BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, suggests investors should abandon portfolios made up of 60% stocks and 40% bonds, a mix that has been a standard for six decades.
Perhaps the most famous trading experiment ever conducted was when commodities investor Richard Dennis bet his partner William Eckhardt in 1983 that he could train a group of amateurs – dubbed “the Turtles” -- to be successful futures traders.
As 2022 draws to a close, it’s natural to think about what to expect from 2023. I’m primarily interested in technology.
The dispiriting thing about the Securities and Exchange Commission’s 400-page proposal to re-engineer financial markets, and the response from outside the agency, is that lawyers and economists are arguing over questions that have easy technical solutions.
From the earliest days of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) in the 1950s, practitioners have spoken of using it for investment fund management.
A yield curve inversion, when rates for two-year US Treasury notes rise above those for 10-year notes, has preceded every recession since the 1960s. The first clear inversion in 15 years happened in July 2022, although there were brief and shallow inversions in August 2019 and April 2022.
Any time you neglect to maximize diversification, whether to chase active management, indulge personal intuition or save trouble, you need to think carefully about whether you are getting paid enough for the additional risk.
There’s a lot of focus on Elon Musk’s Twitter Inc. purchase and plans to turn around the troubled social network.
Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler recently gave a speech called “Competition and the Two SECs.”
The firestorm among UK pension funds is a wake-up call for their peers across the Atlantic. The end of an era of cheap money is exposing an industry that’s chronically underfunded and overexposed to market turbulence.
In times like these, when nothing seems to work in financial markets, risk parity strategies should act as a sort of shock absorber. It’s a simple concept, really. Unless you have reason to believe one investment is better than another, you should take equal risk in each.
One of the most popular and reliable touchstones of investment strategy is value.
The benchmark S&P 500 Index’s recent rebound has brought it more than halfway back from its 2022 low point in mid-June, which is an encouraging sign for many investors.
Everyone agrees that a recession is a contraction in real economic activity, but there’s no consensus on how deep, widespread and long-lasting the contraction has to be to deserve the “recession” label.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission is concerned that retail investors are being duped by “greenwashing.”
Investors have had an unpleasant 2022, to put it mildly. Both stocks and bonds have dropped by more than 10%. On top of that, inflation rates at around 8.5% are the highest in four decades, reducing the purchasing power of whatever remains investors’ portfolios and promising big increases in interest rates by the Federal Reserve that threaten future investment returns.
As if all that’s going on in the world wasn’t enough to worry about, Bloomberg News reports that young people are seeking mental health treatment to break all-consuming cycles of cryptocurrency trading. Those profiled complained that frantic trading in the hopes of scoring quick riches in a rapidly growing, $2 trillion asset class led them to neglect ordinary life and destroyed their peace of mind.
We know the Covid-19 pandemic has changed the U.S. workforce forever. What we don’t know for sure is how the changes will play out. Some are accelerations of trends that began around the time of the financial crisis in 2008 or earlier, while others were directly inspired by the pandemic. Still others were temporary dislocations that will revert. But it’s anyone’s guess which changes are which.
The Bloomberg Global Aggregate Index, a benchmark for the bond market worldwide, has tumbled 11% from its peak in January 2021, equating to a drop of $2.6 trillion in the index’s market value.
The most important news for long-term investors is rarely in the headlines. Great contrarian plays rarely come from things most people don’t believe, rather they are based on things most people ignore.
A new report from the U.K.’s Cambridge University Centre for the Future of Democracy offers investors a rare chance to think about the overall economy over the next decade. The authors compiled a large global dataset that suggests some not-often-heard claims, such as that the tide of populism, nationalism and inequality has turned, and is rapidly receding in favor of a more prosperous, peaceful, egalitarian and cohesive globe in the next decade.
Large asset managers provide model portfolios for many purposes — as options in 401(k) plans, as blueprints for institutional clients and affiliated financial advisors, and as suggestions for unaffiliated investment advisors. These have the “lather, rinse, repeat” conflict of interest.
I don’t know which of the three Fed Bears will show up in 2022, but all three are plausible enough that investors should diversify so none can cause fatal financial damage.
The total value of all cryptocurrency assets has just exceeded $3 trillion, according to Bloomberg News. It’s such a big number that it needs some context to be meaningful. Consider Microsoft Corp. and Apple Inc., which have market capitalizations that recently topped $2.5 trillion.
There has been an unusual burst of good news for State pension plans in the past week. New Jersey, one of the shakiest plans in the country, reported a 28.6% return for the fiscal year ended June 30, the highest in more than 20 years.
More than half the racial gap in individual stock ownership has disappeared essentially overnight.
A former AQR research head says Biden-Harris propose to tax 401(k) plans at both contribution and distribution.
We should restore the large tax incentive and bring fees into line with taxable investment standards.