Insights

Volume 15, No. 1, 2017 Burton G. Malkiel Fully automated investment services provide automated investment management. Selected portfolios are low-cost and are rebalanced, tax managed and optimized, consistent with an investor’s goals and risk tolerance. Everything, including deposits, withdrawals, transfers, and reporting, is handled electronically. The substantial advantages made available by technology are enumerated… Read more

Volume 13, Number 3,(2015 Burton G. Malkiel More than 10,000 Baby Boomers will be reaching retirement age every year from now through 2030. Inadequate savings, high cost and poorly designed retirement plans as well as investor behavioral mistakes combine to level most of them woefully unprepared for retirement. The paper suggests a number of possible… Read more

Volume 13, Number 3, 2015 Harry M. Markowitz Markowitz (1991) proposed the development of a “Game of Life” simulator in which portfolio selection was just one type of move in the financial actions of a subject household. Sherri Grabot’s invitation to Markowitz in the late 1990s to form and join the design committee of GuidedChoice… Read more

Volume 13, Number 4, Fourth Quarter 2015 Jack Treynor With home goods (e.g urban services) output equals demand; when demand increases we put older machines back to work. But the real wage depends on the productivity of the marginal home goods plant. Because money prices go up when the real wage goes down, an increase… Read more

Jack L. Treynor For a century, the critics’ favorite example of the failures of capitalism has been the Lorenz curve. They rank households from poorest to richest and then plot cumulative wealth against the cumulative number of households. The critics argue that, if capitalism were fair, the Lorenz curve would be a straight line: the… Read more

Dean LeBaron The physical world is composed of phase shifts, and we generally accept and understand the implications. The failure to recognize a phase shift that has taken place is exemplified by the perception of investment people about where they stand in the world … even what they stand for. I was part of the… Read more

Jack L. Treynor… Read more

Martin Fridson Price collapses in dotcoms and telecoms have fostered a comeback in the fundamental analysis identified with Benjamin Graham (1894–1976). Defining Graham’s method is no simple task, however; his thinking evolved considerably over a 60 year career. Reducing Graham’s approach to a quantitative formula does not produce superior performance. His most celebrated pupil, Warren… Read more

John C. Bogle Author John C. Bogle argues that the Information Age has given birth to a worship of hard numbers, and, in turn, the attitude that “If you cannot measure it, it doesn’t matter.” Mr. Bogle disagrees with this syllogism, and offers four “Perils of Numeracy,” detailing the threats that each pose not only… Read more