Hi, My name is Jeroen Blokland, and I’m happy to announce I will be working with Knaken to provide up-to-date information about macroeconomics, financial markets, and investing in general. Obviously, I will focus on Bitcoin and crypto assets regularly. But this blog also aims to provide you with some helpful background on market developments and how these impact the returns of different asset classes like equities, commodities, and bonds.

Long-term asset manager

Before I go into that a little more, let me first tell you something about myself. I have been active in the asset management industry for more than 20 years. My last job was head of Multi Asset at Robeco, a sizeable pure-play asset manager with over EUR 200 billion in assets under management. I used to run several multi-billion multi-asset portfolios before pursuing a new career.

True Insights

In the second half of 2021, I launched a new independent investment research platform called True Insights. True Insights helps investors across the globe to build well-diversified multi-asset portfolios and to capitalise on market developments. Our investment framework is focused on determining which asset classes and investments are most attractive and offer the best return. We translate the outcomes of our framework into asset class views which we implement into our ETF-based Global Multi-Asset Portfolios. Members of True Insights can follow these portfolios in real-time.

Why multi-asset?

I look at 11 different asset classes, including equities, commodities, real estate, corporate and government bonds, but also gold and bitcoin. The beauty of a multi-asset approach is that you can reduce risk without necessarily giving up return. Even for investors that can carry a lot of risk, diversification offers real benefits. For example, investing in a combination of equities, commodities, and crypto, three of the riskiest asset classes out there, still leaves you with a much better risk-return profile than investing in just one of the three.

In addition, many investors find out the hard way that the amount of risk they can stomach is far less than they anticipated. They get a rude wake-up call only when markets are really collapsing. Many investors then radically lower their investments, thus missing much of the recovery that follows. Adding even a little bit of diversification means that the pain will be less severe when the time comes and markets do crash. I consider it part of my job to explain this to every investor across the globe.

Crypto?

Many traditional investors are having trouble seeing value in Bitcoin and other crypto-assets. Most of the time, this is either because of biased assumptions or a lack of knowledge of how this asset class works. For example, an often-heard argument is that Bitcoin does not have intrinsic value like equities and bonds, which provide a regular cash flow. But many collectibles like art and stamps also represent little intrinsic value. And nor does gold. But perhaps the best example of valuable assets without intrinsic value are euros and US dollars. Yet, all of them represent monetary value.

I will come back to the investment outlook and value of Bitcoin and other asset classes every now and then in my blogs here at Knaken. What is important, at least to me, is that Bitcoin should be considered a (new) asset class. It has some very specific characteristics that fit some major developments in global financial markets. But I will come back to that later.

For now, I am really looking forward to sharing my thoughts on financial markets, asset classes, and investing with you. If you want to learn more about True Insights, please visit our website at True Insight. Also, if you have any questions, please reach out to me at [email protected]. You can also find me on Twitter: @jsblokland.

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