THE NEW BILLCARA.COM
What I can now offer you, and why it’s different
For more than a century, the ordinary investor has been treated as a source of revenue, not as a person with capital to protect.
The great financial houses I have long called Humongous Bank & Broker built their fortunes by packaging investments like consumer products and selling them on fear and greed. They taught the public to chase performance, to confuse activity with progress, and to mistake a salesman for an advisor.
Most people were never taught to invest at all. They were taught to buy.
I have spent nearly sixty years inside that machinery (sales, trading, research, banking, portfolio management, compliance) across three countries. I know how it works because I helped run parts of it.
And I know that its structure cannot be reformed by disclosure or good intentions. The conflict is built into the foundation: the institution profits when you transact, not when you prosper. It is trading against you, and it always will.
That is why billcara.com exists. And why the site is now changing.
What changed
For most of my career, I could only responsibly manage a handful of portfolios. Not for lack of ideas. I only have so many hours, and I will put my name only on work I have checked and have confidence in.
Technology has lifted that limit. The new billcara.com database management and publishing system does the heavy lifting by automating the screening, the scoring, the timing signals across thousands of stocks. I step in at the end, with judgment.
What you have seen me build in the past year is the awareness system: Navigator, INSTAT, and the Mid-Day Briefs. You have seen Perspective, my independent guidance. And there is a handful of core portfolios.
Now, with the IT expertise of my new full business partner Alexei De Quesada, I can offer much more. And I am going to.
The discipline behind every portfolio I plan to offer
Every portfolio I run will rest on the same foundation: my Four-Gate discipline. This approach descends directly from Graham and Dodd and from Warren Buffett, the conventional, common-sense investing that the marketing machine on Wall Street has spent decades denigrating precisely because it does not generate enough transactions.
The Four Gates are simple to state and hard to fake:
• A company is not a stock. The company must clear a quality threshold.
• A stock is just a price. Timing depends on my INSTAT technical indicator scoring.
• To stay fully invested, two INSTAT indicators (momentum & trend) must align.
• At every decision point, the chart must confirm a genuine trend reversal.
Because we’re patient investors and not stock traders, our timing may be late, but we’re never swimming against the tide. That’s why I think of it like the line from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel: “Everything will be all right in the end. And if it’s not all right, then trust me, it’s not yet the end.”
Professionally speaking, a position that cannot pass all four gates does not enter a portfolio. And it has to keep clearing them to stay in. This is how capital is preserved before it is ever grown. Capital preservation and not the thrill of the chase is the first duty of a fiduciary.
So every portfolio, whatever its theme, is strategy-based. The themes simply give different kinds of serious investors a doorway that matches their interests and their stage of life.
What is coming. What is different. Purpose-built portfolios
I have developed a long list of portfolio ideas. But you do not need the whole list in a pitch. You need to know what kind of problem each one solves.
Secular shifts: the forces reshaping the next decade
Energy, water, chips, space, cybersecurity, nuclear, biotech. These attract attention for good reason. The danger is hype. Run through the Four Gates, they become a way to own the future without buying a bubble.
Income and capital preservation
Dividend growers, real estate, infrastructure, recession-resistant staples. This is where my values show most plainly. We have entered the Age of Austerity. In such a challenging period, protecting capital matters more than aggressive growth.
Hard assets and resources
Gold, copper, uranium, farmland, commodities. When confidence in paper assets erodes (a defining feature of the present era), real things hold their place.
Where growth and value live
India, Japan, reshoring, emerging markets. Capital is global, and so is opportunity.
Demographic and consumer
The silver economy, pets, travel, luxury. The most reliable theses often come not from technology but from how people live and age.
My own methods
Deep value, insider buying, buybacks, special situations. The purest expression of the discipline itself.
Values-based
Faith-aligned investing, ESG, sin stocks, for people who align capital with conviction.
The full list is in the appendix
You will find every specific portfolio theme attached separately. Use it as a reference, not as reading. I do not expect you to memorize it. I expect you to say, “That one fits my life.” Ask, and it’s yours.
Why this matters
I am not building this catalog to chase clicks. I am building it because the individual investor anywhere in the world, with any amount of capital, of any conviction deserves a place that is genuinely on their side.
For a hundred years personalization has not existed at scale. The financial services industry that should have served people instead farmed them. Geoff Goetz (RIP), my former partner, called it “fleecing the sheeple.”
I am not promising anyone riches. Whoever promises that is selling dreams. When I started in the industry, I did that too. My first boat was in fact named “Dream Merchant.” Today I am promising only honest work, done the conventional way Graham, Dodd and Buffett taught, by someone who answers to you, not to a sales desk.
Now I want to hear from you
I have a long list of ideas and cannot build them all at once. Tell me which ones you would actually use. You tell me what you need. I build it.
APPENDIX
Full Portfolio Reference List
I. Secular growth: forces shaping the next decade
• The Future of Energy (hydrocarbons to renewables to storage)
• The Race to Space (launch, satellites, commercial orbit economy)
• Health & Wellness (prevention, fitness, nutrition)
• Water (scarcity, treatment, infrastructure)
• Cybersecurity (defensive spending that cannot be cut)
• Semiconductors / Chip Supply Chain (picks-and-shovels of the digital world)
• Nuclear Renaissance (reactors, SMRs, uranium mining)
• Electrification & the Grid (transmission, transformers, hardware)
• Biotech & Genomics (science rewriting medicine)
• Longevity & Anti-Aging (extending healthy human life)
• The Obesity Trade (GLP-1 therapies and ripple effects)
• Food (agriculture to table, including agtech)
II. Income and capital preservation
• Dividend Growth / The Aristocrats (rising income streams)
• Sleep Well at Night (recession-resilient staples and utilities)
• Real Estate & REITs (property income without direct ownership)
• Infrastructure & Real Assets (toll roads, ports, pipelines)
• High-Income / Yield (focused current income)
III. Hard assets and resources
• Precious Metals (gold and silver)
• Commodity Assets (broad raw materials basket)
• Copper (the metal electrification cannot do without)
• Critical Minerals & Rare Earths (strategically scarce inputs)
• Uranium (nuclear renaissance fuel)
• Agriculture & Farmland (productive land)
• Shipping & Logistics (arteries of global trade)
IV. Geographic
• India
• China
• Japan Reawakening
• Emerging Markets (Poland, Brazil, Tiger Cubs)
• Reshoring / Made at Home (supply chains returning)
V. Demographic and consumer
• The Silver Economy (aging world goods and services)
• Luxury & Premiumization (pricing power, resilient margins)
• The Pet Economy (spending on animals as family)
• Travel & Experiences (shift from goods to experiences)
• Gaming & Esports (younger generations’ time and money)
VI. Financial and digital assets
• Fintech & Digital Payments (modernizing money movement)
• Insurance (boring, profitable, underfollowed)
• Private Credit & Alternative Managers (lending migrating from banks)
• Digital Assets / Blockchain Infrastructure (picks-and-shovels, not coins)
VII. Strategy-based: my methods on display
• The Buyback Champions (reducing share count)
• Insider Buying (executives putting personal money to work)
• IPOs, Spin-offs & Special Situations (mispricing opportunities)
• Deep Value / Contrarian (quality on sale)
VIII. Values-based
• Faith-Aligned Investing (screened to honor principles)
• Sin Stocks (tobacco, alcohol, gaming: cash flow without sentiment)
ESG (environmental, social, governance factors, offered hone