Global Predictions Review (For DIY Investors)

I like to look at new financial technology and try it out. I was asked to share my Global Predictions review. Global Predictions uses technology to connect your portfolio to the current economy to help you make more informed investing decisions. The mission statement of Global Predictions is to help “self-directed investors make better decisions in a complex economy”.

This post was sponsored by Global Predictions. Opinions are genymoney.ca’s own. See genymoney.ca’s disclaimer for more information.

What is Global Predictions?

Global Predictions is a fintech company based in San Francisco, California. As of mid-2022 they are expanding their product Global Predictions Wealthwise into Canada.

Global Predictions goal is to help DIY investors make better investing decisions in a complex economy by producing insights and predictions based on a ton of analyzed data.

Global Predictions has created a dynamic model of the global economy by mapping millions of socio-economic relationships so that individual investors can receive different insights specifically tailored to their portfolio.

The CEO and founder of Global Predictions is Alexander Harmsen. His education background is economics and physics which helped Alexander Harmsen create Iris Automation (a leader in autonomous industrial drones). This company raised over $25 million in capital and is still in operation.

After this successful venture, Alexander Harmsen created Global Predictions in 2020.

They have over $800M assets on their investment management platform.

Global Predictions Pricing

Weathwise is the dashboard built by Global Predictions and it is free for individual DIY investors. What is included with your free access to the Global Predictions portal is:

• Automated portfolio improvement suggestions
• Ability to manage unlimited draft portfolios
• You can connect multiple investment accounts
• A visual look at your portfolio concentration (e.g. if you have two different ETFs that kind of overlap you can see how they overlap)
• Economy exploration & explanations

There are other products like the Portfolio Pro which is meant for family offices or wealth managers ($400 each month). They also have other products meant for government agencies, macroeconomists, and financial institutions.

How Does Global Predictions Work?

This Global Predictions review will go over how it works.

Global Predictions Wealthwise dashboard lets you import your portfolio directly from your brokers and banks or manually input your portfolio. After you do this you will receive your Portfolio Score and get recommendations that are customized to your portfolio.

First you sign up by providing your email address and name.

Then they ask for account verification with a phone number.

After this, you fill out a questionnaire about your investor profile.

For example, one of the questions in looking at your current investment strategy. Are you concentrated high risk with a small number of equities, or traditionally diversified, or do you have options, cryptocurrency, and other complex investments?

Then, you have the option of importing your investment portfolio. There are over 12,000 brokerages to choose from (they have both Canadian and US institutions).

Global Predictions uses Plaid and Passiv’s technology to import your information into read-only access and connect to your financial institutions.

If you don’t feel comfortable connecting your accounts, you can also input your data manually too though they recommend connecting your accounts to get the full experience/ optimize it.

Inputting your data helps you see what makes your net worth including:

• Real estate
• Private equity
• Cryptocurrency
• Cash

After you input your net worth, you will get a Wealthwise Portfolio Score.

This Wealthwise Portfolio score is out of a total of 1000.

A score of 723 is considered fair, and within the 95th percentile relative to other Global Predictions users.

The portfolio score analyzes a few factors including:

• Risk match– Whether your current portfolio matches your own tolerance for risk (as determined by the on-boarding survey and quiz)
• Sharpe Ratio– This measures the risk adjusted return of your financial portfolio, it measures the performance of an investment adjusted for its risk. That means “with your risk preferences in mind.”
• Downside Protection- This looks at your level of protection against possible financial scenarios (for example, a Black Swan event)

Finally, after you look at your portfolio score, you can also see some Wealthwise recommendations based on your portfolio.

For example, in the scenario where I put my portfolio as 100% VXC ETF (a Vanguard ex-Canada ETF which invests outside of Canada) Wealthwise recommends country diversification. It also looks at factors affecting the score such as interest rate risk, liquidity risk.

The recommendations also include diversifying asset classes and sectors to make sure you’re not overexposed to the same macro drivers. For example, many people have too much money in stocks impacted by the same risk factors, like for example too much allocated to tech stocks or too much Canadian home bias.

Finally, they put it all together, and you can see your estimated forecasted returns (based on Global Predictions forecast) over the next 12 months.

Finally, if that’s not interesting enough, Global Predictions has a feature where you can input your portfolio and simulate it for various financial crises, like the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic (where portfolios dropped like rock by over 30% and recovered just as quickly) or the 2008-2010 Great Financial Crisis.

This is what the portfolio of 100% VXC ETF looks like if we ran it through the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is a great feature for newer investors especially, who were expecting the bull market to go on forever, and who are not used to the more typical prolonged and drawn out qualities of bear markets.

With that in mind, in this Global Predictions review, there are a number of benefits and drawbacks of Global Predictions.

Here are some of them.

Global Predictions Pros

Data driven. Global Predictions is data driven based on a ton of economic data in the current financial landscape. You’ve got up to date data on the current economy.

Actionable recommendations. The recommendations are actionable and easy to follow in order to improve your portfolio. These recommendations are automated based on your inputted portfolio. You can see where you are duplicating (for example if you have multiple ETFs- I am certainly guilty of that) in your portfolio.

You can connect multiple investment accounts. Similar to other net worth or portfolio trackers, you can connect multiple investment accounts so that you can see the bigger picture.

Historical portfolio performance and future portfolio returns. This is another neat feature of the Wealthwise dashboard, is that not only can you see your historical performance, you can see estimated future portfolio returns for the next 12 months based on Global Predictions forecasting.

Global Predictions Cons

Recommendations seem advanced for the average user. Some of the recommendations I find seem advanced for the average user. For example, probably not many beginner investors know what a Sharpe ratio is.

Not aesthetically pleasing. Unfortunately Global Predictions is not ‘easy on the eyes’ compared to other comparable financial technology websites out there.

Hope that this Global Predictions review was useful.

Have you tried Global Predictions Wealthwise to look at your investment accounts?