In his new book What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence, Blackstone chairman, CEO and co-founder Stephen Schwarzman shares insights from his long career and, specifically, lessons learned…
Tracking Fund Performance is Tricky
For mutual fund investors, “persistence is all that matters,” according to a recent article in Barron’s, but decoding performance track records can be a challenge. “Active managers can beat the…
Morningstar Study: Which Investment Factors Work?
A recent article in Morningstar outlines results of a study the firm conducted on seven investment factors showing that volatility, size and momentum worked best. The article provides the following…
Ang Warns About Value
BlackRock’s managing director Andrew Ang is urging investors to be cautious in how they return to the long-underperforming value factor, according to a recent article in Institutional Investor. Although several…
CalPERS Fires Bulk of Equity Managers
The $380 billion California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest in the U.S., has fired most of its external equity managers, cutting their allocation from $33.6 billion to $5.5…
Oakmark’s Bill Nygren Says Google and Netflix are Value Stocks
A recent Barron’s article shares insights from an interview with the Oakmark Select fund manager and value investor Bill Nygren regarding “the perils of value investing.” Here are highlights from…
Lessons From Our Most Read Five Questions Interviews
By Jack Forehand (@practicalquant) We have just passed the one-year mark of our Five Questions interview series. When we first launched the series, I wasn’t sure how it would go.…
Research Shows Ideal Team Size for Money Manager
A recent article in CNBC reports that funds managed by three-person teams outperform “solo-run” fund by 58 basis points a year. According to a study conducted by Michael Mauboussin, director…
Gundlach: Lower Recession Odds and Credit Warnings
Bond manager Jeffrey Gundlach says the odds of a recession are lower and advises investors to avoid corporate debt due to a weaker dollar. This according to an article in…
Excess Returns, Episode 5: The Double Edged Sword of Avoiding Value Traps
Many value stocks are cheap because they deserve to be. Some of them no longer have sustainable businesses, and as a result their current discounted multiple will look really expensive…