Inequities in equities?
I have written about certain idiosyncrasies of Swiss capital market regulations before. Most Swiss corporations started as family firms and, for a long time, outside shareholders were considered a mere nuisance and treated accordingly. Some remnants of that attitude remain. While there is now a reasonably modern set of rules governing listed firms, there are […]
On Piketty
I admit that I did not finish Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. If you did and liked it, you may want to stop here. I did get a bit further than the typical reader who, according to reports based on annotations on the Kindle version, made it to about page 26. I found it […]
James Montier – the World’s Dumbest Idea
I am a fan of James Montier. I find his insights into behavioural finance very interesting and mostly rather entertaining. Some of his essays, such as the one on Abu Ghraib and the Milgram experiment, are memorable if depressing. He has his obvious prejudices and his bêtes noires (Milton Friedman, the CAPM, efficient markets – […]
The best of the best?
A few years ago, the Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) – Alaska’s sovereign wealth fund with assets of USD 50+ bn (website) – introduced an interesting element into their portfolio. After an exhaustive search, they appointed five asset management firms as external CIOs. They gave each about USD 500 million in a largely unconstrained mandate (the […]
The Economist and CalPERS
After a series of posts that were rather critical of the media, it seems only fair to praise an article that makes its points succinctly. This week’s Buttonwood column in the Economist discusses hedge funds and pension deficits in the context of the decision of CalPERS to abandon hedge fund investment. It makes for rather […]
Bill Sharpe’s dim views on smart beta
Advisor Perspectives has run a story under the title Bill Sharpe: "Smart beta makes me sick". Since smart beta looks like it is going to be around for a while, Bill is likely to keep suffering for some time – if the story quotes his views correctly. But what seems to be causing Bill Sharpe […]
The performance of asset managers
I have made only one specific investment recommendation on this weblog so far and it has turned out to be rather poor advice, at least in the short term. I questioned the wisdom of investing in the Carlyle IPO almost two years ago. But Carlyle has comfortably outperformed both the market and its sector since […]
Radio silence
An unreasonably long time has elapsed since my last post (23 July 2013). There is no excuse other than a bit of writer’s block. I have looked at the previous posts and have discussed their content with some of my most faithful readers. Their feedback suggests that the posts suffer from four main weaknesses: too […]
M&M and pension fund liabilities
As if Detroit did not have enough problems, a gap of several billion dollars has appeared in its pension fund (see the New York Times here). Actually, US public funds have long been notorious for using unrealistic return assumptions in their actuarial calculations where it is not unusual to see expected long term returns of […]
How to ensure poor performance
By Rolf on 10 November 2015
This “case study” is taken from a piece that I wrote for a client who found it too negative. It describes the way that many “active” equity portfolios are managed. It may seem like a caricature to some, unfortunately it is not. Thus, it is not surprising that so many fail to perform. Consider a […]
Posted in Active/passive management, Comments/ramblings | Tagged Alpha, Performance