Dann Bibas – The Case for Passive Investing. Fewer Grey Hairs, Better Returns

Dann Bibas is a co-founder at Fountain financial services in the United Kingdom, a digital wealth manager combining new technology was certified advisors to make personalized investing more accessible. He was formerly an equity derivatives associate at Citigroup, working closely with some of the world’s largest financial institutions on equity, cross-asset and volatility products. He is also a member of the Founders of the Future community in London, the Tech Nation Founders’ Network and is a regular speaker at start-up and fintech events.    “Stock picking, for myself at least, is really difficult”  - Dann Bibas    Die-hard passive investing fan adds key points   Dan truly believes that investment in the market for the long term is the maker of winners  He has felt this way most of his adult life since the following story of loss  Started to invest in stocks when he was a student majoring in finance at McGill University (Bachelor of Commerce)     Watching a stock closely becomes a nightmare of ups and downs   As he learned micro and macroeconomic and other financial concepts, he and his friends became interested in investing as they were learning a lot about markets and how to evaluate balance sheets.   Early forays involved using small amounts of money earned during summer jobs through a friend in his group’s TD Ameritrade account.  They bought a few hundred dollars of shares in Citigroup (a fact Dann used later on during his interview for Citigroup’s graduate program.   This was the first ever investment he actually took seriously. Perhaps too seriously, because his strong memory was that it was very anxiety driven, because he was focused on this one company, watching everything that was happening to it.  He had a clean thesis and thought he would become rich quickly. Then the stock was hit by an earnings report that was negligible below expectations.   Then some macroeconomic event happened and it fell further.   Then there was positive news and it bounced up.   But the stock can also be affected by other banks’ earnings reports, impacting the sector.   So he went from thinking he had an effective thesis but his stock was getting “hit on all sides” both up and down.   How’s the sector doing?  ...