The publication I wish existed when I started investing.
Why Vestaris exists, who is behind it, and what this is — and isn't.
Why I'm writing this
I built Vestaris for the people in my life who haven't started yet. Friends with savings sitting in cash. Friends who pick stocks and have noticed the maths is not on their side. Friends who know they should be investing differently and find every existing source of advice either patronising, predatory, or impossible to apply.
I don't like watching friends make the same expensive mistakes I made when I started. There's no good reason for it. The framework that works isn't secret, isn't complicated, and doesn't require a private bank or a five-figure platform fee. It requires structure — and a willingness to ignore most of what the finance world wants you to pay attention to.
The finance world has two failure modes that I'd rather not contribute to. The first is too much professional information delivered at too high a frequency, aimed at readers who have neither the time nor the need for daily macro commentary. The second is too many non-professionals selling the idea that wealth comes from speculation — from picking the right stock, timing the right cycle, finding the next great thing. Vestaris is neither. The four portfolios on this site are what I would tell a friend to do, written down properly. The quarterly note is how I'd help them think about it over time.
Who is doing this, and why I think it's worth your time
I'm an electrical engineer by training. I spent the first part of my career working on industrial IoT and smart-grid infrastructure — telecoms, energy systems, the kind of work that teaches you to think about systems rather than individual components. I later founded and exited a deep-tech company in the same space, which is where I learned what capital allocation looks like from the receiving end. That perspective — having raised it, deployed it, and watched it work or not work in operating reality — is most of why I think the way I do about portfolios now.
I have been investing personally for roughly fifteen years, through self-directed brokerage accounts and discretionary mandates with two of the larger UK private banks. Both setups taught me things. The DIY accounts taught me how easy it is to make bad decisions when no one is asking you to defend them. The discretionary mandates taught me that the people charging you 1% a year are not, on average, doing anything more sophisticated than what's published on this site for free. They are, however, doing it consistently — which is the part most people get wrong.
The formal study sits behind it. I read economics seriously across an MBA (HKUST/NYU Stern) and a Master in Public Administration at the LSE, and I'm working through the CFA Level 1 — less for the credential than because the discipline of reading the curriculum end-to-end is genuinely useful. I also angel-invest in deep-tech and AI infrastructure, which keeps me close to the operating side of the same themes that show up in the quarterly notes when I write about AI grid capex or the energy transition.
The quarterly note is how I share a synthesised view with people who don't have the time to read the JPM, Goldman, BlackRock and HSBC outlooks themselves. That's the actual product: institutional thinking distilled into portfolio decisions, written by a person rather than a research desk.
What this is, and what it isn't
Vestaris is a publication, not a wealth manager. The four portfolios are published openly for you to copy, adapt, or ignore. The quarterly notes are my thinking, not personal recommendations. The bulletins are my reading of when a market event clears a structural threshold — and most of the time, the answer is that it doesn't.
For personalised advice tied to your specific tax, family, retirement or risk situation, you need an FCA-authorised financial adviser — Vestaris isn't that and doesn't try to be. What it offers is a framework you can take to that conversation already partly formed, use to validate the structure of what an adviser proposes, or use directly if your situation is straightforward enough that a structured ETF portfolio is the right answer on its own.
I'm writing the publication because I would have wanted to read it fifteen years ago, and because the people in my life who haven't started yet deserve better than the patronising, predatory or impossible alternatives. If that's you, the rest of the site is for you. If it isn't, no hard feelings.