It is no secret that investment costs eat into returns, yet few investors appreciate the scale of the damage when those costs are layered. Fund charges, platform fees, adviser fees, and discretionary management can easily add up to 2–3% per year. Whilst that might sound modest, the compounding effect is severe: over 40 years, a high-fee portfolio can leave you with less than half the wealth of a low-fee alternative. Academic and regulatory evidence shows higher fees rarely deliver better outcomes—making cost one of the few factors investors can and should control.

Gold has captivated human societies for millennia, from Roman coins to central bank vaults. Today, it’s often seen as a safe haven or inflation hedge—but how does it actually stack up as a long-term investment?

This post examines gold’s track record across nearly a century, comparing its returns, volatility, and portfolio role to equities, bonds, property, and cash. The evidence shows that whilst gold preserves purchasing power and shines in crises, it lacks the income and compounding power of productive assets. Still, with low correlation and strong performance during market stress, gold can play a valuable diversifying role—particularly when used strategically alongside stocks and bonds.

Factor investing is widely used in equities, but its application in fixed income remains overlooked. Yet decades of research show that bond returns are shaped by two persistent, compensated risks: term and credit. These represent the extra return for holding longer-term or lower-rated bonds, respectively.

Crucially, these premia can accrue even when yields fall. They are realised through mechanisms like roll-down, spread compression, and carry, not by betting on the direction of interest rates.

This post explores how fixed income factor investing works, how firms like Dimensional apply it in practice, and why traditional market cap-weighted bond indices often work against investors seeking higher expected returns.