Sungarden Investment Research

Back in the summer of 2011, a short animated film was built using a website called XtraNormal. The site allows anyone to create a film and chose animated characters and voices. This one particular film sought to educate (with the creators strong opinions included) the audience on the Federal Reserves Quantitative Easing (QE) program, which then was in its middle stages. And boy, did it find an audience, with over 5 million people viewing it!

For a while now, my firm and I have been devout in alerting our clients and blog subscribers to the issues that will confront them as investors if/when the more than three decades of generally falling U.S. interest rates reverses itself. But what if they dont rise much for a while, and instead stay around where they are?

It helps to be aware of the many possible outcomes and adjust your strategy to sync with the current record price highs in this popular market benchmark. Doing so can help you be more successful, regardless of what the next five years may bring. In this sense, it is not where you finish, its where you start.

One of the main themes of the Schwab Impact conference was the urgency the industry feels to go beyond traditional asset allocation. I could not agree more with that concept. But as for the execution of it, I see what I have seen so many times beforea good idea to help investors, which the industry then bludgeons to death with complexity, excessive fees and a bunch of me-too products. I will devote much more space in this blog to this in the coming weeks and months.

I will admit that Point and Figure (P&F) charting is not something I have spent years studying. I do know that according to Investopedia and other sources I have read recently, it is gaining followers. P&F charts tend to be longer-term in their view, and they project and name an actual price target for the stock or index you are tracking.

We have our swim trunks firmly tied around our waists, and the life preserver is tied to our hand. If nothing else, this is a time to remember that investing is a balancing act, regardless of what appears to be happening around us.

When markets get temporarily unruly as they have recently, it tends to drive folks like us to go back and prove to ourselves once again that each and every part of our existing portfolios (the stocks and the hedge positions we own) is as valid to us as it was when we bought it. And, with many stocks on our watch list getting closer to being viable additions to the mix as their prices drop, we are essentially scouring our investable universe to see if we can either improve our upside potential, strengthen our defenses, or both. It is a rigorous process, always.

Rather than try to out-guess the market's trader element, we prefer to act consistent with what our objectives are for each strategy. Avoiding the big loss is a prime part of that. Tracking bounce days when market activity is getting increasingly concerning to us is not. Boring? Yes. Effective at keeping our clients retired? We think so.

Since 1962, the Dow has had a daily change of at least 0.60% over 45% of the time! (Ycharts.com 2014) There are 251 U.S. market trading days a year. This means that on average, about 113 trading days a year result in the Dow changing by 100 points or more, in current terms. Enough said. So, let's focus on what is really news. When market volatility truly returns, it will be like U.S. Justice Potter Stewart famously said about pornography (paraphrasing): you'll know it when you see it.

The news was greeted with shock by some, while others wondered what took so long. In perhaps the first of many shoes to drop on the hedge fund industry, the largest U.S. pension fund, Calpers announced it will sell all of its hedge fund investments within 12 months. Media stories on this announcement were quick to cite lagging performance of these funds over the past year, but it appears Calpers was more concerned with the level of fees and lack of transparencythat is, they did not know what the heck was going on inside of many of the funds.

Investors have heard about record highs in the stock market for months now. Headline indices like the S&P 500 and the Dow 30 broke their record highs this summer, and are still quite close to them. But what about the other indices? According to a recent Bloomberg article, About 47% of stocks in the Nasdaq Composite Index are down at least 20% from their peak in the last 12 months while more than 40% have fallen that much in the Russell 2000 Index and the Bloomberg IPO Index. Some will refer to this as a two-tiered market. We prefer to call it "bad breadth."

This weeks blog borrows its title from one of the early anthems of the 1970s Punk Rock era. At a time when terrorism dominates the global newswire, another part of the world is erupting in what could become a market-moving chain of events. This is accompanied by an atmosphere that can appropriately be described as vicious (Baby Boomer alternative music buffs from their college days hopefully get the pun there).

Investors and their advisors have eased into the perceived comfort of evaluating investment results over standard, fixed time periods, such as year-to-date or the past 1-3-5 years. These are all valid time periods to review, but I dont think they are enough.

This week, the S&P 500 stock index crossed the 2,000 mark for the first time (this figure and other historical returns referred to in this article do not include dividends). Round numbers always get the medias attention, so avid market-watchers already know this. But why? Why, just six years after the financial world seemed to be ending, are we celebrating a milestone that at that point seemed a generation away?

Robert Isbitts posted: "As a big Robin Williams fan, this was a tough week. Ironically, before this comedic genius's shocking death on Monday, my team and I planned for this week's blog to be a parody of the work of another comedian taken from us too soon, George Carlin.

Summer slowdown? No way! The news is full of compelling story lines. Some of them have investment implications, some do not. Here, we briefly sort them out.

My last article suggested six ways in which retired and retiring investors may be lulling themselves into a false sense of comfort. They do this by adhering to ideals that were originally postulated many years ago, and which today still have some merit. But theyve become clichs to a point where their foundation is no longer questioned when it needs to be. They are myths which need to be busted

The question we have is how are we going to pay for all of this borrowed money? If you are the government and own the Mint, you can print more money. That pays your debts but devalues your currency, so you replace one problem with another. When you hear that the Fed is "pumping liquidity into the system" there is a good reason - they are the only ones left who can. The consumers financial condition is again fading into treacherous territory.

A while back, we published a list that we continually update at Sungarden. We call them Red Shoots. They are essentially the opposite of a set of conditions which gave investors hope that not all was lost, in the throes of the financial crisis of 2008. Those reasons for optimism were called Green Shoots, like a patch of short green grass about to show up on the dirt area you will one day call your lawn. Red Shoots are the opposite: they are the reasons for extreme caution when the market and many investors seem to be forgetting that security prices are not a one-way propositi

Investors should pay very careful attention to how retirement investing has changed versus 10 or 20 years ago, get educated about it and then apply it to their specific situation. Financially-speaking, its a case of adapt or perish.

Todays blog is an excerpt from our whitepaper, The Sungarden Study which addresses the retirement income crisis, standard solutions, and offers a recommended alternative to traditional approaches. To request a copy of the study, please use the Contact Us tab at www.sungardeninvestment.com .

When volatile markets come around, it is not the actual VIX level that is most important. Understanding of the way the rules of engagement for risk management and return strategies change (and they can change a lot), is the key. The difference between fearing volatile markets and capitalizing on them is, in our opinion, a key element to the long-term success of any investment strategy.

I cant help but notice a great number of similarities between peoples approach to their investment portfolios and the way baseball games are played. This is true, even at the T-ball level with four and five year olds, not major leaguers, running around.

Today, I reach the half-century mark on this earth. I have spent over half of that time working in the investment management business. Over my more than 90,000 hours in the industry of managing money and caring for investors, I have met thousands of people, read a seemingly infinite amount of research and developed more than a few opinions about both investing (in bold) and life.

This is about the time in a market cycle (up for stocks, for several years) that it is prudent to talk not about playing defense, but HOW it is being played. That is, proactively and not reactively.

This week marks the first anniversary of our blog, which you can find at www.sungardeninvestment.com. To celebrate, we chose from among the more than 50 blog posts of the past year eight which we believe were the most impactful, based on readership and feedback we have received. We invite you to see what you may have missed or take a fresh look at this tour of Sungardens views. The original post date is noted after each title, and you can simply click on a title to go to it.

This was on my mind recently as CNBC turned 25 years old. That is a significant achievement no matter how you slice it. Since 1989 the biggest business news network around has transformed the way people participate in the markets. Their hosts have become icons, and they have turned some very bright but anonymous portfolio managers and economists into the business world equivalent of rockstars.

To paraphrase an old Sean Connery/Roger Moore movie: bonds?high quality bonds. Bond funds, too. Bond funds, particularly those that invest in US Treasuries and other types of bonds at the low end of the risk spectrum, have been popular investments with individual investors for a long time. Since a lot of those bond buyers are generally risk-averse, many of them likely moved cash out of money market funds to buy the bond funds, so there is likely a strong element of ?reaching for yield? occurring there. That is, they were used to earning 6-7% on their Treasury Bonds not very long ago.

Last Tuesday marked the end of the Passover holiday, in which Jews around the world celebrate the exodus from Egypt in biblical times (see the classic movie ?The Ten Commandments? for a visual version of the story). One highlight of the ?Seder? dinner conducted on the first two nights of the holiday is for all gathered to recount a part of the story known as ?The 10 Plagues.? Biblical references aside, it got me thinking about 10 plagues that today?s retired and retiring investors must grapple with. Here they are, sans the Matzoh Ball soup.

Whether you are new to the retirement investing mindset, you go back to the days of Rukeyser and Kangas, or are somewhere in between, here is my list of things you will often see when watching financial TV ... and how to separate the reality from the hype and sales pitch.

First, lets be clear: "Risk" is the possibility that you will need money but dont have it, either because your portfolios value plunged, because your investments dont have near-term liquidity, or both. What freaks investors out in the here-and-now, is VOLATILITY. Yet many traditional approaches to building a portfolio dont really take this into account, other than a token survey question or two when the client is first starting to invest.

It is important to understand that no one can predict the future with certainty. Investors should take so-called expert forecasts with a grain of salt. Effective portfolio management is not about forecasting the future and then clinging to that forecast. It?s about continuously evaluating information and market conditions and then making adjustments when necessary to pursue the ultimate goal. To paraphrase long time market watcher Steve Leuthold, ?Predictions are for show, our decisions within the portfolio are for dough.?

Independent advisors come in all shapes and sizes the ones who get it treat the client as a teammate, not an opponent, and see their role as being the clients advocate, representative, and interpreter, within an increasingly complex investment world. Shortcuts and overkill by Wall Street ?rms increase the chance of the clients later feeling fooled, and feeling like a fool. Independent ?rms will continue to be the winners in that battle for the clients affections because they are far less likely to allow that to happen.

Its a short attention span world, and while we often wax poetic about investment topics we feel passionate about, today we will summarize our world markets view in less than the time it takes to heat up the dinner your family ate two hours ago (a scenario most familiar to this writer).

One of the main difficulties with MPT, is that by focusing on historical data to calculate asset allocation, it completely ignores extreme risk (2007-2008).

This week, we take a lighthearted look at Exchange-Traded Funds. ETFs are mutual funds that trade on a stock exchange. ETFs are rapidly taking a bite out of the business long dominated by traditional "open end" mutual funds - the investment in a basket of securities with a common characteristic, such as industry, company size, geographic region, etc.

The financial media is filled with historical comparisons to past periods. Despite the fact that all mutual fund companies and financial advisors are obligated to warn that past performance is no guarantee of future results, it is human nature to look for clues as to when history may repeat itself. As the famous quote goes, those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. What prompted this week's blog, is the most uncanny, shocking and truly creepy numerical coincidence I have seen in some time...or perhaps ever.

The start of each year is full of market predictions from investment strategists. I tend not to get too caught up in that (it is one of the benefits of being an independent firm ? no one is compelling us to provide one!). Not wanting to get lost in the sea of 2014 market predictions, we now take a look back at the seven-week mark of the year?when many of these predictions are already out of the news cycle.

There are a number of scenarios and events that could cause rates to rise in the next several years. Increasing economic growth in the United States would mean that the Federal Reserve no longer needs to keep market interest rates artificially low. Central banks around the world have been buying debt to spur economic activity, with mixed result at best. When there is no longer a need to purchase more debt, the massive, coordinated demand for that debt will fall. And when that happens... uh-oh.

Boxers are tough. So are secular bear markets. Whether or not we have been in one since back in 2000 (we say yes) is a subject of constant debate in the investment advisory industry. What is more important to investors today is whether past market behavior tells us anything important about the current environment? We think the answer is yes - human behavior repeats itself over and over again.

Here is our list of official National Football League penalties - as applied to investors. Dont get penalized, think your way through todays environment, or find a money management specialist who can.

Rates have been steadily falling since the 1980s. A simple "reversion to the mean" in which rates rise toward their long-term average (the average 10 year U.S. Treasury rate since 1926 according to data sourced from the St. Louis Federal Reserves website) would mean that rates would rise to about 5%. Thats almost a 2% increase from where we are right now. We suspect that would be more than enough to spur a dramatic change in investors attitudes toward bond investing, and to increase interest in viable alternative strategies for retirement income.

At most, a laddered bond approach should be a modest allocation within the total retirement strategy. In our opinion its value is in its emotional comfort to the investor as opposed to the merits of the strategy itself.

Next week, my team and I will release Sungardens first major whitepaper. It assesses the retirement income problem, reviews existing solutions and presents a framework for how investors and financial advisors can pursue a solution with confidence.

Lively debate is common in our business and it existence promotes exactly what investors are looking for - flesh and blood people who can do the research for them, the planning with them and be willing to stand by their beliefs and act in their clients best interests.

I am not debating that gold can be a very good investment over some periods of time. But perhaps these events bear watching to see if gold regains its luster or fades down to a level that would plunge it further into the investment markets version of the toilet. Gold is now about a break-even from four years ago and its price is sitting near a long-term "support level" price last reached over the summer of 2013. The next few months should be interesting ones.

It seems to me that the best advice for the upcoming year as an investor is "dont anticipate what will happen, just balance reward potential and risk potential for each client situation and be ready for anything." This is very similar to the feeling the surrounded markets in 1999 just before the dot-com bubble burst, and again in late 2007 when the credit crisis started to become more widespread. So, here is my advice for those investors and financial advisors who wish to start getting mentally ready for surviving 2014.

Our industrys challenge: How to deal with that via creation of intelligent investment strategies that allow advisors and their clients to follow through on their desire to skirt both the bond and stock bubbles of the future, while still striving for a competitive yield for their retirement portfolios.

I dont see imminent signs of a rough market, but it does appear that some "red shoots" are not forming. FYI, a red shoot is a term I just made up. Whereas a "green shoot" is a piece of good news in an otherwise difficult economic environment, I define a red shoot as a piece of potentially bad news among a sea of green stock market profits.

Back in June of this year, the Fixed Income (a.k.a. bond) market may have experienced the defining moment of this generation of investors. The yield on the 30-year U.S. Treasury bond moved above 3.50% for the first time since the summer of 2011. It stands at about 3.80% now. After many fake-outs, this could be the start of a long-term trajectory higher.

On the 50th anniversary of one of the most tragic events in U.S. history, I took a quick look back at investment market history around that time. As it turns out, the stock and bond markets had done quite well in recent years and by mid 1963, the 10-year Treasury was a bit under 4% (around the lowest rate in about a half-decade) and the stock market was near its all-time high. Whether it was a direct result of the calamity of Kennedys death or other factors, late 1963 was a turning point for the U.S. stock and bond markets.

Earlier this week my wife (who doubles as Sungardens Director of Operations) joined me for three days in Washington D.C. at the Schwab IMPACT conference for investment advisors. To me, this is the biggest show of the year in our industry and the Capital edition continued the traditional mix of new ideas, networking and a feeling at the end once described by David Letterman as Im tiredbut its a nice kind of tired. Here are some brief highlights and what I think the implications are (if any) for what we are doing for our clients now and in the times ahead.

The typical approach to spreading ones assets in order to diversify and conquer, is to have the client complete a risk tolerance questionnaire. That survey is important not only to establish guidelines for how the assets will be managed, but also because some form of it is required by securities regulators to make sure advisors know who their clients are. The magical conclusion usually includes a color pie chart, representing a variety of asset classes that are assumed to be a path toward asset growth and preservation of capital.

In the first of a regular series in my Informed Investing blog, lets count down the top 10 things that give investors the willies in todays investment environment. These are situations known to even casual investors, but may or may not be communicated to them effectively by their financial advisors.

Drawing conclusions about tax efficiency of a money manager or other investment vehicle based solely on trading turnover is shortsighted and can cause you to bypass some very good potential investments and investment strategies. Keep that in mind as year-end portfolio tax planning rolls around.

In baseball a 5-Tool Player is one who has high-level abilities in these areas: hitting for power, hitting for average, running, fielding and throwing. 5-Tool Players are a special breed, and teams covet them. I have identified 5 tools a premier investment approach should have in order to be successful in our arena, the achievement of client goals and growth of advisory practices.

When markets get tied in a knot over an issue like the debt ceiling, its helpful to break down investors decisions about how to handle it in their portfolios. Whether it is an investment in foreign currencies, shorting the stock market, selling everything or some other investment strategy that comes complete with a perceived safety net, its tough for investors to manage their emotions and the mixed messages they get from the media.

In order to avoid getting too P.O.d (thats either a slang term for angry or a pun on the Post Office, take your pick), I asked the Sungarden investment, operations and marketing teams to provide me with their opinions on what else to shut down. I combined their thoughtful work with my own thinking on the topic and here is our top 10 list.

I recommend using at least two benchmarks for each portfolio or portfolio strategy: One based on the portion of the S&P 500’s volatility that the client is prepared to endure over time. The other is the S&P 500 Total Return Index as this has become, over time, a very common and recognizable indicator of performance of “the market.”

This weeks message is simply to group together three L-words that remind us of what spikes and crashes markets, and keeps us in the appropriate frame of mind, lest we forget the crisis that gripped our minds and money 5 short years ago.

You probably havent heard of Greg Dobbs. If you have, you are either a big Major League baseball fan, a casual fan of the Miami Marlins baseball team, or you know Greg Dobbs personally. He is a solid Major League player, but will not be mentioned alongside Ruth, Mays and Ripken. He is a great team player, a great media interview and was briefly featured on a national TV program last year as the most interesting man in baseball, a moniker given to him by one of his teammates.

Volatile markets, increased complexity and media hype have the potential to distract us from our true objectives for the wealth we have saved and now invest. But those distractions can be overcome. How? It starts with understanding what this often-used, misunderstood term Investment Time Horizon really means.

During the past week, a survey caught my eye and dropped my jaw. It was published in Investment News, a leading online and print publication for the investment advisory industry last weekend. It covered a survey of individual investors by brokerage firm Edward Jones about the potential impact of rising interest rates on their investment portfolios. According to the article, written by award-winning columnist Jeff Benjamin, “two-thirds of the respondents don’t understand how rising rates will affect their investment portfolios.”

For years I have been asked what I think of financial television. My typical response: reporters and entertainers are not fiduciaries. That is, they are not in the business of making you more successful. They are in the business of driving higher rates for advertising dollars for the network. Thats the game, thats it.

You may have one. If you do, you know. A friend who is a joy to have in your life and you know that your world would be a bit less happy if they were not in it. But they are also one that needs a lot from you. Attention, advice, help with moving, your opinion on which dog to take home from the sheltermaybe even money.

Todays blog post picks up where last weeks left off by updating the 13 key points for investors I laid out in an article in RIABiz.com on January 14 of this year. These were and are the most significant data and forces for investors to track today, to pursue long-term growth and sidestep major losses. As I did last week, I will also note whether I think each point is a positive or negative (or other) for investors now that we are about 3/5 of the way through 2013. The six areas covered last week were generally positive. Lets see about the final seven on the list

In todays sound-bite, tweet-driven world, one cant help but do all they can to keep it simple, keep it brief and resist the temptation many of us Baby Boomers have to fall prey to paralysis by analysis. With that spirit in mind, here is a quick, pointed update on the 13 key points for investors I laid out in an article in RIABiz.com on January 14 of this year. These were and are the most significant data and forces for investors to track today, to pursue long-term growth and sidestep major losses.

The implications are enormous. But dont tell that to the bond fans. They are still showing their clients 3/5/10 year historical returns through the end of 2012, where most measures of bonds total return resembled that of a stock portfolio. This was a fortunate reality for those who were invested heavily in bonds, but it is a mirage for those who are looking forward from here. They dont realize it, but they are currently in the eye of the storm. The dirty side is probably right behind it.

First, lets be clear: Risk is the possibility that you will need money but dont have it, either because your portfolios value plunged, because your investments dont have near-term liquidity, or both. What freaks investors out in the here-and-now is VOLATILITY. Yet many traditional approaches to building a portfolio dont really account for this, other than a token survey question or two when the client is first starting to invest.

Most investors based in the U.S. are walking around thinking the market has gone way up this year. They are rightif they are talking about certain indexes within a big wide world of markets, including stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities. But the disparity (i.e. lack of correlation) among markets has been striking. I think that the best way to convey this to you is to simply show you how a small group of market indexes have done for the year-to-date yesterday along with brief commentary, in bullet point form.

Volatility Management is the most important consideration in our portfolio management process. In some market environments, we think investors are well-compensated for the risks they take. In others, they are not. Thus, volatility can be either a warning sign or a gateway to outstanding opportunities. It is part of an investment managers job to decipher that for you, on an ongoing basis, and make rational decisions.

So, is this the moment to sell all of your assets and hide? NO, but it certainly is a time to be aware of the psychological change taking place in investor behavior and to have an investment approach that by its nature is adaptable to such enormous changes in investor perception. I get a strong feeling we are entering another period in which, like the economy, some investors and financial advisors will thriveand others will dive. Are you prepared?

Herb Brooks, who coached the 1980 Miracle on Ice U.S. Olympic Hockey Team to its unlikely win over the Soviet Union, included that quote as part of what I consider to be the best motivational speech in sports history. He was talking about his team and their Russian opponents. He might as well have been talking about bond investors on June 20, 2013.

Investing at its most basic level is about one thing: the return you seek on your investment and the risk you take to get that return. I often emphasize that the biggest risk to investors is volatility, because its the occasional shakiness of markets or market segments that causes investors (whether they manage their money or have someone else do it for them) to react emotionally instead of logically. That plays out every day in markets around the world.

Once I publish a blog post, I immediately start thinking of a topic for the next one. At this time last week, I decided to focus todays blog on the concept of trading turnover that is, how long you hold something you bought, until you sell it. It seems that with the stock market on a four-year tear and the bond market threatening to fall apart at any moment, it is a great time for investors to prioritize the most basic investment rule: buy low / sell high.

As stock markets around the world continue their surge, investors should be doing what investors should always be doing AVOIDING COMPLACENCY.

The current investment market climate reminds me of a scene from the old TV sitcom F-Troop. U.S. soldiers ask their Native American friends, the Hekawi tribe, how they got their name. As Chief Wild Eagle, the Hekawi leader, said back then (paraphasing: many moons ago, Tribe travel west, then come big day tribe fall over cliff, that when Hekawi get name. Medicine man say I think we lost. Where the heck are we?

The most vital and pervasive issue investors will face in the next decade is how to wring out enough income from the savings they have amassed to maintain or enhance their lifestyle. To do so, they will need to be far more flexible in their investment approach. They also must adapt to an environment for "high quality bonds" (Treasuries, Municipals and Corporates) that does not at all resemble that which they are accustomed to.

As "Cliff" makes his way from post-election debate to complete absurdity I did some research. As it turns out, many of the potential outcomes of the Fiscal Cliff in January are in sync with the titles of popular songs from this Reggae superstar Jimmy Cliff. No, I'm not a Reggae fan, but it was pretty funny when I looked it up and I think I can get some points across while writing something that will keep advisors into the holiday spiritbefore reality returns soon.

Oh, we had heard about Cliff. We were warned about this nefarious character many months ago. We knew he was lurking and we knew he was not going to just go away. Cliff had invited himself into our lives, and unless we dealt with him, he was not going anywhere. You, the hard-working financial advisor, have probably been wondering when everyone else would notice him. That time came when the sun came up Wednesday after the election. There he was, casting his extraordinarily long and potentially costly shadow. Fiscal Cliff finally entered the national spotlight. It is time to meet him.

Obama and Romney are asking for four years to deliver results -- ask your clients for three. First, a brief disclaimer: Nothing in this article is intended to be politically motivated. OK, with that out of the way, let's talk about a most critical issue in our industry that is easily forgotten in today's madcap, have-it-now, sensationalized world: investment evaluation horizon.

These days there are more varieties and combinations of investments than selections on a Starbucks menu -- but that's not necessarily a good thing. Now, you can invest in emerging markets, dividend-paying stocks, bonds from Africa and commodities that only farmers and professional speculators used to traffic in. Heck, clients can even tell an advisor they would like a double-long, midcap equity ETF.

In my experience, several investing buzzwords have done more harm than good for investors. While they are important concepts, they have been so commoditized by the financial planning industry that their true meaning has been misinterpreted. All the while, Wall Street firms have reaped the benefits by mass-customizing portfolio management. What started as a concerted effort to help investors has been reduced to a marketing pitch and investors keep falling for it.

After one of the most trying years for investors in 2011, the first half of 2012 had a similar feel. The split-personality of optimism about a slow but visible recovery in the U.S. and weekly do-or-die drama in Europe produced the type of half-year that, frankly, we expected. Specificially, a continued pattern of news-driven, unsustainable moves in both directions landed much of the U.S. stock market in a tight price range.

In 26 years in the investment industry, I have seen investor and advisor behavior from many different angles: as an advisor, portfolio manager, strategist, author and proprietor. Two things have been quite consistent during that quarter-century: 1) That clients and advisors both care deeply about investment performance and 2) that investment performance is rarely evaluated with proper perspective.