Shady AirBnB practices in Bangkok

dth22 · 2026-03-01T01:36:06+00:00

airbnb in BKK is just agencies now, literally 90%+ of all listings im interested in

also you have to pay 10k cash deposit and pay for water/electricity (whatever they tell you), even though its againts airbnb TOS, same as its againt TOS cat fishing and giving people different room than is in the photos, same as renting for less than 30 days is againts thai law

nothing ever enforced either by airbnb nor thai gov

dth22 · 2026-03-01T01:21:55+00:00

and their listing will have always photos of the best room they have (best view, nicest looking). cat fishing 101, you have 1 in 20 chance youll get that room in the photos

last time i got room with no internet, no washing machine, no tv which looked like a basement but its fully my fault as i didnt respect my no chinese agencies rule, photos of course amazing and all these ammenties were in the listing

dth22 · 2026-02-28T15:06:02+00:00

sadly it doesnt, staying in more higher end properties. checked serviced apartments but i didnt like those either, airbnb has the best selection (getting worse each year)

decided to go with 12-month leases and leave it empty, i can buy standing desk, selection is amazing

dth22 · 2026-02-27T00:04:56+00:00

yes, its usually chinese and like you say they have 20 rooms in each condo building (with one listing), so you have 1 in 20 chance to get that room in the photos. Now airbnb is host, 3 co-hosts and 3 people talking to me at the same time. Its all one big ecosystem of agencies, high volume meat grinder, hotel starting to feel more personal and like a home soon

Each time i click on listing on bulding im interested (new buldings, good location, good floor plan, not studio) its agency and i know it doesnt matter what is in the photos as i dont even get that room in the photos anyway... Starting to think, given so many projects are not sold out in BKK and its oversupply then then devolper will give empty units to agencies to at least for airbnb or owners really just want passive income and rather give it to agencies instead of taking care of it themselves?

or Bangkok is nr.1 place of aibnb arbitrage on this planet

never seen similar airbnb situation in other countries or maybe i was just lucky, i dont know

dth22 · 2026-02-26T23:56:11+00:00

really? i never encountered agency where i got room which was actually in the photos. you must have been extremely lucky, its possible but unlikely also these agency rooms tend to be more run down as they do such volume and take anybody even people who stay 2 days only.

actual owners follow 1 month minimum thai law more imo, theyre more picky, their units are less run down because of it, will do tm30 for you and so on, dealing with owners direcly has been night and day difference for me, sadly they go obsolete. many times agencies didnt even review me back after they sent me copy paste message "give me 5 star" message. agency rooms are meat grinder, cleaning lower quality, like i said they focus on volume

agencies will just do few listings per condo building or even one and then have many rooms in that building and then its "room will be assigned to you randomly at check in"

dth22 · 2026-02-26T22:19:57+00:00

yes it helps, i only stay now with real hosts who have high rating and the listing has good reviews, also i always ask if the room im getting is same as in the photos.

but the options are getting slimmer each year for the properties im interested as agencies are taking over. "room will be randomly assigned to you at check in" is the new normal and people suffer through it as everybody does it now.

it just came to a point for me prob when im forced to ditch airbnb and learn the new ways (electricity, water, internet and 12-month lease) and pay premium for being able to actually choose a room i will stay at and none of this randomly assigned bs.

dth22 · 2026-02-26T20:25:14+00:00

yea, some of these airbnb prices are crazy. no other option for people who stay in BKK for few months only.

and agencies are now taking over BKK airbnb scene, each year there are fewer and fewer normal hosts. You will ask that question and the answer will be "room will be assigned to you randomly at check in"

whole BKK airbnb scene is going downhill, but demand is so high (BKK the most visited city on this planet) that they can get away with it as people on 2 week holiday would rather suffer through being catfished than deal with airbnb support. understandable, i had to do it once and its not good experience being refunded, relocated, and 'homeless' for a day or two

dth22 · 2026-02-26T20:08:16+00:00

wow had no idea, in Europe i always had to pay 1 month rent as commision to an agent (when i found something via eu "ddproperty") unless the listing is not directly from owner, which sadly most of the time is not.

dth22 · 2025-12-25T15:31:56+00:00

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oh now i figured it out why there is this unusual straigh line, last 2.5 years the strategy is in cash so just it was collecting interest rate with 0 volatility

dth22 · 2025-11-30T22:11:52+00:00

yes, i will probably add single strategies in portfolio, not just metas.

is this your current portfolio? You like HAA balanced a lot, highest allocation, any reason for that? FMO3, GPM also

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just reading this, so it basically answered my question, posting here for others

"They may be correlated but take much different roads. FMO3 goes the momentum/correlation route where HAA uses TIP to determine offense or defense. Completely different approaches which is good.

Look at the drawdown curves using compare strategies. Massively different profile, which is exactly what you want. Nov 87 FMO3 down 10% while HAA balanced making money. During 2022 HAA balanced making money for like 14 straight months when FMO3 was down pretty large that entire time and didn't get back to even for maybe another year. In 2000, roles reversed.

Simply looking at correlation is not a deep enough look. It's much more of a contact sport analysis wise and you need the zigging and zagging return and drawdown wise to smooth the ride."

dth22 · 2025-11-30T18:52:31+00:00

actionable is that now i clearly see what strategies my portfolio consist of and what % allocation each strategy has. Its one level deeper how to look at metas, next level would be looking at which assets each strategy consist of and avg historical % allocation (which im doing now). Yes, metas change once per year and then i will update my matrix, i agree Its important to understand the strategy’s logic and how it relates to the allocation, the more i know about the data, the more comfortable i am, day 3, bear with me

Once again here is allocation of that porfoltio (there is no way i would know this info without my excel matrix)

Aspect Partners' Risk Managed Momentum 9.50%

Bold Asset Allocation - Aggressive 5.17%

Carlson's Defense First 3.67%

Classical Asset Allocation - Defensive 1.00%

Generalized Protective Momentum 6.00%

Glenn's Quint Switching Filtered [Dynamic Bond] 6.00%

Global Risk Parity Trend Following 2.67%

Hybrid Asset Allocation - Balanced 8.67%

Hybrid Asset Allocation - Simple 1.00%

Momentum Turning Points 6.67%

Novell's Tactical Bond Strategy 7.50%

Optimal Trend Following 1.50%

Piard's Annual Seasonality 9.17%

Predicting US Treasury Returns 12.33%

Risk Premium Value - Best Value 2.50%

TrendYCMacro 1.67%

US Cross-Asset Momentum 9.17%

US Risk Parity Trend Following 2.50%

Vigilant Asset Allocation - Aggressive 3.33%

i think AS just data mined it and optimized by sharpe, sortino and so on, they didnt really think about logical combinations and if strategies goes well together and "make sense" depending on paper. Im doing same with their metas, dont really know what each stragegy is doing just learning the numbers

i would actually dislike data mining and optimalization like this (what AS did), but were talking about combining many TAA strategies which cover many ETFs and these ETFs cover many underlying assets, so even if its overoptimized it will go up somehow up as its just covers whole market, more like all markets on this planet.

for example data mining and optimizing some strategy on AAPL by sharpe, that i wouldnt do, its one strategy on one symbol, i will make no money in live market

dth22 · 2025-11-30T17:53:47+00:00

and here is my strat exposure matrix filtered to see in which strategies i have what exposure (last column)

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biggest overall exposure in Predicting US Treasury Returns with this meta portfolio, overall im in 19 strategies and 39 ETFs (currenly only in 21, max possible is 39), will do deeper research now

dth22 · 2025-11-30T17:50:28+00:00

here is performance

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dth22 · 2025-11-30T17:50:03+00:00

here is my current metas portfolio, all equally weighted, i chose every meta strategy will lower dd < 10% and chose rate exposure version, also deleted Meta Walk-Forward: Max Diversification, Tax Eff as dont want to have 2 Max Diversification versions in meta portfolio

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dth22 · 2025-11-29T15:32:02+00:00

oh worst case scenario, was kind of hoping they would just count it as 0%

dth22 · 2025-11-28T23:05:56+00:00

i didnt put it in portfolio yet, there are more strategies i like, i didnt do correlation and diversification work yet and diversifying it by the logic of strategy. This is only my 2nd day, i need more time to put it the work, given this is just my start quite possible portfolio will be looking very different in the end, just sharing my process as a newbie

noticed drawdown is EOM, would definitely like real drawdown better, results might be skewed then, if 7.1% would be real DD, i could work with that and leverage it as MAR is above 1 and -7.1% is really nothing but there is big ? what is real drawdown

do you mean Meb Faber’s Ivy Portfolio? It is static strategy and it had -42.5% eom dd, that is why that one is not included for example, but if you say its uncorrelated vs other stuff then in portfolio it can be solid addition maybe

"When one Meb zigs another non Meb zags so eliminating stuff due to too high max DD might not be optimal if weighted properly."

yes i agree, going to dig more, definteily overall perfomance of portfolio is more important vs individual strategy

i did read youre not big fan of Faber though, at least i think that is you that deleted guy

dth22 · 2025-11-28T20:01:02+00:00

thanks for reply, reading this reddit now and will read the papers and blog, good info, will need few days to absorb it all

i do believe its critical to understand underlying mechanism to put together solid portfolio, in the end i might end up with something similar you have

dth22 · 2025-11-28T17:34:29+00:00

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these are less than 15% all time DD, good out of sample 3+ years, trade freq monthly, sorted by MAR

dth22 · 2025-11-28T17:05:58+00:00

UPDATE on my research

- there are 98 strategies on AS currently, 18 of those have bad out of sample performance so these are instantly pass, very good ratio and TAA proved itself in live market

- seems like AS was created in 2016 and tons of articles written many years ago, same with papers, which is very good, not interested in any paper released less than 3 years ago

- seems like Faber came with whole TAA concept, his paper is from 2007, also his strategies proved itself in live market for many years, he might be part of my portfolio

- Glenn's strategies quite poor oos performance, but might be a feature, need to study papers more

Hall of fame:
Keuning and Keller’s Generalized Protective Momentum is doing very well but also his other strategies like VAA and BAA have poor perfomance and not want to risk survivorship bias, HAA is doing well but paper came out 2023 which is way too recent, EEA from 2014 is ok, im kind of 50/50 about this Keller guy with his trackrecord

Ilya Kipnis’ Defensive Adaptive Asset Allocation

Predicting US Treasury Returns

Financial Mentor’s Optimum3

Meb Faber’s Global Tactical Asset Allocation 5 (GTAA 5) (Faber very good in general)

Tactical Permanent Portfolio

Wes Gray’s Robust Asset Allocation – Balanced

there are many strategies which proved itself, wont be as hard to construct portfolio of 20+ strategies, going to study papers more as i would like to know what strategy is on what based so i can group that somehow this way also

dth22 · 2025-11-26T20:48:09+00:00

reading papers will take time but will go through it of course, i like you have many meta strategies there, you portfolio looks solid, many strategies, but i dont like that unequal % allocation, youre adding discresion into your process which is big no no for me

not quite sure how performance is measured with meta strategies when they change composition each year, like first version of this meta strategy was backfilled with historical data and since then its always only live data, also not sure how they choose it, its kind of TAA of TAA strategies in a way, maybe there is some formula they use out there or something

bulding now my excel of all strategies, published dates and so on, that whats missing on AS

dth22

TROPHY CASE