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Articles & guides
Practical articles on ETFs, taxes, dividends and strategy. Clear and traceable.
Portfolio analysis with Investboard: A practical portfolio check
Check holdings, ETF overlaps and deviations from your strategy. With a worked example and a comparison with Parqet and getquin.
AI in investing: keep control of rules, strategy and monitoring
What BaFin and ESMA actually require, which limits AI-generated ideas need, and how an investment mandate with honest monitoring keeps the investor in control.
AI investing needs a mandate, not a better prompt
AI agents can now move from a conversation to a securities order. The next question is not whether they can act. It is whether they understand the investor they are acting for.
Change Your Investment Strategy or Stay the Course?
When a changed life justifies a new policy, and when prices, headlines or recent returns are only creating pressure.
Investment discipline: why it is the real edge
Brokers are built for execution and trackers for observation. Neither is built for the discipline of following a plan you set yourself. What a behavioural control layer does instead.
The All Weather portfolio: Ray Dalio's answer to the AI bubble
In 2026 Ray Dalio warns of concentrated AI risk and still considers his risk-balanced core essential. What All Weather means now, and why the familiar 30/55/15 mix is not his current recommendation.
What your broker app hides, and what it costs you
The screen shows today's return. What actually decides your long-term net return sits elsewhere: what you really own, what it costs, what survives tax, and whether you are still following your plan.
Artificial intelligence in wealth management: what it can and cannot do
Five client-led shifts are reshaping European private banking. Where AI helps, where it is overrated, and how Investboard uses it: as explanation, not decision.
Understanding ETF costs: TER, tracking difference and hidden fees
Why the total expense ratio is only half the truth, and the tracking difference the more honest figure.
Anlage KAP: when the tax return pays off for investors
Usually the bank settles the tax. The Anlage KAP is for the years in which it could not know everything.
Loss offsetting: how share and ETF losses save German tax
Two pots, a December deadline, and a widespread misconception about equity ETFs.
MSCI World vs. FTSE All-World: the difference that counts
Both are named for the world; only one means all of it. The choice is above all a decision about emerging markets.
Buy and hold: why long-term holding is so hard to beat
Buy, diversify, hold for decades: the strategy that asks little except the hardest thing, doing nothing.
The behavior gap: why investors lag behind their own strategy
The most expensive line item in a portfolio is rarely the market, but the distance between the return of a strategy and what the investor actually keeps from it through their own timing.
Panic selling: what truly helps in a crash
Why selling in a panic usually locks losses in, and what the evidence describes as a calm counterweight.
Investment Policy Statement for private investors: your mandate
The Investment Policy Statement, translated for the self-directed investor: a set of rules you write yourself, to bind today's calm mind to tomorrow's stressed one.
Cooling-off: the deliberate pause before every decision
Why a short, pre-set waiting period lets the hot impulse cool and gives calm reflection back the room that arousal takes from it.
Why doing nothing is often the best decision
For most investors, trading less beats trading a lot, because activity feels productive but as a rule it costs return.
Loss aversion and mental accounting: the costliest thinking errors
How the research of Kahneman, Tversky and Thaler explains the two deepest thinking errors that quietly cost investors return, and how you can recognise them.
The quiet cost of tinkering
Why frequent reshuffling costs return, and what a calm portfolio preserves.
FIRE in Germany: the complete guide
Planning financial independence under the German tax burden
The 4% rule in Germany: why 3.5% is more realistic
The Trinity Study meets the Abgeltungsteuer
Coast FIRE explained: when can you stop saving?
Compound interest does the work
Barista FIRE: work part-time, live full-time
Financial freedom without a complete exit
Withdrawal strategies: spending capital vs. preserving capital
Three strategies for the withdrawal phase compared
Opening a Junior Depot: the complete guide for parents
Step by step to a securities account for your child
NV-Bescheinigung for children: save tax from day 1
Make your child's investment income tax-free up to the allowance
Schenkungsteuer: making the most of the EUR 400,000 allowance
Give tax-free every 10 years: how to do it right
ETF savings plan for children: which ETF, which strategy?
Building wealth from the first day of life
Transferring wealth: Schenkung vs. Erbschaft
When does an early gift pay off?
Calculating the pension gap: what the gesetzliche Rente does not cover
Work out your personal provision need realistically
Building an emergency fund: how much, where to keep it, how fast?
The foundation of every solid financial strategy
Equity for a property: savings plan and timeline
Saving systematically toward a home purchase
Optimising your savings rate: the road to financial independence
Why every percentage point counts
Vorabpauschale 2026: what ETF investors need to know
Basiszins, calculation and practical tips on the Vorabpauschale for accumulating ETFs.
Optimise your Sparerpauschbetrag: splitting the Freistellungsauftrag correctly
How to make the most of your EUR 1,000 allowance across several custody accounts.
Measuring ETF overlap: holdings, weights and look-through
MSCI World and S&P 500: why shared holdings, weighted overlap and portfolio exposure answer different questions.
Dividends after tax: what actually lands in your account
The full tax chain, from the gross dividend to the net amount.
Rebalancing as discipline, not timing
Rebalancing is not a return lever but a way to steer risk: a fixed rule that sells what has risen and buys what has fallen, and takes the decision out of the moment.
From knowledge to clarity
See taxes, dividends and allocation for your whole portfolio in one place.