Jul 6, 2017

Weekend Links - 7/6/17

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

As an investor you don’t have to be brilliant. Just not stupid. abnormalreturns.com 


VISUALIZATION OF THE WEEK



RETIREMENT FINANCE AND PLANNING

Retirement is Risky Business – Here's a List, Dirk Cotton.  there are a large number of financial risks that every plan should contemplate. Many of these won't come to mind when we consider a list of major retirement goals for our mission statement, but one major goal of the mission could be to mitigate as many applicable common retirement risks as we can identify. 

Does Monte Carlo Analysis Actually Overstate Fat Tail Risk In Retirement Projections? Derek Tharp at Kitces.com While already included in most financial planning software solutions, Monte Carlo analysis remains a somewhat controversial projection tool for financial planners, due to the fact that it commonly relies on a normal distribution to project the probability of future returns in a world where many have suggested that returns are not actually normally distributed. Which raises the question of whether or to what extent Monte Carlo analysis projections might be understating the risk of a retirement plan?  [my thoughts here ] 


Planning for Retirement? The Importance of Time Preferences, SSRN.  The findings indicate that the way that individuals discount future consumption is associated with the extent of their retirement planning and preparedness. We find that individuals who engage in retirement planning are better prepared to meet their retirement goals upon leaving their career jobs. 




MARKETS AND INVESTING 

The Economic Trend Usually Looks Positive When Recessions Start, Capital Spector.  As I’ve written previously, calling the start of the last recession in real time – with a high degree of confidence – wasn’t possible until March 2008, or thereabout, based on analysis of vintage data. But if you were looking at Big Four levels, as opposed to rates of change, a reliable warning would come later, too late, in fact, to be of practical value compared with other methodologies.  

Are REITs a Distinct Asset Class? Kizer and Grover, Buckingham Asset Management.  [the short answer looks like no to them]. 

The Best Strategies for the Worst Crises, Cook et al.  Man AHL.  In contrast to these passive investments, we investigate two dynamic strategies that appear to have generated positive performance in both the long-run but also particularly during historical crises: futures time-series momentum and quality stock factors. Futures momentum has parallels with long option straddle strategies, allowing it to benefit during extended equity sell-offs. The quality stock strategy takes long positions in highest-quality and short positions in lowest-quality company stocks, benefitting from a ‘flight-to-quality’ effect during crises. These two dynamic strategies historically have uncorrelated return profiles, making them complementary crisis risk hedges. We examine both strategies and discuss how different variations may have performed in crises, as well as normal times, over the years 1985 to 2016. 

Growth Optimal Portfolios, Corey Hoffstein.  … we explore geometric mean maximization, an alternative to the traditional Sharpe ratio maximization that seeks to maximize the long-term growth rate of a portfolio. Due to compounding effects, volatility plays a critical role in the growth of wealth. Seemingly lower return portfolios may actually lead to higher expected terminal wealth if volatility is low enough. Maximizing for long-term growth rates may be incompatible with short-term investor needs. More explicit accounting for horizon risk may be prudent.  [Thoughts here]

Risk Premia Forecasts: Major Asset Classes | 6 July 2017 capitalspectator.com  


ALTERNATIVE RISK

Buying Cliff Asness, Institutional Investor.  

A Century of Evidence on Trend-Following Investing, Hurst, Ooi, Pedersen, AQR.  They find that in each decade since 1880, time series momentum has delivered positive average returns with low correlations to traditional asset classes. Further, time-series momentum has performed well in 8 out of 10 of the largest crisis periods over the century, defined as the largest drawdowns for a 60/40 stock/bond portfolio. Lastly, time series momentum has performed well across different macro environments, including recessions and booms, war and peacetime, high- and low-interest rate regimes, and high- and low-inflation periods.  


SOCIETY AND CAPITAL

Over $200,000 in Income: What Income Taxes Paid? Tim Taylor. The small number of those who have high incomes but no income tax don't bother me much. It's a big country. A few rich people will put all their wealth into tax-free bonds. Some will have a few years of making very large charitable contributions, or very high medical expenses. Some will have earned much of their income in another country, and so pay income taxes there. When you hear about high-income people who don't pay income tax, it's pretty much always a situation with exceptional circumstances, and certainly not a general rule.    

World’s Largest Pension Fund Selects Three ESG Indices for$9 Billion Investments, CIO.  Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the world’s largest pension fund, announced Monday that it will shift 3% of its passive domestic equity investments (roughly $8.8 billion) into environmental, social, and governance (ESG) indices. 

Who Came to America,and When? Visualcapitalist.com  Here are three maps and data visualizations that give us some history of who came to America, and when it all happened. 







No comments:

Post a Comment