17 May 2016

PIMCO Shows that Discipline Can Pay Off

Lately, I’ve been interested in looking at strategies that have struggled in the past, in part because some of our strategies are struggling right now. Take value, for example, the strategy of buying cheap stocks with the idea that they outperform the overall market over time.  It’s a tried and true approach dating back to the 1930s, but the last year has been so rough that the 10-year track record… Read More

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11 May 2016

Do Behavioral Biases Matter?

It’s the second to last day here in Montreal and there is a recurring subject that I have noticed popping up in many of the sessions here at the conference – Behavioral Biases. In the investing world this refers to the psychology behind investor behavior and the effect that widespread decision making can have on markets. As an investor it’s important to understand them because they really do matter. First,… Read More

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10 May 2016

Is Acropolis Contrarian?

Today I attended a session on Contrarian Value Investing. During the speakers prepared remarks I began to think about whether our investment philosophy here at Acropolis could be characterized as contrarian. It’s easy to say that we are value investors. We have value biases in many of our stock asset classes, and by a slightly different definition we invest fixed income dollars with a value bias too. But are we… Read More

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9 May 2016

Mindfulness Meditation in Montreal

I suppose that the event planners at the CFA Institute know better than to cram too much technical material into the first day of a conference, especially on a Sunday. For one of the first sessions they invited Jeremy Hunter, a professor at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management and expert in the field of applying mindfulness meditation in business. Jeremy has spent the last 3-years developing a mindfulness… Read More

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