Some things are easy to measure, like the internal costs of a mutual fund or exchange traded fund (ETF) or how much we spend in commissions at our custodian to buy or sell stocks, bonds, mutual funds and ETFs. It’s much harder to measure the market impact of your trading, or how much you pay as a price-taker (like us) between the price to buy a security (the offer) and how… Read More
When I first took over Daily Insights, I wrote an article entitled ‘The Year of the Bump,’ which was about several of the Acropolitans that were having kids that year. Unfortunately, I wrote that article before our current website, so it isn’t online, but I thought about that in a meeting today. We were visited by representatives from Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) and our primary contact said that he and… Read More
Today, we have a special Daily Insights courtesy of Michael Lissner: John Wanamaker, a man few of us have heard of, has impacted our lives and saved us time. Wanamaker became a prominent Philadelphia retailer with a reputation for honesty and transparency. He made his mark as a merchandising genius, as well as inventor. One great contribution he made was to save people time. In particular, he wanted to save… Read More
I had the great pleasure of attending the St. Louis Business Journal’s Most Influential Business Women event on Friday to celebrate the success of my business partner, Dannelle Ward. The luncheon at the Chase drew 750 people to honor 25 women that the Business Journal selected from nearly 150 nominations. It was fun to hear all of their stories, which were obviously all impressive. The feature in Friday’s paper provides… Read More
The end of the second quarter is always a relief for me because for the past six years, it has meant that we are finally through getting our CEFEX certification. As you probably already know, we serve our clients in a fiduciary capacity, which means that we are required to act in the best interest of our clients. You may think that everyone in the financial services industry has to… Read More
Yesterday, I wrote that Bill Gross, the former bond king, said that shorting German bonds was the short of a lifetime. Although I didn’t have my nice chart (which I’ve added below), I did note that German yields had spiked, which means prices fell and his short must be working out well. I also went through the details of a short trade, so if you missed it, you can click here…. Read More
While I was in New York over the weekend, my sister walked me past a six-story townhouse right off of Fifth Avenue that now belongs to one of my (very few) high school girlfriends. It’s a pretty nice house with views of Central Park and apparently cost them a cool $26 million (not including any renovation and decoration costs). This woman married her college boyfriend who is now the… Read More
A little less than a year ago, author Michael Lewis created a firestorm with his book, ‘Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt,’ that chronicled the world of high-frequency trading (HFT). At the time of the launch, he went on 60 Minutes and announced that ‘the market is rigged’ and that everyone who had money in the stock market was a victim of predatory traders. Michael Lewis is one of my… Read More
Hopefully, The Department and Labor (DOL) and Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) will continue to move towards placing employees first in company 401(k) plans. One step they are considering in raising the legal bar on the advisors to 401(k)s. Acropolis fully supports a stronger fiduciary standard, the lowering of plan fees, and encouraging more effective employee education, as profiled in Financial Advisor Magazine article below. Click here to read the… Read More
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
