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The British journalist Nicholas Wapshott’s Samuelson Friedman, a sequel to his earlier Keynes Hayek, promises an exciting Shootout at the OK Corral but doesn’t deliver. (The silly book titles don’t help either.) Nobel laureates Paul Samuelson, left of center, and Milton Friedman, firmly on the right, had much more in common than not — they were both passionate believers in …

We shouldn’t read too much into pop sociology, especially when investing other people’s money. William Strauss and Neil Howe built a following by studying substantive differences among generations: Baby Boomers, Millennials, Gen X and so forth. But that view is mistaken, according to Bobby Duffy. Duffy asks whether our lives largely shaped by when we were born, as popular “generational …

An urban legend has Amos Tversky, the late co-founder (along with Daniel Kahneman) of behavioral economics, asking a computer scientist what he was working on. The computer man responded, “I study artificial intelligence.” Tversky, a notorious smart aleck, responded, “I study natural stupidity.” Steven Pinker has studied natural stupidity more carefully than any other living writer. Trained as a cognitive …

How Did the World Go from Poor to Rich? After tens of thousands of years of living at a subsistence level, how did the world suddenly become so rich? By “suddenly” I mean in the last 250 years (I’m a long-term investor). However, even if you think in shorter time frames, the rise of China in the last 40 years, …

Interviewed by Kathryn M. Welling Larry Siegel’s Highly Contrary, Surprisingly Practical Future Vision There’s no getting around it. For all his financial acumen, intellectual firepower and years of experience in trying to meld the minds of Wall Street to scholarly research, Larry Siegel remains both highly rational and a dogged optimist. Amazing. Larry is also a familiar face to faithful …

An urban legend has Amos Tversky, the late co-founder (along with Daniel Kahneman) of behavioral economics,asking a computer scientist what he was working on. The computer man responded, “I study artificial intelligence.” Tversky, a notorious smart aleck, responded, “I study natural stupidity.” Steven Pinker has studied natural stupidity more carefully than any other living writer. Trained as a cognitive psychologist …

Having suffered through the worst pandemic in a century, we are keenly attuned to catastrophe. Few people are better equipped to document the history of catastrophes and our response to them, for better or worse, than Niall Ferguson, the Scottish-American historian and documentary television star whose previous books have covered everything from The Ascent of Money to Colossus: The Rise …

After tens of thousands of years of living at a subsistence level, how did the world suddenly become so rich? By “suddenly” I mean in the last 250 years (I’m a long-term investor). However, even if you think in shorter time frames, the rise of China in the last 40 years, and of the United States, Europe, and Japan in …

4 articles from The Journal of Investing are included in this PDF: COMMENTARY: Problems with the Endowment Model by Richard M. Ennis COMMENTARY: The Endowment Model Is Just Active Management by Laurence B. Siegel REBUTTAL: The Endowment Model Defense That Wasn’t by Richard M. Ennis REBUTTAL: The Market Portfolio Is Bigger Than You Think by Laurence B. Siegel

May 11, 2021 7:00 AM ET CLICK ON RADIO TO HEAR PODCAST Summary “Fewer, Richer, Greener,” by Laurence B. Siegel, director of research for the CFA Institute Research Foundation, offers a relentlessly optimistic take on the future. In this interview, Siegel cites messenger RNA and the blockchain revolution as contemporary examples of innovation in a real economy he thinks will …

The saga of local public health officials tasked with fighting epidemic disease, and their clashes with national health authorities who didn’t care, was a perfect recipe for putting readers to sleep. But Michael Lewis made it into high drama. I couldn’t put it down. That’s about the worst opening for a book review that I can think of, but I …

What do financial folly and religious frenzy have in common? This question has not been carefully explored since Charles Mackay’s spectacular 1852 study, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. But, in a recent book, William Bernstein, a well-known economic historian, neurologist, and investment manager, makes the connection even more strongly than Mackay did. The title of his book, …

Endowment funds have long been thought to be the best-managed asset pools in the institutional investment world, employing the most capable people and allocating assets to managers, conventional and alternative, who can and do truly focus on the long run? But, after a decade of subpar performance, documented by Richard Ennis in this issue of the JOURNAL OF PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT, …

Powerful demographic trends will cause higher inflation and interest rates, and a reduction in inequality as labor reclaims its bargaining power in the global economy, argue two British authors in a persuasive book. That conclusion “caused a furor” when it came from the celebrated British economist and central banker Charles Goodhart, and Manoj Pradhan, a macroeconomist. It is the central …

Conversations with Frank Fabozzi is a fortnightly series of interviews with leading investment thinkers and practitioners conducted by Frank J. Fabozzi, editor of The Journal of Portfolio Management and a prominent Yale professor and author. Conducted in an informal and personal manner, Frank discusses what lessons his interviewees have learned from their experiences in the financial markets and any key …