Vanguard

Best Blogs of the Week

Posted by Anu Heda on Mar 18, 2013, in Best Blogs of the Week , tagged with , ,

This week’s best posts are plastered with great charts and tables. FAs (like all us) gravitate towards them to decide whether we should read this blog post. Additionally FAs can reference these graphs/charts easily in conversations.

  • Columbia – Well Zach Pandl (pdf) had us with his first sentence. The post provides insight on a difficult (and common) decision, when to start slowing investment in fixed income, especially government bonds.
  • Russell – This post explains a straightforward answer process to the question: how much 401(k) invest is right for me?
  • Russell – Any chart that shows returns by asset class is immediately helpful in making the case for a balanced asset allocation model.
  • Vanguard – No surprise that the moral of the story is low-cost and diversified investing. Still the post is effective in supporting that discussion for the thousands of Vanguard-producing FAs.

 

 

How Did Asset Managers Respond to QE3?

Posted by Mike McLaughlin on Sep 14, 2012, in Thoughts , tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

It’s almost old news by now. Yesterday, the Fed announced QE3 and ongoing purchases of mortgage-backed securities at the rate of $40B per month. So, how did asset managers respond?

Using Twitter as an (incomplete) proxy for firms’ responses, here’s the short, chronological list of activity as of 5pm on the day of the news:

That is six responses within about six hours. As a sidebar, it’s interesting that none of the content referenced any of trending conversations on Twitter (#QE3, #Fed, etc.). Per the screen capture below, a search showed Oppenheimer and Russell taking advantage of Twitter’s social features. But these were from before the Fed’s announcement.

I don’t know exactly what I expected when I started to look, but overall I’d characterize the volume as a bit disappointing. The biggest financial news of the week warranted a bigger, faster response. Firms know that; it’s still a matter of getting the process ironed out.