What’s in Your View Finder?

Posted on Friday, October 21st, 2011

I’ve thought quite a bit about Steve Jobs. Things like what he’s contributed to the world, what his impact will have been 10 years from now, could he have done it outside the U.S., was he a good dad, etc. And I’ve thought about the investment implications of his work. The following is an article… read the full article

Where Do Investment Returns Come From?

Posted on Monday, September 19th, 2011

Part I O.K. I know my third grade English teacher would cringe at the grammar, but I hope it gets the point across. But have you ever pondered the question? Historically, capital markets have provided positive returns. But why? Risk is not the only answer. There are plenty of types of risk that don’t produce… read the full article

Comments about S&P Downgrade and Market Reaction

Posted on Monday, August 8th, 2011

I am usually reluctant to respond to market events, especially bad ones, with commentary. I think it just fuels the pessimism. However, since S&P downgrades of the U.S. come about every other century, I thought I should at least throw out a few observations. The market over the last few days has been ugly. There’s… read the full article

Why DFA? Here Are A Few More Reasons

Posted on Friday, March 11th, 2011

Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) is an important part of our clients’ investment strategy. There are three recent news items about DFA that you may have some interest in. The first is from Barron’s which named DFA as the best fund family for 2010 and #1 for equity funds. While that’s nice, we are always suspect… read the full article

Vegas, Wall Street, and Investor Behavior

Posted on Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

If Index Funds Perform Better, Why Are Actively Managed Funds More Popular? A recent article published by two researchers at Wharton suggest that investors rationally invest in actively managed strategies, knowing that the odds are against them. It’s been widely known for years that index funds consistently outperform actively managed mutual funds. Actively managed funds… read the full article

The Private Equity Illusion

Posted on Tuesday, December 7th, 2010

Imagine this. A private equity firm puts together 73 funds over a number of years with each one lasting 10 years. Funding occurs over the first 5 years of the life of each fund with distributions occurring the last 5. All but 2 make money, the average total return being over 150%. Better yet, over… read the full article

DFA Cracks the Top 10 Largest Fund Families

Posted on Saturday, November 20th, 2010

Dimensional Fund Advisors moved into the top 10 of Mutual Fund Families due its strong inflows from investors over the last 18 months, but also because of its lack of outflows during the market downturn from 2008-2009. As you know, we use DFA almost exclusively in our clients’ portfolios. To see why, click here. DFA’s… read the full article

Why Do the Ultra-Rich Pour Money Into Hedge Funds?

Posted on Tuesday, November 16th, 2010

And it’s not just hedge funds. It’s private equity and venture capital, too, according to a Wall Street Journal article. By most measures, performance in these investment vehicles is spotty at best, and taking into account that many of them don’t report performance when results are bad, the only ones you have to measure are… read the full article

Elections…Much Ado About Nothing

Posted on Thursday, November 4th, 2010

There’s a general belief that divided government is a good thing for markets because it means that the government is less likely to pass any legislation that doesn’t have broad support among the electorate. The concept is the government can do no harm. But looking at the history of which party was in charge including… read the full article

Here We Go…

Posted on Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

I’ve been wanting to start a blog for a while now under the self-delusion that anyone would actually be interested in what I think about. Well, here it is along with a few thoughts right out of the box. If you’re interested in subscribing, copy the web address into you’re RSS reader (get some techie… read the full article

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