The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

An update on the Dolce Far Niente Portfolio

IMPORTANT: somebody has been impersonating me on Substack, on Instagram and on YouTube. Please don’t engage. Report and block, possible. And please DON’T send any money.

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Time and again, it has been proven that sector allocation trumps individual stock picking. In other words, choosing to invest in—or avoid—specific sectors has a greater impact on returns than selecting the right company within those sectors.

With this in mind, almost a year ago now, I introduced the Dolce Far Niente portfolio. It emphasises strategic asset allocation above stock picking: a portfolio of low-risk, long-term investments, designed around today’s market conditions, about which we don’t have to constantly worry and fret. Hence “Dolce Far Niente”, which translates literally as “the sweetness of doing nothing.”

Many of us have other things to be getting on with. We don’t have time to constantly monitor our investments, so I make only occasional adjustments to the Dolce portfolio—we trimmed back uranium earlier in the year, for example—but the main approach is to leave it alone and let it grow with minimal interference.

Today we check in and see how it is doing: the answer is pretty well.

I also ran into Condor Gold (CNR.L) Chairman Jim Mellon yesterday - he came to see my show at the Edinburgh Fringe and we had a drink after. He didn’t give much away, but I’ll tell you about that too.

October 1, 2023 was the start date for Dolce Far Niente. Many of these assets, even though they have risen, still remain buys in my view. The Nasdaq, for example, has done an island reversal since the volatility of last week, which bodes well for tech stocks, bitcoin and US equities more generally.

The broader allocation currently looks something like this:

1. Gold: 15%

2. Bitcoin: 5%

3. Special situations: 10%