A recent Fidelity poll of financial advisors found that their biggest worry right now is rising interest rates over all else. It’s ironic that so many people are worried about rising rates when all rates continue to do is fall. These advisors are not alone as many investors are worried about the future prospects for…

A few weeks ago I pointed out the fact that Vanguard’s stock funds have had an enviable run of outperformance in relation to their benchmarks. I feel that the active fund industry can learn a lot from Vanguard’s process. In last weekend’s Barron’s there was a table that showed that 3 out of the top…

John Authers from the Financial Times had a great story last weekend on state of the fund management industry. This chart garnered a lot of discussion on social media:

Charlie Bilello from Pension Partners posted a great chart in a recent post:

There was a mind-blowing stat flying around last week that showed less than 10% of all U.S. stock funds are currently beating the S&P 500 in 2014. Over longer time frames, the fact that most index funds beat the majority of actively managed funds is a given at this point, but indexing always looks even better…

Tadas Viskanta from Abnormal Returns made a great point in a recent post: In the financial blogosphere and financial media we are often confronted with debates about issues that really are important only the margin. Of late discussions about active vs. passive, smart beta vs. dumb beta and alternative assets have been at the front…

It was the spring of 1976. Investors were still licking their wounds from the severe bear market of 1973-74. Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, an investment bank, was hosting a conference that matched two investing legends onstage at the same time — Ben Graham and Charles Ellis. Ellis, moderating a Q&A, asked Graham why the mid-1970s…

Financial planner extraordinaire Michael Kitces had a great post last week on some words and phrases that need to be banished from retirement planning. A few examples Kitces used: Banish retirement income in favor of retirement cash flows. Banish retirement in favor financial independence. This got me thinking about some of the other words and…

“The paradox of skill says that when the outcome of an activity combines skill and luck, as skill improves, luck becomes more important in shaping results.” – Michael Mauboussin I recently wrote a post about how size is the enemy of outperformance. My main point was that extreme levels of outperformance become nearly impossible to pull…

Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal posted an excerpt from a letter written by a hedge fund manager to his investors stating the reasons (see also: excuses) he had to close down his fund. Here’s part of the rant: Post-2008 monetary policies have rewarded the beta investor who’s gone “all in” on market risk and themes,…