Happy Monday, Investors,

I know you are tired of yearly recap emails and bold 2024 predictions by now, that’s why I didn’t want to write one.

Hang in there for one more, I’ll add how I want to continue with Meta Investor this year and how it can help you.

We made it, again.

We beat the market, and pretty well this year 🚀

I wanted to write that when the whole market is rising, it’s not that difficult to earn money.

But then I saw a different investor mentioning that with +17.51% she outperformed 2/3 of top hedge funds.

That’s an interesting number, and it seems 2023 really wasn’t the best year for investment funds.

But let’s face it, these guys play a completely different game, and it’s incomparable with retail investors’ portfolios.

What does it mean?

What I want to say though, is that this performance is mostly from passive investing.

I have decided to deploy a different strategy, where the biggest chunk of my portfolio (~80%) is on “auto-pilot”, with occasional adjustments and rebalancing (3 or 4 times per year).

I do the same in crypto (which performed way better than stocks this year).

And actively manage only a small portion of my investments 1-2 times per month.

This approach is important because I realized either I want to trade and spend the time, or I don’t.

But there is very little in between and I was tired of constantly checking the markets, crypto, learning, and trying to figure out things, all while working full-time.

So, I defined my almost fully passive and automated strategy, and let it run with occasional rebalancing.

Seeing the performance, and questions I’m getting from other investors,

I’ve decided I’ll be more transparent with you on my portfolio allocations and investments in 2024.

You will see more behind the scenes of my reasoning and decide for yourself, if you want to follow a similar approach or not.

How can you get closer?

Reach out on Twitter, or add a comment to this post. Tell me what interests you, or what’s the biggest challenge you face.

Discord - I’ve ignored it for way too long, I’ll try to be more active for you there.

Free 1:1 consultation - sign up for a free call with me. There are still a few people in the queue, but I’ll try to talk to everyone who signs up.

Passive investing in Web3 course - I get a lot of questions on the very basics of crypto investing, especially how to start, choose the right sectors, projects, and how to automate the investments. I’m thinking of doing a simple course for the same purpose, to show everything you need to know to start investing, automatically, into projects and sectors you research with the same frameworks I'm using.

Plus lessons learned, tips, and tools to speed up your investment journey.

If you are interested, please fill out the form here: Whitelist.

If we get enough interest, I’ll create it.

What am I watching in 2024

Now is the time for bold predictions.

Right now I want the dust from Santa Rally to settle before I start making portfolio changes.

But to mention at least a few events I’ll be focusing on in 2024:

The AI narrative might slow down, opening doors to something new

• For years we have seen big swings due to narratives.

• Whether it is AI, or it was crypto, EVs, Cannabis, recent anti-obesity drugs, …

• Now it feels the big tech driving 2023 might finally get too expensive and cool off.

That could bring 2 things:

A.) Reduce the gap in the S&P, meaning undervalued stocks going up, offering great returns compared to the index as a whole.

B.) A new narrative is about to take the reins - crypto?

Probably my direction —> reduced exposure to S&P and being more selective with individual stocks, focusing on value over growth.

Choosing crypto instead of growth companies in my portfolio.

Keep an eye on the narrative change in the next weeks, maybe I’m wrong and the market will find something better than crypto.

The year of crypto - do we need it?

• While ETFs are long priced in (when you hear it on CNBC 3 times per day, it’s usually too late), there is still something important to reveal.

• As big institutions jump on the bandwagon, they will start hiring more consultants and, in the financial space, banks to help them.

• Right now the biggest leader in the banking sector would be JPM, with C and GS following.

• It’s not about the extra fees they will collect and boost their revenues, but about the strategies they help define for their clients.

• They will explore together the real financial use cases of crypto, like international settlements; micro-loans to businesses and SMEs; trans-boarder sales, transfers, and financing; identity management; etc.

• Since they operate slowly, we might not see the next big use case this year, but we can see the direction they are heading, and that’s the most important - which blockchain will they use? Will they focus on the financial use cases, or rather explore the compliance? Will they affect the price of public assets, since they will need to leverage Oracles, or developer tools and SDKs? Or will they create everything in-house and create a new proprietary infrastructure, like JPM has been doing on their Onyx blockchain for years?

• This could be the final validation of the technology by the industry. My eyes are on finances, but gaming might be similarly close to a big release this year as interesting titles pile up for release during 2024.

More on crypto

• The European Commission is due to launch a new political body — the European Digital Infrastructure Consortium.

• While alone it might not make big waves, the fact that it was proposed by Belgium, which takes a 6-month presidency of the Council of the EU, and ECB's early announcement of €1.2bn contracts for five initiatives in digital euro project suddenly makes this much more relevant.

• Similar questions to the above: will Amazon (one of the contractors) take the lead in the digital transformation? Which chain and infrastructure? Will it speed up the conflict with stablecoins and possibly put more restrictions on them?

So it begins… Happy 2024!

Matt