Almost everyone believes a stock market correction is inevitable. The financial media whip up a daily frenzy of anxiety by offering conflicting views from “investment pros” on when this correction will occur. Here are some tips for dealing with the “market correction” issue. Don’t try to time the correction There is no academic evidence indicating…
All performance-based advertising should be banned. Your telephone rings. The call is from an executive recruiter. She has some really good news. You are being offered a position as the fund manager for a large-cap mutual fund. Large-cap stocks are those of companies with a market capitalization value of more than $10 billion. The companies…
“We should just move to the country and live in a tent.” I mention this idea to my wife every time I’m confronted with one of the realities of living in Park City, Utah. It seems like almost everyone here is an athlete of some sort, and they take their sports seriously. From mountain biking…
Despite extremely poor returns, the growth of the hedge fund industry has been explosive. Assets under management grew from about $50 billion in 1990 to more than $2 trillion by 2007. Today that figure is at an estimated $3 trillion. It’s believed hedge funds account for almost a third of the average daily stock market…
Investors tend to think of hedge fund managers as the superstars of the financial world. Collectively, it’s estimated they now manage somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 trillion. Unfortunately, their reputation hasn’t translated into the type of returns that live up to all the hype. As we’ve continued to demonstrate over the years, the hedge…
The combination of the S&P 500 Index losing about 1 percent per year during the decade from 2000-2009 and a rising tide of obligations caused a “perfect storm” for public workers’ pension funds across the country. These funds increasingly began turning to riskier alternative investments in private equity and hedge funds in an effort to…
Investors are battered daily with an avalanche of financial information. Much of it is wrong. The securities industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually sponsoring all forms of financial media, a great portion of which is little more than an infomercial for its services. The consequence of so much sponsored media content masking as…
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently released its annual “Cost of Raising a Child” report. The news from it is really no news at all to us parents—kids are stinking expensive and growing even more so. However, if you read between the lines, there are three extremely important points that don’t show up in…
Millennials, also known as Generation Y, are an interesting group of people. The term typically refers to those born between the early 1980s and 2000. The general perception of this generation is mixed. Some articles portray them as selfish, lazy and entitled. Others report they have a community spirit. A study published in 2012 in…
In my book, “Think, Act, and Invest Like Warren Buffett,” I noted that the Oracle of Omaha advised investors: “We have long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune-tellers look good. Even now, Charlie (Munger) and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept…
To really help people, financial planners have to delve into the the feelings and emotions that drive their clients’ financial decisions. One planner explains why that’s so hard. While most of us financial advisers want to do the best for our clients, we often struggle at the task. The main problem, as I recently wrote:…
As a continuation of our previous discussion earlier this month on small value mutual funds, today I’d like to review the metrics of some popular small value ETFs. As a reminder, the smaller and more “valuey” the stocks that a fund owns, the higher the expected returns of the portfolio are. The following table, with…
An algorithm is defined as a set of detailed instructions that result in a predictable end-state from a known beginning. The discovery of an algorithm that would consistently generate outsized returns would be the holy grail of investing. The individual who came up with such an algorithm and published the methodology in a peer-reviewed journal…
I recently went backpacking in the Uinta Mountains. It’s a range of gorgeous peaks close to my home in Park City, Utah. A group of friends planned to spend a few days in the backcountry, so we got together to discuss everything we’d need for the trip. We had a lot of experience hiking and…
Q: Can you capture higher returns on a municipal portfolio by lowering its credit quality? A: Investors generally demand a higher yield when purchasing lower-credit-quality municipal bonds due to their greater risk. The assumption is the greater the risk, the greater the expected return. However, evidence has shown that investors have not realized higher risk-adjusted…