Hey, this is Carsten. Welcome to my substack. I am looking to use it to share my thoughts on investing and investments, comment on the market and discuss investment ideas. For a long time, I had planned to publish investment themes or start a blog but never really executed on it.
This is changing now. Why?
Firstly, I have been an ardent leader and follower of various blogs for many years. It has become a main source of my idea generation process, along with forums such as COBF and websites like VIC. Interestingly, when most blog editors reflect on their writings, they report on the enriching and productive experience of noting their thoughts down, (a) because it really helps them to structure, rearrange and verify them and (b) because they get interesting some feedback on their ideas. I have always had an interest and found some joy in both reading and writing so it is time to finally start the experience.
Secondly, I am just launching a small investment company and Germany where I live. The company is private and owned by myself and some close family members. We are looking to use it as a vehicle to pool and invest our money which we have done informally (i.e. without founding a company) for a couple of years. Starting the company marks a good occasion to better formalize and document the investment process, establishing a trail of thoughts on investments.
As I intend to use the substack to share and discuss ideas., it would be great to have interested readers how engage, discuss and provide feedback. Also, I will try openly share the performance of our new company, which is also named “Augustusville”.
Personally, I am not new to investing but have been involved in the marketsin some form for more than 15 years. Back in 2006, I started my career in JPMorgan’s investment bank in London, working in the hottest area known at that time: Credit Derivatives. It was a great learning experience, witnessing from short distance how quickly the Champagne Days of 2006/7 turned into the worst crisis in decades. Risks that nobody thought relevant the day before suddenly materialized. Confidence turned into panic. The best product turned into the worst product in an instant. Record bonus receivers were laid off. The experience of these days probably forever coined my perception of financial affairs, implanting caution and conservatism in my thinking. I was also lucky to get broadly educated on various financial products across asset classes. And I learned that Wall Street (and the City of London) are first and foremost gigantic selling machines.
After 8 years in London, I decided to call it a day and move back to good old Germany. At that point, I wanted to start a family and look into other things in life beyond the pure money-making machine. However, I have always been a finance guy and now work on the private equity side of a German Development Financial Instituion, having moved to the bright side. Here, I got to know a completely different investment world with new markets (we are focusing on EM) but also a less precise, less neat, less opportunic yet more optimistice and more long-term investment approach.
After my return to Germany, I started a family portfolio with my parents and my sister. We used a “friends and family account” at Interactive Brokers for this and have jointly invested ever since with me managing the portfolio and luckily, outperforming major indices over time. With Augustusville, we are looking to take the next step.