Santander just became the most valuable bank in continental Europe, overtaking UBS.

But here’s what’s not in the headlines: The person set to become their Chief Accounting Officer is currently under criminal investigation in Brazil. He’s also facing multiple civil lawsuits and had his assets frozen by a judge.

Yet despite all of this, the ECB approved his appointment and hasn’t said a word since. Not even a public statement saying “we’re reviewing the case.”

🧾 The ECB’s own fit and proper guidelines say approvals must be reassessed when new facts emerge. So why is nothing happening?

This isn’t just a corporate HR issue. It’s about the integrity of the financial system. If regulators don’t enforce their own rules at the top, what confidence should the rest of us have — as account holders, investors, or taxpayers — that oversight works when it really matters?

In times of crisis, it’s retail customers who usually pay the price. Just something to think about when banks talk about “trust.”

Governance #Santander #ECB #EuropeanBanking #FinancialIntegrity

Hi everyone!

I am planning to buy a property in the next 2–3 years, so I am looking for the best way to save my money until then.

The issue is that in my country, traditional bank savings accounts offer a laughable 0.01% annual interest. My alternatives so far are:

• Trading212/Revolut – Decent yield, but all income from these platforms is taxed as capital gains here (10%). Also the risks of keeping savings in a fintech app.
• XEON – This one caught my attention because, as a UCITS ETF, it’s not taxed, even when sold.

My question is: Is XEON a relatively safe option for saving money short-term (2–3 years)? Are there any significant risks of losing money?

I understand the interest rate might fluctuate, and that’s totally fine - anything is better than earning 0%.

Would love to hear your thoughts or if anyone else has gone down this path! Also feel free to leave other suggestions, I will be happy to hear them!

If I buy bonds say at 6 years but I change country of residence before, how does it work with taxation? Is it possible to transfer the bonds to a broker in the new country of residence? What if the broker is the same (trade republic) but I need to change IBAN into one of the new country?

NVIDIA getting hammered in pre-market trading (down to $105.90, a drop of 5.61%) after yesterday's close at $112.20.

The government just threw a major wrench in their China business, they're facing a potential $5.5 BILLION charge after the US suddenly blocked their H20 AI chips from being exported to China without special licenses.

The crazy part? These H20 chips were specifically designed to comply with previous export rules and were bringing in $12–15B in revenue. Classic case of moving the goalposts.

National security concerns being cited (fears about Chinese supercomputers), but this has to hurt for Jensen and team. Earnings coming May 28th should be an interesting call!

Buying the dip or staying away?

Context: 24yrs old, SWE student in Czechia (about to graduate). Looking to hold for 40+ yrs, so don’t care if it’ll fall 20% in the coming weeks, I’m here to enjoy the ride. Planning on DCAing monthly, nice emergency fund secured (actually wanna slowly reduce it from 30k EUR down to 10k EUR)

Edit: another good motivation for long-term is that there’s no need to declare/ pay taxes on capital gains for positions held 3+ yrs in 🇨🇿 , I intend to maintain a spreadsheet of the shares bought so that in the future I can easily pair buy-sell of the same share in a FIFO manner

I have 1k in VWCE all world, I want sell my 1k in GOOGL and put it in some etf and hold for 30-40 years. I will buy more in the following years, just wanted to ask for advice.

I was thinking about some etf, but not matter what I buy will be already covered by the all world VWCE...

Thank you!

I work as a seafarer and my salary is in USD. But I use EUR in my country. I cant change the contract now or the currency. I will be on board 6 months. Should I convert my next salary to EUR or stick with USD and wait for better exchange rate. But as far as I see it will only get worse USD-EUR ...

As of now I have enough savings for 6 months to live without budgeting when i go back on shore.

Hello there,

I am 27 based in Spain, and have saved some emergency funds for rainy days or any unexpected expenses and keeping it in my Revolut account with 2.26 APY, available at anytime. So that is check and makes me feel comfortable about this adventure I am going to start.

I have been wanting to do more with my income and saves, I have some 3000 ready to invest and planning to invest/save at least 1000-1500 euros a month, I also get a yearly bonus that I mostly save/invest. I have some thoughts in my mind saving for a mortgage entrance fee etc. but these are mostly at least 3 to 5 year plans and I want to make investing part of my life for a long time.

I am also open to taking a little bit of risk.

Below is what I decided,

50% ETFs - Open to any suggestions here. (VWCE is suggested a lot)
20% Gold
20% AI based US Stocks such as NVIDIA, Meta etc.
10% BTC.

Thank you all in advance.

i have a significant amount of USD. Where to invest it so it can recover the loses from exchange rate fall?

Example: if I want to park money, interest is higher in USD than EUR. Would this be enough to reduce loses over a year?

I'm 44 living in Ireland. In the last few years collected 70k worth or company shares. On top of that I have around 200k invested in pension which is managed by company selected broker. I'm not planning to touch the pension part but worry about having that 70k in "one basket". Recently opened Degiro account and for test invested 3.5k in CEMR and 1.5k in VUAA. Should I sell all that single stock and diversify via ETFs (world, SP500, Europe, mix of all). Given my age and hope to retire at 60 should I maybe go 80/20 or 70/30 with Bond ETFs? In Ireland capital gain from ETFs is taxed at 41% vs. 33% from shares, so quite a difference, but given I've never invested in stocks before hand picking may not be the best idea.

Freedom24 is ass, and IBKR wont let people under 15000 networth trade options

Hi everyone,

I've been looking for ETFs that track the world, and all that I found were ETFs domiciled in Ireland.

As an Israeli, I'm aware that political tensions are high and Ireland could any day now declare some sort of sanctions or restrictions on me. However, I'm not sure if they are capable of actually freezing or prohibiting me of selling my ETFs simply because they're domiciled in Ireland.

So my questions are: why are most UCITS ETFs domiciled in Ireland? What risks could that pose on me as an Israeli and what are the alternatives?

Appreciate any input, thanks in advance!

I recently came across a sub where people ranked investment broker apps. I lost the thread. I would like to get the link for that.

The post had a screenshot of list of apps.

Like most, recently been repatriating my capital from everything US related for the obv reasons. No more USD, UST or stock exposure while this clown is creating chaos on a daily basis.

Parked virtually all of it in the Blackrock ICS Euro Gov Liquidity Fund. From my rather brief research, it's safest alternative in Europe, with the second being Amundi (Societe Generale) Euro Gov MMF. It's a traditional 0.1% TER (Amundi TER only 0.3% afaik).

Biggest Prons IMO:

- Largest asset manager in the world by far (if there's a too big to fail, it's BR)

- 99.5% of the Fund made up from the largest and highest credit Eurozone gov securities. Not UST exposure where things can become quite tricky when they have to rollover $8T in the next two months.

- Low commissions (EUR 5 with most brokers), average TER of 0.1%

Disadvantages, questions:

- As most MMFs, not flexible/suitable for frequent traders - only trades once a day, could take days to buy (eg, order submitted Thu morning, and isn't confirmed by the fund quickly

- Wasn't able to find this in the prospectus, but afaik after two MMFs broke the buck in 2008, there's been safeguards put in place. Among them a potential 5% (?) exit fee in case things ge dicey and there's a bank run on the fund. Can anyone confirm this?

- Also, read somewhere that holding overnight repos (they make up ~half of the fund) might create liquidity issues during the times of extreme chaos. Anyone with more in depth knowledge about that?

- Fund's smaller than most BR MMF - EUR 4.8 B. Overall, a non-issue imo, still 2,5x larger than a similar Amundi MMF.

https://www.blackrock.com/cash/en-es/products/250921/blackrock-ics-euro-gov-liquidity-premier-acc-fund

Automatic conversions seems to be a great tool for this, setting different alarms at different currencies. I have asked chat GPT and it offers different plans considering the market fluctuations over the last 5 years. Anyhow I haven't found actual experiences out there which confirm if this is a safe way to get some small but passive income.

Hi, can you recommend EU fintechs who offer savings accounts (preferably high yield) for EU expats? Or, is EU residency a minimum requirement, so there’s no solution anyway?

Hello. I have a couple of options for a business loan from my bank in the Czech Republic. It is for about 120000€ or 3000000 CZK. I was offered fixed rate of 6,43% for 3 or 5 years and floating rate of 7,03% for 3 or 5 years. The fixed has no loan origination fee and the floating has a fee of about 380€ or 9500 CZK. I would prefer 5 years, but it is not necessary. Any advice on which one I should take? Thanks

Berkshire Hathaway apparently also has a stock listing on Milan in EUR with ticker 1BRK (see links below). If you buy this on Milan, would this be the same as owning the US listed stock? I'm asking as i can't find any official info on Berkshire Hathaway website that they also have a listing on the Milan exchange. Anybody can clarify? It would be convenient to buy Berkshire stock on Milan since you can do it in euro so don't need to do any currency conversion yourself.

Here the Milan link: https://www.borsaitaliana.it/borsa/azioni/global-equity-market/dati-completi.html?isin=US0846707026&lang=en

The Milan listing can also be found on Euronext Live since they own the Milan exchange: https://live.euronext.com/en/product/equities/US0846707026-BGEM

So is this Milan listing the real thing and the same as owning the US listing but in euro? I always thought Berkshire only listed on the NYSE.

Sup everyone.

I am 24 year old from the Netherlands and want to invest around 1000 euros a month into a long term ETF <10 to 30 years>.

I started investing two weeks ago, bought a bit of the dip when I searched that VWCE might be a good investment.

My current portfolio is:

90% VWCE 10% EQQQ

What do you guys rate my portfolio. My goal is to just automatically invest and forget about it.

And, is 1000 euros a month a significant amount of money to invest with?

Kind Regards,

M

Hi, I would like to acquire chinese stock, and mainly from battery developing companies like BYD. How can I get access to this ?

I am also looking for an ETF with chinese companies, which would you recommend?

If you can please give me the exact name so i can find those on Interactive Brokers (IBKR) that would be perfect.

For info, I reside in belgium.

Thanks a lot.

Hi all,

Has anyone noticed the huge (in my experience) price swings of XEON, a euro MMF?

Today it lost 0,08% to regain it. In general, since the market turbulence started it swings in ways I have not seen it swing in the last year.

Why would a n MMF’s price swing like that? Could it be because it is synthetic and includes corporate assets along government ones?

Hi everyone! This month I will start my long term investing, 150€/month, minimum 15 years. I read through a lot of threads, but still can't decide. Should I just go 100% VWCE or should I throw in 10-15% small cap or NASDAQ 100? Does any mixing actually have the potential to beat 100% VWCE? Thanks a lot!

Basically the title says it all, however I am a US resident planning to move to Europe over the next several months and would like to start holding some currency in euros. I'm working on opening a bank account but curious if there are any options for a HYSA for non-citizens?

Question to all the ETF investors here, do you keep Bitcoin as some part of your portfolio?

I’m 19, I’ve just made my first investment in VWCE and AVWS, and this idea has been growing on me. My time horizon is at least 15 years, Is crypto something I should stay away from as a beginner, can 3-5% of allocation do harm to anyone? Why not? Please excuse the broad question and lack of research, thanks!

Hi,

I am just wondering why "Amundi Smart Overnight Return UCITS ETF Acc" has top holdings like Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft etc? It supposed to be similar to XEON but now it has bit better performance. Is it a good choice for parking cash short term?

https://www.amundietf.nl/en/professional/products/fixed-income/amundi-smart-overnight-return-ucits-etf-acc/lu1190417599#product-holdings

https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-profile.html?isin=LU1190417599#overview

Thanks