I often get asked “how do I get started with an investment portfolio?”. The best answer, but not very helpful, is to learn about building and investing in a diversified buy and hold portfolio for the long term. A very true statement but it usually leaves the investor still looking Read more…
Month number 2 for 2015 has come and gone. I’ll get right to the updates for this coming month, March 2015. Like last month I’ll continue with added commentary on the portfolio changes. Starting with the most basic portfolios, below are the March updates for the GTAA5 and the Permanent Read more…
One of the challenges in dealing with modern portfolios like the Permanent Portfolio, the various IVY portfolios, Risk Parity portfolios, etc is the lack of long term historical data. Most of the modern portfolio data for a broad range of asset classes only goes back to 1973. The period from Read more…
In today’s post I want to address another approach to dealing with the prospect of poor future returns. In my last post I described the prospect of poor future returns and different risk-based portfolio strategies in such an environment. Today I’ll consider an alternative. The alternatives are various dedicated income Read more…
There’s been a lot of chatter recently about asset valuations, in particular US stocks and US bonds, and their impact of future returns. This is nothing new. It just seems to get louder at the start of every new year. I’ve discussed this topic before on the blog. Last time Read more…
And there goes January. That was sure quick. There were a few developments over January in a few of the tactical asset allocation portfolios so let’s get right to it. Here is the February 2015 tactical asset allocation update. As of this month all the data is coming from new versions of my Read more…
The world of quantitative finance is never boring. At least not from the research perspective. Today I want to explore some new research from one of the top quant shops on the small company effect and see how an investor can apply it simply to an existing quant approach. Specifically, Read more…
Its been about 2.5 months since my last post and after some consideration as to whether continue blogging or not I’ve decided to keep at it. I was recently inspired by a recent Frontline documentary called ‘The Retirement Gamble”. You can watch it on-line here. Its well worth your time. Read more…
The 4% rule of thumb for retirement savings is under threat. After 10 years of retirement, through the end of 2009, individuals who retired at the beginning of the year 2000 are potentially on a path to run out of money before the end of their 30 year retirement period. Read more…
I am a contrarian investor by nature. When there is too much fanfare around an investment, be it a stock or whole asset class, I usually find myself wanting to run for the exits. The hair on the back of my neck literally stands on edge sometimes. Most value investors Read more…
There are lots of lies in finance or more subtly put, a lot of things wrong with conventional wisdom. I have trouble deciding which lie is the biggest but definitely one of the candidates is ‘Stocks for the Long Run’ which usually means that buying and holding the market index Read more…