19 Nov 2015

Injured Unicorns Spotted in Silicon Valley

As opposed to the horse with a single, spiraling horn projecting from its forehead, today’s unicorn describes privately held start-ups that are worth more than $1 billion: think Uber, AirBnB, Snapchat or Pinterest (actually, these are all considered ‘deca-corns’ because they are worth more than $10 billion). Current estimates suggest that there are now 143 unicorns in existence today and are supposedly worth half a trillion dollars, but it’s actually hard… Read More

By Tags:
18 Nov 2015

What Retirees (and Pre-Retirees) Worry About

One of the interesting (but less than encouraging) data points in the inflation data is that medical care service costs increased 3.0 percent in the 12 months ending in October while core inflation was 1.9 percent (core inflation excludes volatile food and energy costs). Everyone at Acropolis knows that retirees and pre-retirees worry a lot about healthcare costs.  A recent UBS study of 1,849 high net worth individuals with an… Read More

By Tags: ,
17 Nov 2015

A Big Bet on Emerging Markets

For most of last week, I was in Boston at Schwab’s IMPACT conference – my fourteenth pilgrimage that includes prominent speakers, workshops and a football field size area of vendors pitching everything under the financial services sun. This year featured more academics than usual, which I found particularly engaging.  One of the sessions was actually a debate between academic Roger Ibbotson (who also manages some money) and Rob Arnott, a… Read More

By Tags: ,
6 Nov 2015

New Data Helps Planning for College

It seems like it was only yesterday that I was pouring over US News & World Report magazines and the Princeton Review book ‘best colleges.’  Of course, it’s obvious that it was a while ago because I’m referring to magazines and books.  Today, everything you need is online. In fact, the volume and quality of the data just got a little better in my opinion thanks to the new College… Read More

By Tags:
27 Oct 2015

Efficient Markets: Fact and Fiction

For almost 50 years, one of the most controversial ideas in finance is that markets are efficient as presented by Gene Fama’s Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH) in 1966. Let’s start with a simple definition of EMH: Current market prices incorporate all available information and expectations and are the best approximation of intrinsic value. In some ways, it’s such a simple statement that it’s a little surprising that it’s so controversial…. Read More

By Tags: ,
26 Oct 2015

Jack Bogle Doesn’t ‘Do” International Investing

Jack Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, is one of my heroes.  Earlier this year, there was a petition to award him the Presidential Medal of Freedom (that I asked you to sign) and he wasn’t even close to getting enough signatures for the President to consider the petition.  I was both surprised and disappointed. I’ve read several of his books and whenever I see him interviewed, I pay attention.  A… Read More

By Tags: ,
20 Oct 2015

I’ve Got an Embarrassing Admission

In September, I wrote an article about the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) – how it was constructed, how it compares to the S&P 500 and why I think, to quote myself, ‘that it’s an almost worthless relic of history.’ A few readers emailed me to say that while they agreed that the DJIA is a funny index with its price-weighted construction and limited number of stocks, its performance roughly… Read More

By
15 Oct 2015

Portfolio Insights

We are pleased to provide a digital copy of Portfolio Insights, our quarterly newsletter. Table of Contents: The Correction In Perspective The Importance of Discipline Information Security Today New at Acropolis Janet Blinked Click here to read this issue: 2015 Q3 Portfolio Insights

By Tags: ,
9 Oct 2015

The Right Time Horizon for Stocks

When people ask me how long their time horizon ought to be when investing in stocks, I usually say 10 years.  It occurred to me the other day that either I’ve never really looked into this in a very detailed way or I’ve forgotten about it.  In either case, it’s now time to look. To answer this question, I looked at rolling returns for the S&P 500 since 1926 for… Read More

By Tags: , ,
9 Oct 2015

Visualizing Stock Returns

A great way to visualize asset class returns is to put them into what the industry calls a ‘periodic table,’ which I’ve done below.  The basic idea is to order the returns of asset classes in each calendar year from best to worst. In the chart below, 2006 is the first year and the best performing asset class in gray was 35.9 percent.  At the bottom of the column is… Read More

By Tags: