If you want to improve your investment decisions, you need to quantify the impact of those decisions. That’s where attribution analysis comes in.
How are your Investments Doing – Benchmarking Portfolio Performance
Recently a client asked how his portfolio was doing, and my answer was that he was doing well because the portfolio return over the last decade was above the return target he had established in… Read More
Rainy Days and an Emergency Reserve – Funding for the Unexpected
One of the most common questions we get from clients is how to handle an emergency reserve. If clients have an emergency reserve, questions typically center around how much they need and how it should… Read More
Plan for a Bear Market – How to Stay on Track (and Sleep Well)
Bear markets are part of investing, so you should plan for them. Here are a few things you should do.
What Investment Diversification Really Means
In my experience, nearly every investor knows that having a diversified portfolio is something they should do. Diversification, investors understand, helps reduce risk. But there is less knowledge around what diversification actually means. I’ve heard… Read More
The Ups and Downs of Investing in Emerging Markets
One of my favorite charts on investing is the Callan table of investment returns. The chart depicts the return of various asset classes1 from year-to-year, and just a glance at it shows how volatile relative… Read More
Market Movements: Shifting Focus from the Unknowable
Early on in my career, clients would ask where I thought the market was headed, and I felt obliged to answer these questions on market movements. Valuations were high, I would explain, or I might… Read More
Investment Management: Questions to Ask About Your Portfolio
I attended a conference on communications a few weeks ago run by Dimensional Fund Advisors. Dimensional, or DFA as they are known, has an interesting story. They were founded by academics, including a few Nobel… Read More
Wall Street Slump: Your Checklist for When the Market Heads South
An old rule of thumb when it comes to investing is that markets drop more quickly than they rise. Panic strikes suddenly, but optimism creeps in over time. That leads to situations like the most… Read More
The Most Important Thing: A Great Investing Book for the Holidays
If you study something intently enough, your views will evolve and investing is no exception. After college, I read a number of books on investing from authors like Peter Lynch, Joel Greenblatt and Burton Malkiel…. Read More