Would and how would you secure cash for an investment in 9 months?

Investing / Brokers
1

Hi

I can buy shares of my company at the end of the year (December 2024) for about CHF 420k

Current assets today (March 2024):
• Cash: CHF 60k
• Cash I will earn till december: CHF 50k
• ETF: CHF 120k (VT, XLKS, LCWD)
• Stocks: CHF 120k (mostly techs)
• Crypto: CHF 10k
• Sum/total: about CHF 360k today
• Missing at the end: about CHF 60k (I’ll probably take a loan).

I already assessed the risk/needs/etc. I made my decision about the “investing” thing (and discussed about it in a previous post).

My question is: how would you “secure” the cash to invest it in 9 months?
• Would you sell everything now (the market is pretty high) and stay cash till December?
• Would you sell and buy state bonds?
• Would you hold and sell as late as possible?
• Do I have other good options here?

Second question: would you take a bigger loan to keep a bit of stocks/ETF in your portfolio?
Loan info: The loan (7%) requires a minimum deposit of 35% cash. ROI would be between 8% to 13% depending on the company’s profit, without too much risk (for me).
• Would you take as much loan as possible and keep more stocks/ETF?
• Would you take as least loan as possible and keep less stocks/ETF?

Edit: the loan would be at a cantonal Bank, with max. 5 years, and max. “About 7% rate”. I still have to discuss it with the bank.

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2

For the stocks and ETFs, you could also consider placing trailing stop or trailing stop limit orders.

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3

Sounds quite a lot to me. Are you talking about CHF?

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4

If I think about it, it comes down to the question of what is expected return of ETFs over the planned investment horizon (let’s say 10 years)

Taking loan will result in 7% annual interest towards bank while keeping money invested in ETFs will result in 5% -7% compounded returns.

So I would say taking loan will NOT be beneficial if expected return from ETF is about 5% . However if you expect much higher returns from ETFs, then it’s a different story. Based on my understand long term expected returns in CHF terms might be 5-7% for global ETFs

I would also recommend to check with your tax advisor if borrowing to invest might cause some tax issues.

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5

Yes, at my local, cantonal bank.

It’s not a mortgage for a house, so the bank can finance it but it’s expensive

6

One option you should be able to negotiate is to obtain a loan from whoever sells you the shares - either from the company itself if newly issuing shares, or the previous owner.

If you’re buying from the company, this will be easy - this loan can be repaid over ten years through deductions from the salary part of your income. If you’re buying from some owner cashing out, they might understand you do not have 420k lying around, and grant you more favorable terms than some bank.

From what I’ve heard, the former is common among law firms, where partnership stock is easily priced in the 500k range.

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7

7% in CHF is realy really bad.

Shop around for a better one.

9

yeah I tried, but no or negative feedbacks from the usual banks hier.

10

yeah it’s also a good option. I’ll try to see and manage to get a better rate than at the bank.

And yes that is a good comparison point, it’s kinda like a law firm.

11

thanks for your reply, I didn’t think it could be a problem tax-wise, I have to check it out

And yes, I will have to find a balance between ROI from the ETF and the loaned cash I can get.

12

this is really interesting, thanks for the help I will check this out!

13

  1. The usual way of finding money is to ask the 3Fs: family, friends and fools. If they know you well, they might go for 3-5%.

  2. Another way is to get a part of the funding from P2P marketplaces, search for “p2p kredite schweiz” though I would not hope for a much better rate than 7%.

  3. you could negotiate some sort of payment plan from the previous owner for part of the funding which would not force you to sell your stock holdings.

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15

Also there’s a massive volatility difference, one is guaranteed to make you lose 7% annually, the other could either make you lose 15% some year and gain 10% the next year. Pretty sure minimizing the loan is best, esp if you need the loan because you’re short on assets (if you have much more assets then yes maybe you can ride it out over decades)

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16

Something else I will mention that non-entrepreneurs never take into account is that this kind of deal can lead to much higher income even in the short term so the interest rate becomes more or less irrelevant.

Know of several partnership buyins that could, after the purchase, be financed on dividends alone – not even mentioning the much higher gross payouts through salary/bonus.

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17

thanks!

yeah i’m going to ask existing partners (also the one leaving) if they would give a loan for a fair rate.

Family could eventually help. I will have a look a P2P lending, thanks.

18

thanks for the insight.

Main challenge is that the first dividends will come almost 14 to 16 months (March/Mai 2026) after the investment (December 2024), and that I have very few “buffer” available.

19

that is also my opinion, but I like to see some other ideas here :slight_smile:

20

I checked this and this looks like a really nice option!

I wonder why everyone isn’t putting a trailing stop limit on every ETF/stocks in case of a big crash, especially now that the market is crazy high.

I just put one on every stock I have, like 5% to 10% below actual value depending on the volatility of each asset.

thanks for the insight!

21

If enough stop loss accumulates, you can influence the price with fewer capital. They short an asset, the price drops, triggering stop orders, which then trigger others, liquidity steps back from the craziness, they buy back much cheaper, then the price recovers, because there was no fundamental reason. Happens relatively often in crypto.

If there is such an attack or not, a bit of volatility can trigger your stop orders.

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22

Because in general , if one operate with stop losses, then they need to do it all the time. And also decide when to jump back in.

Often this will lead to a long term performance drag.

Of course it’s different scenario if one needs money in 6-9 months and their main objective is capital preservation

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