Intro + request advice on how to change my portfolio in my new situation

One thing I think matters in investing and isn’t directly related to finance (but affects the way we can hold our ground when things turn bad) is minimizing regrets.

The “problem” with big tech and startup stocks is that they have the potential to underperform (and loose some of their grandeur) but they also have the potential to spike up. Will you feel worse:

A) If you sell all your RSUs, get decent market returns but see that your company stock went x10 in the mean time and you didn’t participate in that?

B) If you keep your RSUs, other sectors outperform your company stock and it goes down 40%-60% while the rest of your porftolio goes up 10%-20%?

Worst case is some change of leadership, scandal or regulator intervention breaks the company and the stock goes to 0.

The 2020 and 2022 drawdowns have been relatively short and, while the pain was sharp, there are more nerve wrecking crashes out there. I like this chart from Visual Capitalist to envision that (for the S&P500 but the rough behavior can be the same for global all cap stocks - click on the link below it for the full size as well as a description of the crashes displayed):


https://www.visualcapitalist.com/sp-500-market-crashes

Your current 70/30 is with the 500k cash you have set aside. If you don’t use it for a real estate purchase, a good chunk of it should stay in cash or bonds in order to keep you at max 80/20.

For tax reasons, bonds are normally better suited in retirement accounts but if you segregate them in your mind, as it seems you do, a potential heavy drawdown affecting your IBKR portfolio has the potential to hurt psychologically even though its actual effect would be lessened by retirement assets. It may be worth pondering keeping a decent chunk of cash/bonds in taxable for peace of mind purposes.

Options to do that as a Swiss investor can be found in this thread, the contributors to which I thank deeply: Short guide to CHF fixed income options

Everything you are writing here projects “person who understands what’s happening to them, knows her way forward and is capable of executing on it”. You are not a quitter or a failure, you are drained. When a car is out of fuel, we bring it to the gas/power station for a refill, we don’t punch on the steering wheel calling it a quitter for not going further. Humans have mechanical and mental processes that require care too.

You are living a temporary situation but your overall processes are working and impressive. The same qualities that got you to build a 4M net worth at 38 and move to two different countries, where you have been welcomed and built social networks, are still there but they’re currently crushed under the weight of an environment and manager that are draining your energy. You’ll get them back if you allow them space for recovery. You still have to walk the walk and it is not at all an easy road to walk, but it sounds like you’ve got this.

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