Tom Brakke recently highlighted a rather outlandish Wall Street practice that is fairly commonplace in the world of finance: As reported by RIABiz, there was a telling exchange during the last Charles Schwab earnings call.  An analyst “grilled [the CEO] about whether Schwab was damaging shareholder interests in an overzealous regard for the welfare of…

There was a crazy story in the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this month about a financial advisor named Phillip Cannella. To say that Cannella is a fan of annuities would be an understatement. He promotes them on a radio infomercial every Saturday and Sunday in the Philadelphia area and believes in them enough to compare himself…

I recently had the opportunity to have a great back and forth conversation with Morningstar’s Jeffrey Ptak on all things institutional asset management along with some thoughts and ideas from my new book. Jeff is a really sharp guy and asked me a series of in-depth questions after reading Organizational Alpha. Many of the questions…

I’m a huge proponent of index funds for a number of reasons that most people have heard ad nauseam: Low costs Low turnover Tax efficiency Easy to understand Transparency You’re basically guaranteed to beat the majority of other investors over the long-term Beating the market is extremely difficult There are plenty of people out there…

Momentum is one of the most misunderstood concepts in the investment world. Everyone intuitively understands value investing (buy a dollar for fifty cents) but few people grasp how much momentum (in both directions) impacts the markets. I wrote the following post for Bloomberg in late-January. Since this was published there have been 13 additional all-time…

“If you don’t have the discipline to stick with your underlying strategy particularly when it’s not going in your favor, it’s nothing. It’s data on a page.” – Jim O’Shaughnessy Portfolio management can be broken down into two distinct camps — macro and micro. The macro deals with investment plans, asset allocation, risk management and philosophy…

One of the problems with the institutional investment industry is many of the firms who help oversee the assets for nonprofits are too focused on the markets and not focused enough on the unique challenges and opportunities these organizations face. A lot of consultants forget that the assets they are managing are earmarked to do…

One of the great things about the Internet is that it’s broken down many of the barriers to information that existed in the past. Investors can now become more informed than ever before if they know where to look and who to trust. You no longer have to go through the gatekeepers to access relevant…

The asset class quilt is my favorite performance chart because it illustrates how difficult it can be to predict the winners and losers each year in the markets. There’s little rhyme or reason for how these things play out from year-to-year so it provides a good reminder for investors to understand that any single year’s…

I’ve gotten the opportunity to speak with a number of college students over the past few years. I’m always impressed at how far ahead of the game most of these students are from where I was at their age. At these talks, I mostly try to share my story and tell them some of the…