Based in Europe, Nicholas is a widely recognized expert on exchange-traded funds and an accomplished investment expert. Nicholas has been a regular commentator on CNN International and Fox Business Network. He has also been cited in The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Fox Business News, CBS MarketWatch, Yahoo Finance and MSN Money Central.
Here’s a little more about the journey that led him to you…
Growing up in Pittsburgh, Nicholas earned spending money by selling flavored ice cubes at Little League baseball games, delivering the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at 5:00 a.m. and shoveling snow during the harsh Pennsylvania winters.
For a kid from the Rust Belt who was a big Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers fan, he also lived a double life. He spent his summers studying in West Germany (before unification), France, Italy and communist Hungary on scholarships he diligently applied for while in high school.
I was lucky. My parents made me aware of opportunities other kids couldn’t even dream about. Every summer, I had the chance to dip into a completely different language, reality and culture. During the bad old days of the Cold War, not a lot of kids from the United States were spending their summers in Europe, let alone behind the Iron Curtain. It was as if I got to visit another planet each summer. And then I spent the school year back on planet earth.
Luckily, this was the kind of unusual background that top colleges were looking for.
Nicholas earned a B.A. in both economics and history and an M.A. in history in less than four years from Stanford University.
There, he discovered the work of free market economist Friedrich Hayek and wrote two theses on his work.
That work put him on track to win a Fulbright scholarship to the Karl Marx University of Economics in Budapest, making him one of the first Fulbright scholars to study behind the Iron Curtain.
Assuming his academic interests in the Soviet Union and centrally planned economies was a professional dead-end, he turned down an economics Ph.D scholarship to Oxford University and went on to attend Harvard Law School instead.
Truth be told, he wasn’t a big fan of the law. Compared with the exciting world of clashing economic ideals, law seemed pedestrian and boring. Harvard proved better fit for his classmates, including future president Barack Obama and good friend, now Supreme Court justice, Neil Gorsuch.
As luck would have it, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down before he graduated. Suddenly, Eastern Europe and Russia were open for business.
After Harvard, he joined the world’s largest law firm, which had just opened offices in Eastern Europe. His mission – as he put it then – was to “help dismantle centrally planned economies.”
For nearly four years, he worked on the privatizations of some of the leading banks, oil companies and telecom companies in the region, listing them on regional stock exchanges. It’s this work that first exposed him to the fascinating world of investing.
Nicholas then set out to learn all he could about finance and embarked on a successful and varied business career, including launching several investment funds in Europe, founding a London-based roundtable of leading investment experts like Steve Forbes and Nassim Taleb, and writing for Eagle Publishing’s The Global Guru for 12 years alongside four other investment advisory newsletters.
In January 2018, Nicholas became The Oxford Club’s first and only ETF strategist, writing for the daily Liberty Through Wealth e-letter (formerly Investment U) and our flagship newsletter, The Oxford Communiqué. He is also the Editor of the new ETF trading service, Oxford Wealth Accelerator.
Outside of work, Nicholas focuses on managing his personal investments and his growing family.
Articles by Nicholas
Why You Should (Probably) Avoid Story Stocks January 23, 2020- Stories can be very compelling, which is why story stocks are so hard to resist. Should investors use them as a shortcut to wealth accumulation or stay away?
Warren Buffett’s Favorite Indicator Is Flashing Red January 21, 2020- Warren Buffett will never bet against America, but he does trust certain indicators to tell him what to expect for the U.S. markets and when to hold back.
It’s Time You Join the ETF Revolution January 16, 2020- Now is the time to join the ETF revolution. With countless strategies and options available, ETF trading is the key to your ideal investment portfolio.
Should You Take Another Bite of Apple? January 14, 2020- Apple had a fantastic 2019, surging an incredible 86%. Learn what lies ahead for Apple in 2020 and whether it will remain an excellent wealth generator. 
Lessons From the “China Miracle” January 9, 2020- In the mid-2000s, investing in China was all the rage. But what happened to the "China miracle"? How will China continue to impact global wealth?
Is It Time to Bet Big on Warren Buffett? January 7, 2020- Warren Buffett had a rough year, but is Berkshire Hathaway about to turn things around? Here’s what could be in store for his investment strategies this year.
Here’s How the U.S. Economy Stacks Up Against the World January 2, 2020- It may seem like the U.S. has its share of challenges ahead for 2020, but let’s take a look at where the U.S. economy stands as we head into a new decade.
Why the US. Stock Market Won’t Soar Again in 2020 December 31, 2019- 2018 ended on a sour note for investors, but 2019 will go down as one of the best years in recent history. What will 2020 bring for wealth builders?
The Single Most Important Quality of Successful Investors December 26, 2019- You might think the key to becoming a successful investor is studying modern financial theory. But really, the secret of wealth is more psychological.
The Endowment Portfolio Turns 1 December 19, 2019- The Yale endowment’s massive success would be impossible for an individual investor to achieve... Or would it? Here’s how it performs as an ETF portfolio.