As those who read my articles know, I am a big believer in value investing. But I also understand that as a follower of value, I am prone to focusing on information that supports that belief. A while back, I tried to combat my own confirmation bias by writing an article that looked at the arguments against value investing. That article ended up being the most read article of all time on our blog. So… Read More
The primary focus of most investors is generating returns. And that certainly makes sense given that we all have future goals we are trying to attain, and our portfolios are the major tool we have to achieve them. In recent years, however, there has been another goal that has been rising in importance. Many investors now also want to use their portfolios to express their values. They want to use them to help produce positive… Read More
By Jack Forehand (@practicalquant) One of the most dangerous games we all can play in investing is the game of looking back and thinking about what we should have done. Hindsight bias leads us to believe that we should have known all sorts of things that there was no way to know at the time, and that leads to conclusions that would have been very difficult to draw with the information that was available then.… Read More
A new private equity fund created by BlackRock is intended to hold companies for “up to forever” while addressing the issue of high fees, according to an article in Institutional Investor. The fund has been created by BlackRock’s long-term private capital team (LTPC) under the leadership of Andre Bourbonnais and fellow Canadian Mark Wiseman (chairman of the firm’s alternative-investment unit and global head of active equities). The two men structured the new fund, the article… Read More
An article in Barron’s remembers legendary investor and long-time Barron’s Roundtable member John Neff, who died earlier this month at 87. “Neff favored deeply unloved stocks with hidden potential,” the article says, adding, “And he bought them by the truckload for the Vanguard Windsor Fund, which he managed for 31 years through 1995.” For the same period of time, Neff also served as a member of the Barron’s Roundtable, which the article describes as an… Read More
In a recent article for The Wall Street Journal, columnist Jason Zweig argues that although many U.S. investors appear to be increasing their exposure to China (hoping for high returns due to the country’s economic growth), “those hopes could end in heartache when expectations collide with reality.” Zweig points out: “History shows that countries with faster-growing economies often produce lower—not higher—stock-market returns.” Since Chinese stocks peaked in 2007, Zweig explains, they have lost an average… Read More
The prospect of market highs and an interest rate cut—fueled by our trade woes with China–spell opportunity for investors in the stock market, says billionaire trader Paul Tudor Jones. This according to an article in Bloomberg. In an interview with Bloomberg Radio, the head of Tudor Investment Corp. said, “We should be long stocks right now,” adding that the Fed is “probably on the cusp of the first rate cut after a long hiking cycle.”… Read More
The founder and CEO of Brown Capital Management has a simple approach: Find businesses that “save time, money, headaches and lives”—then figure out whether management has the skills necessary to grow them. This according to an article in Forbes. “If these criteria are met,” the article explains, Brown’s firm will “load up on the stock and wait.” The firm subscribes to what the article describes as an “old-school stock-picking operation that doesn’t chase the latest… Read More
A recent article for Fortune by Ben Carlson of Ritholtz Wealth Management says you can win any argument about the stock market by “simply changing your start or end dates to suit your stance,” but these swings in stock price also offer important takeaways for investors. The article argues that there “will always be ammunition for both sides of the bull and bear debate in almost every security or market imaginable for the simple fact… Read More
A recent article in Bloomberg reports that Manulife Investment Management is on the brink of overweighting European stocks after the region’s equities saw the worst tumble in more than three years. The dip comes in the wake of “messy politics in the U.K. and Italy combined with the fallout from U.S.-China trade tensions,” the article reports, adding comments from JPMorgan Chase that the region’s stocks are unlikely to outperform the U.S. unless they can outpace… Read More
Although Yale University’s endowment fund—and its chief investment officer, David Swensen—have enjoyed a stellar reputation in the industry for decades, a recent article in Morningstar argues that the fund’s reputation “owes to its earlier accomplishments” and that, recently, it has been outperformed by the market. By creating a portfolio of securities that behave like the S&P 500, the article’s author, Morningstar columnist John Rekenthaler, says he “blitzed Yale’s fund over the trailing decade” (except for… Read More
Warren Buffett claims that owning the S&P 500 index through a low-cost index fund will deliver about the same results as if he chose the stocks, “and maybe slightly better.” This according to a recent article in MarketWatch. “I think it’s the best investment because more people don’t know how to pick stocks. And—most of the time I don’t know how to pick stocks,” Buffett said. But, according to the article, the problem isn’t with… Read More