In the last three posts I showed you what Premium Research is: BackRoll, the Markets Hub and the Premium Guides. With just a few days left before the close of presale, I want to answer the questions I get most often: what does it cost, when does access begin, and what happens if you change your mind? Banker on Wheels is a family-run business, not a software company with a sales team. We’re a small team building apps, working with institutional-grade data providers and producing unique, high-quality research that we want to stand behind for years to come. That’s why we’ve structured Premium the way we have. We’ve built this website on the trust of our readers over almost seven years. We don’t take that lightly, and we’re grateful for your support. So here’s exactly how Premium is priced, why the prices will change, and what you can expect when you join.

Bank Deposits have their merits, but let’s face it, they provide you with a tiny fraction of the market yields.  So, where can you park your cash?

But too much yield, and something might be off. One thing you learn fairly quickly when you start your career during the GFC 🤯 is that despite what you hear there is no such thing as no risk in finance. In 2008, the structured finance products I managed were mis-sold as having their risk reduced, when in fact it was just transformed. Some like ABCP were packaged in Money Market Funds. Even institutional investors fell for it. If the yield is too good to be true, particularly for a short-term goal, it almost certainly is. 

That said, a higher yield can be worth it if you understand the risks behind it. If those risks are aligned with your goals, even better. So, what are all your short-term investing options? Today, let’s look at the trade-offs. 

For each option let's see what it pays today, who stands behind your money including in synthetic cash ETFs, and how it may behave in a crisis.

In my last two posts I showed you the apps: BackRoll, the backtest, and the Markets Hub, the monitor. Today it is the core of Premium: the Premium Guides, and the pipeline of guides coming over the next 12 to 18 months. Why guides at the core? The apps help you test your plan and monitor markets. The guides are where your questions turn into answers. Since we started coaching, hundreds of 1-on-1 sessions have taught us a lot about the problems you face, and the same questions keep coming back: how much can I safely withdraw, how do I set up portfolios for different goals, what do I do after a business sale or an inheritance, what changes if I move countries. The guides are all written by me, with a portfolio construction focus, in a language you can understand. Ten are live today, around twelve more are in the pipeline. Here is the 7-minute tour.

In August 2026, Vanguard launched the FTSE Global All-Cap UCITS ETF (VALL; on Xetra it trades as VGLA). It’s the cheapest single-ticket exposure to the entire global equity market, with large, mid and small caps across developed and emerging markets, at a total expense ratio of just 0.07%.

For the first time, the fee is almost the same as its US equivalent as well. Normally, wise investors would wait until an ETF has grown and built a track record, to reduce closure risk and tracking uncertainty. But, this isn’t a normal ETF. In a recent call with us, Vanguard told us it’s the most successful ETF Vanguard has ever launched. Worldwide. In just a couple of months it’s hitting most of the targets. Today, let’s see where things stand against Vanguard’s older funds tracking the same index.

The majority of you wanted us to focus on Premium in our last survey, so we built it.

After thousands of hours spent building a free resource, we realised that creating a premium service was the only way to bring our research, guides and tools to the next level while preserving what makes Banker on Wheels special in the first place.

This premium setup allows us to partner with multiple data providers. Together, data and running costs amount to multiple times the price of a Tour de France bike. Some of these data sources, to my knowledge, have never been available to individual investors, in Europe nor even in the US.

Centuries of academic-quality data, a non-US focus, our own quality checks and methodologies, and years of research and synthetic index construction make our apps genuinely different. We are building on deep data and rigorous research foundations.

Supplemented with guides you won’t find anywhere else, Premium Research will allow us to build one of the most complete research platforms available to non-US investors.

The upside of those nearly seven years of Banker on Wheels for you, is that we now understand our readers’ problems well enough to build a service we’re certain returns considerably more value than it costs.

What can more than a century of market history actually teach us about building wealth? Exponential Wealth: Centuries of Stock and Bond Returns, published by the CFA Institute Research Foundation, brings together the Ibbotson long-term return dataset with 100 years of US market history, centuries of earlier data, and global evidence across countries and markets. The book looks at stocks, bonds, bills, inflation, risk premiums, drawdowns, compounding and diversification, before turning to the harder question of what historical returns can tell us about future expected returns. One of its most useful messages is that the extraordinary US experience should not automatically be treated as the universal outcome: the global and historical sections highlight survivorship bias, market disruption and the importance of looking beyond the US. It puts many of the ideas long-term investors rely on, compounding, the equity risk premium, diversification and expected returns, into a much longer historical and global context. It also makes a useful distinction between what markets have delivered and what investors should reasonably expect going forward.

Fixed Income Fund Types Should Be Aligned With Your Goals – There are eight categories that you may use in portfolio construction. Long-Term Investors In Accumulation Phase – often choose Government or Aggregate Bond ETFs, as they reduce the portfolio volatility. For such funds, most Investors tend to hedge currencies. Inflation Bond ETFs can provide further protection, but their long-duration can be problematic in certain European countries. Retired Investors – often use Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETFs or Mortgage Bond ETFs which de-risk Equity portfolios, while adding incremental yield. Short-Term Investors – can choose Money Market Funds, Short Duration Government or Investment Grade Corporate Bonds. Bonds To Avoid For Most Investors – Include more volatile segments like Emerging Markets or High-Yield Corporates. Both exhibit a stronger correlation with risk-on assets, limiting their utility in simple portfolios. But sometimes they are useful in retirement. NPL Funds – while high yielding – are a great addition, as they are decorrelated. But they are rarely accessible to individual investors.