In my previous post on this topic I explained what beta is, since understanding it is integral to understanding the marketing concept known as smart beta.  In this post I’ll address smart beta and whether or not it’s worth allocating your investment dollars to ETFs that utilize it. The concept is fairly simple to explain. …
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I’m not a big fan of marketing terms created for the sole purpose of making products sound better than they are.  And when investment or insurance companies do this for financial products it really gets me going.  One term that’s getting a lot of mileage right now is “Smart Beta,” commonly applied to certain exchange…
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Now that the presidential election is behind us, many Clinton supporters have threatened to pull all their money out of the U.S. stock market and leave the country.  Should we sell all our stocks now before the mass exodus starts? This analysis of course comes under the category of predicting the future, and my readers…
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The CFA Institute posted a blog by Issac Presley about The Harvard Crimson, Harvard University’s student newspaper, which ran an editorial last month excoriating the university’s management of its endowment fund.  To quote from the Crimson:  “Harvard Management Company announced a $2 billion loss for fiscal year 2016. Let’s not mince words: this is unacceptable.” …
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Mutual funds have been around since the 1920s, although their popularity really began to soar starting in the 1960s.  By now most everyone I meet has a basic familiarity with these extremely useful investment vehicles.  Then came the Exchange Traded Fund (ETF), a variation of a mutual fund pioneered in the U.S. by the S&P…
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