A recent bump in market volatility underscores “why investors should mistrust serene markets,” according to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. On Wall Street, the article explains, market…
A Loser’s Game for Active Managers
“What is ironic is that active managers have been doing exactly what they needed to do to fight back, and it still hasn’t helped much. It might even be hurting,”…
Excess Returns, Episode 2: The Rising Bar for Active Management
The market has always been tough to beat, but the ability to investors to gain inexpensive exposure to factors like value and momentum has made the job of active managers…
A Refresher on Stock Investing Basics
In a recent Bloomberg article, columnist Nir Kaissar argued that profits, governance and price should always be front and center in the stock investment decision-making process. Kaissar used the missteps…
How One Stock Fund Finds Winning Picks
A recent article in Barron’s profiles Grandeur Peak International Stalwarts fund lead manager Randy Pearce and the “small army” of investment analysts his firm uses to research and identify opportunities…
Fidelity Warns Baby Boomers to Lay off Stocks
According to a recent Bloomberg article, in its third-quarter retirement report Fidelity Investments said that Baby Boomers (those born between 1944 and 1964) are too heavily weighted in stocks. The…
A Formula to Explain the Great Decade for Stocks
A recent Fortune article by Ritholtz Wealth Management’s Ben Carlson argues that the past decade’s strong stock performance has been “almost exclusively driven by fundamentals, much to the chagrin of…
Morningstar’s Revamped Ratings Deliver Hit to Active Funds
The rating agency Morningstar has spruced up its rating system, which “hasn’t proved to be very predictive for future performance and volatility” and has “lost its luster because of the…
Here’s How Active Managers Squander Alpha
New research shows that active managers do in fact generate alpha, but have a hard time keeping it because they hold positions too long. This according to an article in…
The Danger of Overscrutinizing Out of Favor Investment Metrics
By Jack Forehand (@practicalquant) — No investing factor has been maligned more than the Price/Book in recent years. In a period where value in general has performed very poorly, the Price/Book…