Investment News outlines an arbitration request by an investor seeking damages for being placed in two funds; one to F-Squared (an outright fraud) and another to Good Harbor's U.S. Tactical Core Fund (GHUIX). The adviser placed approximately $900,000 of the investor's savings, which his

The always interesting quant aggregator Quantocracy linked to the following post by John Orford (follow John on Twitter at @mmport80) outlining a 'Steady Volatility Strategy' that targets a constant volatility target based on the most recent VIX index as follows: Stock weight = Target

I really don't like the high yield asset class. Not just in the current environment with near-low historical yields and the potential for material liquidity issues, but in general. As an asset class, I think the high yield asset class: Often caters to unsophisticated investors that only look at

Ignore the Margin Debt Alarm The margin debt alarm has seemingly been sounded every few months when investors realize absolute levels of margin debt has reached new all-time highs (inferring that risk taking has too reached all-time high levels and stocks are at risk). This brief post highlights why

Following up on my post The Relationship Between Stocks and Bonds, which outlined why it is probable that stocks will outperform Treasury Bonds over the next 10 years, let's take a look at what appears to be another expensive area of the bond universe... high yield U.S. corporate bonds. High

As a follow-up to A Guide to Creating Your Own Smart Beta Fund, let's dive into the high flying paying world of hedge fund management.. Per Investopedia: Hedge funds are alternative investments using pooled funds that may use a number of different strategies in order to earn active return, or

The following chart has been floating around for more than a year, supposedly showing investors have not only performed poorly, but even worse than almost any asset class. As Richard Bernstein stated: The average investor underperformed nearly every asset class. They could have improved performance

ThinkAdvisor shares Jeff Gundlach's (Doubleline) thoughts from the Milken Institute Global Conference, outlining the potential impact of the shift towards passive investing within Robo Advisors. The financial planner industry has very wide range of delivery. A lot of … asset gathers do

Well... maybe not the "case for". Rather, a "potential" use. If you are contemplating an allocation to the fund in a buy and hold manner (you're not... just saying)... I wouldn't. While John Hussman is without question a remarkable writer (and in my view a remarkable

My initial goal of this post was to share why risk parity was less likely to be a free lunch on a forward basis using data going back to the 1950's (the last time we saw rates at current levels), but it became more of a risk parity 101 piece. I'll save much of those comments for another

As I outlined in my previous post The Relationship Between Stocks and Bonds, the S&P 500 yields 3.7% at the current 27 CAPE (cyclically adjusted P/E), attractive from a relative basis to the sub 2% yield of the ten-year treasury. That said, a 3.7% yield is quite low by historical standards.

A Wealth of Common Sense has a recent post 'Stock Market Losses with Low Interest Rates' that outlines: Just because interest rates are low doesn’t mean stocks can’t or won’t fall. Interest rates are a very important factor in the markets but they’re not everything. Stocks are

FT tries to define smart beta: Smart beta is a rather elusive term in modern finance. It lacks a strict definition and is also sometimes known as advanced beta, alternative beta or strategy indices. It can be understood as an umbrella term for rules based investment strategies that do not use the

Long story short... yes, there appears to be a relationship between economic growth and stock market performance within the U.S. (and developed world), but that relationship holds only over longer periods of time and does not hold for all countries (less developed countries often "divert"

Eugene Fama and Kenneth French released their seminal white paper 'The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns' in June 1992 which added value (as well as size) as explanatory factors that drove market (out)performance. Per Investopedia: Fama and French attempted to better measure market

Quick... which of the three allocations A, B, or C is 60% S&P 500 Index / 40% Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Index, 55% S&P 500 Index / 45% Barclays U.S. Corporate Bond Index, or 62% S&P 500 Index / 38% Barclays Treasury Bond Index going back all the way to the inception of the Barclays

One of the top Google “rebalance free lunch” results is an article quoting one of the brightest minds in finance, Clifford Asness, that I think most investors would agree with: "Rebalancing is one of the few free lunches out there," said Clifford Asness, managing principal of New York