While waiting for the other shoe to drop has become a favorite pastime for many in the investment community, the current bull market appears to be pretty sturdy. Precisely why,…
Bide Your Time in an Overbought Market
Although current market conditions might make assets vulnerable to reversal, that doesn’t necessarily mean a drop is imminent. When asked whether recent gains in the S&P 500 mean it’s time…
Active Share is not a Predictor of Fund Performance
At a time when fund expenses are increasingly under scrutiny, some have turned to active share (the level of correlation between an index fund and its benchmark) as a predictor…
A Conversation with Nuveen’s Bob Doll
Making predictions can be pretty dicey business in general, but particularly when it comes to matters of the economy. A recent Investment News article recapped an interview with 36-year veteran…
In Factor Investing, Integration is a Plus
Portfolio diversification is a known strategy for minimizing risk, but these efforts can be thwarted if the diversified securities react in a similar way to market conditions. Factor investing is…
Zweig: Avoid Higher Risk When Yields are Low
It seems that yield-starved investors are turning to high-risk investments in what Jason Zweig of The Wall Street Journal recently termed, “a reckless lunge.” Since June 30th, inflow to ETFs…
How the Brain Handles Buying and Selling
We’ve written often about the role that human behavior plays in investing. While logic and reason are contributing factors, emotions hardly take a back seat. In a recent issue of…
Zweig: Gold Is Not All That Glitters
In the summer of 2015, Jason Zweig wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal in which he claims that investing in gold (which was trading at around $1,130 an…
Bill Gross on Weak Credit: Do Not Pass Go
It might sound like an oversimplification to discuss the current state of the credit markets in terms of a Monopoly game, but that’s exactly what Janus fund manager William Gross…
Can Active Investing Still Generate Alpha?
Back in 1984, Warren Buffett wrote an article entitled “The Superinvestors of Graham-and-Doddsville” (referring to the book Security Analysis co-authored by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd) in which he argues that passively…