Below you'll find a list of all posts from 2018
The chief goal of society should be to maximize wealth, according to Tyler Cowen. Pursuing that goal has delivered everything from nutritious and abundant food, to air conditioning and smartphones in the developed world, and those benefits are spreading rapidly to the developing world. The challenge is how societies can embrace and implement that goal. If those challenges are overcome, …
I can guarantee a few things about Howard Marks’ new book, Mastering the Market Cycle. You will enjoy the thoughtful writing in clear language, and you will learn one great, and I believe correct, idea about the operation of markets. But you will not master the market cycle. Nobody can. What you can do, as part of a broader program …
I can guarantee a few things about Howard Marks’ new book, Mastering the Market Cycle. You will enjoy the thoughtful writing in clear language, and you will learn one great, and I believe correct, idea about the operation of markets. But you will not master the market cycle. Nobody can. What you can do, as part of a broader program …
Cullen Roche, an Encinitas, California chicken farmer, heterodox thinker, monetary theorist, blogger (http://www.pragcap.com), and investment manager specializing in taxable portfolios spoke at the Foundation Financial Officers Group (FFOG) semi-annual conference in Santa Barbara on October 24, 2018. He is the founder of Orcam Financial Group. In addition to my other roles I am the investment thought leader for FFOG, and …
Michael Lewis is such an engaging writer that it’s been said he could tell a gripping story about a piece of dirt in the road — beginning with the geological origins, several billion years ago, of the dirt’s mineral components. Lewis can write conservative (The Blind Side) and he can write liberal (“Obama’s Way”). He can turn nerdy statistical analysis …
Michael Lewis is such an engaging writer that it’s been said he could tell a gripping story about a piece of dirt in the road – beginning with the geological origins, several billion years ago, of the dirt’s mineral components. Lewis can write conservative (The Blind Side) and he can write liberal (“Obama’s Way”). He can turn nerdy statistical analysis …
In 2003 I attended a talk by Samuel Huntington, the late Harvard historian who made a big splash with his 1997 bestseller, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. It was an “answer song” to The End of History and the Last Man, written by Francis Fukuyama, one of Huntington’s former students and protégés. Fukuyama’s book proposed …
Investment advisors, managers, and their clients talk about balancing risk and return when advising clients on their strategic asset allocation (SAA) policy for the overall portfolio. This is true whether the client is an individual, a pension plan, a foundation or endowment, or a sovereign wealth fund. SAA investment policy or strategy is typically set by choosing from among a …
Is the world economy in a long-term slowdown? Are our best days behind us? Is productivity growth, widely agreed on as the principal driver of broader economic growth, headed for a long period of subpar performance? If so, what can we do to remedy the situation and restore economic dynamism? Investors, business leaders, policymakers, and academic economists each have their …
For the first time in at least 40 years, there’s a fundamental economic reason that a yield curve near-inversion might not herald a recession. The U.S. Treasury yield curve is currently flatter than usual, not quite inverted but close enough to make some people nervous — since, in the past, recessions have almost always followed. I will make the case …
For the first time in at least 40 years, there’s a fundamental economic reason that a yield curve near-inversion might not herald a recession. The U.S. Treasury yield curve is currently flatter than usual, not quite inverted but close enough to make some people nervous – since, in the past, recessions have almost always followed. I will make the case …
Why does value investing work? Why do other factor strategies work? For that matter, why does any active strategy — meaning, any strategy other than cap-weighted indexing — “work” in the sense of having a reasonable chance of beating the cap-weighted index other than by random variation? The Classical Answer The answer could arise in classical finance, or behavioral finance, …
On June 27, 2018, I spoke with Byron Wien of the Blackstone Group, a longtime friend of Advisor Perspectives and the author of the widely-followed Ten Surprises series of predictions, which Byron has produced for 33 years. For many years, Byron was chief U.S. investment strategist at Morgan Stanley. If you are in the camp of those who think Donald …
On June 27, 2018, I spoke with Byron Wien of the Blackstone Group, a longtime friend of Advisor Perspectives and the author of the widely-followed Ten Surprises series of predictions, which Byron has produced for 33 years. For many years, Byron was chief U.S. investment strategist at Morgan Stanley. If you are in the camp of those who think Donald …
These are tough times for lovers of freedom and democracy. After a quarter-century of spectacular progress following the fall of the Berlin Wall, liberal democracy has yielded to autocracy in a variety of countries. And, even in thriving democracies such as the United States, voters are embracing populism in reaction to perceived economic stagnation, widening income disparity, and disruption of …
At the Q Group in Palm Beach, Florida, on May 7, 2018, Robin Greenwood, a Harvard finance professor, presented a paper, “Bubbles for Fama,” that he co-authored with Andrei Shleifer and Yang You. The Q Group is a discussion group where directors of research and other senior investment professionals interact with finance academics. Founded in 1966, and conducting two seminars …
The rise of populism has been fueled by rhetoric bemoaning the downward plight of the middle class, and that chorus has been joined by many from the left. But are we really worse off than we were a generation or a century ago? Not according to Steven Pinker, whose new book documents the dramatic improvement in lives across the globe. …
On April 5, 2018, I attended the Foundation Financial Officers Group (FFOG) joint conference with a European foundation group, EFFIO, in Milan, Italy. The most engaging and erudite speaker was Russell Napier, a former asset manager with Baillie Gifford, Foreign & Colonial, and CLSA, and now independent. Napier founded Electronic Research Interchange (ERIC), a platform for independent investment research; and …