Tag Archives: Asset Classes
Opportunities in International Investing
More and more, we are finding it easier to justify our higher allocations to international equities. Roughly 55% of the investable equity universe, by market cap, is outside of the U.S. Also, world GDP has outpaced the U.S. GDP every year this decade; moreover, emerging markets have seen average GDP growth since 2000 of 5.9% [...]
Bubbles…Is Gold next?
The WSJ recently published a chart that we thought was worth examining, and then noting here. The chart draws an excellent comparison between the recent surge in gold prices to previous bubbles of the last decade, giving us a cautionary perspective for those pouring money into gold today:
20-year Annualized Returns by Asset Class
20-year period ending 12/31/08.
S&P 500 Index = 8.4%
Average Investor = 1.9%
The culprit = Investor Behavior
source J.P. Morgan Asset Management
Modern Portfolio Theory
Modern portfolio theory suggests that a basic element in diversification of risk (with risk defined as the variation of actual returns around an expected return) is allocating the assets in an investment portfolio among categories of investments whose statistical performance correlations to each other are relatively low (or even with no correlation or negative correlation). [...]
Lessons from the Madoff Scandal
Unfortunately, we are all now too familiar with Bernie Madoff, the once-storied hedge fund manager who was running nothing more than a $50 Billion Ponzi scheme. Undoubtedly, the size and depth of this scandal will bring about needed regulation, but what can the individual investor do now to protect themselves from investment scams? A few suggested guidelines [...]
Do hedge funds hedge?