Best Blogs of the Week

Best Blogs of the Week #248

Posted by Anu Heda on Oct 31, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with Columbia Threadneedle, JPMorgan, Loomis Sayles, Vanguard

1 election post. That is all I will bring you. Promise. Overall here are the four most engaging posts from the last three weeks.

Columbia Threedneedle – Election 2016: Lifting the cloud of uncertainty – Changes to tax policies are likely regardless of who wins in November. But it’s questionable how much change can actually be effected considering an expected divided government even if Trump wins.

JPMorgan – Fatter tails and endogenous risk – Although endogenous risks are difficult to quantify, there are ways to recognize and mitigate them. Analysis of flow data and correlation can provide insight into crowding and cross asset dynamics. Stress testing can help quantify potential tail losses, and hedging via non-linear products such as options can help protect against the risks.

Loomis Sayles – Global Growth Themes and Forecast (Infographic) – We’re in a “lower for longer” bond yield environment as inflation in advanced economies decelerates and major central banks—the Bank of England, European Central Bank and Bank of Japan—pursue quantitative easing (QE).

Vanguard – Good grief! They’re commoditizing index investing again – While it may be tempting to think that the same application of technology can displace the human element of running an index fund, we have not seen that disruption and probably never will. Indeed, people remain one of the most critical differences across providers.

Best Blogs of the Week #247

Posted by Anu Heda on Oct 03, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with BlackRock, Vanguard

Two posts this week featuring investing timeliness from industry titans.

BlackRock – Bonds that have seen the most traffic lately – The first thing that jumps out at me from this Bloomberg data is the continued search for yield.

Vanguard – When the worst of times is the best of times – To help you explain the challenges of timing the market to clients, we looked at the 20 worst and 20 best days from 1990 through 2015. What we found (see figure below) is that all but one of the worst days were within a month of at least one extreme up day.

Timeliness - Vanguard

Best Blogs of the Week #246

Posted by Anu Heda on Sep 19, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with BlackRock, Vanguard

Three posts this week to consider, including an interesting retirement income approach via Vanguard.

BlackRock – How investment advisors are changing with the times – How investment advisors are changing with the times – Last year, almost 20% of the surveyed viewed robo advice as a threat to their businesses, while 39% saw robo technology as an opportunity. This year’s study was significantly more optimistic: Only 14% saw robos as a threat, while nearly half saw them as an opportunity.

Vanguard – Changes to Form 5500: Lessons from the life of a beta fish – Benchmarking often leads to plan design enhancements that improve participant retirement outcomes. Of course, transparency into any individual plan could also produce an entirely different outcome. For example, the proposal indicates that the IRS and DOL could use the Form 5500 data for targeted enforcement of plans with compliance issues noted on the form. It wouldn’t be surprising for these plans to be subject to future audits.

Vanguard – Sustaining retirement income in a lower-return world – Two of the most popular are the “dollar plus inflation” and the “percentage of portfolio” rules. I’d like to offer what I consider an alternate solution: the “dynamic spending” strategy.

Best Blogs of the Week #245

Posted by Anu Heda on Sep 12, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with TIAA

Only one post this week and it covers fiduciary responsibility. “D-O-L,” as our clients refer to the fiduciary responsibility for financial advisors, looms large throughout the industry. The rule is extremely complex and deserves high-quality posts such as this one.

TIAA – Fiduciary Rule’s “Recommendation”: What’s an Advisor to Do? – So if a statement puts an advisor on the recommendation side of the line such that the advisor becomes a fiduciary, what does that entail?

Best Blogs of the Week #244

Posted by Anu Heda on Sep 06, 2016, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with Invesco, State Street, Vanguard

Three excellent posts this week including a one-year post-mortem on the flash crash (Feels like many years ago).

Invesco – One Year Later– In the wake of last year’s volatility, many market participants pinned the blame on ill-conceived regulations and a lack of price visibility. Most agreed that something needed to be done to prevent another meltdown. One year later, has anything changed?

SSgA – 3 Reasons to Take a Look at Emerging Market Debt– But it’s important to understand that EM debt and EM equity are not the same. Over the past ten years, EM debt has more than doubled the return of EM equity, but with only one third the amount of volatility

Vanguard – 40 years of innovations in indexing – And the pitch for indexing wasn’t outperformance; it was to help investors minimize the cost of investing in a broad sense. If you think about it, not being broadly diversified has a cost, portfolio turnover generates transaction and tax costs, and, of course, active management advisory fees are a cost. Indexing hits at those headwinds straight on.

Dispersion for EM Debt via SSgA (not Flash Crash)