I want to take a break from my Postmodern Finance series to talk about a different series of posts I came across recently on the topic of index funds and market efficiency. The anonymous author of Philosophical Economics (who I'll refer to as Phil) recently wrote several posts which explore, [...]
Okay, here's an easy one, which would you have rather owned, Asset A or Asset B? Asset A, in this case, is the SPDR REIT ETF. Asset B is Vanguard's Total Stock Market ETF. As you can see, over the period 2003-2015, REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts, basically stocks of [...]
In my last post I described how the link between risk and return has not been as strong as Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) would predict, and investors willing to use leverage can take advantage of this fact by buying a portfolio of low-risk securities on margin. Indeed, this result was [...]
This is part three in my series on our current state of knowledge in wealth management, how we got here, and what we can do better. To start at part one click here. In my last post I explained how Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT) spurred the invention of the index [...]
This is part two in my series on our current state of knowledge in wealth management, how we got here, and what we can do better. For part one click here. Suppose you are shopping for a new car, or a fancy new electronic gadget of some kind. There are [...]
