as Bloomberg, Reuters and the FT.

Take aways

Investing to secure your financial future, in my view is a must. In our age we are lucky to have plenty of free, excellent resources that we can benefit from. The earlier we start the better it is. What are the resources that you use to stay up to date and shape your investment strategy?

About the author

Boris Grozev is a seasoned fintech executive. Moreover, he is an entrepreneur by heart. Boris has helped number of businesses. To clarify, he has created and implemented business development and product enhancement strategies. In addition, his advisory work in emerging and frontier markets has resulted in culture and technology change. Above all, it has fostered innovation and lead to tangible results. He also invests in variety of asset classes and shares his experiences from the journey to financial independence. Boris’ leadership abilities, ambition naturally spread to others. He is a fast learner. His stamina, attitude and passion to succeed help to achieve common goals.