30 Jun 2014

Financial Times Top 300 RIAs Includes Acropolis

The Financial Times Top 300 RIAs includes Acropolis in their inaugural ranking! A subscription may be required, but here is the link to the report. When we started out nearly 12 years ago (our anniversary is in August), we received a few accolades from a magazine published by Bloomberg that consistently said that we were one of the fastest growing firms. Still, compared to other firms on the list, we were… Read More

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19 Jun 2014

ALM Insights – June 2014

ALM Insights is focused on banks and other institutions that use their portfolio to manage risk on both sides of their balance sheet. It takes an in-depth look at securities investment strategies, balance sheet and asset/liability strategies, regulatory topics and general economic information. To view this issue, click the image below. In This Issue: Remember The Taper Tantrum? What’s My Duration? Bond Sector Performance

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10 Jun 2014

Getting Better After-Tax Returns

One of the questions that we get from time to time is why one spouses account is outperforming the other.  It’s kind of a funny question because it reveals some sort of mild competition between a husband and wife, who are presumably on the same team. When there is a discrepancy, it almost always has to do with what type of investment we put in certain accounts. For example, imagine… Read More

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9 Jun 2014

Cash is Trash

A recent report by State Street’s Center for Applied Research recently found that individual investors favor cash the world over.  In the US, investors keep 36 percent of their investible assets in cash.  Globally, that’s a little less than average.

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8 Jun 2014

Labor Market Picks Up

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the economy added 217,000 jobs to the payrolls in May, which actually brings the number of jobs to levels not seen since before the recession in 2007. The chart below shows just how long it took it took to get back all of the jobs that were lost – a staggering six and a half years. The chart demonstrates that the… Read More

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3 Jun 2014

Cliff Asness Says: Fire Your Mechanic

One of my favorite people in our industry is Cliff Asness, founder and current mouthpiece for AQR, one of the mutual fund companies that we use. His academic background is very strong, he got his PhD in finance from the University of Chicago, the intellectual home of efficient markets, but wrote his dissertation on momentum, the most significant critique of the efficient market hypothesis.  His advisor was none other than… Read More

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3 Jun 2014

Do Hedge Funds Hedge?

Bloomberg News reported yesterday that the private equity giant KKR was closing down a hedge fund that they formed three years ago.  KKR is one of the largest and most successful private equity firms in the world, but they have struggled to find their way in other areas of the asset management business. The hedge fund, known as KKR Equity Strategies, wasn’t successful attracting assets with only 20 clients investing… Read More

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