Throughout this 10-year bull market, investors have been overly cautious toward equity markets and ignored “new highs”. Now in this late-cycle market environment, investors are piling into cyclicality, private equity and venture capital. It’s time to stop saying everyone is so bearish.
A brief monthly update on what's happening in the municipal bond market.
RIA investment platforms – specifically the vehicles and tools they use to manage client portfolios – are about to undergo the most profound change in a generation. With the race to zero for trading stocks, mutual funds are becoming outdated. Customized portfolios of individual stocks will be the winner.
As two recent commentaries demonstrate, in their zeal to promote their agendas, asset managers are claiming that the humble 60/40 portfolio is doomed to the dustbin. But their analysis is flawed. The 60/40 will outlive us all.
If you’re an advisor looking to differentiate your practice from others, consider this article to be your first step toward a better understanding of impact investing.
Read Harold Evensky's latest Newsletter.
The first Litman Gregory Masters Fund was launched December 31, 1996. Litman Gregory Masters Equity was created because, as financial advisors, the team at Litman Gregory wanted more control over the mutual funds they used in its client portfolios, and it had specific ideas about how to build a “better fund.” Since then, Litman Gregory has been a pioneer in the development of liquid alternative funds and, in 2018, launched a high-income alternatives fund.
Listen... do you hear that? A bubble is popping. No, we aren’t talking about the stock market... well, at least not the stock market you’re probably thinking about. Generally, public companies have the economics to back up their lofty valuations, even if those valuations are, well, lofty. It is the market for private companies, specifically those backed by venture capital (VC), that looks truly bubblelicious.
Chris Davis is chairman of Davis Advisors, a firm founded by his father that has followed the same value-investing discipline for its 50-year history. In this interview, Chris discusses the exceptional opportunities he is finding among the financial stocks, how financial advisors can add the greatest value and the biggest changes he has seen over his career.
What was once the world’s largest commodities hedge fund is officially closing, creating new opportunities for some investors to get exposure to raw materials and mining using other funds. According to Bloomberg, Blenheim Capital Management’s CEO and chief investment officer, Willem Kooyker, is calling it quits after a 50-year money management career that made him a legend in oil, metals and agricultural markets.
If you’re committed to helping your clients achieve their financial outcomes, don’t avoid discussing taxes.
Never in my investment career can I recall political “happenings” carrying so much weight in daily market movements. Today’s markets are whipsawed by political slings and arrows, often in the form of tweets or breaking news reports. And “investors” increasingly are reacting impulsively to a reality that’s shifting minute-by-minute.
Do factor premiums survive implementation costs? To answer this question, I’ll examine the returns of live mutual funds to see if they have been successful at capturing the returns of small-cap and value premiums.
When baby-boomer adults were in their twenties, we sang along with Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits. Their song, “Money for Nothing” defined the era of music videos. We got cable in 1981 and will admit that we were glued to the TV watching music videos of the bands and performers we loved.
A review of the risks which keep the markets range-bound. Investors are bearish, but remain aggressively allocated.
Clients have started commenting on the connection between my new, expensive car (which I am excited about) and their fees.
As we look ahead to the closing months of 2019, most of the year’s volatility drivers remain in place. With that in mind, we believe now may be the time to adopt a more defensive posture without deviating from your long-term strategic asset allocation.
Lon Erickson, CFA, is a portfolio manager and managing director for Thornburg Investment Management and oversees five of its fixed income mutual funds. Erickson says that rates could be as low as 1.1% in the next year, and he explains why a collaborative, bottom-up construction process will benefit advisors and their clients.
For those advisors seeking to outsource their portfolio construction, the proliferation of model portfolios leaves them with an overwhelming challenge to properly analyze the thousands of choices. Indeed, the fate of those who fail to overcome that challenge will be reminiscent of that of Blockbuster Videos.
As the financial markets enter what I expect to be a rather disruptive completion to the recent speculative half-cycle, it will be helpful for investors to consider certain propositions that are readily available from history, rather than insisting on re-learning them the hard way.
Yields have declined sharply over the course of the year. The 10-year yield has dropped about 100 basis points; the 30-year about 80 basis points; and short-term rates are down about 50 basis points. Can rates go any lower? How should advisors position their clients in this environment?
For reasons unknown, October has historically been the most volatile month for the stock market—by a goodly margin. Between 1950 and the end of 2017, the S&P 500 Index saw as many as 362 trading days during the month of October in which the market moved up or down more than 1 percent.
Covered call strategies in a closed-end fund may help long-term investors manage short-term volatility.
Learn the potential benefits of a harmonized investment approach to your organization's DB and DC plans.
It’s only natural for someone invested in a poorly performing active equity mutual fund to wonder if it’s time to make a change. Should an investor sell a fund if it trails its benchmark for a year? Three years? Five years?
In this issue, Research Affiliates discusses why its contrarian philosophy may add value over the long term and how the growing likelihood of a global economic slowdown is affecting positioning.
In the past three years, oil and gas discoveries made by conventional means have fallen to an incredible seven-decade low. What’s more, a “significant rebound is not expected,” says IHS Markit. Find out what’s driving discoveries lower!
It has been a good year for U.S. investors. The global economic slowdown and geopolitical turmoil created a nearly irreversible thirst for super safe assets...
When Carl Gugasian of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe rates Bianchi Corp. a “Strong Buy,” whose interest is that in? We dig into the conflict between WallStreet and You.
Michael Milken rose to the top of Wall Street by way of the Wharton Business School with Drexel Burnham Lambert in tow. Milken’s work at Wharton was founded on the core theory that bond investors were rewarded by taking junk bond risk.
John Langbein may not be a familiar name to financial advisors, but he has had a significant and lasting impact on our profession. On September 16, he was awarded the Frankel Fiduciary Prize.
The price of gold has beaten the S&P 500 Index over a number of different time periods, even the century (so far!). The yellow metal, however, has also outperformed arguably the greatest living investor, Warren Buffett.
While the clear majority of mutual funds provide daily liquidity, it's not guaranteed. This is why understanding the potential risks to liquidity is key.
Smart beta direct indexing is an increasingly accessible implementation route that accommodates tax-loss harvesting and customizations based on client preferences and circumstances.
Private equity investing has created enormous wealth for those fortunate to be the general partners of a fund. But for regular investors – the limited partners – recent studies show that when properly adjusted for risks PE returns lag those of the less risky public markets. Moreover, there is little evidence that investors can identify, in advance, the very few PE funds that will outperform.
Once a year, I post a list of investing rules of great investors in history. Experience is a valuable commodity and these rules can keep you from learning the hard way.
Taxes are going to cost you a lot this year. By how much, you're wondering? Let’s start first by looking back.
Value investing is poised to dominate growth investing based on a historical comparison of valuation metrics. The gulf between the P/E ratios of value growth and growth stocks has never been this wide.
What’s the difference between a tax-aware, tax-efficient or tax-managed approach to investing? See why it matters and why we believe managing for taxes can make a difference for investors.
There are a number of lessons investors can learn from the sensation that is the Popeyes chicken sandwich. One of those lessons is that people often put a premium on scarcity.
With the political, fundamental, and economic backdrop becoming much more hostile toward investors in the intermediate term, understanding the value of cash as a “hedge” against loss becomes much more important.
As the topic of recession remains top of mind for many investors, now is the opportune time to consider preparing your portfolio in the event of a pullback.
According to John Sheehan, accommodative Fed policy and favorable market technicals drove the investment grade credit market’s strong start to 2019.
Analysts' expectations for 10% earnings growth in 2019 have been revised down to just 2%. This estimate will be about right if margins can be maintained at the current level and the dollar doesn't further appreciate. For 2020, analysts currently expect growth of 5% to sales and 11% to earnings. This is too optimistic.
More than a year after the start of the U.S.-China trade war, we’re finally starting to see consumer prices increase. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose to a six-month high of 2.2 percent year-over-year in July.
Planning is a lot of work for the advisor and for the client – so how can you make the payoff as positive and effective as possible? How can you make your advice useful?
Chapter 1 in the seminal book “The Intelligent Investor” by Benjamin Graham is titled “Investment versus Speculation"
I’ve worked at firms that offer outsourced portfolio management services – so-called turn-key-asset-management providers (TAMPs) – for almost 30 years. I know the industry very well and have seen my share of disasters. Here’s what to watch out for when selecting a TAMP.
We have repeatedly warned about the danger of the Fed hiking into a weak, highly leveraged economy. The Media said it was bullish. Now they are cutting and it's bullish. It can't be both.
