Salient to Investors: Nine of every 10 stocks in the S&P 500 are set to end the year in positive territory. Only 2 in 5 US bond funds have broken even for investors. Almost anything associated with gold has lost money. The best performing US large-cap stock is Fannie Mae,
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Wade D. Pfau at The American College and Michael Kitces at Pinnacle Advisory Group said: A U-shaped retirement plan – 20% to 40% in equities, with a gradual increase of 1% per year to a maximum 60% to 80% allocation to stocks by the end – is
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller said: People make better decisions with financial advisers. A lack of good financial advice was one of the problems that led to the financial crisis. Many Americans went into unsupportable debt to buy homes, which a good financial adviser would not have let
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: The National Bureau of Economic Research found: A robot could replicate Warren Buffett’s stock-picking performance. The ingredients of that robot are 1.6x leverage, which is what Buffett runs at Berkshire Hathaway, and a statistical factor-weighting investment approach that overweights growing, high-payout, profitable companies with low betas. Read
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Amanda Schneider at Goldman Sachs said that more than half of the 50 favorite short positions of the major hedge funds have outperformed the S&P 500 year so far this year, and 5 have returned over 100%. The top 25 stocks on the Goldman list based on
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: There are more than 400 liquid alternative, hedge-fund-like strategies offered in a mutual fund wrapper, up from a few dozen prior to the financial crisis. Many observers think it unlikely that equity returns will continue to be as robust as the last 5 years, while bonds face
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Nobel Laureate Harry Markowitz said: Booms and busts happen and every time is different in terms of the fundamental causes. 2008 didn’t change the historical probability distribution of returns. 2008 was not an outlier event but a one-in-40 event and was not the worst year of return.
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Managed futures turned out to be good for brokers and fund managers but not for investors. During the decade ended in 2012, over 30,000 investors put $797 million in a managed-futures fund called Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Spectrum Technical LP, which already had $341.6 million invested during
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Markit reports US hedge funds were short 2.4 per cent of shares, close to an all-time low. Only 6 companies reporting earnings this week have more than 3 per cent of their stock sold short. In Europe’s Stoxx 50 index of top companies, it is only 2. HFR
READ MORE... →Salient to Investors: Greg Jackson at Jackson Park Capital looks for any size stocks of companies with: A shareholder-oriented management team, with CEOs owning stock in their companies. Strong insider buying and buying in the open market with cash that’s at least six figures in value, not acquiring shares through
READ MORE... →