July 19, 2018
There are an absurd number of investing articles online and in print about what investment actions to take to “beat the market.” Regardless of whether any of them have actually studied investing formally or read a variety of academic research on the topic, it seems like everybody and their mother has some advice to give […]
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June 29, 2018
Almost all investors have experienced amazing results over the past few years, with their portfolios growing significantly regardless of what investments they held. Not only did portfolios increase in value, but they accomplished that growth with very little fluctuation. Hopefully this describes your experience too. It has been a fun, easy ride for investors recently, […]
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May 16, 2018
Key Observations: Many investment markets have become quite choppy over the past few months, starting with the spike in volatility in February. As many markets have experienced pullbacks since they peaked in the end of January, the long-term valuation measures have become slightly less pessimistic, though we are still in quite an overvalued state at […]
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March 5, 2018
Key Observations: January was a strong month for most asset classes, with continually low volatility at unprecedented levels. February was a totally different story, as volatility came back with a vengeance. All asset classes lost value across the board, stemming from sharp drops early in the month, followed by a muted recovery that tailed off […]
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January 12, 2018
Bitcoin has been dominating the news lately, characterized by crazy speculation and severe price swings. I have no intention of “investing” in it at the moment, given that it’s entirely a gamble and not actually an investment; however, I do really like the blockchain technology and what it can potentially do in other areas aside […]
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November 13, 2017
Source: Morningstar Direct daily total return data for SPY, EFA, EEM, AGG, TIP, DBC, GLD, & ICF October was another strong month for equities, generally speaking, as they continued their run up. Although they continue to keep reaching new tops, it appears that the positive momentum signals may be decelerating slightly. Considering that this […]
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September 26, 2017
Source: Morningstar Direct daily total return data for SPY, EFA, EEM, AGG, TIP, DBC, GLD, & ICF Following a few years of tough performance for emerging market equities, investors have shifted their attention to emerging markets in 2017, driving up prices in EM close to 30% since the beginning of this year. Generally speaking, […]
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June 15, 2017
Relationship to Managed Futures When considering alternative investments to diversify away from stock and bond risk within an investor’s portfolio, trend-following managed futures is often the first to be added to the portfolio. This is likely due to trend-following managed futures’ intuitive design, lack of correlation to other asset classes over the long-run, and availability […]
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May 25, 2017
A counter-trend strategy is basically a contrarian trading strategy that aims to benefit from the tendency of investors to overreact to news in the short-term. Although many investors find it pretty intuitive that trend-following capitalizes on the market’s tendency to continue rising (falling) over the course of the future months if it has been rising […]
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January 9, 2017
Since lack of correlation to global markets is often the driving force when adding alternative investments to a portfolio, many investors start their search for alternative investments by screening for funds with low to negative correlations. I listed off many of the possible alternatives strategies in my previous Student of Finance post, titled What Your […]
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