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“A State of Heart” Featuring Tim Maurer

For some, fiduciary is just a headline. For us, “It’s who we are.” The word fiduciary has been in the news a lot of late, from Wall Street to Washington, but it’s a word that has always been part of our daily dialogue. Advisors who act as fiduciaries, as we do, are legally required to put the…

The Impact of Scale on the Performance of Active Managers

Diseconomies of scale and their impact on active manager performance. There is a large body of overwhelming evidence that past performance is at best a poor predictor of active managers’ future performance. That is why the SEC requires that common and familiar disclaimer. There are many explanations for the difficulty that active managers face in…

Faith-Based Funds Don’t Mean Divine Returns

Seeking Alpha

Socially responsible investing (SRI) has been referred to as “double-bottom-line” investing. The implication is that you are seeking not only profitable investments, but also investments that meet your personal standards. Faith-Based Funds (FBF) can be viewed as a subset of SRI. While SRI applies screens on secular social concerns, FBF screens investments based on the…

The Lies Of Private Equity

ETF

While embarking on scenic tours can make life both interesting and exciting, they’re best avoided when it comes to the world of investing. The reason is that most “interesting” investments fail to deliver on their promise of returns sufficient to compensate for their incremental risks. This has been especially true of hedge funds. And it…

A Close Look At Emerging Markets

ETF

There’s an interesting paper from Martijn Cremers, a professor of finance at the University of Notre Dame, on the performance of emerging market stocks that are the publicly traded affiliates of multinational companies. But like so much in the world of investing, Cremers’ findings, while certainly alluring, need to be examined closely before investors jump into…

Stock Pickers Fell Flat In 2013

ETF

Last year certainly provided active managers with plenty of opportunities to outperform, and it’s worth examining if they really did. For example, while the S&P 500 Index returned 32.4 percent, Netflix (NLFX), the top performer in the index, returned 297 percent. Two other stocks, Micron Technology (MU) and Best Buy Co. (BBY) returned more than…

7 Myths About Dividend-Paying Stocks

US News

The most common misconception among investors may be the value of investing in dividend-paying stocks. Almost every week, someone contacts me to extol the virtues of investing in what they call “high quality, dividend-yielding securities.” Often, their interest is spurred by the recent high performance of these stocks. According to one paper by Gregg S. Fisher, published…

The Delicate Craft of Misleading Investors

Huffington Post

Proponents of alternative investments (like hedge funds) have a very effective presentation. They claim these investments have low volatility (risk), offer excellent risk-adjusted returns, and don’t correlate well with stocks or bonds, thereby providing a “hedge” in troubled times. These proponents demonstrate the accuracy of these claims with compelling statistics, displayed in impressive marketing materials….

Lessons From 2013: Part III

Seeking Alpha

Day three of our lessons from 2013, we’ll dive right in with an examination of hedge fund returns. This one holds the title with the most repeat performances, appearing most years. The HRFX Global Hedge Fund Index earned just 6.7 percent. The table below shows the returns for various equity and fixed

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