Wealth Preservation Tactics

Amazon just flipped the script on reimbursements 🧾 Used to be: if Amazon lost or broke your stock, they’d pay you based on your average sale price. Now? You’ll get back only your manufacturing cost. And if you don’t upload it, Amazon will guess low. This change has been live since March, but many brands are just now seeing the hit in their June P&Ls. Here’s what it actually looks like: 🛒 Retail price: €79 🏷️ Your sourcing cost: €28 💸 Old reimbursement: ~€70 ❌ New reimbursement: €28 📉 Margin loss: €42 per unit And this isn’t a niche problem. If 10% of your FBA stock gets lost or damaged before it’s sold, you could lose 3 to 5 points of margin overnight. 💡 Here’s what smart sellers are doing right now: 🔍 Audit Amazon’s estimates Export your cost data, sort by lowest % of retail, and flag the bad ones 📤 Upload real factory costs Use the sourcing cost template in Seller Central to upload your true COGS 🧾 Keep invoices on hand You’ll need them to dispute lowball reimbursements 📦 Upgrade packaging and prep The cheapest loss is the one that never happens 📊 Rebuild your cost model Assume you get back only COGS on pre-order loss 🛡️ Review insurance coverage Especially if you rely on FBA for high-value goods This isn’t just about compliance. It’s about protecting your margin before it disappears into Amazon’s guesswork. If you're still relying on the old system, you’re leaving money on the warehouse floor. Get your operations & finance team in now. And get your sourcing cost data under control. 📦 Because in 2025, Amazon’s warehouse mistakes are your problem now.

HSBC Sticky bond yields and Flight to quality Uncertainty and volatility are set to be a feature, not a bug, of investment markets near-term. For investors considering ways of building portfolio resilience without sacrificing growth, one strategy is to focus on ‘quality’. Quality is a stock market factor – and a proven long-term portfolio diversifier – that can defend against downside risk but still benefit from market upswings. Under the hood, it captures exposure to firms with strong profitability, consistent financial performance, and the safety of robust financial health. These traits help it deliver through-the-cycle performance. It pays off because quality stocks tend to be undervalued by the market. Meanwhile, investors often bid up the prices of lower quality firms that promise lottery-like returns, but which have a habit of underperforming in a downturn. Our latest Multi Asset Insights shows that quality delivers its strongest active returns when the economic outlook begins to cool – making it a potentially useful defensive strategy in portfolios. Faced with elevated volatility, that approach aligns with our view that investors should pay attention to diversification and selectivity in asset allocation. 

I just helped a brand escape Vendor Central hell and boost their margins by 47%. But here's what shocked me most about their situation. This brand was stuck in the classic Vendor Central trap, Amazon controlled their pricing, blocked their ads, and slashed margins while demanding better terms each year. Sound familiar? After working with 50+ Amazon brands generating $181M+ in revenue, I see this pattern constantly. Here's the brutal truth about Vendor Central most brands won't admit: Unless you're a top-tier vendor with a dedicated buyer, you're not in a partnership - you're in a tug-of-war you'll rarely win. The 3 warning signs your Vendor Central relationship is killing your business: Warning #1: Margin erosion spiral - Rejected cost increases - Random price drops without notice   - Annual term renegotiations that favor Amazon Warning #2: Lost advertising control - Suppressed ad campaigns - Blocked keyword targeting - Zero control over your brand messaging Warning #3: Inventory nightmares - Chargebacks and shortages - Lost buy box sales - No visibility into demand planning The solution? Ask one critical question: would you make more money on Seller Central? Here's how we helped that brand find out: - Ran margin comparison using Amazon's FBA calculator - Tested a few SKUs on Seller Central quietly - Compared total profitability after all fees and allowances Result: 47% margin improvement plus full control over pricing and inventory. Jeremy from Ongrok put it perfectly: "I've never had this level of service from any agency - not just Amazon, but any marketing channel. It's 10 levels above anything I've seen." Most brands stay trapped in Vendor Central because they think it's "safer." Smart brands calculate the real cost of that safety. Stuck in Vendor Central and want to explore your options? Shoot me a DM saying "Gigabrands Growth Engine" and I'll help you build a strategy! #Amazon #AmazonPPC #Ecommerce

Tail Risk Hedging and Trend Following: A Combined Framework The paper implemented a tail risk hedging strategy and overlaid it on a trend-following approach, referred to as the Portable Alpha Portfolio. The Portable Alpha Portfolio consists of two components: 100% exposure to the MSCI ACWI Index as the beta source, while alpha is generated through a tail risk hedging overlay and a 50% exposure to a trend-following strategy. -The tail hedge is constructed by systematically purchasing three tranches of 10-delta SPX put options with one year to expiration, rolled quarterly, and notionally sized. -The trend-following component includes 79 futures contracts, with normalized returns computed over four lookback periods: 3, 6, 9, and 12 months. Positions are taken long when the lookback return is positive and short otherwise. Findings -The Portable Alpha portfolio produced a statistically significant monthly alpha of 0.25% after controlling for equity, bond, and commodity factors. -Outperformance was most pronounced during crisis periods, especially in the first half of the sample, while more recent periods showed returns comparable to the ACWI benchmark. -Across the full sample, the portfolio achieved superior risk-adjusted performance and stronger downside protection. -Performance attribution analysis indicates that convex return streams can be effectively overlaid to enhance portfolio performance without reducing core equity exposure. Reference: Bruno Schwalbach & Christo Auret, Enhancing global equity returns with trend-following and tail risk hedging overlays, Investment Analysts Journal, 2025 Join a community of 6,000+ quants—subscribe to the newsletter! Link in profile #portfoliomanagement #riskmanagement #investing ABSTRACT This paper demonstrates that overlaying a combination of trend-following and tail risk hedging strategies onto a global equity portfolio significantly enhances performance. These strategies are complementary. Tail risk hedging mitigates equity risk effectively during sudden market crashes, while trend-following supports equity during slower bear markets. By employing a portable alpha framework, the performance of a 100% global equity portfolio is compared with a Portable Alpha portfolio that retains full equity exposure (beta) while layering on trend-following and tail risk hedging strategies (alpha). The resulting portfolio returns remain largely driven by global equity but exhibit a large, positive, and statistically significant alpha of 0.25% per month after controlling for traditional equity factors and other asset class excess returns. Outperformance in absolute terms was strongest during periods of market turmoil, while the improvement in risk-adjusted performance was evident across the entire period.

How can investors best protect capital during market declines? Bill Hester of Hussman Strategic Advisors provides valuable analysis of how different assets perform during significant market downturns. The study introduces a metric called Bear Market Cumulative Return (BMCR) that aggregates performance across six major market downturns from the past 25 years, revealing which investments truly provide protection when markets decline. During these periods, the largest, most overvalued sectors typically contribute disproportionately to overall market declines. In the 2000-2002 collapse, Technology represented 34% of the index but generated 44% of the total decline. Similarly, in 2022, Technology, Communication Services, and Consumer Discretionary collectively accounted for 71% of the market's drop despite making up only 55% of the index. While long-term Treasuries historically performed well in bear markets (11.8% BMCR), they proved unreliable in 2022, falling 28%. Intermediate Treasuries showed more consistency with a 7.4% BMCR. Healthcare stocks (+23.5% BMCR) and low-volatility stocks (+26.7% BMCR) demonstrated strong defensive characteristics. Most impressive were hedged equity strategies - a portfolio long Consumer Staples stocks and short the S&P 500 significantly outperformed traditional safe havens. Information Technology performed worst, with a -16.2% BMCR relative to the broader market. This highlights that even hedging technology exposure with an S&P 500 short position still resulted in significant losses during bear markets. Current market conditions mirror those preceding previous major downturns. Today's Technology sector trades at approximately 10 times sales, exceeding the 7.8 multiple seen at the 2000 peak, while Consumer Staples stocks trade at lower valuations than in 2000. This extreme concentration in Technology stocks creates heightened vulnerability to sector-specific corrections. The data suggests that future market declines may follow similar patterns to those seen in 2000-2002 and 2022. Traditional defensive assets like long-term Treasuries may not provide reliable protection in all market environments, while hedged equity approaches focusing on Consumer Staples, Healthcare, and low-volatility stocks have historically delivered superior protection during market declines. https://lnkd.in/eQ7s94cB

Amazon doesn’t care about your margin. But it does track its own — obsessively. Too often, brands focus on gross margin or contribution when assessing Amazon profitability. But the real commercial driver on Amazon’s side is Net PPM — net pure product margin — which determines your cost price pressure, your marketing contribution, and even your stock availability. If you don’t understand Amazon’s margin, you can’t control your performance. Here’s what leading brands do differently: 🧠 They model both sides of the equation - Your margin view (COGS, landed cost, retail price) is just one lens - Amazon’s Net PPM (Cost price vs Selling price minus fees and co-op) drives their decisions - If Net PPM is weak, you’ll lose leverage — even if you’re growing 📊 They build margin-aware retail strategies - Negotiate Co-Op based on contribution to Net PPM - Align promotions and ad spend with SKUs that already deliver strong Amazon margin - Identify the trade-off between low margin growth and high margin growth by ASIN ⚙️ They use margin to prioritise resource and roadmap - Link Net PPM to content refresh cycles and A+ investment - Prioritise ad budgets and SEO work where margin allows room to scale - Avoid wasting energy on ASINs that will never be strategically viable for Amazon Your own margin matters. But Amazon’s profitability on your catalogue is what determines how often your POs land, how wide your assortment gets listed, and how hard you have to fight for ads.

Why Amazon Can Turn Off Your Best Seller Overnight Strong sales don’t always mean safety. Low-margin, high-handling SKUs are now being flagged internally by Amazon. That means slower delivery, weaker search placement, and tighter restock limits. No alerts. No dashboard warnings. Just declining performance. At Extreme Branding, we spotted this pattern across 47 SKUs generating six-figure sales annually. What we learned (and how we fixed it): 1️⃣ Amazon tracks SKU-level profitability. It’s not just about your sales. If Amazon’s costs outweigh their margin, the SKU is deprioritized. 2️⃣ Catalog audits are essential. We built an internal system that measures contribution margin the way Amazon does, not the way sellers usually calculate profit. 3️⃣ Hybrid fulfillment keeps momentum. Pulling flagged SKUs into FBM or 3PL stopped ranking erosion while protecting account health. 4️⃣ SKU mix matters. We restructured catalogs to highlight SKUs that Amazon wants to push, high-margin, low-handling items that strengthen the account as a whole. This is the operational side of scaling most sellers miss. Because on Amazon, it’s not enough to sell well. You have to align with what Amazon finds profitable. P.S. A SKU profitability audit can reveal which of your products are at risk long before sales drop. DM me if you’d like to run through the process. #AmazonFBA #AmazonPPC #BrandScaling #AmazonSellers #EcommerceGrowth #MarketplaceStrategy

Amazon's "try them all, return them all" problem is killing your margins. High ASP products (think $700+ Garmin watches - Now Wearable4U on Amazon) face a massive challenge on Amazon: The "buy five, keep none" consumer behavior. I've seen luxury products with 30-35% return rates. That's not sustainable. Here's what most brands miss: sometimes you DON'T want customers buying directly from your PDP. Let me explain... When return rates are sky-high, I'd rather have fewer sales with a 5% return rate than more sales with a 30% return rate. The math works better. This is where brand stores become strategic. A well-designed brand store creates deeper product education and comparison tools BEFORE purchase. It actually adds helpful friction to the buying process. It guides customers to the exact right model for their needs, reducing the "buy five, return five" behavior. PDP structures are one-size-fits-all. They're designed for quick conversion, not products requiring a complex consideration cycle. For complex, expensive products, your brand store can create alignment between consumer behavior and profitable purchasing flows. Sometimes adding the right friction is exactly what your economics need.

Your Prime Day sales spike means nothing if 30% of it comes back in a return box. That’s the average e-commerce return rate, and it only climbs higher after big promos. With Prime Day fast approaching, how ready are your listings for this big sales event? Here are some of the strategies my team of Amazon experts do for our clients to help prevent product returns after Prime Day: According to the 2025 Global Returns & Profit Impact Report by Rithum, 61% of consumers return products because of poor fit, and 33% send items back due to discrepancies between what was shown and what was received. These two issues alone account for the majority of e-commerce returns and both are fixable with better listing optimization. To reduce returns based on these findings: 👉 Make size charts and fit guides easy to find and understand—don’t bury them in the A+ 👉 Ensure your main and secondary images match exactly what ships, down to accessories and packaging 👉 Include real-use visuals and infographics to set clear expectations before purchase Returns are predictable. And preventable. If your listing is vague, outdated, or dressed up to trick the algorithm, you're setting yourself up for a returns hangover. Amazon buyers don’t want surprises. They want certainty. Show the right info, and you won’t have to deal with regret boxes showing up on your doorstep two weeks later.

Who owns #water in #mining? In many companies, the honest answer is “no one fully does”. And that’s a problem. On site, water is mostly about keeping production running. It’s a P&L issue: get enough water to operate, avoid shutdowns, meet the plan. At corporate, water usually sits under #sustainability, tied to disclosure, reputation, and long-term commitments. Two very different perspectives. Two completely separate reporting lines. They only really connect at ExCo level, and water shouldn’t need to be on their agenda. If it is, something has probably already gone wrong. To make things harder, every mine tends to have a different organization structure. Some may report water under services, some under environment, some under operations. But rarely is there one person or team owning the full picture: inputs, outputs, #risk, costs, value. This isn’t just an asset-level issue. That lack of clarity makes it incredibly hard to build a corporate unified strategy. And often, when operations get stuck in internal power plays, defending local P&L autonomy and resisting corporate involvement, the result may be fragmentation, short-term thinking, and limited influence and oversight from the top. This weakens the mining company’s ability to respond to financial stakeholders, product offtakers, and other external parties who are now asking tougher questions about water. Corporate might make bold sustainability commitments, but if it can’t steer the ship, bluewashing is just around the corner. We still tend to treat water like a utility: supply-to-meet-demand. But that model breaks down fast when supply is disrupted or at risk. Here’s what we should be asking: • What’s the revenue impact of not having the water we need? • What’s our exposure to water-related risks like flooding or dam breaks? • Are we managing pollution risks where it matters and at the right level? • Do we even know what level of water risk we’re willing to accept? These are not compliance questions. They’re business questions. And they should shape how we organize water, not just who fills out the ESG report. There are some companies doing this well. But most still have a long way to go. Skarn Water Sustainable Mine Water Management