Series 01
Examinations
Examinations
What you keep matters more than what you're told
The Examinations
Where money quietly goes.
Fifteen short, evidence-minded studies of the costs and choices that shape what a household actually keeps — idle-cash sweeps, fund fees, yield mirages, tax drag, when to deploy, and how a portfolio is structured. No products, no pressure. Just the arithmetic, examined plainly.
The series
A Platform-Cost Examination
The Idle-Cash Examination.
Two brokerages can look identical — zero trade commissions, zero account minimums, the same funds — and quietly pay wildly different rates on the cash sitting idle in the account.
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A Fee-Structure Examination
The Fee-on-Income Examination.
An advisory fee is quoted as a percentage of assets — say 0.60% — and it sounds modest against the whole portfolio.
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A Yield-vs-Return Examination
The Yield-Mirage Examination.
A fund advertises a distribution yield near 3.86%.
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A Strategy-vs-Baseline Benchmark
The Cash-Coverage Benchmark.
A household needs a fixed amount of cash from its portfolio each year.
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An Expense-Ratio Examination
The Same-Exposure Examination.
Five flagship funds track effectively the same slice of the market.
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A Fund-Structure Examination
The Wrapper Examination.
A zero-cost index mutual fund and a low-cost ETF can hold the same companies in the same weights — and still behave like different instruments.
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A Tax-Structure Examination
The Direct-Index Examination.
Two ways to own the same index: buy a single pooled fund, or directly own the 200–600 individual stocks inside it.
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A Vehicle-Choice Examination
The Vehicle-Tradeoff Examination.
Two funds track the same index.
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A Sequence-of-Returns Examination
The Sequence-Risk Examination.
The danger isn't a market crash.
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A Deployment-Method Examination
The Deployment Examination.
When a large sum is ready to invest, the instinct is to ease it in slowly to avoid buying at a peak.
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A Marketed-Claim Examination
The Tax-Alpha Examination.
A personalized-indexing strategy advertises a headline "tax alpha" of 5.04%.
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A Decision-Architecture Examination
The Windfall-Structure Examination.
Most large windfalls aren't lost to bad markets.
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A Methodology Examination
The Apples-to-Apples Benchmark.
Most strategy comparisons are rigged before they start — each option quoted with its own favorable assumptions, on its own time frame, against its own benchmark.
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A Strategy-vs-Baseline Benchmark
The Two-Forces Benchmark.
When a long-horizon strategy pulls ahead of a conventional stock-and-bond blend over decades, it is tempting to credit a single clever idea.
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A Fee Examination
The Reverse-Compounding Examination.
Compounding is supposed to work for you.
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