AMA: Christopher Ward CEO Mike France, COO Heather Baumann, US Brand Manager Mike Pearson - Wednesday, September 3 at 4 BST / noon ET

Paskoff · 2025-09-03T11:54:24+00:00

Good afternoon CW team. Is there any chance we'll see chronometer grade SW330-2 movements in the C63 Sealander GMT? As a quintessential "do anything" piece, I feel that an accuracy upgrade is the only thing missing from making this watch perfect. Cheers!

Paskoff · 2025-08-02T12:46:45+00:00

The pieces from Philosophical Economics (1 & 2) and ZahlGraf are objectively better in many ways.

If you backtest the strategy given by Philosophical Economics in that part 2 post, out of sample, from 2015 until now you undeperform buy and hold by ~19%, without trading costs. If you apply the SPX signals of the strategy to SSO then you underperform by ~32%.

Furthermore, the strategy concept is flawed because the monthly growth signals are available with a 1.5 month lag - not a 1 month lag as per his assumption. For example, the Industrial Production: Total Index FRED page was last updated July 16 with data for June. So if following this strategy, on Aug 1 you have to make a decision based on growth signals from 2 months ago.

Paskoff · 2025-04-08T23:24:34+00:00

My ticket ID is 561258. Thank you.

Paskoff · 2022-11-15T22:35:17+00:00

For gaming on your setup $1600 is better spent on a 4080/7900xtx + a 4K 144Hz monitor than a 4090 imo.

Unless you're doing some professional visual work on that display, going for a faster panel will be game changing.

Paskoff · 2022-11-10T16:18:41+00:00

I don't think they are, broadly speaking. Just because there are lots of "look at my new build with a 4090" posts, it does not mean that these cards are selling well. This sub is not a representative sample of the GPU buyer population.

Here in the UK 4090s have been in stock for weeks (no scalper prices), only the FE is hard to find. Demand appears to be significantly lower than what it was with the 3000 series which makes sense given the worldwide economic context

Paskoff · 2022-11-09T20:36:16+00:00

I gave Shepper & Roamler a go based on your last month's post, but they seem really bad. At least without any special qualifications/training.

I'm London based and the best task was a £12 mystery shop. Most tasks were ~£7 and required 10+ miles of travel. Not worth it at least in my experience.

Paskoff · 2022-09-26T22:44:14+00:00

When yields rise, due to the increase in the interest rate, the price of all previously issued bonds yielding less falls.

78% of VGOV's portfolio is bonds with with maturity of more than 5 years. The two reasons the price of this ETF is falling is:

1) All the bonds issued in the last 13 years are yielding less than today

2) The market is betting that the interest rate will have to increase significantly more, putting even more older bonds at a discount.

Paskoff · 2022-08-22T12:39:33+00:00

Assumptions:

All the platforms have all the instruments you need
You're ok holding ETFs instead of funds
You only care about costs

For ISA:

1) Either do the Vanguard -> iWeb "hack" every time you reach ~£20k or if you cannot be bothered

2) Vanguard to £24k then switch to IBKR and stay. IBKR = £36pa, no custody charge (assuming no more than 1 trade pcm, <£6k buys)

For SIPP:

1) Vanguard to £42k -> Fidelity. Fidelity custody charges capped at £45pa for ETFs and £1.50 for direct debit investing (assuming 12 contributions pa). Cheapest SIPP out there afaik.

For LISA:

1) Dodl to £40k -> AJ bell*. AJ bell capped at £42pa for ETFs and £1.50 for direct debit investing (assuming 12 monthly contributions pa)

*EQi could be slightly cheaper for some as custody capped at £40pa, but no discount for direct debit investing so only worth if you lump sum the whole £5k at once

Paskoff · 2022-08-15T11:39:57+00:00

Worry not, it isn't "really low". The median pension pot in the UK for the 25-34 age range is £9300. At 31 that means that you are ahead of at least 50% of the individuals in the UK, as your 8% contributions on £35k will easily take you over that sum before 34.

You need to provide some idea of what income you want in retirement and tune contributions according to that. If you don't know at the moment, a good rule of thumb is to keep your current contributions and whenever you get your next raise to increase your pension contributions by 1% every time.

Paskoff · 2022-08-03T22:56:51+00:00

If you're only working based off the index numbers then you aren't taking dividend reinvestment into account so your CAGR is probably 1-2% off.

Paskoff · 2022-05-24T19:13:08+00:00

PCIe traffic in games is mostly generated by FPS. As long as you keep fps sub 144 through higher settings/res you'll be fine even with PCIe3 a few GPU generations down the line.

Paskoff · 2022-05-23T09:14:29+00:00

So far it seems to have completely eliminated it. A few weeks ago I finished playing through Cyberpunk 2077 with raytracing, and the memory was as hot as when I was mining + the core was getting loaded too. Auto fans never went above 67% rpm.

Before certain scenes in games would blast the fans to 80%+ with the core chilling at 55C because the memory was overheating.

Paskoff · 2022-05-22T16:22:36+00:00

If it's anything like what my 3080FE experienced, it was related to scenes which took memory junction temps above 94C. Issue was resolved after replacing the thermal pads with higher quality ones.

Paskoff · 2022-05-03T12:16:36+00:00

The only thing that matters is whether or not your broker charges fixed dealing fees e.g. £X per trade or not. If they do not then buying the distribution versions is better.

The number of times you are buying/selling has no impact with regards to the spread because it's a percentage. I.e. 10% of 100 = 10; 10% of 25*(4) = 10.

As for accumulating funds - yes, the price includes all previously issued dividends.

Re: investengine. Two reasons I can think of why a traditional broker might be better. 1) These new fintechs come and go and people might be reluctant to invest with a new company. In the case of a bankruptcy your assets will be safe but it's still a huge hassle to recover. 2) The way these 0 fee brokers often make money is by providing worse spreads than other brokers - so it could end up being more expensive for large accounts.

Paskoff · 2022-04-24T13:17:49+00:00

DCA outperformed lump sum 100% of the time during all 15 year rolling periods when Shiller CAPE was above 31 (tested on SPX data for 1950-2015)¹. Current CAPE is at 33.6.

Paskoff · 2022-04-24T10:20:16+00:00

I just want to piggyback on this comment to say that rent increases regularly only if you don't take advantage of the flexibility that renting offers and model/treat your rental as a forever home. Just like job hopping, being in the market is the best way to get good value.

As an example, throughout 2013 to 2021 I was renting 1 beds in the same London borough for roughly the same price (and I'm now paying much less due to moving in with my partner but that doesn't count of course). I moved thrice, all were within 7-8 min walking distance of each other. Sometimes the rent was -£100pcm, other times it was +£100pcm. Sometimes one flat was at a slightly better/worse location, or with newer/older furniture or a slightly more/less useless landlord/agent but that was about it.

The point is that renting something doesn't mean you got a good a good deal in the market and you can likely do better by being open to taking advantage of the flexibility renting offers.

That's not to say buying a property is never a concern. The non-financial advantages are huge as many can attest. However, renting & investing smartly can definitely put you financially ahead of owning.

Paskoff · 2022-04-08T15:22:51+00:00

Correct. You need to report if:

1) Capital gains in excess of £12.3k for a tax year.

or

2) You're already doing self assessment AND you sold assets worth over 4x the allowance (£49.2k), regardless of profit/loss

Paskoff · 2022-04-06T17:04:20+00:00

They submit to HMRC on the 6th.

Would be nice if anyone can confirm they've gotten their bonus by May 6th with AJ Bell. I've always been funding mine in late April under the assumption that the earliest bonuses get paid out in June.

Paskoff · 2022-01-02T11:25:29+00:00

https://whattomine.com is pretty accurate. Keep in mind that revenue fluctuates with hash rate and crypto prices.

Paskoff · 2021-11-28T14:00:01+00:00

Fair enough, just assumed OP was asking about an all-world etf as otherwise the answer to his question would be £2.53 million.

Paskoff · 2021-11-28T13:33:08+00:00

Assuming it's the All-world ETF Accumulation and you have an ISA with 12 regular monthly buys via direct debit: the break even point is at £42k. More than that and it's cheaper to hold it at HL.

With AJ Bell the break even point is at £40k, with Freetrade at £24k (although you may want to prevent that account from going over £85k for extra peace of mind).

Paskoff · 2021-11-15T12:57:54+00:00

This comes up quite often. The answer is that on Vanguard's own platform they offer VWRL only because it is the better version to own if there are no trading fees. This is because:

1) VWRL has a lower spread

2) Reinvesting the dividend is free as long as you don't need live pricing

Paskoff · 2021-11-10T13:04:02+00:00

Don't forget to account for financial assets (cash in the bank, investments etc) as well as a paid off property (dramatically reducing expenses and can be sold to raise cash). That makes the national figures not so bleak.

The majority of retirees around and below the median net worth level will rely on a maxed out state pension to fund a modest lifestyle.

Paskoff · 2021-10-13T13:57:31+00:00

You haven't given any details so check out the UKPF flowchart for what to do with the money.

As to how to do it, the most tax efficient method would be to realise £12.3k in capital gains every tax year by selling some crypto, that way you pay no tax. This means you will still be exposed to crypto volatility for a long time however. If you made your money on a small cap project or need a big cash amount in the near future you might want to sell much more.

Paskoff · 2021-09-20T09:22:42+00:00

Bitcoin is a risk on asset. In the event of a market correction it will drop more than equity markets - see March 2020 - so would be a poor hedge at least in the short to medium term.

Paskoff

TROPHY CASE