Short Story Long
Against the Status Quo
For this letter, I want to start out with some of the datapoints I find interesting. The market tends to feel rather chaotic when we are in the thick of it, so I think it is helpful to step back and look at the data on a regular basis. Record levels of money market assets …
The biggest challenges I faced investing early on were both, getting to know myself, and the cognitive traps that we are all susceptible to. I am a firm believer that successful investing has more to do with understanding one’s self first, and then developing processes to help short-circuit or sidestep any behaviors that may be …
I have been traveling over the last couple of weeks, during a period most would characterize as a time that one should not, and would not, travel on an airplane. On my flight back from Park City, Utah on Friday, both of my flights were completely full, and outside of people wiping down seats with …
I replicated another tactical ETF strategy in QuantConnect that I think is somewhat interesting. The guys over at AllocateSmartly do a lot of replication on these types of strategies (and do a great job). Rather than rephrase everything in my own words, you are probably better served reading the write up they did on the …
Lately I have been allocating most of my free time to an open-source Quant platform called QuantConnect. It is a really great platform that allows you to construct your own trading strategies using Python or C# and backtest before implementing the strategies live. It give you a ton of flexibility to program any features and …
I was at a conference last week in Los Angeles for Citywire magazine and they had a speaker, Ben Hammersley, a technologist, journalist, and author based in London, England. Normally I don’t take notes during speaking engagements, but given the fact that such a large part of what I do now involves technology, he had …
According to Wikipedia, heuristics are defined as: any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods may be used to speed up the process of finding a …
Over the last four years, there has been a widening market for global exchange-traded products (ETPs). In fact, according to the BlackRock Global ETP Landscape Report, it has grown from $598 billion in 2006 to $3.5 trillion in 2016. As they grow, the waters might get muddy for the average investor, leading them to pick …
The market for exchange-traded funds is rapidly expanding, which is why advisors need to perform proper due diligence before investing. The First Step We can start by selecting an ETF by size and/or market capitalization (anything from micro to large-cap), then choose from domestic or foreign equities at various levels of economic development. In fact, …
We like to think that issues are so easily solved with simplistic, watered down answers. To use an old cliché, the truth of an argument usually lies somewhere in the middle. For instance, when I see my fellow advisors arguing for or against active and passive fund managers, their biases come out instead of rational …