Laurens Swinkels’ worst investment ever

Laurens Swinkels is parttime Associate Professor of Finance at Erasmus School of Economics and Head of Quant Strategy at the Sustainable Multi-Asset Solutions team at Robeco. His area of expertise is empirical asset pricing. He teaches Finance courses and has published his academic work in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics. Prior to rejoining Robeco in 2016, he was a Researcher at Norges Bank Investment Management. He was a Researcher at Robeco from 2004 to 2012 and at PensionFactory and APG Asset Management from 1999 to 2004. He is member of the Research Committee of Inquire Europe. Laurens holds a PhD in Finance and a Master’s in Econometrics from Tilburg University.

Swinkels’ worst investment ever

When Swinkels moved to Tilburg for his study, he was torn between buying or renting an apartment. Since he would only be in school for a few years, he decided to rent. After graduating, the associate professor moved to Amsterdam, where the house prices were unimaginably high. Hoping that the prices would go down, he rented an apartment. However, the prices just kept going up. Ultimately, Swinkels decided to buy a house in Rotterdam, where the prices were lower than in Amsterdam.

Unexpectedly, Swinkels had to move to Norway five years after buying his first house. We he moved, the house he bought was 25% underwater. Since the money Swinkels had spent buying the house was a large part of his total wealth, this was a very big hit. He sold the house only two years ago.

Lessons learned

One of the lessons Swinkels shares during the podcast, is that always valuable to have liquidity that allows you to buy and sell a house. Moreover, according to Swinkels, it would be best to remove emotions from your decision-making.